Is War on Terror Counter-productive??

[mazHur]

There is general consensus in Afghanistan and Pakistan that the war on terror is counter productive and has led to further terrorism in the region. This furtherance of terrorism to other parts of the region and away has also made the US and its allies to lose the war.
It's a pity that with all its might the mighty powers of the world have not been able to achieve their target against terrorism during the last 11 years of war which has not only created more troubles but also drained the US of its economic grit.
What do you think about it and Why??

Until 70's the Afghan women wore skirt and blouse but later and today they suffer at the hands of their own men as shown in the following clip. What has led to this 'ideological change'' and why is there so much hatred against America??



Taliban's war on Afghan women
4 April 2014 Last updated at 01:26 BST

As Afghanistan prepares to go to the polls, women in particular are feeling threatened by Taliban threats to attack voters.

Many women have been killed in the conflict and Saeeda Mahmood, of BBC Pashto, has been to the southern province of Helmand to meet the families of the women victims.

Read more

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26879997

 

[Stone]

Is War on Terror Counter-productive??

Yes.
There is obviously more terrorism in the middle east after Bush started his crusade against it.
The US would up creating more enemies and more terrorist factions for the world to deal with because of Bush's foreign policies.

 

[mazHur]

Yes.
There is obviously more terrorism in the middle east after Bush started his crusade against it.
The US would up creating more enemies and more terrorist factions for the world to deal with because of Bush's foreign policies.

{{{{{{I have but to agree with you this time, my bad!!}}}}

 

[Stone]

{{{{{{I have but to agree with you this time, my bad!!}}}}

It is what it is, mazHur.
I try my best not to deny reality.
Immediately after 911, the US had a lot of goodwill in the middle east.
That was lost when Bush declared a war on terrorism and invaded Iraq. From that moment on, the world has been at greater risk of terrorism, both from internal and foreign sources.

 

[mazHur]

It is what it is, mazHur.
I try my best not to deny reality.
Immediately after 911, the US had a lot of goodwill in the middle east.
That was lost when Bush declared a war on terrorism and invaded Iraq. From that moment on, the world has been at greater risk of terrorism, both from internal and foreign sources.

America has also exposed us to high risk,,,,,our people our dying every day fighting your proxy war. Our fault is only that we have corrupt govt and bad economy. The West doesn't allow us to reform and perpetually keeps us engaged in frivolities of war ...firstly it was War againt USSR, now it is war against terror, an abstract bullshit which serves no purpose.

 

[Stone]

America has also exposed us to high risk,,,,,our people our dying every day fighting your proxy war. Our fault is only that we have corrupt govt and bad economy. The West doesn't allow us to reform and perpetually keeps us engaged in frivolities of war ...firstly it was War againt USSR, now it is war against terror, an abstract bullshit which serves no purpose.

Indeed, a big mistake for the US to use Pakistan as mercenaries.

You should have realized dealing with the neocon Bush administration would be not be beneficial to anyone other than the corporate backers of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld group.


To top it off, your government/military obviously couldn't be trusted and obviously gave aid to bin Laden at the same time.
So you wound up even more screwed and at odds internally.

 

[The Man]

There is general consensus in Afghanistan and Pakistan that the war on terror is counter productive and has led to further terrorism in the region. This furtherance of terrorism to other parts of the region and away has also made the US and its allies to lose the war.
It's a pity that with all its might the mighty powers of the world have not been able to achieve their target against terrorism during the last 11 years of war which has not only created more troubles but also drained the US of its economic grit.
What do you think about it and Why??

Until 70's the Afghan women wore skirt and blouse but later and today they suffer at the hands of their own men as shown in the following clip. What has led to this 'ideological change'' and why is there so much hatred against America??



Taliban's war on Afghan women
4 April 2014 Last updated at 01:26 BST

As Afghanistan prepares to go to the polls, women in particular are feeling threatened by Taliban threats to attack voters.

Many women have been killed in the conflict and Saeeda Mahmood, of BBC Pashto, has been to the southern province of Helmand to meet the families of the women victims.

