US Military Action in Afghanistan - Poll

[Exi5tentialist]

If half the money which has been spent on the military campaign had been spent on aid, infrastructure development and especially bribery of village chiefs and opthers, the results would have been considerably more effective in my view!

Agreed. There's been a lot of money wasted on this little military adventure in Afghanistan. Other than continual escalation (now to Pakistan) I don't see what it's achieved.

Interesting though that even in the early stages the vote is going in favour of military action in Afghanistan and against military action in Iraq going by the other poll what I set up.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Not from my perspective, no. The 'war on terror' could have gone in several directions, but trying to 'tame' Afghanistan was a not a good (or right) option in my view. Just ask the British in the 19th century!

www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/WH/XIX/Afghan-Wars/index.html

www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/WH/XIX/LadySale/index.html

[HomerJay]

If half the money which has been spent on the military campaign had been spent on aid, infrastructure development and especially bribery of village chiefs and opthers, the results would have been considerably more effective in my view!

Agreed. There's been a lot of money wasted on this little military adventure in Afghanistan. Other than continual escalation (now to Pakistan) I don't see what it's achieved.

Pakistan was the source of the Taliban.

The Taliban and their cohorts have been attacking Pakistan (from within) for a long time.

What would the cost have been of leaving the Taliban in place, across two countries?

[Exi5tentialist]

What would the cost have been of leaving the Taliban in place, across two countries?

An wider and more successful Arab Spring, with oppressive governments overthrown from Kabul to Tripoli.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

While there are Muslims alive you probably won't find a solution to this problem.

[Exi5tentialist]

While there are Muslims alive you probably won't find a solution to this problem.

Nice try G

[Animavore]

America's so-called War on Terror is the biggest pile of bollox I've seen in my short life. They, America, have no buisness trampling all over the face of the planet thinking they can do as they please. And then they wonder why something like 9/11 happens! I wouldn't mind that much but fucking Afghanistan of all places. What type of fuck-wit decides to go near that hell hole? Best to cut it off from the rest of the world and let it rot by itself because that's what they seem to want. Who are we to dictate to them otherwise?

[Exi5tentialist]

And then they wonder why something like 9/11 happens!

But 9/11 was the start of history. The US was a peace-loving, benign utopia before then!

[Animavore]

And then they wonder why something like 9/11 happens!

But 9/11 was the start of history. The US was a peace-loving, benign utopia before then!

Lol!

[mistermack]

I think it was right for America to invade Afghanistan, because it gave the Russians a bloody good laugh.

When the Russians were there, the US was arming the locals, helping them to kill Russian soldiers, so every dead US soldier is a kind of justice.
It cheers me up and I can't wait for the day that the US creep out of there with their ass on fire, claiming victory, just like Vietnam.

[Exi5tentialist]

this problem.

What, repetition?

[Pappa]

America's so-called War on Terror is the biggest pile of bollox I've seen in my short life. They, America, have no buisness trampling all over the face of the planet thinking they can do as they please. And then they wonder why something like 9/11 happens!

Plus, I felt they twisted the truth hugely to suit their desires. The US was attacked by an independent terrorist group who were taking refuge in Afghanistan. They treated the whole situation as if they were at war in the conventional sense in order to grant themselves the right to invade Afghanistan, replace the rulers (who had been causing them some headaches for a while) with something hopefully more amiable to the US, and more generally to get their fingers deep in that particular pie. Their whole foreign policy over the past decade seems to have come out of the Kissinger School of World Hegemony.

[JimC]

What would the cost have been of leaving the Taliban in place, across two countries?

An wider and more successful Arab Spring, with oppressive governments overthrown from Kabul to Tripoli.

I'd be interested to hear your reasoning for that.

Without intervention from the outside, it is hard to see a Taliban-lead government being overthrown from within, and the effect of Afghan events on the Arab world in general is fairly tenuous, at least in comparison to the festering sore that is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

[Warren Dew]

I don't think I can answer the poll the way it's set up. Yes, the US should have taken action IN Afghanistan, as long as that's where bin Laden and boys were, but not AGAINST Afghanistan, which is how it turned out. Taking action against a few select targets with a small task force instead of taking over the whole country and trying to turn it into Little America. Covert ops and air support kinda thing, instead of the Bush preferred method of tearing through the country with guns a-blazin'.

Given the Taliban were protecting Al Qaeda, I don't have a problem with the overthrow of the Taliban as part of the initial action, which didn't involve that many U.S. troops anyway. Missing Al Qaeda's relocation and dispersion was a mistake, and the escalation to conventional warfare at the end of the Bush administration and accelerated to include nation building under Obama was unjustified.

[Gawd]

Al Qaeda is not a single group, it is an idea and ideas are bullet proof.