They're ok with Michael Bay filming their stuff like a car commercial, or Favreau treating them like irresponsible warmongers or clueless canon fodder; the army representatives don't fucking care as long as they're put onscreen in mainstream movies. Whether the movie is praising them or not, as long as there are famous actors, slick CGI or funny catchphrases it's still as good an infomercial for recruitment as America's Army or Top Gun were back in the day.

Personally, I don't think a movie site is the place for a political debate, although I'm still puzzled as to why we bombed the tar out of Iraq when most of the 9/11 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia.

Over to you guys...

And I think you answered your own question about why Clinton didn't doi anything about bin Laden. He was too busy having to deal with a Republican Congress trying to impeach him over a blowjob while they were busy having affairs witheir barely legal assistants and pages or trying to pick up other men in airport bathrooms.

Fireproof is still an idiot though.

Actaully, I never got around to looking it up on Amazon, but I had thought about it.

Actually, I never really got around to thinking about it either.

Actaually, I don't even like reading.

Furthermore, there were plenty of war movies during WWII that were put out by Hollywood. Yup, that same Hollywood you and your kind are always going on about how unpatriotic "they" are. The difference is that was a declared war and FDR certainly knew how to rally the WHOLE country, not just Democrats. How many cabinet members has Dubya appointed who are Democratic? Oh yeah, The Great Uniter, I forgot.

I'll be there on opening night to watch this just to see what it's all about...then I'll read the book.

You're funny, Mr. Fireproof. And props to Mr. Nice Gaius for the Burger King line, that was sweet.

The point about a declared war is that the entire country was behind the effort and it was largely due to the FDR administrations efforts. You can say the word “bogus” all you want but the facts are certainly there. Have you heard every “bogus” argument so that you can actually say it’s the most bogus? Are you saying there are no people in Hollywood capable of making an objective movie about war? That’s both an absolute and all encompassing statement…how omniscient you are!

Declared war as in the US Congress declaring war. Who said anything about the UN besides you?

Goodness, taking the high road right off the bat, huh? So, you know me well enough to call me names, eh? Ah yes, real bad-assed Internet courage on display. You really know how to discuss something don’t you? 9000rpm? More like 2mwy (2 miliradians per year). And, yeah, I’m proud of everything I do except maybe engaging Internet know-nothings like you.

A tear rolls down her cheek

"Where's daddy?"

Jaiger

ZINGER!

I also recommend The End of Suburbia. The title might be a little hyperbolic, but the doc is quite teh excellence.

Nice try though, Brafficles.

It's ok, Baffled. You can't think you've won everytime.

Neither is it a fact that any pilots flew DC-3’s over The Hump. They were C-47 (Army Air Corp version of the DC-3) and 46’s, to be precise (and later four engine bombers carrying cargo). The AVG did run up on some Zero Model 21 (easy to spot as they had the single collector exhaust pipe) pilots before Pearl Harbor but mostly the earlier IJN A5M “Claude” and Imperial Army KI-43 “Oscar” pilots. Their pilots were superb and before PH, could out fly any the US had, AVG included. It was Chenault’s tactics that saved the day though it certainly doesn’t diminish anything our brave pilots were able to do. Really threw the Japanese (not to mention the occasional Spanish Civil War ace/veterans the Soviets threw in the mix) for a loop and negated the benefits of their superior (at the time) aircraft. As for the Pacific Fleet, our F4F Wildcat pilots showed they could hold their own against the superior Jap pilots in the long fighting (after PH) of Guadalcanal. I certainly agree that had the US Navy been warned in time, the Pearl Harbor attack would’ve turned out differently. However, it could’ve also turned out that the Japanese had sunk our carriers which, fortunately, weren’t at Pearl. Let me guess, FDR sent ‘em away on purpose, right? Those unfortunate B-17 pilots didn’t have any defensive armament either (sitting ducks for the Zeke pilots) and the Battle of Midway showed that the US couldn’t hit a Jap ship using heavy bombers for love nor money.

Anyway, sorry for the pedantic exercise but I’m still not sure how this ties in with the ludicrous idea of FDR appeasing Hitler.

Now, if that's not good enough for you, then your beef is with Miller, the graphic novel, and the studio that decided the flimsy storyline was enough to turn into a feature-length film.

But, please, do continue to call each other fags and pussies over differing opinions on it. I know that what people do best on AICN.

