Hard News: Watching the Watchmen
194 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 … 8 Newer→ Last
-
Craig, foreign aid is completely different to being part of an army of occupation, and you know it.
Well, I think we have our rationale for withdrawing from the United Nations, tearing up every international treaty and convention we've ever signed...
I support the U.N. and collective action under the umbrella of broad agreed principles of international law. Lieutenant Tim O'Donnell was killed in a sophisticated and well planned ambush in Bamiyan province, up until now the safest province in Afghanistan (which is why we were stationed there in the first place). If you want a sign "we've" lost this war i can't think of a better one.
I don't see how saying we shouldn't have a bar of a lost cause in defense Karzai's hopelessly corrupt and immoral puppet regime is tantamount to walking away from the concept of the UN and collective agreements.
-
New Zealand actually has a fairly extensive post-WW2 history of putting professional soldiers at risk for (mostly) laudable goals. We had personnel in the former Yugoslavia for 15 years. We lost four soldiers in Timor.
The young soldier who died in Afghanistan was part of the Provincial Reconstruction Team, which seems quite clearly part of that tradition.
This quote from Lt O'Donnell on his work training local police forces did make me feel proud:
"They still require a lot of work," he said.
"For police - they're not like the police back home. They don't go around really arresting people, they're basically security guards. But it's our job to build up their capacity and develop them so one day when we pull out, they'll be capable of taking over."
You know, Tom, I think he felt he was making the world a better place.
-
Craig, foreign aid is completely different to being part of an army of occupation, and you know it.
It's actually not "completely different" in the case of the PRT. A significant part of its work lies in providing project management for NZAID work in Bamiyan. The aid projects wouldn't happen without it.
It should be noted that Jon Stephenson's story this year indicated that locals rated the PRT's performance in providing security more highly than their aid work.
-
Surely the Taliban feel they are doing their bit to make the world a better place too, at least according to their lifestyle principles, which are uncannily not far removed from a retrosexual's wet dream: running around in pyjamas all day, armed to the teeth with whatever gun you want, plenty of dope in the back yard, never having to shave and PMT under (burqa) wraps.
Sounds awfully like some tea baggers' ideas for life too. -
How about they pull out asap, cut military budgets and start doing aid by aid where it'll be most effective?
Right now, that might mean no aid projects in Afghanistan. The Taliban attacked a USAID office last month, a UN aid centre last year. Before the invasion, UNHCR said that the Taliban were making its aid efforts impossible. (They have recently accepted first aid training from the Red Cross.)
But as a broader principle -- had billions of US military dollars poured into the Middle East been spent on peaceful cultivation of hearts and minds, yes.
-
You know, Tom, I think he felt he was making the world a better place.
What, defending Hamid Karzai? Are your serious?
I'm not doubting for a second his intentions were noble, just like the majority of the thousands of soldiers who have been killed in that place. All that does is make all the angrier he was killed there, in that place and for what? I say again, Harmid Karzai's government? The minute we leave it'll all be swept away.
Or was he really sacrificed so John Key can get some FTA brownie points with the Americans?
-
What, defending Hamid Karzai? Are your serious?
It appears that Lt O'Donnell was serious. He clearly thought his work was worth something. If you're going to repeatedly invoke his name, it might be a mark of respect to acknowledge that.
-
Tom, O'Donnell was not there under duress, and the work he was doing sounds like it helped people. If NZ got FTA brownies then that would be a good thing too.
-
Right now, that might mean no aid projects in Afghanistan.
That may well be the case and would be a tragedy foe the people who live there. But there is scant evidence that things are really stabilizing there to the point that peaceful aid missions will be able to continue their work there after a year or two more of war. Why not rebuild Haiti, help the flooded in Pakistan, the drought plagued in east Africa? The ongoing Afghan war strikes me as a face-saving exercise on the part of the US.
-
no disrespect to Lt O'Donnell's view of his work and the merits within but I'd like to think we're not going to blindly support the troops and bugger the rationale of being there which seems the case today
after seven years of rebuilding its time to say job well done and bring our people home as staying is not going to help anyone for any longer than we're there
-
Why not rebuild Haiti, help the flooded in Pakistan, the drought plagued in east Africa? The ongoing Afghan war strikes me as a face-saving exercise on the part of the US.
The US always wants something. That is why there is no push to help flood victims, or drought ridden areas. There is simply nothing to gain. Imho.
-
Interesting Foreign Policy mag blog on the Time cover story and the moral question of the fate of women:
For the United States, embroiled in a war in Afghanistan and entangled with allies and others throughout the world who promote or tolerate policies that are unfair or cruel to women, the challenges are great. As Time asks, "Do we leave if by leaving we sentence women to decades or centuries more of enslavement, compromise and debasement in the name of religion and cultural history?" Would we do so if the reasons for the abuse were that they were black or Jewish or Christian?
