[quote]Experiment1 wrote:
They made the largest attack on American soil[/quote]
so, after all this time, was it really a cover up? Was it Afghanis flying those planes into the twin towers?
Al-Qaeda attacked us, not the Taliban.
The Taliban made the mistake of harboring Al-Qaeda and letting them set up terror camps.
[quote]Experiment1 wrote:
Although if we counted Iraqi/Afghan civilians we’d likely be well over 100,000 killed altogether, but those don’t count.[/quote]
why count Iraqis? You’re asking if the Taliban has won, they’re based in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
If we’re talking about a war against al-Qaeda, then you’d have to include even more nations than just Iraq and Afghanistan, since they’re spread worldwide. Plus, other nations beside the US are fighting them, so you’d have to include their numbers as well.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Wait! I thought it was al qaeda that “attacked us” and not the taliban.
[quote]
there must be something wrong,
we agree.
-edited…see my explanation below.
[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Ok, I’ll agree to say tabiban are terrorists if you agree that they think the US military is also terrorists.
Perspective is everything.[/quote]
Now it’s the “tabiban,” huh?[/quote]
Well, the Taliban do not go to other countries and commit violent acts to effect regime change.
There comes a point when one has to realize that the reason one is scared by the whole world is not that it is chock full of terrorists, but because one happens to be a pussy. [/quote]
So, the Germans must have been the biggest pussies of all. Not only did they fear an International Jewish Consipiracy, which never commited a terrorist act against the German people, they marched unarmed civilian men and women into gas chambers naked. That sure takes balls. And btw, when the Jews did get guns, they kicked your krout ass.
[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Ok, I’ll agree to say tabiban are terrorists if you agree that they think the US military is also terrorists.
Perspective is everything.[/quote]
Now it’s the “tabiban,” huh?[/quote]
Well, the Taliban do not go to other countries and commit violent acts to effect regime change.
[/quote]
I wouldn’t say that to the Pakistanis.
The Taliban ARE terrorists. Check the number of dead Pakistani civilians who have died at their hand.
[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Ok, I’ll agree to say tabiban are terrorists if you agree that they think the US military is also terrorists.
Perspective is everything.[/quote]
Now it’s the “tabiban,” huh?[/quote]
Well, the Taliban do not go to other countries and commit violent acts to effect regime change.
There comes a point when one has to realize that the reason one is scared by the whole world is not that it is chock full of terrorists, but because one happens to be a pussy. [/quote]
Okay tough guy…
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Ok, I’ll agree to say tabiban are terrorists if you agree that they think the US military is also terrorists.
Perspective is everything.[/quote]
Now it’s the “tabiban,” huh?[/quote]
Well, the Taliban do not go to other countries and commit violent acts to effect regime change.
[/quote]
I wouldn’t say that to the Pakistanis.
The Taliban ARE terrorists. Check the number of dead Pakistani civilians who have died at their hand.[/quote]
Check the number of Pakistani civilians that died at the Americans hands.
Other than the Pashtun tribes in the Pakistan/Afghanistan border region they have no business there.
[quote]MytchBucanan wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Ok, I’ll agree to say tabiban are terrorists if you agree that they think the US military is also terrorists.
Perspective is everything.[/quote]
Now it’s the “tabiban,” huh?[/quote]
Well, the Taliban do not go to other countries and commit violent acts to effect regime change.
There comes a point when one has to realize that the reason one is scared by the whole world is not that it is chock full of terrorists, but because one happens to be a pussy. [/quote]
Okay tough guy…[/quote]
Takes not much these days, doesnt it.
Not being scared of the Boogie Man was expected from grown ups not even one generation ago.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Ok, I’ll agree to say tabiban are terrorists if you agree that they think the US military is also terrorists.
Perspective is everything.[/quote]
Now it’s the “tabiban,” huh?[/quote]
Well, the Taliban do not go to other countries and commit violent acts to effect regime change.
[/quote]
I wouldn’t say that to the Pakistanis.
The Taliban ARE terrorists. Check the number of dead Pakistani civilians who have died at their hand.[/quote]
NavJoe was off the reservation again. How does one who obviously have a decent degree of intelligence so totally fuck up with the facts so often?
The guy is so dumb at times that it makes me hurt.[/quote]
Facts like that the Pashtun tribes always lived at both sides of the border and consider that to be their territory?
