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Top British General: Afghanistan "Close to Anarchy"
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| Top British General: Afghanistan "Close to Anarchy"
- Click HERE to go to the original thread with graphics
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| Ass Boil |
Can some of the cut and run Bush apologists explain to us again how we finished the job in Afghanistan?
Quote:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanist...1826303,00.html
Afghanistan close to anarchy, warns general
· Nato commmander's views in stark contrast to ministers'
· Forces short of equipment and 'running out of time'
Richard Norton-Taylor
Friday July 21, 2006
The Guardian
A British soldier from 16 Air Assault Brigade on patrol in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Photo: John D McHugh/Getty
The most senior British military commander in Afghanistan today described the situation in the country as "close to anarchy" with feuding foreign agencies and unethical private security companies compounding problems caused by local corruption.
The stark warning came from Lieutenant General David Richards, head of Nato's international security force in Afghanistan, who warned that western forces there were short of equipment and were "running out of time" if they were going to meet the expectations of the Afghan people.
The assumption within Nato countries had been that the environment in Afghanistan after the defeat of the Taliban in 2002 would be benign, Gen Richards said. "That is clearly not the case," he said today. He referred to disputes between tribes crossing the border with Pakistan, and divisions between religious and secular factions cynically manipulated by "anarcho-warlords".
Corrupt local officials were fuelling the problem and Nato's provincial reconstruction teams in Afghanistan were sending out conflicting signals, Gen Richards told a conference at the Royal United Services Institute in London. "The situation is close to anarchy," he said, referring in particular to what he called "the lack of unity between different agencies".
He described "poorly regulated private security companies" as unethical and "all too ready to discharge firearms". Nato forces in Afghanistan were short of equipment, notably aircraft, but also of medical evacuation systems and life-saving equipment.
Officials said later that France and Turkey had sent troops to Kabul but without any helicopters to support them.
Gen Richards will also take command of the 4,500-strong British brigade in Helmand province at the heart of the hostile, poppy-growing south of the country when it comes under Nato's overall authority. He said today that Nato "could not afford not to succeed" in its attempt to bring long-term stability to Afghanistan and build up the country's national army and security forces. He described the mission as a watershed for Nato, taking on "land combat operations for the first time in its history".
The picture Gen Richards painted today contrasted markedly with optimistic comments by ministers when they agreed earlier this month to send reinforcements to southern Afghanistan at the request of British commanders there. Many of those will be engineers with the task of appealing to Afghan "hearts and minds" by repairing the infrastructure, including irrigation systems.
Gen Richards said today that was a priority. How to eradicate opium poppies - an issue repeatedly highlighted by ministers - was a problem that could only be tackled later.
General Sir Mike Jackson, the head of the British army, said recently: "To physically eradicate [opium poppies] before all the conditions are right seems to me to be counter-productive." The government admits that Helmand province is about to produce a bumper poppy crop and is now probably the biggest single source of heroin in the world. Ministers are concerned about criticism the government will face if planting over the next few months for next year's crop - in an area patrolled by British troops - is not significantly reduced.
Kim Howells, the Foreign Office minister responsible for Afghanistan, told the Guardian that the immediate target had to be the biggest poppy cultivators and dealers who control the £1bn-plus Afghan drug trade.
The strategy should be: "Go for the fat cats, very wealthy farmers, the movers and shakers of the drug trade" and their laboratories, he said. Asked about the concern of British military commanders that by depriving farmers - and warlords - of a lucrative crop, poppy eradication would feed the insurgency, Mr Howells admitted: "It's a big problem for us." |
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| Ironpirate |
| assboil thread!@#!@#!@#@! |
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| Ass Boil |
You always contribute so much to every thread.
How about a pop quiz, genius:
question #1
Define "casualty"....
bwaaahahahaha! retaaad |
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| SDLaw06 |
| We were retarded to ever think a thrid world country would ever adopt democracy, I can't think of many that have. Some day we will learn. |
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| Ass Boil |
Quote: Originally posted by SDLaw06
We were retarded to ever think a thrid world country would ever adopt democracy, I can't think of many that have. Some day we will learn. |
Not only that, you shouldn't have to force it upon anyone at gunpoint. It will never work... |
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| Billyfromsphily |
Quote: Originally posted by Ironpirate
assboil thread!@#!@#!@#@! |
Again Ironasshole is a Casulty of his own defcient intellect. |
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| Ironpirate |
| i hope you become a casulty, omg owned |
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| Crazytree |
we could be doing better... but honestly an anarchy is better than the Taliban in total control.
