Kucinich plans to force vote on US withdrawal from Afghanistan

Thanks for that. I messed up editing. I thought that comment was gone to cyber-land forever.
You have a great future in IT

Geeky gal that doesn't like good stuff to just disappear. At your service. :)

your logic is circular.

Because one is an important security issue. Afghanistan is a critical issue in security because if the Taliban manages to establish a base in Afghanistan from which to launch attacks into Pakistan there can be a serious problem.

The people here seem to forget how important it is for there to be some stability in Afghanistan. Pakistan's government is weak and just a few months ago we all remember how the Taliban was knocking on the gates of Islamabad. If that government is toppled and WMD fall into the hands of people like al-Qaeda or the Taliban, then what?

Correction: We have every reason to give the troop surge a chance. Peace at any price can potentially find us back in Afghanistan in the future.

just as abstruse as the first comment.

Thanks for the posting. I never knew about Bayard Rustin and the origin of the phrase speak truth to power. A very impressive and inspirational man.

abstruse [əbˈstruːs]
adj
not easy to understand; recondite; esoteric
[from Latin abstrūsus thrust away, concealed, from abs- ab-1 + trūdere to thrust]
abstrusely adv
abstruseness (n)

Thanks RFID.

What exactly is abstruse about this? Did you read the link?

i skimmed it. It's some dude's biography. It's over a thousand words. All I was looking for was a definition of the term, not a life story.

The origin of the term is in the link. The definition is pretty self explanatory.

...and a thousand words long?! i don't need to know that bad. I'm still hanging with abstruse.

you asked....both times.

p/c personal computer? Use your words. What are you talking about no holes barred?

p/c = politically correct. . . no holds barred = no rules of restraint

There is no such thing as 'no rules of restraint' in war. War is governed by domestic and international laws and treaties to which the US is signatory.
All international treaties become the supreme law of the land as laid out in the US Constitution. Feel free to look that up.

I'm aware of the "rules," however I grew up in various environments that when engaged in a fight, the purpose is to win, "no holds barred" was understood until the bitter end. And I also fully understand that we are currently engaged in warfare with a culture that doesn't give a fock about rules, never has, and never will. . . compassion is viewed as a weakness, so why not stop bullshitting our selves?

No, ignorance and belligerence is viewed as weakness.
When do you begin to realize that the US has been playing into bin Laden's hands from the beginning?

Do you not think his wettest dream was to permanently mire the US in a middle eastern occupation, bankrupting the once great nation and elevating the hatred of America? America has given him everything he sought every step of the way. The middle east is now terrorist incubator central thanks to the wrong-headed response.

Advantage bin Laden.

This conflict is not going to go away, end it (a Grand Finale) there, or end it here, so where is it going to be if you were to have a choice?

There's the rub, there is no 'ending it'. What do you suggest? Genocide?
What we are doing is precisely counterproductive. It is the occupation itself that feeds the insurgency more than anything else. The notion that these tribesmen pose an existential threat to the security of America is laughable at best.

You've forgotten that it was a handful of "tribesman" that took down the trade towers, and also attempted the same to the pentagon, not to mention the innocents on the flight over Pennsylvania, eh?

We DO NOT want to build an oil pipeline in Afghanistan! There isn't any oil IN Afghanistan! IIRC there is some irrigation projects, but that is just to help the local economy and allow the country to feed it's self.

Very 2002. Try something 2008. The pipeline is going through Iran.

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://moinansari.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/tapi-pipeline.jpg&imgrefurl=http://rupeenews.com/2008/02/13/peace-in-swat-nato-impotence-iran-pakistan-china-ipc-pipeline-heralds-eviction-of-india-from-afghanistan-and-maybe-even-chahbahar/&usg=__PuDrpqk1TXkPiro26Z0BxYNQKwc=&h=93&w=135&sz=5&hl=en&start=21&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=Z8wDVBPaqcjfiM:&tbnh=63&tbnw=92&prev=/images%3Fq%3DDauletabad%2Bgas%2Bfields%2BGwadar%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DX%26um%3D1

it's for gas. look at the link i posted. That's the third time you've tried to shove that same reference down my throat. Read it again. Said it in 2009, talking about the late 90s. Late 90's is even more out of date than 2002. Get over it.

Gas oil, whatever. Does gas make it OK then?
Lets call it energy because the specific commodity is secondary. it could have been water for all it matters.
The fact remains, this invasion was planned well in advance.
What's more, it was accomplished in five weeks including authorization in Congress and mobilizing the army, navy, air force, marines, and starting an invasion by October 7, 2001. Just to send spec ops into the country, getting them in place and designating appropriate targets would take much longer than five weeks.
It is simply impossible to accomplish this scale of military operations with a lumbering bureaucracy like the US military.
It took a full year to build up forces to invade Iraq the first time around and, aside from a brief ground war, there was not even an occupation in the cards.
What the US did was simply logistically impossible to accomplish in five weeks. It could not have been mobilized in five weeks.
meantime, billion dollar fortresses are under construction in both countries and the intent is to remain there in force permanently. not ten years, not twenty years. Permanently.