That the Pakistani military is not supposed to be there because they had a deal with the Pashtun tribes there?
Facts like that that deal was violated by the Pakistani military because the Americans insisted on it?
Facts like the drone strikes in Pakistani territory that are AN ACT OF WAR, dun-dun-dun, that kill civilians?
Facts like that US “intervention” have killed millions of people since the end of WWII with the expressed intent of influencing what political regimes will be implemented in nations thousands of miles off the coast of the US?
Those facts?
And a Pakistani perspective:
By AHMED QURAISHI - WWW.PAKNATIONALISTS.COM
There is a very simple question that every Pakistani government official needs to ask the Americans: If you fail to pacify the Pashtun in Afghanistan, is it Pakistan?s responsibility to sever historical ties and wage war against them?
This is the mother of all questions because it deals with the issue of some, not all, of the Afghan Taliban using Pakistani territory to attack occupation armies in their country. Apparently this is the excuse the United States is using to expand its failed Afghan war into Pakistan. US officials say Pakistanis are unable to exercise sovereignty over their own territory. US proxies inside Pakistan ? in politics and media ? then use this argument to ask another question: Isn?t Al Qaeda and Afghan Taliban violating Pakistani sovereignty by using our border pockets as hideouts away from action inside Afghanistan? This argument is used to justify US violations of the Pak-Afghan international border. If Afghan Taliban can violate Pakistan?s border, why not the US military? So the justification goes.
Pakistan still has time to come out strongly with two arguments at policy level. One, there is no way of completely stopping Pakistani Pashtuns ? who are an integral part of the Pakistani nation ? from sympathizing with the Pashtuns in Afghanistan. And Two, US must solve the ?Pashtun problem? inside Afghanistan. The solution is not by starting a war between the Pakistani military ? manned in substantial part by the Pashtuns ? and between Pakistani or Afghan Pashtuns, like the so-called Haqqani network. This will not fix the toy the Americans broke in Afghanistan.
In other words: What is it the US is doing wrong in Afghanistan to spur Pashtun and Taliban resistance, including pushing some of them into Pakistan? And should Pakistan respond by killing the Pashtun because the US says so?
There are two more strong arguments that can strengthen a Pakistani policy review, which is overdue nine years into a failed war.
One is the fact that Pashtun and Taliban resistance against occupation in Afghanistan is not a function of Pakistani tribal areas. The US military dare not claim that Pakistan?s devastated tribal belt is alone responsible for the rout facing US, NATO and ISAF forces across Afghanistan. But this is what the Americans imply when they shift the world focus to Pakistan without anyone from the Pakistani side disputing this twisted American logic.
And the second argument has to do with al Qaeda. Pakistan needs to dispute the American claims about the quality and strength of Al Qaeda presence in the Pakistani tribal belt. London?s International Institute of Strategic Studies is not exactly a den of antiwar activism. In a report last month, the think tank questioned the US policy line that al Qaeda is strong enough to threaten anyone beyond Afghanistan or Pakistan.
If anything, we are seeing a US-occupied Afghanistan becoming a magnet for unknown terrorists from multiple backgrounds and questionable loyalties using Afghan soil to enter our tribal belt, as in the case of the Germans involved in the alleged Mumbai-style Europe terror plot. Washington is conveniently using these conspiracy theories to expand its war inside Pakistani territory without any credible evidence.
[b]
Pakistan does not have a quarrel with Afghan Pashtuns or the Afghan Taliban. The latest US reports and assertions that Pakistan or its spy agencies maintain contacts with either are ridiculous. Islamabad must maintain those contacts. In fact, we must expand contacts with the Afghan Taliban in view of the double game the United States played with us in Afghanistan over the last eight years, where it turned Kabul into Anti-Pakistan Central and deliberately expanded and continues to encourage Indian presence on our western borders.
The American duplicity extends to peace talks. Washington wants us to enter into a war with Afghanistan?s Pashtuns while it secretly establishes contacts and tries to win them over behind Pakistan?s back. [/b]
The same argument extends to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and Kashmiri groups. Islamabad can?t shower bombs on Kashmiris who decide to become part of LeT or support their kin resisting Indian atrocities in Kashmir. The solution there too is for India to resolve its own problems. Its festering occupation in Kashmir, like the festering American occupation in Afghanistan, is breeding two-way violence that first and foremost destabilizes Pakistan. Our answer can?t be to send troops to crack down on our Pashtuns and Kashmiris. Others need to answer for their actions that are destabilizing Pakistan and the region.