History suggests that the answer is, sadly, yes. And frankly, a prolonged stay in Afghanistan is neither in the U.S. interest nor, in fact, is it moral on its own because it produces an appalling waste of life and resources and much suffering in pursuit of an unachievable goal. (Regardless of how small the president argues that ever-shrinking goal has become.)
But we cannot leave Afghanistan nor can we continue to pursue our goals in Pakistan or develop our relations with the Saudis or consider the future of our relations with the Iranians...nor can we appropriately contemplate relations with any nation and at the same time turn a blind eye to the systematic abuse of women and its justification by friends, enemies and whatever it is you might call the Afghan or Pakistani governments
-
That may well be the case and would be a tragedy foe the people who live there. But there is scant evidence that things are really stabilizing there to the point that peaceful aid missions will be able to continue their work there after a year or two more of war.
Obama's exit strategy from Iraq is going surprisingly well, and there are indications his public are tired of Afghanistan too. He'd love to be out of a war he didn't enter.
But who'd want to be the president who pulled out of Afghanistan and ushered in, say, a civil war in which half a million people died?
I put quite a lot of stock in the views of Jon Stephenson, who knows more about the country than anyone else i have access to. He's well aware of the costs of war and the corruption of Karzai. But he doesn't think it's tenable to just up stakes and leave immediately.
-
But who'd want to be the president who pulled out of Afghanistan and ushered in, say, a civil war in which half a million people died?
I doubt many people in the US would notice or care; the political danger is a withdrawal followed by another terror attack inside the US.
-
Russell, what exactly is your position? it seems to me you are advocating a TINA approach, that we have a tiger by the tail and we can't leave?
-
it may not be tenable for the US to just up and leave... it is for NZ
-
I doubt many people in the US would notice or care; the political danger is a withdrawal followed by another terror attack inside the US.
The period 1989-1996 was basically one of full-on civil war followed by anarchy. Civilian casualties and excess mortality is unknown, but Afghanistan had the lowest life expectancy in the world during this period.
I doubt anything has changed.
-
Russell, what exactly is your position? it seems to me you are advocating a TINA approach, that we have a tiger by the tail and we can't leave?
Not immediately. And even finding a time to leave will be a matter of "defining victory down" till it's not victory any more. I think that process of defining down is underway, and there are and will be some kind of negotiations with anti-government forces.
I went and had a look at my interviewing with Jon this year, and he was pretty clear that "it's over", but that the withdrawal will be negotiated "which is the way that most wars end."
He also ventured that the upshot could well be a bloody civil war, displacing two or three million people, causing immense suffering to women and children, and quite possibly reinstating the Taliban. The best case scenario would seem to be partition, so at least the north can have a crack at civilisation.
But I personally can't just shrug off the moral implications of, in particular, the fate of Afghanistan's women. You say "women's rights" like it's some Western affectation, but before the Taliban -- before 1996, that is -- they could work and walk the streets and learn to read. They were allowed to look out windows. It's their birthright too, and it really troubles me that it might be taken away again. It's a horrible, horrible moral choice.
The departure might start in a year, but in no way will it be simple.
For New Zealand? I would have been okay with our troops leaving next year, as planned, but I think we must honour our new commitment till 2015. I don't think Key have even tried to make a real case for our presence.
I do think our PRT contingent has helped people and that they -- and Lt O'Donnell in particular -- should be permitted their pride in that. I think you personally should permit a fallen soldier that pride -- especially when you purport to mourn his his loss.
Happy?
-
Happy.
Don't agree with you though.
-
The period 1989-1996 was basically one of full-on civil war followed by anarchy. Civilian casualties and excess mortality is unknown, but Afghanistan had the lowest life expectancy in the world during this period.
Wikipedia says 10,000 in Kabul alone in 1994.
And that "The Soviet occupation resulted in the killings of between 600,000 and two million Afghans, mostly civilians," with six million displaced.
Ironically, the US occupation looks like a calm spell by comparison.
-
I was talking to an Afghan friend the other day (yes, Afghan, a bit like Spanish people having the audacity to call themselves Español) who told me that when he was there, earlier this year, he was walking down the street with his cousin chewing on a stick of sugarcane, his cousin told him not to throw the end of his cane in the street as the US troops would assume it was a weapon and shoot them both. He also told me that it was not uncommon for American troops to shoot children so as to be sent home for counselling or "punishment" he wasn't sure which but suspected it was more to do with PR.