Come on. It's only "too soon" of somebody claims they are using "facts" when the facts aren't really out there yet. Like, if somebody made a film about the OJ murder and trial story before the trial was over, but they were goign to find him "guilty" in the movie anyway. THAT would be "too soon" b/c the facts weren't there to support it. I don't really know exactly what story this Greengrass movie will be telling, but unless it's jumping to a conclusion about something which hasn't happened or been proven yet it isn't "too soon."

Change the world, brothers...

If you see that much homosexuality in these films, it can only be a reflection of what you want to see in it because there are no continuous and overt displays in these films (at leat that I remember and not including scenes studios cut from the original releases). If seeing half naked men makes makes a film "gay", then wouldn't half-naked women make it "gay" for female audience members? The thoery just doesn't work, friend.

While Shia and Sunni extremists do of course have deep theological differences they cooperate in at least a dozen countries on a political and terroristic level to work against the interests of the United States.

* In AFGHANISTAN, Iran has financed and armed the Sunni Hizb Islami (Islamic Party) since the 1990s.

* In the former Soviet republics (and now independent states) of TAJIKISTAN and UZBEKISTAN, Iran has for years supported two Sunni movements, the Rastakhiz Islami (Islamic Awakening) and Hizb Tahrir Islami (Islamic Liberation Party).

* In AZERBAIJAN, Tehran supports the Sunni Taleshi groups against the Azeri Shia majority (who are pro-American).

* In ALGERIA between 1992 and 2005, Iran financed the Sunni terrorist group, The Front for Islamic Salvation (FIS).

* In 1996, a suicide attack claimed the lives of 19 American servicemen in Al Khobar, in eastern SAUDI ARABIA. The operation was carried out by the Hizbullah in Hejaz, an Iranian-financed outfit, with the help of the Sunni militant group “Sword of the Peninsula.”

* In 2000, Sunni groups linked to al-Qaeda killed 17 U.S. servicemen in a suicide attack on USS Cole off the coast of YEMEN. A Shia militant group led by Sheikh al-Houti, Iran’s man in Yemen, helped with the operation.

* There are no PALESTINIAN Shia, yet Tehran has become the principal source of funding for Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian Sunni terror groups.

* Indeed, Iran is now the chief direct state funder of HAMAS. The new Iranian budget, which came into effect on March 21, allocates over $2 billion to the promotion of “revolutionary causes.” Much of the money will go to Hamas and Hizbullah.

Science isn't actually a belief system or an ideology, it's a method, and one that is built on the premise that it can be wrong, often is wrong, and will never be complete. It's an open-minded process, whereas the creationist's version of reality is air-tight and hermetically sealed against even the most passive investigation. One thing that always amuses me about Creationists is their adopting of the empirical state of 'theory' as applied to Natural Selection. "Darwin's theory is just that- a theory", they announce, triumphantly, firmly believing that they have felled Goliath with his own stone. Well, Like I said, Science is a method, and in fact, all science, (with the exception of a fraction of the observable stuff and phenomena that make up our immediate surroundings) is "just a theory". That's how science works. The empirical process begins with an idea, opinion, or leap of intuition, or most often, an unexpected accident, then a hypothesis is formed. Once the hypothesis has been put through a series of tests it becomes a theory. At any point along this line if anything goes wrong, if the hypothesis falls apart under evidence, it never reaches the level of theory. A theory becomes a theory when everything goes right, when all tests and evidence add up to what the hypothesis posits, but something like evolution (or string theory, or the big bang) can't become scientific fact because no one has so far sat down to observe the process over millions of years and take notes. Empirically speaking, it remains 'just a theory', But a theory with almost 200 years of rigorous, mounting evidence and experimentation that supports it. With each and every field of scholarship in science that has developed since Victorian times, geology, chemistry, biology, anthropology, paleontology, (among others) the theory of evolution has been supported. Not once, in almost two centuries has the slightest hint that there might be something wrong with it ever shown up. So "Just a theory" actually means a great, great deal. It's ironic that the method of science that prevents it from labeling evolution as fact is the thing most infinitely sensible about it, and the thing that creationists try to use against it, without any sense.