**Afghanistan has been hurled into interminable turmoil, with hundreds of thousands of its citizens displaced; almost daily bombing runs, drone missile attacks, middle-of-the-night commando raids, indiscriminate shooting of civilians at checkpoints; mass-scale drought and famine; an explosion of opium cultivation and trafficking; expansion of that destabilization by setting Pakistan aflame with the potential for its fragmentation and dismemberment and heightened tensions with its - fellow nuclear - neighbor India.

This is the current, grave situation seven and a half years after the invasion of Afghanistan.

With the deployment of another 30,000 US troops and thousands more from NATO's ranks (recently Italy, Poland, Georgia, Azerbaijan and other nations have announced increases) Western troop strength will soon approach 100,000.

This is pouring fuel on fire. Taliban has become as amorphous a term as al-Qaeda has been; anyone in Afghanistan, even in the non-Pushtun North and West of the nation, who takes issue with Western warplanes and combat troops dealing out death and destruction in their nation and their villages is now a Talib. An enemy.

The more US and NATO troops that arrive in Afghanistan, the more resentment, resistance and violence will ensue. Inevitably.

The US and NATO have arrogantly spurned offers by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the post-Soviet Collective Security Treaty Organization to assist in bringing a regional - and non-military - resolution of the myriad crises afflicting Afghanistan, its long-suffering people and the region.

NATO is not a nation-building, peacekeeping or humanitarian outfit - it is an aggressive military bloc. When it and its individual member states' military forces leave South and Central Asia then healing, reconstruction and lasting peace can begin.

http://wfol.tv/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=754:afghanistan-us-nato-wage-worlds-largest-longest-war&catid=51:other-resources&Itemid=14

actually a completely different invasion had been researched as a contingency plan that was never used. It was merely that even though the circumstances, administration and enemy were all different, the terrain and weapons had not changed a whole lot and much of the plan could be easily reworked with very little additional effort. This was never a secret. it was announced on national news while the thing was going down.

This argument is based on confusion of the word plan. There is plan to prepare for and plan to design. The war was designed previously for other reasons. They happen to have it lying around.

Are you suggesting special ops designated all the targets in Afghanistan in two weeks?
Wow. Were they led into battle by General David Copperfield?

How did the USA begin an invasion, including a sustained aerial bombing campaign from multiple bases such as the US itself and numerous European and Middle Eastern bases, get Congressional approval and execute the operation, all inside of five weeks without already having the carrier groups and at least a third of the troops and millions of tons of ordnace and general logistical supplies in position and masses of ordnance. Again, that doesn't happen in the real world, only because it is simply not possible.

Included in that time frame we also had disparate and competitive US intelligence agencies investigate and determine the identity of all 19 hijackers (the next day after 9/11, As I understand).
The same amazing intelligent agencies who *all* failed to protect America on 9/11 suddenly got super-human and infallible investigative abilities over night and named all the bad guys....THE NEXT DAY!
Hey, I used to like comic books at one time, too. But life is not the Fantasic 16.

Finally, if Bush really accomplished all of that in five weeks then perhaps I should reconsider my exceptionally low opinion of him as a 'commander-in-chief' of the military. But I don't think he either did given evidence to the contrary, nor could he have done if he threw everything he had at it.

@ SleepDirt, you say:
"Included in that time frame we also had disparate and competitive US intelligence agencies investigate and determine the identity of all 19 hijackers (the next day after 9/11, As I understand).
The same amazing intelligent agencies who *all* failed to protect America on 9/11 suddenly got super-human and infallible investigative abilities over night and named all the bad guys....THE NEXT DAY!"
Why and how did they fail to grasp the severity of what they "supposed" could happen? . . easy, they like you, just could not come to terms with the facts that it could really happen. . . i.e. denial kicked in.
When reality struck (quite literally), they then had undeniable proof to act upon what they previously knew, but would not concede as so.
Another example of p c multi-culturism focking up good old fashioned common sense. . . (which seemingly isn't common anymore). . . go figure, eh?

I agree with you 100%

Why are we talking about the economy? I was talking about the war. Let's not change the subject. Can anyone answer my damn questions? Or are they inconvenient?

I offered that tid-bit up with the thought that possibly you'd follow the logic along with insight about B.O. plenty and his campaign rhetoric concerning his economic policies and its results to that of his Eastern Wars policies as just as much bullshit and just as toxic, imho. . .

I thought that's why you did that. I'm sure he could handle the economy much better than he is now. But I don't see how one has to do with another. Can I just get a direct answer to the questions?

I don't mean to be rude or anything but it upsets me that NO ONE that is for immediate withdrawal seems to even think about what I mentioned in my questions. So the questions stand.

I can't offer up any rationale that "solves" those questions, because I don't see anyone, group or nation, who clearly understand the complexities of the worlds problems beyond those issues that effect any given sector of their own society and its direct effects upon their own lives, and even then, factions within their own camp cannot even come to a consensus that is even seemingly coherent, imho.

yeah because toppling the administration is just what we need right now as a nation. Ron Paul fan then?