And an Israeli opinion:
Pakistan uses Islamic fundamentalism to submerge traditional Pashtun ethnic identity in a desperate attempt to suppress Pashtun ethnic nationalism, and to stave off the disintegration of Pakistan. The Pashtuns are a numerically large enough ethnic group possessing the strength of arms to be able to secede from Pakistan at any moment, should they decide upon it.
The answer is to let the separatists have their way and achieve their independent ethnic states, breaking up Pakistan. It’s better to allow Pakistan to naturally break up into 3 or 4 benign ethnic states, than for it to keep promoting Islamic fundamentalist extremism in a doomed attempt to hold itself together. Pakistan is a failing state, and it’s better to let it fail and fall apart. This will help to end all conflict in the region and the trans-national terrorist problem. An independent ethnic Pashtun state will be dominated by Pashtun ethnic identity instead of fundamentalist Islam, and thus AlQaeda will no longer be able to find sanctuary there. Conventional ethnic identity is far more natural and benign than trans-nationalist Islamism with its inherent collectivist political bent. Supporting the re-emergence of 4 natural ethnic states - Pashtunistan, Balochistan, Sindh and Punjab - would be far better than continuing to support a dangerous and dysfunctional failed state like Pakistan which continues to spew toxic Islamist extremist ideology in a doomed attempt to hold itself together.
[b]
Following the failure of the Vietnam War, many Americans later recognized that war was really a war of ethnic reunification by the Vietnamese people. It wasn’t a case of one foreign country attempting to conquer another foreign country - indeed, the north and south Vietnamese were not strangers or aliens to one another - they were 2 halves of a common whole. The question was whether they would reunify under communist socialism or under free democracy, but because a blinkered American leadership refused to recognize the Vietnamese grassroots affinity for one another and their desire to reunify, it pretty much ensured that Vietnamese reunification would take place under communist socialism.
Likewise, the Pashtun people live on both sides of an artificial Durand Line (Afghan-Pak “border”) which they themselves have never accepted or recognized. It’s a question of whether they will politically reunify under close-minded theocratic Islamism or under a more secular and tolerant society. Because today’s blinkered American leadership is again blindly defending another artificial line on a map, and refusing to recognize the oneness of the people living on both sides of that artificial line, America is again shutting itself out of the reunification process, guaranteeing that Pashtun reunification will occur under fanatical fundamentalist Islamism as prescribed by Pakistan (much as Hanoi’s Soviet backers prescribed reunification under communist socialism.) It’s only later on, much after America’s defeat, that some Americans will realize too late that they should have seen that the Pashtuns on both sides of the artificial line were actually one people. Pakistan knows it all too well, because they’ve been living with the guilt and fear of it ever since Pakistan’s creation - but that’s why they’re hell-bent on herding the Pashtuns down the path of Islamist fanaticism, using Islamist glue to keep the Pashtuns as a whole hugged to Pakistan’s bosom.
If only nearsighted Washington policymakers could shed their blinkers and really understand what’s going on, then they might have a chance to shape events more effectively, and to their favor. Pakistan is rapidly building up its nuclear arsenal, as it moves to surpass Britain to become the world’s 5th-largest nuclear state.The Pakistanis are racing to build up as much hard-power as possible to back up the soft-power they feel Islamist hate-ideology gives them. [/b]
The world needs to compel the Pakistanis to let the Pashtuns go, and allow them to have their own independent national existence, along with the Baluchis and Sindhis. Humoring Pakistan and allowing it to continue using Islamist hatred to rally the people towards unity to counter slow disintegration is not the way to achieve stability in the region, or security for the world.
http://www.israelmilitary.net/archive/index.php/t-18804.html
[b]
To American eyes the struggle raging in Pakistan with the Taliban is about religious fanaticism. But in Pakistan it is about an explosive fusion of Islamist zeal and simmering ethnic tensions that have been exacerbated by U.S. pressures for military action against the Taliban and its al-Qaeda allies. Understanding the ethnic dimension of the conflict is the key to a successful strategy for separating the Taliban from al-Qaeda and stabilizing multiethnic Pakistan politically.