Science does not require of itself a perfectly rendered map in order to prove its own merit, it's a process, not a belief system. This is crucial- just because science cannot point to every step along the evolutionary path does not amount to a dismissal of this or any other theory. IT IS A PROCESS. We are still finding evidence, we are still learning about it, after millions of years, we've only been studying it for less than 200. And yet, in all that time, nothing yet has been discovered that disproves the theory. All it would take is one piece of evidence, a fossilized footprint in the wrong geological place, a skull that shouldn't exist in the fossil record, even something microscopic (and believe me, there has been a concentrated search for just such a piece of evidence) but nothing yet. Just because we can't show you the roadmap, doesn't mean the terrain doesn't exist. The same argument is used everyday by people with faith. The difference is, ours is an open-minded process, seeking answers we may not expect or want, whereas faith already has the answer it wants, and dismisses whatever doesn't fit arbitrarily. let me ask you- if some of the Bible is myth, and some of it is fact, by what method do you determine the difference? It certainly isn't scienific, but there must be one, surely?

One more thing- It's a fallacy to suggest that just because something like evolution is 'unprovable', it automatically puts it in the same category as any theory you could imagine. There are degrees, there is a spectrum of logic, assumption, circumstantial and peripheral evidence, informed argument that can point you in the proper direction, as long as you remain objective. It's a matter of reason. If you've never been to China, how do you know it's really there? Well, a very convincing case can be made for the existence of China. What about Unicorns? Do Unicorns have horns coming out the top of their heads? The answer is no, because there are no Unicorns. How do I know this? Is it a matter of faith? Unicorns are mentioned in the Bible, after all. Maybe Unicorns do exist. Except that they don't, the notion is absurd, and it offends our sense of logic.

By your argument, not only should we teach ID in schools, we should also teach of Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, Atlantis, the Man in the Moon, Superman, Alien Abduction, protection against Zombies, Vampires and Werewolves... the list goes on. Have I made my point?

Hmm, I like that. Maybe in 2000 years I'll get THAT taught in schools.

Antonius- all the rationalizations aren't going to convince you, and all your faith won't convince me. So here's the thing:

What pisses off people who don't believe in ID or creationism, whether they believe in God or not, is the obvious agenda being served by the arguments. It's OBVIOUS that proponents of these ideas are twisting themselves into painful pretzel-like intellectual contortions in order to serve the agenda of their faith. You probably wouldn't even disagree on this point, you know that it's no coincidence that the same people who promote Creationism also happen to be Christians.

What I ask you to consider is this: that people like me, who make an effort to engage, and form a counter-argument to your claims, have no agenda to serve. I am not a proselytizing atheist. I am not anti-Christian, nor am I anti-religious, any more than I am "pro science". See, from my perspective, saying I'm "pro-science" is like saying I'm "pro-breathing". Science is not in competition with religion, it's on a completely different level. People who promote evolution aren't doing it just to piss you off, or because they have a beef with God. I know this might be hard to swallow, since it's not how your group operates, but it's true. They promote evolution because it makes sense.

Now, as a logical, intelligent person, which argument would you support? the one that has no agenda to serve, or the one that does?

Cheers Doc. I'm surprised at that given his shitty taste in films.

This is an attractive idea, as it neatly plugs any holes in the current theory and makes it look like creationists are conceding ground on Darwin.

However, as far as I can see it has one fucking huge problem that it is never, ever, going to get over, viz. that the crux of the argument is something that it is absolutely impossible to prove or disprove. What you are essentially trying to get the anti-ID lot to do is disprove the existance of God. And believe me, if as rational humans we could have done that already, we would.

If you ask me "are there 227.4 million invisible intangible pink hedgehogs flying around in the stratosphere", I'm automatically going to say no. However, you can easily then say "but prove there aren't" and this is something that I can't do. However, it doesn't mean that there are 227.4 invisible intangible pink hedgehogs up there.

See?

Just thought I'd help you seeing as you love correcting typos.

And his new name is materyoda...now.

Jarv, the uprising has begun ->http://tinyurl.com/64jddp

http://tinyurl.com/4p79fk

And your D-backs seem to be the class of the NL (I realize it's early and not saying much, but well, there it is).

The all time funniest was when Memories of Murder tried to correc xiphos using a common British colloquial phrase, fucked it up so what he was attempting to say was actually gibberish.

Has anyone not smacked the little twat about.

I can't do it justice but it basically runs that he was an arrogant rebellious tosser that went against the council's mandate, but was too useless to do the training properly. Instead of fighting he buggers of to the outer rim before preparing his padwan's son as some sort of guided weapon, motivated by the chance of a bit of nookie with his sister. What a bastard.

What a cunt. I seem to have driven the vile little hypocrite away. It took me long enough. Now if I can just do the same to braffed, although that will be harded because I'm yet to see the cocksucker venture anything resembling an opinion.

