Western involvement in Afghanistan

Ok

You accept that PNAC is a neo-conservative think tank.

You accept that PNAC wanted Saddam removed.

You accept that there were many people associated with PNAC in positions of great power and influence in the Bush Admin.

You accept that they were calling for the removal of Saddam once in government and well before 9/11

You accept that Afghanistan was connected to 9/11 but that Iraq was not.

You accept that without 9/11 they probably could not have got support for an Iraq invasion.

You accept that the Iraq war and occupation had a detrimental effect on Afghanistan.

*

So why are you seemingly refusing to believe that these neo-con leaning PNAC associates had any influence on US government policy toward Iraq.

Or to contemplate that they may have seen and used 9/11 as an opportunity to push their own agenda concerning Iraq.

 

What are you basing your views on?

I mean its doesn’t seem to me that the neo-cons had at heart the best interests of the Afghan or Iraqi people.

It seems to me and many others that if they had had the best interests of the Afghans at heart they’d never have invaded Iraq, they had a job to do in Afghanistan but instead they went off to do something else.

It also seems to me and others that if they had meant the best for the Afghan people they would not have helped the bloody and brutal warlords back into power.

As to the Iraqi people go back and look at the PNAC letter to Clinton, its all about US interests but the interests of the Iraqi people are not mentioned once.

In the run up to the war first there was innuendo about 9/11 and Saddam then his supposed threat and the WMDs and only then was there talk of the Iraqi people - and the most talked about point was Saddams gassing of his own people, but the problem is that the US was supporting Saddam at the time he was doing those gassings.

During the invasion little seems to have been done to minimise the impact of the war on the Iraqi people, in fact the opposite was true, the military machine was systematically destroying the countries infrastructure, but there seemed to be no contingences in place to deal with the problems that was obviously going to cause.

I’ve met people that were in Iraq around the start of the occupation, they said that Iraq workers had tried to go back to work to get the infrastructure going again, (water supply, electricity, sewage etc), were turned away from locked premises because US contractors had not been assigned to take them over, but not having the manpower to guard these places, they were looted which made it much more difficult if not damned right impossible to get them going again.

Before the war Baghdad homes had 16-24 hours of electricity supply per day in 2007 that was down to 5.6, and the number of Iraqis without access to adequate water supplies was supposedly 70 percent in the same year. (US government and Oxfam)

The only places in Iraq that were not suffer such problems in 2007 were military bases and the Green Zone.

Yes Saddam was removed and that was a good thing for the Iraqi people but his removal was done for US interests not theirs and after his removal what followed seemed to be more about US neo-con ideology and US corporate interests.

(Try reading Imperial life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran and The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein)

 

humpf..its kinda difficult to get the electrical power back on when insurgents attack convoys of equipment ...



For example this photo shows civilian contractors, (though this isnt a iraq photo) this will have heavy escorts, but it means very little if insurgents succeed in there attack, even with minimum casualties to troops, damage to this transformer will take day if not weeks to replace.. These kinds of parts not only get the electrical grid back up, they also are needed to provide power to pumps for fresh water..

 

But there wasn’t meant to be insurgents, the Iraqis were meant to greet the US and its coalition of the willing as liberators.

The problem is that to me many of the policies pursued by the US at the time caused many people to turn into insurgents.

Baghdad year zero: Pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neocon utopia By Naomi Klein

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2004/09/0080197
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The thing is that the big problem was that action wasn’t taken straight away, it was known what would be needed the problem was that the US policy makers didn’t bother to put it in their plans.

And the reason for that, it seems to me, was that the operation was to do with US interests and ideology it did not have at its heart the interests of the Iraqi people.

 

Yes.

...because I wonder what relevance it has (or what they had to gain) in (from) the above. Is it because of the neo-cons there are schools being built, indigenous troops being taught, elections, and well, anything positive?

If their agenda was to remove Saddam, good job...it's done...and?

http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/

You don't have to surround yourself with others...
I think you are quite sane...and can have your opinions all by yourself.

It's the definition of "It's complicated" true.
I might be blind, but I don't see your narrative occurring.
Where is it?