Read more

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26879997

What was the other option..just let terrorists do as they wish.
You dont give in to terrorists from fear they will retaliate.
Fuck terrorists...fuck em all.
If you kill one and two more decide to become terrorists..fuck them too.
They already had the mentality to become terrorists...as they were already terrorists sympathizers
These people do not be given a free pass due to fear of repercussions.

Sent from my Motorola Electrify using Tapatalk 2

 

[The Man]

Until 70's the Afghan women wore skirt and blouse but later and today they suffer at the hands of their own men as shown in the following clip. What has led to this 'ideological change'' and why is there so much hatred against America??

Which shows there was a big problem long before we got involved...the 70s is long before bush declared war on terror.

As Afghanistan prepares to go to the polls, women in particular are feeling threatened by Taliban threats to attack voters.

Another good reason the Taliban needs to be dealt with.
IMO the best thing you guys could do is start destroying all Taliban areas by air...hard and fast non stop.
But you guys already made a law to allow sharia law by the Taliban in PK in designated areas.
You guys are giving them safe haven to be the terrorists they want to be...why should I take you guys seriously when you say you are trying to eliminate them..WHEN you provide by law for them to practice what they do?
It sucks you guys lost 5k in troops it really does....so you have terrorists with safe haven...who are also attacking your troops as a show of thanks...cant blame that on the US.
The only thing you can blame on the US is running a bunch of them out of AFG of which they ran back to PK.
If you remember the Taliban had taken over AFG long before we got involved....it takes a rather large group to take over a nation...The Taliban is a serious group as it took years to stabilize afg due to the Taliban strength..
So not only was pk in partial control of the Taliban..all of afg was essentially under the Taliban.

Here is where we are at....what is the easiest way to avoid the wrath of the Taliban...to become one of them.
The larger they get..the more powerful they become..more are apt to join as well due to fear.
Fact is if I were to say to go to PK...my American ass is in great peril..my best bet would be to become a terrorist just to save from being terrorized...unless of course you could do a good job of hiding my ass.

Point is they are large in numbers and have to be dealt with..they more they grow the more will join.
Its happened with baseball,football,basketball..churches, tea parties, activists, weight watchers..the list is endless.
We have a volunteer military people join as they want to...look how large it has become?
Your best best is to beg all western nations for assistance and just blast the fucking regions to craters while they are contained.
You sure dont pass laws which give them permission to operate.
You guys are being very two faced about this...providing haven and saying you are trying to eradicate them.

 

[Stone]

What you say sounds well and good, and from a moral pov, largely logical.
But from a realistic and practical pov, unfortunately flawed by reality.

Consider, will military involvement as we saw Bush initiate, make things better or worse?
Rhetorical because we know from a decade of involvement, his policies actually increased the resolve of terrorism.

What is the purpose for confronting terrorism?

Ending it or reducing it's effects?
This is important because the concept of terrorism can never be eradicated.
History proves this.
So ending it is not possible and the second option is the only effective choice.
But the question of 'how much' is certainly subjective.

Then there is the issue the locale and the means of addressing terrorism.
Fighting terrorism on another nations soil begins the problem of initiative versus resistance.
Consider, when the US initially went into Afghanistan to confront and capture bin Laden and destroy their network, we had much sympathy in the middle east because of 911and the Taliban was seen in the ME as an ally of bin Laden and their destiny linked to him. We had a moral position that was recognized by the world and our military.
So the world expected a confrontation and I suspect, largely accepted as just.
So this wasn't just the US addressing terrorism, in many of the eyes of the world, it was retribution for 911.
But Bush expanded the 'local' and declared a general war on terrorism with the invasion of Iraq.
Sure, Saddam was an evil dictator. But the world saw no hostilities between the US and Iraq at that time.
Not only did Iraq not initiate hostilities, they had no means and had been under enough supervision since Gulf War 1 with the US, that they hadn't exported terrorism either, with men or materials. There was no 911 involvement and no WMD.
But there was oil. And the Bush administration was effectively built on an oil lobby and the world was quite aware of it.
This is where our initiative on foreign soil ran into resistance. This is not the same as losing a battle. It's the will of the residing populace to resist. Those protecting their homes have more to lose than an intruder. Not just their own lives...............their families, their blood lines and their accepted way of life. So they support and initiate any form of resistance.
And here's the rub.
From observation, the residents of that part of the world have less interest in freedom and more interest in non interference by foreign nations.
As shown through out history, a man defending his homeland puts out more effort than the invader. It's the scale of the invasion that usually win's the conflict.
This is why we won our own independence. Our will was greater than the efforts the British were willing to spend, and I should point out, the British used mercs whose loyalty was tied to wages rather than country.
(This was why using Pakistani forces as mercs as maz suggests was a grave mistake.....their loyalty is bought by the highest bidder and can not be trusted. )
Currently, we are seeing much of that resistance in the ME in the manifestation of terrorism because Bush was seen as an invader whose agenda was control of the ME oil fields.

The elder Bush and Clinton had a better tactic, imo. You could argue it was implemented weakly by Clinton in regards to his non-response to the first attack on the Twin Towers, the Cole and several attacks on embassies, but, looking back, containment and suppression was more effective in regards to Iraq than invasion.

Obviously, an absolute can't be imposed in all issues of terrorism.
We needed to confront al Qaeda because they declared themselves an enemy and a combatant.
The world recognized that.
But the mess in the ME was largely manufactured by Bush foreign policy.
Bush not only engineered a war on a budget reducing the margins of success to begin with, he split our forces in the assault on bin Laden and al Qaeda to invade Iraq where there were no hostilities at that time.
Following that mistake, bin Laden escaped and al Qaeda regrouped and spread it's influence to an even higher level.

Man, we've been discussing the Muslim culture in other threads and it's obvious to me, their value system does not include the concept of free will and as a civilization, have few interests aligned with our concerns of terrorism. To the contrary. The concept of terrorism seems imbedded in their culture and they not only accept it, they use it among and against themselves as individuals.

Until their culture evolves as western culture has experienced, from a practical point of view, I see containment as the most effective tool until their culture and morality advances into the modern world.

Fight and destroy your sworn enemy, just don't make new ones.
Unfortunately, Bush left us with more sworn enemies from his foreign policies, than before he took office.
We're now left with a dilemma because of our current lack of military abilities.
As AA mentioned, do we glass over the ME,............or a more acceptable consideration, contain terrorism to that region till those nations have the will to address their problems?

As you know, I favor the latter to be in our best interests.

 

[The Man]

Stone,
The war on terror is a mess for sure..and no disrespect to maz but pk is essentially the problem.
Here is why..the Taliban from PK and the PK army grouped together to have the "Taliban" gain control of Afg...they fought side by side.
The Taliban provided haven and training camps for Bin laden and the AQ.
Pk and the Taliban are essentially brothers in a sense as they supported each other until we invaded Afg.
Declaring war on terror {The Taliban} in afg should have not stopped at a border but rather until the Taliban was crippled,the only thing we accomplished was letting them run home to Pk...since Pk is an Allie that presented problems. The PK had no intent of taking care of the Taliban..the Taliban are their brothers, to this date the Taliban has safe haven with special provisions to operate within parts of PK and hand out sharia law to those within those lands.
The Taliban seeks and executes PK soldiers as a reminder to PK that being an Allie of the US is not cool ..and again no disrespect to maz they are not really an allie IMO ...we merely used them in the past and kind of adopted them as a result.

Bin ladens beef was the US and Saudi Arabia were having relations...The presence of a US military installment in SA infuriated him..
SA stood tall and did not budge and we continued to have the installment in SA.
Whats funny though as there was no problem with PK and the US having relations...reason being a safe haven.
Although we might be an allie to PK..PK is not an Allie to us its just smoke..PK went as far as to protect BL when asked to turn him over.

Our demands themselves were a joke as it didnt include PK where the terrorists were now residing.
To further...when we invaded Afg we slapped PK by running out the PK army and the Taliban who had taken control of AFG.
PK wanted Afg under the control of the Taliban as a strategic move...if under the Taliban then its under PK control. With the TB in control it is considered rogue..but with pk stamping it/ it would have been considered to have been taken over by war.....just a spin of the Russia Crimea occurrence...
So it was not so much as the PK aiding the TB but the TB aiding PK ....PK was funding the Taliban and not the other way around.

IMO we should get maz out of PK and crater the Taliban regions...Lets face it pk is not going to do anything in regard to the Taliban.
We look like fools to the world and we are being played as such.

If they were not our allie then they sure are not now after we ran them out of AFG...what they were doing was essentially their business as a defense.

But going further AFG was just a location..its the TB we were after...PK IMO is more responsible for 911 than AFG.
They took over the land and used it for training grounds which all comes back to PK and the Taliban as the people involved.
AFG was not training the AQ..the Taliban was which came from PK which PK funded ...now they can claim they didn't know that's fine but I am hard pressed to believe it.

I stated years ago we should have just followed the TB right into Pakistan....If Pk were really our allie they would have welcomed it and would have flanked them from the other side.

If it got negative perception so be it as we have all we needed for public support ..as the TB was in PK and PK was providing assistance to the TB directly involved in AQ training camps. I expect they still are.

 

[The Man]

As AA mentioned, do we glass over the ME,............or a more acceptable consideration, contain terrorism to that region till those nations have the will to address their problems?
As you know, I favor the latter to be in our best interests.

I am against nuking ..I do want to see them contained..thing is I dont think they can take care of it on their own though for fear of retaliations...this stuff has been going on for quite some time.

 

[Stone]

I am against nuking ..I do want to see them contained..thing is I dont think they can take care of it on their own though for fear of retaliations...this stuff has been going on for quite some time.

Indeed.
It's easy looking backwards in history and say....this or that should have been done.
I think your previous post is pretty close as regards to the Taliban and Pakistan.
But those really are more localized than worldly, issues of terrorism and probably easier to contain because they are politically relevant and focused in and on those particular nations, Afghanistan and Pakistan for the purpose of local control.

al Qaeda has a different image. bin Laden was pushing a holy war to rid all of the ME of foreign influence, that being mostly the US. He took a war to us. I think al Qaeda is far more dangerous ........and 'containment' of a movement/enemy that has no national boundaries has no meaning. They roam the world.
They can only be confronted.


You stated:

I stated years ago we should have just followed the TB right into Pakistan

That's a good point.
The Taliban sided with al Qaeda as an enemy of the US by giving aid, comfort and especially, protection for their presence as an army carrying out a war on the US. The Taliban in effect declared themselves a combatant and fought along side al Qaeda. That put the Taliban in the same league as those that destroyed the Twin Towers and murdered US citizens on our soil.
But that opportunity you spoke of is long gone and essentially ended when Bush divided our forces for the Iraqi invasion. And Obama isn't likely to consider anything constructive at this late date.



A mess.

 

[The Man]

al Qaeda has a different image. bin Laden was pushing a holy war to rid all of the ME of foreign influence, that being mostly the US. He took a war to us. I think al Qaeda is far more dangerous ........and 'containment' of a movement/enemy that has no national boundaries has no meaning. They roam the world.

Indeed they also operate in Africa and various other places..even if we knocked out the Taliban we still have AQ the true American haters.
But knocking out the TB would put a dent in where many AQ call home...terrorism would go up a for a while as way of retaliation as a result...If nothing else they are a loyal and proud bunch...they arent going away anytime soon.
It will take another influential{persuasive} person such as Bin laden himself to end hate against the west,until then we can only hope we can do what we can to keep it from getting worse until it gets better.

 

[Stone]

........................
It will take another influential{persuasive} person such as Bin laden himself to end hate against the west,until then we can only hope we can do what we can to keep it from getting worse until it gets better.

If we were considering a western culture, I'd agree.
But from my conversations with mazHur and seeing the values of the 'man on the street' (so to speak) I'm doubtful much will change until their value system evolves further. It's incredibly primitive upon taking a closer look. A good 'front' claimed, but a lot of dark shadows hiding their volatile emotions.
Their populace has to want change, rather than denying they need it, before they'll accept an enlightened leader, imo.

If that's correct, maybe it's time to exit Afghanistan and leave them and Pakistan to their own designs.
al Qaeda could potentially see that as a reason to be more open in those nations allowing us to use small black ops teams with good intel and drones without the current investment of the lives and resources of our military in operations involving local resistance.
Occupation hasn't been working well, change the 'game' .
That may even be the thinking in Washington and the military right now, as it looks like there is a lot of effort going on in drone research.

worth a look!
http://rt.com/usa/darpa-drones-swarm-autonomous-985/

 

[The Man]

If we were considering a western culture, I'd agree.
But from my conversations with mazHur and seeing the values of the 'man on the street' (so to speak) I'm doubtful much will change until their value system evolves further. It's incredibly primitive upon taking a closer look. A good 'front' claimed, but a lot of dark shadows hiding their volatile emotions.
Their populace has to want change, rather than denying they need it, before they'll accept an enlightened leader, imo.

If that's correct, maybe it's time to exit Afghanistan and leave them and Pakistan to their own designs.
al Qaeda could potentially see that as a reason to be more open in those nations allowing us to use small black ops teams with good intel and drones without the current investment of the lives and resources of our military in operations involving local resistance.
Occupation hasn't been working well, change the 'game' .
That may even be the thinking in Washington and the military right now, as it looks like there is a lot of effort going on in drone research.

worth a look!
http://rt.com/usa/darpa-drones-swarm-autonomous-985/

It does look like it would be a much safer way for our military for sure.
The Mideast is so far behind as you say in cultural advancements I dont expect a change any time soon.
I guess till then we have to just try to reduce its effects

 

[mazHur]

What was the other option..just let terrorists do as they wish.
You dont give in to terrorists from fear they will retaliate.
Fuck terrorists...fuck em all.
If you kill one and two more decide to become terrorists..fuck them too.
They already had the mentality to become terrorists...as they were already terrorists sympathizers
These people do not be given a free pass due to fear of repercussions.

Sent from my Motorola Electrify using Tapatalk 2

If you were able you would have fucked them when they came to blow your trade center ...still you must concentrate more on your defense rather than cause to 'spread' terror everywhere! Let the US not be the watchman of the world.

 

[The Man]

If you were able you would have fucked them when they came to blow your trade center ...still you must concentrate more on your defense rather than cause to 'spread' terror everywhere! Let the US not be the watchman of the world.

Its actually a joint venture with over 40 nations...not the US alone..granted we have the most muscle though.
In regards to the trade center..most of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia....kinda odd..seems as if they are raising monsters like pakistan LOL.

 

[mazHur]

Its actually a joint venture with over 40 nations...not the US alone..granted we have the most muscle though.
In regards to the trade center..most of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia....kinda odd..seems as if they are raising monsters like pakistan LOL.

Lame excuse all the time...

Why don't they catch the Saudi's?

Make strong fences rather than destroy your neighbors or anybody else's home!
America and her allies are doing the contrary.....creating hate and disaster in other countries, esp Pakistan.

 

[Stone]

Lame excuse all the time...

Why don't they catch the Saudi's?

Make strong fences rather than destroy your neighbors or anybody else's home!
America and her allies are doing the contrary.....creating hate and disaster in other countries, esp Pakistan.

Cause the Saudis kicked bin Laden and al Qaeda out in 1992 ( before 911) and the terrorists eventually found a welcome mat in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
It's only logical to attack an enemy where he resides, not where he's left ( long ago at that ).

 

[Alien Allen]

we need to get independent of the mideast oil completely

in time if we are smart about it the mideast will lose their money from oil and then the next war will be about water which we have plenty of.

It is just a matter of time before water becomes the new oil

The only difference is there will be no Big Water for anybody to complain about. Because the govt will have full control over water.