Rules for winning the Nobel peace prize

[Vatican Assassin]

The goal in Afghanistan, like I said, is to eliminate enemies.

America doesn't give two shits about what happens to Afghanistan once all our enemies are gone because we can't afford to and it's pointless, Afghanistan is a non-centralized (using this in lieu of "backwards," which can be seen as pejorative) feudal-like nation. The only reason there is a central government in Afghanistan is because the rest of the world generally requires it for representation - they are neither coherent nor effective. Warlords tolerate the central government because they don't step on any toes and they get paid off by them.

There is some truthiness here, but I think it leads to a contradiction. Simply put, Genocidal is right about Afghanistan's society make-up; it is de-centralized, and I have heard military commanders refer to it as "valleyism." Essentially, Afghanistan is made up of tribes who control different valleys where they can herd and grow in between the rugged and mostly uninhabitable mountainous terrain. What this means is that unless you consider each individual tribe in each valley to be our "enemy" then you will find it to be very difficult to carry out our current mission of "eliminating all our enemies." If you consider the Taliban to be our sole enemy, even though we set them up and continue to fund them, then you would have to wonder why we haven't taken them out in the last 8 years, and why they control all the opium production. Something is fishy with this...war? conflict? occupation? Seems like we are trying to put Taliban in power while individual tribes simply fight to get outside invaders out of their valleys like they've been doing since forever.

[Stayon]

hahaha really good disp

[paradise!]

approve

truthiness

stephen colbert would thumbs up this, so that's what im going to do.

[Epinephrine]

There is some truthiness here, but I think it leads to a contradiction. Simply put, Genocidal is right about Afghanistan's society make-up; it is de-centralized, and I have heard military commanders refer to it as "valleyism." Essentially, Afghanistan is made up of tribes who control different valleys where they can herd and grow in between the rugged and mostly uninhabitable mountainous terrain. What this means is that unless you consider each individual tribe in each valley to be our "enemy" then you will find it to be very difficult to carry out our current mission of "eliminating all our enemies." If you consider the Taliban to be our sole enemy, even though we set them up and continue to fund them, then you would have to wonder why we haven't taken them out in the last 8 years, and why they control all the opium production. Something is fishy with this...war? conflict? occupation? Seems like we are trying to put Taliban in power while individual tribes simply fight to get outside invaders out of their valleys like they've been doing since forever.

People tend to forget that Afghanistan had for decades a stable society until the USSR decided to make it communist.

[Jerome Scuggs]

in geno's sense, there is a living example of how stateless societies wouldn't need "defense" in the general sense, because it's a bitch to try to conquer a decentralized country. there's no infrastructure to readily take over. just a random "checking in on thread and reading 2 sentences" post here

[Squeezer]

in geno's sense, there is a living example of how stateless societies wouldn't need "defense" in the general sense, because it's a bitch to try to conquer a decentralized country. there's no infrastructure to readily take over. just a random "checking in on thread and reading 2 sentences" post here

yeah I guess it's kind of optimal in the sense that you can't conquer an army of yeoman very easily but would you prefer to live in Afghanistan, where liefe sucks, there is a loose criminal justice system and little to no infrastructure or America, the big bully on the block that bombs anyone that even considers fucking around on our soil?

edit: I guess a better question would be, which do you think is less likely to be invaded and thus more safe/stable? Hint! One of those two countries above is currently occupied by a major foreign power

[Jerome Scuggs]

yeah I guess it's kind of optimal in the sense that you can't conquer an army of yeoman very easily but would you prefer to live in Afghanistan, where liefe sucks, there is a loose criminal justice system and little to no infrastructure or America, the big bully on the block that bombs anyone that even considers fucking around on our soil?

edit: I guess a better question would be, which do you think is less likely to be invaded? Hint! One of those two countries above is currently occupied by a major foreign power

it's not that the lack of a real government caused the poverty, it's a combination of many other factors - it never even got its feet off the ground, the british were fighting the russians there almost a hundred years ago. (the british also spent alot of time dealing with the irish, who also had a similar de-centralization of government and resisted british invasion for quite some time.)

having no centralized government, afghanistan could never assemble a real "national" military, which means the probability of them declaring war is virtually nil. would i want to live in the country that's doing the shooting and bombing and invading? of course, anyone would. but that's not really a salient question anyways, because hey - the "big bully" caused the very enmity that led to groups of people deciding that something must be done, and those people happened to go to a place - afghanistan - to plot their plots.

[Squeezer]

still, I'd rather belong to history's (current) great manipulators as opposed to the ones getting fucked.

it makes my life a hell of a lot easier not having to grow poppy or worry about a superpower waking up one morning and deciding to claim my home.

Plus you're forgetting about crime within Afghanistan. Crime exists there just as it does everywhere. At least in this country we have a large enough police presence to scare most people from engaging in criminal affairs. There they have to deal with it all on their lonesome, or with the aid of a second rate and possibly corrupt set of cops.

[Squeezer]

I mean, if not for the United States, then don't you think some other superpower would be meddling in the Middle East to buy oil? There's a reason no one wants to get involved in the whole Iran post-election mess and it isn't because Ahmadinejad is a good leader, or because they might have a rinky-dink bomb that can fly just beyond their border. It's because China has a seat on the security council and a controlling stake in Iran's oil companies.

You think that wont come back to bite them at some point like it did the US?

Actually it may not put egg on their face since they aren't trying to install leaders or influence public perception, they just want cheap oil. Who knows, maybe things would be legitimately better.

[genocidal]

It's not really as much of a problem determining who our enemies are in Afghanistan as you seem to think, Vati.

We neither set up nor continue to fund the Taliban, but yes we did support them for a while (mostly with arms). It's not like this is a strange trend for America not just in the Middle East but Latin America as well. We've shown a willingness to support political organizations if it seems at the time to be beneficial to our interests in the area. As long as they suit our interests (even if they're an unconscionable group of thugs) we don't really care. Opium fields are more of a concern for Western Europe wanting to keep the drugs out of their countries, not so much for America. But supporting terrorist activities does piss us off.

Basically, the ones that shoot at you are your enemies, and that's usually the Taliban. The problem in Afghanistan is that because of decentralization it's very difficult to get information to villages about American troop movements, thus resulting in unintended conflicts by scared civilians. Additionally, our troop movements are antiquated and result in needless deaths in both Iraq and Afghanistan from attacks on convoys. But the military has its way of doing things and it takes a while for that to change because command-and-control lines encourage swift communication top-down, but not bottom-up.

[Dabram]

disp that was awesome!

[Mantra-Slider]

indeed!!:bigups: