Risks taken by the Allied and Afghans were risks taken on behalf of Afghanistans future. Maybe one could argue that it is different with the Americans who went. into Afghanistan for their own interest indeed (nine eleven). But Britain, Germany and other Europeans were not part of that start and the Americans even deliberately refused NATO assistance as long as they thought it would ne a walk in the woods only. When Nato finally was asked to join, Europeans engaged explicitly on behalf of Afghanistan's national interest, and the interest of its people. At least that is what is claimed until today.

The point remains Skybird. Would you see these people who have served our troops abandoned? Murdered along with their wives and children when we pull out?

Wasting your time...absolutely no deviation..."I'm alright Jack".

The history of nations using indigenous people in other lands to advance their militray, political, imperialistic, capitalistic, religious, or any other motives and then abondoning them to their fates or reneging on the pledges to those who aided them is long and shameful. Here, in Los Angeles, there is a large Filipino community, some of whom served in WW2 as interpreters, armed combatant alogside the US force or who provide much need intel and covert services that greatly aided the war effort in the Pacific, saving many, many American and Allied lives in the process. They were made promises of full US citizenship and veteran's benfits as recognition of their valiant service in WW2 and for the service of many Filipinos in the US military in the years since 1895 when the US acquired control over the nation after the Spanish American War. A bill meant to enforce these promises was introduced in 1993 and every year since then; the bills have never made out of subcommittees in those 20 years that have pased. The Filipino veterans have really been more than patient and are now dying off in greater numbers, as are so many of our WW2 vets. The main obstacle to the passage of any bill has been from the Far Right, who are well known for beating the drums of war and intervention, but seem to fade away when it comes time to pay the bill. And, God forbid, that any of there progeny or others of their class should serve or spill blood in furtherence of the Right causes; especially when there are so many, like the Filipinos, who can be used up and then tossed aside...

The Filipinos are not alone, there quite a few others taken in by the US military and civilian leadership, in the past and the present. As recently as Vietnam: just look up the situation of the Hmong in Vietnam and Laos after the war and how, again, the US rather failed to live up to its obligations and promises regarding the Hmong and left them to the predations of the same enemy they helped us fight against....

Many, many nations have treated the indigenous people of other lands as 'diposaable' or 'forgettable', but it serves the US and other nations like the UK, ill to not take real steps to address the situation and do what is right. As someone earlier noted, what happens the next time we are faced with a conflict in another area of the world and really need the assistance and cooperation of the people in that country? Will they look at our "resume" and say "Seems like a really bad risk here..."


<O>

Jim and me alreay agreed to get them out. I just limited it to the very closest family members only : wives, children, and I set conditions (willingness to fully integrate, no migration of net receivers to our social system). The issue were we differ is whether to see this asylum given is a moral obligation, or a gesture of generosity. You guys seem to agree it is a right they won by their working contract. I say it is no obligation of ours, but our good will only. My argument is that the decisive difference is the motivation aiming at serving Afghan interest, or Germany's interest. And the whole mission was run by Britain and Germny on behalf of Afghanistan's interest. Euope's self interest would have been to never go into Afghanistan in the first.

As I said, the arguments can be seen different for the American motivation to go into Afghanistan.

The good news is that there is no way our adversaries could use how we treat our collaborators in some sort of anti-US/UK propaganda. No. That would be wrong of them. :nope:

Talk about a gift that keeps on giving.... for the wrong side.

I'm ashamed to say my country let these people down as well. Sayed Shah Sharifi, a former combat interpreter for Canadian Forces finally made it to Canada but not without a struggle. His family members he left behind were targets for the Taliban.

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/20..._kandahar.html

That's shameful. I would much rather see people and their families that we trusted with our lives come to my country than some of the questionable ones we do let in.

Noted.

I say it is our moral and human obligation to help those we know will be punished for helping us. My opinion only.

Morals meet reality. Following your logic, you would need to get out a good share of their population and almost all of their women and girls.

It is desirable if no women anywhere would need to live under Islamic slavery, yes. It's just beyond our reach to achieve that.

then there is the issue of Coptian Christians in Egypt. Christian minorities in Turkey. Islamic discrimination of non-islamic minorities is so widespread that practically it exists everywhere in the Islamic word. from Marocco to Pakistan, from Indonesia to Nigeria.

If you want to safe them all from Islam, you would need to launch a global counter-jihad, so to speak. And by doing that, messing up your finances even more than they already are. And the historic patriarchalism and the corrupted regimes throughout the Islamic world you still would not have defeated by that even if you were victorious in wiping out Islam alone. :)

Are you fit enough and ready to carry the whole world on your shoulder, Neo-Atlas?

Come on man you know that's not what I meant although your sentiment is good. I clearly said 'those who helped us' in Afghanistan. We can't save them all but we could save the ones that will be in the most danger. The ones we owe at least our consideration for the position they are in.

From the Toronto Star article I posted.

My guess is that it will only get worse. All countries that employed Afghan civilians should do their best to get at least the people that are being threatened and their families out. Seems like the decent thing to do.

I un derstood you very well. I just put the finger into a moral wound there that we tend to constantly agree in the West. We went there and thought we could bypass the laws of nature,l so to speak. Make it all good with just good will of ours. Then we relaised that it took more. And that it will take much more than we now are willing to give an d invest. We would need not just years but decades more to change that place FOR THEM. We cannot do that. They have to do it themselves, or they don'T. That is evolution growing from themselves. We cannot bring them revolution.

Now, when the troops have left, the girls going to school in some parts are at risk. The women already have lost most of the "improvements" that the media became enthusiastic if not even hysteric about to report in 2002. The truck drivers. The loaders. The many people doing this or that job for the foreign troops, in the camps.

Then the old bills. Family set against family, using the opportunity to settle an old bill or a recent dispute by reporting the other to the Tlaiban once they have taken over.

Then the village leaders and elder that in some parts allowed girls schools. Vaccination campaigns. Cooperated with the foreigner a bit. Or just got bribed and took the money. Maybe sometimes meaning honest game, often placed double game.

There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions being potentially at risk once the troops have left.

That is why I am so pedantic over the original issue. We cannot take them all, and obviously we cannot take over their country and make it better for them. It is beyond out will, beyond our means, and beyond our fiscal capacity, with tlaibvan and local traditions being too strong. We have a netto migration into our social system from Muslim countries already, Muslim migrants cost our social systems more, than they pay back into it later on. They are very different in these regards,m than migration groups from other places.

I do not want to set precedents that we cannot afford. They now talk so much about those interpreters. But the point is for every interpreter we give asylum, there are a hundred Afghans more that morally we then also would have the obligation to let in, because they are not less at risk then these interpreters.

And again, I do not consider the job of the interprters as a service they did on behalf of Germany, but on behalf of their own country, or their own job and incom,e interest. Why that should create a moral obligation for us, is beyond me. That'S why I said to Jim: for mere generosity and humane reasons, get those two thousand interpreters out, with their wifes and kids, but no further family. An obligation they cclaim we have to them, I do not see there. We went there to their help, not the other way around. Ifd the Afghans would not have cooperated a bit, it wopuld have been to their own disadvanatge over the time the troops were there, becasue then the troops would have find it even harder to do something regharding the population.

I refuse to accept a beggar's claim that when I give him something I next have an obligation to give him even more. That may sound not sentimental enough for some, and not romantic. But I am not a too sentimental person by nature. And in the end, I know whose money gets payed and payed and payed more over all this. Ours. what was the status of our tax rates, and the debt levels, and the status of our nation's fiscal systems last time we checked them, how many times our nations GDPs have our implcit debt burdens climbed to already? Can we really afford adventures like this Afghan enterprise?

There is an economic basis to everything. Even to the afghanistan war. Even to being generous or not to asylum seekers. We should make sure that those we let in contribute more than what gets payed out to them. That demands certain education levels. That demands minimum health levels. That demands integration willingness.

To socially thinking people, that may sound rude. But it is the hard fact of life. Nothing is for free, somebody has to pay the bills. I refuse to bypass my head just because my heart wants to wallow in warm feelings. Warm feelings get you nowhere. Calm minds doing cool calculations - that was what would have been needed before Iraq, and Afghanistan. See where the lack of that attitude has led both adventures: two strategic defeats, disappointed illusions, broken promises, and another human tragedy waiting to unfold.

The truth is we intervened in a five year old civil war with the excuse that some of the participants were involved in a terrorist attack on the United States. Turns out that none of the participants were Afghan citizens or members of the Taliban. Oops.

Agreed. Completely. If anything we, U.S. and NATO have set that possibility back indefinitely.

Yes there will be revenge. It is a way of life in any lawless society. In a tribal one like Afghanistan it is a certainty.

Right on both accounts. But we could take some. Some is better than none.

Hmm... We did invade their country and turn it into a full scale battle ground for twelve years. Obligation....maybe just a little.

That is the very least we could and should do.

I noticed that. :har:

Sorry, couldn't pass up that opportunity.:oops:

Agreed. Especially the strategic part. Were there any that were achievable?

America did. Euriopean NATO countries offere dtheir assistance in a bid for prevemjting a full scale war and settling the issue by non-martialö nation building, but america said "No, this show we run all alone". Not before the stakes were raised, the Tlaioban camke back in force and America relaised thast with Afghjanistan AND Iraq it had bit off more than it could chew the Americans suddenly wanted help from NATO, and under US command of course. At that point however Europeans should have said No, for they were planned to just bear the conseqeunces of the mistakes and stuoid errors made by Bush'S gang aft5er underestmating Afghanistan and havign shifted forces out of the coutnry and toward Iraq. Friendship does not mean one is obligated to show soldiarity for the stupidity and irresoknisiblity of th eother.

And anyway: what does "friendship" means between nations, Europe and the US? I never believed in friendship between nations. The current NSA revelations just once again proves that assessment right. Friends would not really spy on each others economies and try to steal business secrets and product technologies. There might be friendships between individual people of different nations. But never between nations themselves.

They gave them shelter and actively protected them. That is the same. Fly with the crows, get shot with the crows. Different to Iraq, I can understand the American reaction after 9/11 as far as Afghanistan is concerned. It's just that I would have done it differently, and that there would not have been any Iraq war with me, but a full scale war in Afghanistan and Pakistan and a stay in Afghanistan in full force instead of destracting resources for Iraq. If I had my way, there either would be no Afghanistan and Pakistan anymore - or some hundred thousand extremists and Taliban woulöd be dead by now and their structures in the region shattered and their bases and retreat areas destroyed. NO MATTER WHAT. But one is so very much concerned with giving war a civilised face. That's why one is loosing them. Wars are not won be deescalating the effort, but by escalating the effort . Bitter, certainly not nice - but true. If one is not ready to agree with that, one better does not support a decision for war, for defeat is almost certain. There is no such thing like civilised war.

Its been a while, but now we see again how Skybird is completely insane, with a CAPSLOCK too.
Breivik would be so proud of you and your dreams of genocide.:doh:

Yes there is some truth to that. But NATO nations were probably involved without public knowledge. In Sean M. Maloney's book Enduring the Freedom he claims that members of Joint Task Force 2, Canada's elite special operations force were in Afghanistan in early October 2001 without the Prime Minister's permission. Hmm..?

Task Force K-Bar operated in Afghanistan from October 2001 to April 2002. It had members from U.S., Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Norway and Denmark. This was before the NATO deployment in 2003.

Good in theory and hindsight but at the time not practical.

Yea it's true they were there and the Taliban was giving them shelter. But was it worth getting involved in a twelve year long war that cost trillions of dollars, thousands of casualties and undoubtedly increased the resolve of Jihadists worldwide? I for one do not think the pay off and the price add up. As I said we have probably made the situation worse. We will probably see in the near future. I would not want to be a citizen of Afghanistan.

Were 3000 murdered Americans not worth to launch a war against those committing the deed, planning it - and those suzppoortiung, hiding them, giving them, shelter? If 9/11 was no reason to kill those doing the deed, what ever then would be a reason?

Different from that question is the way the war was run.

However, Iraq was a war of desire that was intended ten years in advance (I feel uncomfortable to call that ammount of dilletantism and naivety by which Bush assumed to be able to run the show, "planning the war" - obviously the Bush administration dig out the old neocon intention only without turning that intention into a proper war plan. Not only unscrupulous gangsters they were, but incompetent unscrupulous gangster). Afghanistan was a war of need that came unforseen and surprising, America had to react to 9/11, else it could have said goodbye to its claim to be a big nation and having a say in global things. An empire cannot afford to not react to an attack and provocation the scale of 9/11. I have never criticised the US for having gone to war in Afghanistan over the Al Quaeda leaders hiding there. I only criticised the US for the way they ran the event, and over Iraq in general.