A true giant among talkbackers.

Mind you that's how it always dresses, when its mother isn't there to help it.

So what you are basically saying is that wholesale genocide of the civilian population is not only acceptable but desirable provided you win this bullshit "war" faster.

You fucking horrible piece of human detritus.

And this current mess is in no way comparable to WW2. So stop fucking doing it.

By the way: The army was asked to provide tanks, choppers, soldiers, and other hardware, and they naturally said, "NO, SCOTT."

And don't fucking tell me to look something up, especially when you don't seem to know what the term means. In this case Genocide= "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group: Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. ". That's from the Geneva FUCKING convention toolbox. So how would you describe wholesale carpet bombing and destruction of, say, Syria or Iran(which are countries that are not even involved in the war- and seem to have little in common aside from being Muslim)? And don't split hairs with me- you seem to think Saddam's massacre of the Kurds= Genocide but your proposed mass bombing= collateral damage. That is bullshit.

Lastly, your final sentence- nope, everything you put in both posts is an opinion. And that is a fact.

What kind of moral high ground can western liberal democracy possibly expect to hold if there are no differences between our methods and those of any run-of-the-mill dictatorship waging a war of domination?

In his world to massively decimate a civilian population= collateral damage when the US do it, but genocide when someone else does it because this is what he's been told. He is a revolting little bastard that is incapable of seeing his own inherent contradictions and actually quite a good argument as to why democracy does not work.

He doesn't understand what he's talking about, because he is recycling other people's opinions (especially the laughable genocide distinction).

A more ill-informed, hawkish, plain stupid, loathsome post I haven't seen in a long time. Not even Anchorite or Kevin Willis would suggest such a thing.

And when did these utterly fatuous WW2 comparisons start? I've seen it used a few times recently and it is complete fucking horseshit. I blame that stupid "Axis of Evil" speech. This is what happens when you write a speech for the soundbites and not the content- morons like hyprkc think you are being literal.

I haven't seen opinions like those since AnimalBraneBalls hung up his drool stained keyboard. The difference is ABB understood what he was writing, I'm not sure this dirtbag does.

Classic stuff.

Oh, and it's "where" to find me, not "were" to find me.

MasterYoda: "Xiphos you are king of the pillow biters" is definitely the most ill-informed statement since Cheney's "dead-enders" claim.

And there's nothing sadder than threatening violence on the internet.

Loser

I fucking hate it- is it that hard to press 2 more keys?

But cheers for the props & the info.

I also read that arguably, Hiroshima/Nagasaki actually saved lives in the long run- because a protracted war in Japan would have been truly horrendous in terms of civilian casualties. I don't know about that though.

Regarding Dresden, this has been in the news a lot over here recently, because I think we're meant to apologise for it (like slavery, the Empire, etc) and to be honest, I'm a bit pissed off about it. Urban England was fucking bombed to ribbons (have you seen what coventry looks like now- it's all 50's architecture and fucking horrible), so why do we have to apologise?

The worm.

I'm not saying that Dresden was right or wrong, but what I'm saying is that to apologise for it now means nothing- it isn't the current population/politicians that were responsible. They/ We had no say in it and should therefore bear no responsibility for it.

Except always beating us on penalties.

I'm off, have fun.

Truth is, the American military knows full well it has to win that battle for hearts and minds we keep hearing about. Hence having a few UAE troops on the ground in Afghanistan because the locals can relate to other Muslims better, and all sorts of stuff like that. There's no way the anti-war camp is interfering with that drive at all. But it's still not working well enough. A little bit of progress is easy to disrupt with just one random suicide bombing. We need overwhelming progress and in a hurry, in order for that success to survive such tests.

I also want to make clear that I don't think any of this is anything for any nation to be proud of (and the submorons that chant "2 world wars and 1 world cup" are really poor examples of humanity)and the correct way of dealing with it is to acknowledge that it happened, but not apologise; to remember the past, but not revel or wallow in it. If that makes sense.

What a recipe for disaster.

1) They're not a bunch of militants or insurgents. They (the religious youth of Afghanistan) were the backbone of the forces that drove out the Russians, and are now old guys commanding new young guys. They know what they're doing militarily. Look at the fact that, like normal Sunnis (which the Taliban actually are, religiously speaking), they abhorred suicide bombing until Al-Qaeda finally won them over with the winning argument that it was the answer to NATO airpower. What is airpower but a bomb that does a lot of collateral damage? That's what suicide bombing achieves too, though without the ability to strike anywhere at any time. It's like their mini-AirForce for attacks on convoys. This rationalization won over the Taliban commanders despite incredibly clear anti-suicide injunctions in the Islamic religion. The lesser of two evils and all that. This is just one example to illustrate how they are a military force without a national military's means for the moment. The Taliban also later conquered an Afghanistan in the midst of civil war, so they've been fighting non-stop there for more than two decades.