What about this:

Saddam clearly understands the mutually supporting roles of the U.N. Special Commission and the sanctions; the Clinton administration, for its part, has been utterly unable even to articulate this point, let alone deal with it. Saddam also understands that sanctions have real enemies in the West. While many analysts deride sanctions generally as ineffective, Saddam has somehow succeeded in convincing much of international opinion that sanctions are causing terrible suffering to innocent Iraqis.

Thus, Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and now U.N. high commissioner for human rights, recently opined: "I want to bring to the public's concern the incredible suffering of the children and old people" caused by Security Council sanctions against Iraq. U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan essentially bought this line last week when he supported an increase in the permissible amount of Iraqi oil sales. Prominent conservative and liberal commentators in this country have agreed.

But this is nonsense. From the adoption of Resolution 661 on August 6, 1991, the U.N. sanctions have always expressly allowed Iraq to import medicines and food for humanitarian purposes. After the Gulf War, the sanctions were substantially eased, and they have been eased further (too far, in my view) by the various "oil-for-food" resolutions. There are not, and have never been, any international impediments to Iraq's attending to the humanitarian needs of its citizens, if it really wanted to do so.
The suffering of the Iraqi people since 1990 has not been the result of sanctions. It stems directly from the policy choices of Saddam Hussein. This is a man who has used poison gas against his fellow citizens. He has condemned them to starve, sicken, and die in order to free up resources to purchase military and other supplies in international markets. And we can be sure that the extra money Saddam would make from an easing of sanctions would be similarly spent on his needs, not the Iraqi people's. His goal has been to ensure the survival of his government, not the survival of his citizens. All that an easing of sanctions will accomplish is to hand a clear victory to Saddam's propaganda campaign, to acquiesce in the big lie that we, and not Saddam, are the cause of Iraqi suffering
http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraq-121597.htm

I'm sure you will say they were using them as emotional blackmail.

What about now?

I can also agree with you about the negatives too.
I can talk about the negatives all day.
I can also talk about the positives twice as long.
There needs to be balance.
Clearly you don't have any balance.

Baghdad and? where else?

I'm still quite oblivious to the negative agenda and ideology...

Thanks. It might be a little more informative than you. No offense.

 

So why are you seemingly refusing to believe that these neo-con leaning PNAC associates had any influence on US government policy toward Iraq.

For all the reasons that I and others have mentioned (and which you don’t seem to address) I believe that neo-con policies caused more harm than good.

For example because of their ideas the educational premises were trashed and looted in the first place and were not up and running a lot sooner than they could have been.

*

Quote:
Or to contemplate that they may have seen and used 9/11 as an opportunity to push their own agenda concerning Iraq.

But it wasn’t done in the interests of the Iraqi people and that’s why it was so badly executed, and caused so much damage to the Iraqi people’s interests.

And neither was it in the best interests of the Afghan people.

*

It also seems to me and others that if they had meant the best for the Afghan people they would not have helped the bloody and brutal warlords back into power.

I’m unsure what you mean, can you please clarify? Are you saying it’s too complicated for you to understand?
*
As to the Iraqi people go back and look at the PNAC letter to Clinton, its all about US interests but the interests of the Iraqi people are not mentioned once.

So yes the Clinton letter is all about US interests but and the interests of the Iraqi people are not mentioned once.
*
Quote:
I’ve met people that were in Iraq around the start

Well the neo-con ideals were discredited and changed but by then many of the mistakes had occurred and will have lasting ramifications.
As I’ve set out and which you seem to be basically agree with but dismiss as unimportant, which seems to be a bit of a contradiction.
*

If an idea seems wrong or is shown to be wrong or detrimental then it is a good idea to point this out so people in the future don’t make the same mistake or follow the same ideas.
You seem to want to whitewash over the mistakes with a thick coat of ‘the positive’. And although you claim a lot for ‘the positive’ it mainly seem to consist of ‘the ends justify the means’.
*
Yes Saddam was removed and that was a good thing for the Iraqi people but his removal was done for US interests not theirs and after his removal what followed seemed to be more about US neo-con ideology and US corporate interests.

That I’m sorry to say is because you don’t seem to want to see it.

I’ve set things out and you seem to basically agree with them but then dismiss them as unimportant.