I watched the sombre reaction to "One of ours" dying in this so called war, all I could think was "What the fuck do you expect?" -
<vent>
The Great Game continues...That smug patronising aggressiveness towards anyone who dare question received truth. It's not conducive to anything but ugly slanging.
what George said - But Russell I feel you were unfair to Christiaan (who, I'm assuming neither you nor Craig know much about either...) I don't think Craig helped in not maklng it get personal with his:
You don't have to, Christiaan, but London's rather unhallowed ground for that kind of moral callousness. Plenty of people out there who would regard any Londoner shredded by a car bomb as asking for everything they get by living in the heart of an "imperial" power.
which sure looks like a back-handed ill-wishing to me (and similar intemperate & inflammatory statements triggered me withdrawing from the PA System for a while last year) so I would understand Christiaan's response in kind...
- and then you weigh in with:And to be fair, Christiaan, they probably don't give a shit about what some smug middle-class white lefty in London thinks either.
Although I'd guess they'd do you the favour of refraining from wishing you dead. Given that they don't actually know anything about you, and all.
and then...
Christiaan, do you possess the ability to see other people as anything other than a cypher for your own ever-so-certain politics? You know nothing about Craig and unless you can improve your attitude I'd rather you didn't come here.all a bit heavy-handed and an, er, immoderate slagging off for a Moderator to my eyes - but that's just my opinion, and I guess we all have them, that's why we're here, right?
Better the demonym you know...
Afghan would appear to be the first choice
though Afghani and Afghanistani are also used
- according to the Wiki-cliques...Half-baked wars and too many cooks...
Afghan and Anzac biscuits - both are covered in war-nuts now it seems -
The battle for Hearts and Minds is well over
- the more hearts and minds they terminate "accidentally"...
...using Drones and Daisy Cutters instead of Cookie Cutters was always gonna go pear-shaped.Penta-going, going, gone!
Surely if we were interested in getting communications, health and education to deprived people, the coalition's billions of dollars could have been more effectively spent.
The planners and spenders are much the same people for Afghanistan as for Iraq
and as has been revealed recently the Pentagon can't account for the bulk of earmarked reconstruction funds...According to an audit by the U.S. Special Investigator for Iraq Reconstruction, the Defense Department is unable to account fully for more than 95 percent of $9.1 billion in Iraqi oil money tapped for rebuilding. Of that amount, the Pentagon is totally lost about what happened to $2.6 billion.
just a continuation of the MIC's* laxity in this area - does anyone remember Donald Rumsfeld's Sept 10, 2001 announcement that the Pentagon could not account for $2.3 trillion!
"According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted.
*MIC = Military Industrial Complex
not Men In Chambray - though that does have a certain resonance...The US and their undeclared wars...
But I think it's glib to demand an immediate exit and not consider the consequences.
just like the earlier Afghanistan/Pakistan tinkering by renowned "Geo Strategist" and Obama booster Zbigniew Brzezinski intent on giving the Russians a lesson - funding the Mujahideen (Operation Cyclone) during the Carter administration, then pretty much abandoning them ...
In the interview, he is also quoted as saying "What is most important to the history of the world? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?" When the interviewer questioned him about Islamic fundamentalism representing a world menace, Brzezinski says, "Nonsense!"
Glib ? yes! historic consequences indeed...
Here come the Cavalry... Calvary? Cavillers?
Luckily those friendly Rockefeller Foundation folk have been sorting the future out for us - that link's a snippet of four possible scenarios for the near future... enjoy!
</vent>
sorry about length... :- ) -
Afghanistan had the lowest life expectancy in the world during this period
If it weren't for the AIDS epidemic in Africa, Afghanistan would still have the lowest life expectancy in the world. Looking at the colour-map of life-expectancy, it's plain that Afghanistan is the odd one out in the region.
the withdrawal will be negotiated
I'd agree with that and when I say the US and others should be out asap, I realise it is not going to be tomorrow. But this ongoing talk of victory or even avoiding civil war with any certainty strikes me as hubris.
But I personally can't just shrug off the moral implications of, in particular, the fate of Afghanistan's women.
I'm not sure that anyone is asking that you do that. But is ongoing war in Afghanistan the best place and manner to be committing resources? I'd say no it's not.
-
I do think our PRT contingent has helped people and that they -- and Lt O'Donnell in particular -- should be permitted their pride in that.
Yes, that. I find some of the attitudes expressed around this, and not necessarily on here, a bit chilling. Our isolation is no excuse for callous indifference.
Helen Clark and Geoffrey Palmer are both proving that our world view is sufficiently broad, while at the same time determinedly impartial, to allow our representatives to contribute significantly to global events.
Our 'fallen soldier' was doing his bit too, in an arguably riskier and more selfless manor.
ETA: And along came Ian, and this all seems less relevant. Bring on the Band of Horses, the cavalry has fallen.
-
Ian, pure brilliance of form and content, once again.
Post your response…
This topic is closed.