I'm convinced that turning these countries into stable democracies is simply not possible. It hasn't been achieved for a very long time and not before many, many people died on both sides. |
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| thoroldjames |
afghanistan's a fucking mess, i mean no argument the Taliban had to go,but the current state
of the country is a disaster. |
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| iam72hrstv |
One could argue, due to falsified election results in the U.S. and Mexico, North America is close to anarchy.
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| SDLaw06 |
I hate the falsified election results argument, absolutely loathe it. I often wonder if the people that say Bush wasn't elected truly understand how the electoral college works. You don't have to win the popular vote to be elected. No one ever said you did. And for all the people bitching about it, nothing has been done about it.
Sorry it's off topic, but that shit bugs the hell out of me. If you are assuming it's falsified because of the Supreme Court ruling, that's a different argument, but equally stupid. While you may not like the result, there is nothing false about the government functioning as it should. |
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| Teddy Duchamp |
hamas was elected democratically...yet we support the israelis when they arrest their cabinet...it's not about democracy...it's about electing who we want in charge. We dont support democracy...we're cool w/ the most extreme of the extreme in the saudis...those fuckers are looney...and them and our government conduct circle jerks nightly. we loved suharto....when he was conducting a holocaust amongst his people....its funny how saddam is currently on trial for a massacre in 82....yet when it was actually 1982 and he was doing all this shit, we loved him...we absolutely loved the fucker....he was our pal and we were arming him til kuwait. what a joke.
afghanistan is a fucking mess...instead ofgoing into iraq we should have stayed in afghanistan and finished the god damn job....get rid of the taliban entirely....get osamas stupid ass...and build the place up...now we got 2 messes on our hands...and one place we worked to get back on the map in lebanon...which was as progressive as it got in the middleeast is now getting turned into a parking lot by the israelis that we just sent more weaponry. |
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| BeerPal |
Quote: Originally posted by SDLaw06
I hate the falsified election results argument, absolutely loathe it. I often wonder if the people that say Bush wasn't elected truly understand how the electoral college works. |
:smash: |
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| BeerPal |
Quote: Originally posted by Teddy Duchamp
hamas was elected democratically...yet we support the israelis when they arrest their cabinet...it's not about democracy...it's about electing who we want in charge. We dont support democracy...we're cool w/ the most extreme of the extreme in the saudis...those fuckers are looney...and them and our government conduct circle jerks nightly. we loved suharto....when he was conducting a holocaust amongst his people....its funny how saddam is currently on trial for a massacre in 82....yet when it was actually 1982 and he was doing all this shit, we loved him...we absolutely loved the fucker....he was our pal and we were arming him til kuwait. what a joke.
afghanistan is a fucking mess...instead ofgoing into iraq we should have stayed in afghanistan and finished the god damn job....get rid of the taliban entirely....get osamas stupid ass...and build the place up...now we got 2 messes on our hands...and one place we worked to get back on the map in lebanon...which was as progressive as it got in the middleeast is now getting turned into a parking lot by the israelis that we just sent more weaponry. |
Jeezus kee-rhyst. Use elipses much? :rolleyes: |
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| Ass Boil |
Quote: Originally posted by SDLaw06
I hate the falsified election results argument, absolutely loathe it. I often wonder if the people that say Bush wasn't elected truly understand how the electoral college works. You don't have to win the popular vote to be elected. No one ever said you did. And for all the people bitching about it, nothing has been done about it.
Sorry it's off topic, but that shit bugs the hell out of me. If you are assuming it's falsified because of the Supreme Court ruling, that's a different argument, but equally stupid. While you may not like the result, there is nothing false about the government functioning as it should. |
What about deliberate attempts to disenfranchise and suppress voting? |
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| Teddy Duchamp |
Quote: Originally posted by BeerPal
Jeezus kee-rhyst. Use elipses much? :rolleyes: |
Maybe, but I want to fuck you like an animal. |
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| SDLaw06 |
Quote: Originally posted by Ass Boil
What about deliberate attempts to disenfranchise and suppress voting? |
Or deliberate attempts to falsify voting registers so dead people can vote. |
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| patcracker |
| Gee Afghanistan, Iraq, who's next? For once i wish this administration could something done besides Tax Cuts and gay Marraige. Oh Almost forgot Ironpirate is a 'Tard. |
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| Ass Boil |
Quote: Originally posted by SDLaw06
Or deliberate attempts to falsify voting registers so dead people can vote. |
Yes, that should be stopped, also.