Quote:
(Try reading Imperial life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran and The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein)

LOL well with all due respect that’s a rather obvious statement they’re books of several hundred pages, I don’t have the time to do that here (some people think my post overlong already) that is the reason why I sometimes suggest further reading.

Thing is they’ll explain in a lot more detail why things went wrong, but the thing is you already know things went wrong, and agree they went wrong you just don’t seem to care if they went wrong or to lean from it.

 

We can circle around (counter to most peoples logic we should always move and see forward) the detrimental outcomes of this particular decision and that particular decision, all day long.
We might even be able to circle around a particular grouping of people, and what they may have said before, at the time and after particular events.
I am just not seeing a direct link, yet. Sorry.
As I also see detrimental outcomes right now.
Are you suggesting there is still a neo-con agenda at play?

Mentioning that you are not the only person to think your way isn't that helpful or persuasive, sorry.
I would ask you to refrain from telling me about others and stick to your own thoughts, but I am a gentleman, and appreciate a good debate, however it might be strained by a complete misunderstanding I might have...or a bias you might project. Heck, both at play at the same time.

...this is a point I strongly protest.
I'm not...or hope I'm not stupid enough to think it was a purely selfless action, but I struggle to see that what you are bashing my head with.
I see positives, and the outcome is positive...at the end of the day.
I know I'm not smart enough to know if it "was all worth it".

I said/meant, It is very complicated in Afghnistan...it's a complex situation not helped with second hand information.

However, in my travels, linked to this particular issue, I have not seen anything that suggests that "we" put back in bloody warlords.
Was this on purpose or by accident? where is there evidence for this?
I might be naive.

Not in that particular letter, no.
What about other documents they produced? (like the one I posted).

What were they, and how did they change and how were they discredited....IYHO?

Apparently you have not set out this in a way that I understand.
I hope I'm not completely stupid, and am "just not seeing it".
As far as I can tell, it seems I have three thoughts while considering your hypothesis:
I see that both Iraq and Afghanistan wasn't A1 in planning and execution (pardon the pun).
That is what I was agreeing with.
I see that there was a body of people, commonly described as "neo-cons".
I see that you are suggesting, apparently, the power of these so-called "neo-cons" purposely pushed their agenda and their agendas directly resulted in everything negative that occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan... (obviously everything was planned to further their agenda....and nothing was the result of the situation on the ground being responded to - therefore somewhat of a chaotic situation, under the influence of fate...and, obviously, nothing positive occurred because there was nothing positive about their agenda).
Is that more than three?

I am agreeing with you that there were plenty of negatives.
I'm not suggesting there wasn't any negatives because of "The war in Iraq/Afghanistan" ...a direct result, infact.
If you did not appreciate that, well, that is what I am agreeing with you about.
I don't wish to white-wash the negatives, merely wonder how there was positives too.
Clearly both conflicts didn't all have negative outcomes....so I do wonder how "neo-cons" could have only perpetuated negatives.
You seemingly are not acknowledging the positives, or atleast not factoring them into your equation
Inconvenient, perhaps?
I don't think I have covered your negatives with positives, tbh.
I have tried to be fair.

Which would be?
Who has control of Iraq oil?

I do, I truly do.

I see you as adding 1 and 1 and making 3.

I thank you for your "further reading"...but isn't it possible to get a point across in a digested way? I know I'm not good at that, tbh. I thought you were.

I do.

 

Wow, there are some ridiculous views here!

 

...like?

 

Is it really worth me pointing out? You'll just disagree with me.

 

It certainly is.
I might agree with you...heavens above that might happen.
I tend to agree with good arguments....
I do not mind being proven wrong.

 

Heroin, the CIA in Afghanistan, 9/11 and the Mujahadeen
http://www.activistpost.com/2011/03/heroin-cia-in-afghanistan-911-and.html
http://www.truthistreason.net/usafghan-forces-are-the-worlds-largest-drug-cartel

 

opium wars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCGWWhgqJX8&feature=player_embedded#at=214

 

what has the war in Afghanistan really achieved?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...r-in-afghanistan-really-achieved-2302852.html

 

Go, Taliban, Go!!!

 

no way they destroyed almost all our precious opium there when they were in power:mickey:

 

ok wars are wrong and westurn involvement in afghanistan is NOT HELPING ... so they should leave ..