The Pakistani army is composed mostly of Punjabis. The Taliban is entirely Pashtun. For centuries, Pashtuns living in the mountainous borderlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan have fought to keep out invading Punjabi plainsmen. So sending Punjabi soldiers into Pashtun territory to fight jihadists pushes the country ever closer to an ethnically defined civil war, strengthening Pashtun sentiment for an independent ?Pashtunistan? that would embrace 41 million people in big chunks of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
This is one of the main reasons the army initially favored a peace deal with a Taliban offshoot in the Swat Valley and has resisted U.S. pressure to go all out against jihadist advances into neighboring districts. While army leaders fear the long-term dangers of a Taliban link-up with Islamist forces in the heartland of Pakistan, they are more worried about what they see as the looming danger of Pashtun separatism.
[/b]
Historically, the Pashtuns were politically unified before the British Raj. The Pashtun kings who founded Afghanistan ruled over 40,000 square miles of what is now Pakistan, an area containing more than half of the Pashtun population, until British forces defeated them in 1847, pushed up to the Khyber Pass and imposed a disputed boundary, the Durand Line, that Afghanistan has never accepted. Over Pashtun nationalist protests, the British gave these conquered areas to the new, Punjabi-dominated government of Pakistan created in the 1947 partition of India.
At various times since, Afghan governments have challenged Pakistan?s right to rule over its Pashtun areas, alternatively pushing for an autonomous state to be created within Pakistan, an independent ?Pashtunistan? or a ?Greater Afghanistan? that would directly annex the lost territories. Fears of Pashtunistan led Pakistan to support jihadist surrogates in the Afghan resistance during the Soviet occupation in the 1980s and, later, to build up the Taliban. Ironically, during its rule in Kabul the Taliban refused to endorse the Durand Line despite pressure from Islamabad. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has also resisted, calling it ?a line of hatred that raised a wall between the two brothers.?
The British got the most rebellious Pashtun tribes to acquiesce to their rule only by giving them formal autonomous status in their own ?Federally Administered Tribal Areas? (FATA). This autonomy was respected by successive Pakistani governments until the Bush administration pressured former president Pervez Musharraf into sending his army into those areas in 2002, displacing 50,000 people. Since then, Predator strikes have killed more than 700 Pashtun civilians.
So how should the Obama administration proceed?
Militarily, the United States should lower its profile by ending airstrikes. By arousing a Pashtun sense of victimization at the hands of outside forces, the conduct of the ?war on terror? in FATA, where al-Qaeda is based, has strengthened the jihadist groups the U.S. seeks to defeat.
Politically, U.S. policy should be revised to demonstrate that America supports the Pashtun desire for a stronger position in relation to the Punjabi-dominated government in Islamabad.
The Pashtuns in FATA treasure their long-standing autonomy and do not like to be ruled by Islamabad. As a March 13 International Crisis Group report recognized, what they want is integration into the Pashtun Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP). The United States should support Pashtun demands to merge the NWFP and FATA, followed by the consolidation of those areas and Pashtun enclaves in Baluchistan and the Punjab into a single unified ?Pashtunkhwa? province that enjoys the autonomy envisaged in the inoperative 1973 Pakistan constitution.
In the meantime, instead of permitting Islamabad to administer the huge sums of U.S. aid going into FATA, the Obama administration should condition the aid?s continuance on most of it being dispensed in conjunction with the NWFP provincial government.
Al-Qaeda and its ?foreign fighters,? who are mostly Arab, depend on local support from the Taliban for their FATA sanctuary. Unlike al-Qaeda, with its global terrorist agenda, most of the Taliban factions focus on local objectives in Afghanistan and FATA; they do not pose a direct threat to the United States. U.S. policy should therefore welcome any new peace initiatives by the secular Pashtun leaders of the Awami National Party, now ruling the NWFP, designed to separate Taliban and Taliban-allied Islamist factions from al-Qaeda. As in Swat, military force should be a last resort.