There is a common misconception among conservatives that those of us arguing for secure, fair elections only want more of OUR votes to count. I want your vote to count, even if you are on the opposite side of every issue from me.
Now, all you need to do is show me how many "dead people's" names were found and we can compare and contrast that with the nearly 300,000 Ohio voters who's votes were nixed due to racist and classist voter disenfranchisement in 2004.... |
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| SDLaw06 |
But it's OH, they can do that. :rolleyes:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=1021
Here, I googled it, it's the first thing I found, in the interest of brevity, you can question whatever sources you want, I didn't read the whole thing, just enough to notice the numbers were about even. |
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| iam72hrstv |
Corrupt U.S. Voting details from above link:
FLORIDA: 64,889 dead people remained on the voters rolls on Election Day despite being listed in a database of Social Security Administration death claims.
MICHIGAN: 50,051 dead people remained on the voters rolls on Election Day.
NEW MEXICO: 5,000 dead people remained on the voter rolls on Election Day. The presidential election there was decided by 6,000 votes.
IOWA: 4,900 dead people were on Iowa's voter rolls on Election Day. Bush won Iowa by 10,000 votes.
More than 181,000 dead people in total were listed on the voter rolls in the six swing states of Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota and New Mexico.
Thousands more voters were registered to vote in two different places, which could have allowed them to cast more than one ballot.
OHIO: More than 90,000 ballots were discarded for including no valid choice for President either because no candidate was chosen, the counting machine failed to register their choice or they voted mistakenly for more than one candidate. Bush's "official" margin of victory in Ohio now stands at 119,000 after provisional and overseas ballots have been added to Election Night numbers which originally showed a margin of 136,000 votes.
The FBI has confirmed they are investigating the complaints made by Florida congressional candidate Jeff Fisher (partially discussed in this previous BRAD BLOG article) concerning vote-rigging in the state of Florida and elsewhere. |
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| Ironpirate |
| This sounds like loser talk to me. |
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| iam72hrstv |
Anarchism is the name for both a political philosophy and a loosely organized society, derived from the Greek αναρχία ("without archons" or "without rulers"). Thus "anarchism," in its most general semantic meaning, is the belief that all forms of rulership are undesirable and should be abolished. For many anarchists, this includes not only the state, but other systems which they may consider authoritarian, such as capitalism. The rise of anarchism as a cohesive philosophy in the 19th century, with its notion of freedom as being based upon political, economic, and social equality, was a reaction to the rise of bureaucratic nation state and large-scale industrial capitalism.[1]
Although anarchists are unified in the rejection of the state, they differ about economic arrangements that would prevail in a stateless society. On this issue anarchists differ widely, ranging from advocates of complete common ownership and distribution according to need, to supporters of private property and free market competition.[2]
The word "anarchy", as most anarchists use it, does not imply chaos, nihilism, or anomie, but rather an anti-authoritarian society that is based on voluntary association of free individuals in autonomous communities operating on principles of voluntary exchange, mutual aid and self-governance. |
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| iam72hrstv |
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| SDLaw06 |
| Oh it didnt show up at first. |
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| Delaware06 |
| Wilsonian idealism, I am sorry will not result in a set of circumstances in which... the world is made safe for democracy. It was a foolhardy belief after WWI and it remains the same today. When President Bush spoke to the nation after winning reelection and laid out his plan for the world, which was so similar to the words spoken by Wilson generations earlier, I knew we were in for a hell of a lot of trouble. The world is going to hell.......... |
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| iam72hrstv |
| I saw Anarchy durring the Los Angeles Riots, it seems like people were benifiting from Anarchy by gaining free televisions, shoes, and booze. In Afganistan Anarchy is less fun. Anarchy in Afganistan is a bloody shit sandwitch served with a warm glass of crude oil. |
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