Run Taliban, Run!!

[Ziroc]

Lol, again we see what cowards these losers are.. They talk all big and tough until the REPERCUSSIONS come (That's the allied forces), and they run and flee (JUST as the Iraqis did).

So pathetic. You screw with us (Any Nation that wishes Peace) and we'll bury you. [img]graemlins/bricks.gif[/img]


Any other takers?? [img]graemlins/imtough.gif[/img]

[Ronn_Bman]

It is wonderful to see them on the run and local tribes reclaiming their lands. I know this doesn't make those who were against the bombing feel any better, but it did allow a relatively quick route of their standing force. With nearly 80% of the country free from Taliban rule refuges who left their home both before and after September 11th are returning home. The UN also is getting it's biggest shipments of food into Afghanistan now from Uzbeckistan, a route which has been out of commission for years, and says they should be able to feed the 4 million refuges.

[Barry the Sprout]

Just a quick point. This is far from the end as we all know. That is what worries me - Afghanistan is only the start and this will not bring the fight for justice any nearer to a conclusion.

Also I am not in the least suprised that the Taliban fell so quickly. Their entire governmental budget for one year (not even military budget but the entire thing) is one tenth of the cost of one B52 bomber. How long did we expect them to hold out? Bush, Blair etc had planned for this eventuality i.e. the Taliban falling quickly with minimal fuss and us still not having a clue about how to catch bin Laden. That is why for the last God knows how long they have been saying that this is only the beginning. For the forseable future they will continue to trample on civil liberites and kill people. Hopefully we might have something to show for it, but I strongly doubt it myself.

Also, sorry to do this again but there was a classic cartoon in Private Eye basically summing up what Ziroc said above. It had an Afghanistan sign post with one side saying:

Kabul, Paridise.

And the other side pointing in the opposite direction saying:

Anywhere but Kabul, some kind of life.

Also I feel the need to point out that the Northern Alliance are quite a long way up Amnesty International's list of "Not very nice people". They are in fact some distance higher up it than the Taliban truth be told.

Already the Warlords of the NA have requested coalition troops to protect themselves from the other warlords

What kind of Pandora's box have we opened here?

[Nanobyte]

This archive just reminded me of something. Why not take the time to have a good laugh? www.madblast.com

[Ronn_Bman]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Barry the Sprout:
Just a quick point. This is far from the end as we all know. That is what worries me - Afghanistan is only the start and this will not bring the fight for justice any nearer to a conclusion.

Also I am not in the least suprised that the Taliban fell so quickly. Their entire governmental budget for one year (not even military budget but the entire thing) is one tenth of the cost of one B52 bomber. How long did we expect them to hold out? Bush, Blair etc had planned for this eventuality i.e. the Taliban falling quickly with minimal fuss and us still not having a clue about how to catch bin Laden. That is why for the last God knows how long they have been saying that this is only the beginning. For the forseable future they will continue to trample on civil liberites and kill people. Hopefully we might have something to show for it, but I strongly doubt it myself.

What kind of Pandora's box have we opened here?

---

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step."

(it's a proverb not a political statement so please don't "thump" it, you know who you are )

With the successes in the past few days, Osama Bin Laden and his organization have effectively lost Afghanistan as a "safe" base of operation. This is a success, and it is justice. The Afghan people, not just NA, are rising up to fight the Taliban. I don't claim the NA are a bunch of great guys, but the government to be set up will include all the tribes of Afghanistan and the NA has agreed to this "Afghan tribe coalition" even though they occupy most of the country.

The Taliban would never have fallen or been removed from the cities without action. Keep in mind, a few weeks ago, the anti-bombing advocates said the Taliban couldn't be removed this way. The Afghans who have been freed from Taliban rule aren't complaining about civil liberties and justice because now they are getting them. Barry, I know your heart's in the right place, but you expect too much and by doing so are only focusing on the negative. There is initial success, and it's only been 5 weeks. Look at the positive! I don't mean ignore the negative, but simply ignoring the positive is just as one-sided, isn't it?

Peaceful people can be dealt with peacefully, violent people can not. What about the civil liberties of those citizens of 60+ nations who died September 11th? What about the civil liberties of those who were targeted for past attacks and those who may be targeted for current/future attacks? What about the civil liberties of all Americans considering the Taliban have said that their goal is the destruction of America?

"The current situation in Afghanistan is related to a bigger cause, that is the destruction of America."

"If God's help is with us, this will happen within a short period of time, keep in mind this prediction," Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar said. "The real matter is the extinction of America, and God willing, it will fall to the ground."

"I tell you, keep this in mind. This is my prediction," he warned. "You believe it or not, it's up to you, but we will have to wait and see."

This is not a concept they've recently decided on, but one they knew Osama Bin Laden held and they supported all along.

This particular "box" was unlocked before, but only flung fully open September 11th by Osama and his Taliban cronies, not Bush and Blair. Some would like the "box" left open, some want to talk about closing it, some would like it closed slowly and gently, while others want it closed quickly, but the job is to close it, through the means at our disposal.

[ 11-16-2001: Message edited by: Ronn_Bman ]

[Skunk]

I believe that we've learnt from our mistakes. The West put the Taliban in power in the first place and we've paid dearly for it. This time around, we are going to do things openly and with the help of the UN. This time around we are going to set up a stable government and make the country a UN protectorate until it is mature enough to go it's own way.