Ron Paul?

Obama? Oh wait.. it must be Ron Paul because while honest he's also completely insane.

Remember the the Happybunnies formula:

Are they harping on how "honest" a politician is?
Are they in the same breath also calling all politicians corrupt?
Is the topic based on militia type ultra conservative utopian ideology?
Is there some sort of conspiracy?

Must be Ron Paul.

yeah because the other option of McCaine sure would have gotten you us of Afghanistan alright. UH huh. Sure. So tell me. What color is the sky on your world?

McCain didn't run against Obama in the DNC primaries.

Ah. I was a Clinton fan myself.

Great quote!

Oh god. A truther.
My personal favorite right wing conspiracy nuts these days are the chuckers. The guys who believe Obama scheduled his press conference specifically so he could interfere with the Charlie Brown Christmas Special for his own nefarious purposes. They actually exist.

Was there a plan written up for possible troop intervention in Afghanistan? Of course there was. We were pouring billions into a proxy war with the Soviet Union. No at least researching it would be irresponsible.

The chuckers! that is great.

"Oh god. A truther. "

Ad hominems. A sure sign of someone who is getting irritated because they are losing an argument in the face of empirical evidence.

It's not an insult per se. That particular article is a favorite of the thruther crowd. I was reacting to an attempt to hijack the thread onto something completely different. you think that I should have to explain why truthers are irrelevant?

Ok. The expanded version of what I thought was assumed by the term truther:

The thing wrong with that piece is that it talks mostly not about current events but about stuff from the start of the war and all the way back to the Reagan administration.

One of the standard techniques of the truthers is to attempt to confuse the timeline. There have been effectively four or five different conflicts fought in the country back to back.

1)Soviet Union vs. Afghanistan. That one was quite short. (Soviet union wins)
2)CIA aided by Pakistan using the Taliban regional warlords as a proxy against the Soviet Union (US/taliban wins)

----Cold war ends. Soviet union disappears. Everything changes.----

3)Taliban government using Al Qaeda as a proxy against the United states (US loses)
3.5) United states allies with non Taliban regional warlords against taliban government. (US wins)
4) Taliban regional warlords (not the Taliban government, that is gone) capitalize on Bush's stupidity to reignite the war. (still in progress)

I am only talking about the current one (4). this article doesn't even address that but talks about 1, 2, and part of 3. The idea of the truthers is to conflate these separate things into one bit and form a conspiracy theory about it.

it's not about Osama and hasn't been for years. Right now it's about Pakistani nuclear weapons.

His campaign promise was not to take troops out of Afghanistan it was to take troops our of Iraq. Which he is doing.

AFAIK That liar and killer stuff is just ridiculous. Bush maybe for the killer, but how do you get Obama?

Obama's campaign promise was to end the war in Iraq and escalate the war in Afghanistan with an additional two brigades... 30,000 troops. He kept his campaign promise.

Indeed that war needs to end and he offered the best of both worlds: Put in the resources necessary to get Afghanistan under control and set a deadline for the Afghanis to take their security into their own hands.

Bush created a ticking time bomb. Obama's gotta defuse it. Running away won't help.

you did that?!?!?! Asherp you rock!

Second. Good for you.

Very admirable, asherp. Hats off to you.

You can be in my peace corps any time! ( I think this has just become asherp appreciation day )

me 2

me 3

I would include Bernie Sanders in that group and Russ Feingold.

True that. There are so many baddies that it is hard to remember the ones that don't make my head explode. :D

They're not working for it. They're demanding it like children wanting sweets. Yes peace is better than war, any idiot knows that. The problem is that war is better than nuclear war, which is what we risk if Pakistan falls.

But you are OK with right-wing Israelis clamoring to to nuke Tehran? KimJong Il has nukes but the US is not bombing his civilians. Isn't that also an existential threat? What about Russia? Russia is an authoritarian dictatorship that has shut down all but state controlled media and assassinates journalists abroad, they have nukes, subs, bombers, hackers, spies. Shouldn't we invade? They have WMDs, they are known to commit acts of terror, they need a regime change, some democracy, they are a threat. What about Red China?
A defense force is essential for a nation's defense. I cannot recall the last time the US used it's military forces for defense. Can you?

"I cannot recall the last time the US used it's military forces for defense. Can you?"
No. . . pray that we never see that day.!

AMEN BRO !

wtf does that even mean?

See my post down-thread.

I did. It makes even less sense that this comment. It's someone's thousand plus word biography and has nothing to do with defining the term.

What it means is that it is difficult for a member of a party to stand up and buck the leadership on any issue. I respect his willingness to speak the truth to those in power.

"It's someone's thousand plus word biography and has nothing to do with defining the term."

So you tacitly admit you didn't even read it then.

I agree wholeheartedly.

I don't. He may be honorable but that doesn't make him right. An afghan withdrawal might have made sense if Pakistan hadn't gotten involved, but now if one country falls, both probably will. And Pakistan is nuclear. IMHO This is a big big deal.