In the conventional wisdom, either Islamist or Pashtun identity will eventually triumph, but it is equally plausible that the result could be what Pakistani ambassador to Washington Husain Haqqani has called an ?Islamic Pashtunistan.? On March 1, 2007, Haqqani?s Pashtun predecessor as ambassador, the retired Maj. Gen. Mahmud Ali Durrani, said at a seminar at the Pakistan Embassy, ?I hope the Taliban and Pashtun nationalism don?t merge. If that happens, we?ve had it, and we?re on the verge of that.?
http://pkonweb.com/2011/09/pakistans-ethnic-fault-line-by-selig-harrison/
I am talking about the rash of bombing attacks against the Pakistan government.
No one told Musharraf to attack the Red Mosque years ago.
and about your article: Of course Pakistan’s not going to admit they are double dealing. They actually benefit for having Al Qaeda and the Taliban around cause we give them more aid to keep the supply lines open.
So, what do you think Orion, time to leave Pakistan, Afghanistan and let the chips fall where they may?
We did that when the Soviets were defeated and if we hadn’t, just think, we might not be in this mess right now.
Cliff notes:
At least to the Pashtuns and they are really the only ones who have a say in the matter, there is no Afghanistan nor is there a Pakistan. What actually is there are Pashtun lands and any intrusion is responded to in kind.
Pakistan has left them alone for a reason, first of all because 20+% of the Pakistani military is Pashtun, second because the Pakistani military has no chance in them there mountains and third, because that re ignites ethnic rivalries that are best forgotten if Pakistan is supposed to stay in one piece.
Due to repeated American drone attacks that kill a fuckload of civilians and due to madrassas built and financed by American allies (snicker…) young Pashtun are incresingly radicalized which makes an end of both Pakistan and Afghanistan likely and an independent Pashtunistan or some such more likely and that will be deeply Islamic, Wahabbi style.
Hey, if they play their cards right and they should if they want a failing empire of their backs they probably can aquire nukes when they do that, as deeply entrenched in the Pakistani army as they are.
Conclusion: America is preparing the clusterfuck that will keep her forces occupied around 2030 or so with the chances of a OMGmushroomcloudovermanhattan rapidly rising.
Orion, your articles counterdict themselves:
first article:
“The solution is not by starting a war between the Pakistani military manned in substantial part by the Pashtuns and between Pakistani or Afghan Pashtuns, like the so-called Haqqani network”
thrid article:
“The Pakistani army is composed mostly of Punjabis. The Taliban is entirely Pashtun”
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
I am talking about the rash of bombing attacks against the Pakistan government.
No one told Musharraf to attack the Red Mosque years ago.
and about your article: Of course Pakistan’s not going to admit they are double dealing. They actually benefit for having Al Qaeda and the Taliban around cause we give them more aid to keep the supply lines open.
So, what do you think Orion, time to leave Pakistan, Afghanistan and let the chips fall where they may?
We did that when the Soviets were defeated and if we hadn’t, just think, we might not be in this mess right now.
[/quote]
That is not why you are in this mess.
You are in this mess because you did not simply take OBL out like you eventually did right at the start of this whole clusterfuck.
With the proper presentation from American media whor…, um, reporters, I think a dead OBL and a few alQuaeda bases being blown to smithereens by cruise missiles the American population bloodlust would have been satisfied, Americas enemies would have gotten the message and everyone would have lived happily ever after.
Well, almost everyone.
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
Orion, your articles counterdict themselves:
first article:
“The solution is not by starting a war between the Pakistani military manned in substantial part by the Pashtuns and between Pakistani or Afghan Pashtuns, like the so-called Haqqani network”
thrid article:
“The Pakistani army is composed mostly of Punjabis. The Taliban is entirely Pashtun”
[/quote]
The Taliban are entirely Pashtun.
The Pakistani army is roughly 20% Pashtun which is both “substantial” and leaves room for “The Pakistani army is composed mostly of Punjabis”
20% isn’t a substantial part.
but here’s the latest link:
[quote]orion wrote:
You are in this mess because you did not simply take OBL out like you eventually did right at the start of this whole clusterfuck.
With the proper presentation from American media whor…, um, reporters, I think a dead OBL and a few alQuaeda bases being blown to smithereens by cruise missiles the American population bloodlust would have been satisfied, Americas enemies would have gotten the message and everyone would have lived happily ever after.
Well, almost everyone.
[/quote]
Clinton used cruise missiles in the 90’s. It didn’t work.
Maybe the Taliban should have just handed Bin Laden over.
Do you agree Al-Qaeda is a threat and should we try and destroy them?