Look, the place is like an old run-down neighbourhood. First the bulldozers have to move in and clear the old buildings. That's what the last 5 weeks were about.
At night, the vandals (warlords) come out to play and throw rocks at each other - well, we've only just started to pave the wave for a proper security force to move. When they arrive the vandals will leave or at least stop being a nuisance.
Then we start building - and when it's complete, we let the residents set up their own resident committee and we but out of the whole process.

5 weeks so far. Probably 5 years before the UN finally leaves. Patience. Rome wasn't built in a day...

[Larry_OHF]

As quoted in a joke to threaten Bin Laden...
I like the idea of educating the women!
That is where you will see a new country built!
When the women can claim the right to speak out like the womens' movement that the US had...that is when the world can sit back and know that everything is ok...

Girls rock!!!
[img]graemlins/rocking2.gif[/img]

[Barry the Sprout]

Larry, I agree with you about womens education. You can generally tell how progressive a regime is by its treatment of women. The sad fact about Afghanistan is that the only time the women there have been treated as anything like equals to men was in the Soviet occupied sectors 15-20 years ago. If it becomes widespread in Afghanistan under the NA or the UN then I will personally go and bow before George Bush's feet and kiss his shoes. But we'll just have to see.

Ronn, I don't think there really is a +ve side for the people of Afghanistan anymore. The sad fact about all of this is that the Taliban do have popular support. Any kind of coalition if it is to be democratic must include both them and the Northern Alliance. Something that will be very conducive to good government I am sure... If we include neither then it is hardly going to endear the Afghan people to us. This is what worries me most to be honest, we will put in place a government that has no popular support and thus have to prop it up constantly. So we become the demon of these people's lives even more. To them we are imposing a government and ensuring its unpopular survival. And the options other than that are that we let the Taliban back in (unpopular for the West) or the Northern Alliance (unpopular for the Afghan people).

Every person that has died has a family. Most of them were p***ed off with us anyway. The death of so many people has created a generation of martyrs and if we prop up a government then all we will do is create a generation of freedom fighters in their image. Even if all you care about is westerners (not aimed at you Ronn because I know you don't, it is just illustrating the point) then the bombing and occupation is not going to help in the slightest. They will attack back, we will attack back, etc. And each time it will get harder to stop. We could have avoided that but we chose not too.

So now we have acheived what? Bin Laden can't use Afghanistan anymore. What are going to do - bomb every country in the world so that he can't use that either? The point about Al-Queda is that it has cells in lots of different countries. They could probably use America or Britain as a base of operations if they wanted to. This action has played into his hands as he has lost very little and gained the hearts and minds of a generation at least. It may seem depressing and negative, but only because it is true.

[KHaN]

I do have to say I thought it was great seeing men on CNN laugh while they cut eachothers beards, to some that might be offense according to ones beliefs. To me it looked like Freedom!

[Ronn_Bman]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Barry the Sprout:
Ronn, I don't think there really is a +ve side for the people of Afghanistan anymore. The sad fact about all of this is that the Taliban do have popular support. Any kind of coalition if it is to be democratic must include both them and the Northern Alliance. Something that will be very conducive to good government I am sure... If we include neither then it is hardly going to endear the Afghan people to us. This is what worries me most to be honest, we will put in place a government that has no popular support and thus have to prop it up constantly. So we become the demon of these people's lives even more. To them we are imposing a government and ensuring its unpopular survival. And the options other than that are that we let the Taliban back in (unpopular for the West) or the Northern Alliance (unpopular for the Afghan people).

Every person that has died has a family. Most of them were p***ed off with us anyway. The death of so many people has created a generation of martyrs and if we prop up a government then all we will do is create a generation of freedom fighters in their image. Even if all you care about is westerners (not aimed at you Ronn because I know you don't, it is just illustrating the point) then the bombing and occupation is not going to help in the slightest. They will attack back, we will attack back, etc. And each time it will get harder to stop. We could have avoided that but we chose not too.

So now we have acheived what? Bin Laden can't use Afghanistan anymore. What are going to do - bomb every country in the world so that he can't use that either? The point about Al-Queda is that it has cells in lots of different countries. They could probably use America or Britain as a base of operations if they wanted to. This action has played into his hands as he has lost very little and gained the hearts and minds of a generation at least. It may seem depressing and negative, but only because it is true.

---

There are positives and you can see them looking in the faces of those freed from Taliban rule. You can see the positives in the uprisings against the Taliban by local tribes. I can see the negatives, and I don't expect you to agree with me but to have true perspective you have to see both sides.

The Taliban had popular support, but lost it before this coalition effort began. They lost it because they enforced their radical interpretations of Islam on the citizens of Afghanistan. They ruled with popularity to begin with, but their rule quickly turned to one of force and intimidation. We aren't going to prop up a government. The UN wants to allow Afghanistan to be ruled by a cross section of Afgans. This should be based on a rule by Afghan people not by radical political groups.

The only way to have avoided this conflict is for September 11th not to have happened or for US not to have responded. There is no peaceful solution to terrorism. They do not want to negotiation, they want America removed from the face of the planet according to their announcement yesterday. They tried to say Osama didn't do it, he couldn't have because he was under their supervision, but now the truth comes out that they were with him all the time. Everything they did after September 11th, was a delaying tactic.

Osama's organization does have lots of cells and those have to be weeded out, but the training grounds, recruiting stations, command and control facilities, and the governmental protection provided by the Taliban can not be allowed to exist.

[ 11-17-2001: Message edited by: Ronn_Bman ]