2) Carrying on from the last point, the Taliban's ranks are very well-disciplined, as religiously indoctrinated youth are easy to keep in line. They might even be better disciplined than the soldiers in Western armies. And on top of that... they want it more. Listen to the comments coming out of NATO commanders. The Taliban rank and file actually believe they're fighting for God. In NATO's case, maybe Bush believes he's fighting for God, but our guys on the ground there are SANE, NORMAL guys like US. They worry about LIVING, about their fellow man. The grunts on the Taliban side all share the same zealous faith of their leaders. They just want it more. So if this really is a Westerners-who-want-WW3 vs. Muslims-who-want-WW3, then the West is in for a rude awakening because that's what it comes down to. The Quran-thumping Muslims want it more than the Bible-thumping Christians.

As for what it would have taken to defeat Japan, read The Battle of Okinawa: The Blood and the Bomb by George Feifer.

Any time weapons that produce terror are used, incendiary, chemical, biological, radiological, it provokes deep seated responses in people as being extreme even for warfare.

There are conventions and prohibitions over the use of certain weapons - and for good reason. Another thing about Dresden, is that it was not considered a high value military target, but this may be revisionist thinking at work. As for an apology, you are quite correct that none should be forthcoming. I do think in some circumstances that a gov't must apologize for the actions that a previous generation caused, but generally, those situations, are for crimes against humanity. An argument can be made for just what that constitutes, but in my mind, there are some crimes so self evident, that it is not debatable.

Completely agree with you about not getting Pakistan actively involved (see: driving them in that direction) by (I hate this completely over-used term) "carpet bombing" Afghanistan. Whatever that means anymore.

It's also a fact that the terror bombings in WWII, as started by the Luftwaffe over Rotterdam, ended up having the exact opposite effect of stiffening the resolve of the civilian population. Hence the Londoners "stiff upper lip" during the Blitz.

Anyone who doesn't think the Japanese military was working as hard as possible to develop their own nukes to drop on the US is seriously naive. Also, I think Truman might've re-considerd using nukes if he'd been made aware of the effects of radiation poisioning, etc. Who knew? The projected Allied casualties for invading Japan proper was in the millions. Man, many more Japanese civilians would've died in the process as they were issued sharpened bambo spears and ordered to fight to the death.

Finally, and this is for Xiphos, while it's true that strategic bombing in WWII was to reduce the capacity for the enemy to produce more bullets, bombs and butterbeans for the troops, it was also intended to kill those very civilians pumping out the material. Read Chuck Yeagers first book about one mission where he and his wingman were ordered to strafe a French civilian refuge column. It was to clear the way for a US Army armored column trying to advance. Does that make Chuck a terrorist or murderer? No, not in my opinion but to say ANY combatant won't target civilians is just not true. However, there are many examples of US airman boring into the ground with their aircraft to avoid killing civilians. And we certainly don't do the kind of shit the Soviets did in Afghanistan!

This book doesn't take sides, it reports the facts. After reading the book, our bumbling of Iraq makes perfect sense. There is no way possible that the amount of mistakes made were an accident. Literally every decision was flawed and worked to prolong our occupation. And make friends of Cheney even richer.

During the Gulf War, Cheney said we should not occupy Iraq because it would result in a quagmire (and not the good giggidy giggidy kind). He has had a hard on for privitizing the majority of governmental departments, including the military, for years. The devil, I mean Cheney, want to do this to make him and his friends a lot of money.

If you think we invaded Iraq to kill Saddam, stabilize the region, or bring down oil prices, you are horribly naive. Read Imperial Life In The Emerald City and Blackwater:The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army and you will have a completely new understanding of exactly what is going on.

But that does lead to the possibility of the Russians getting involved with the invasion. Or the fact that we might have run out of the manpower necessary to remobilize enough troops to invade Japan, dragging on the war for another good few years. Even if it might have been the right thing to do (assuming it would've resulted in fewer civilian casualties, or perhaps the same amount spread over an extended amount of time and geography), it wouldn't have been the smart thing to do.

I don't know if it's possible to flatten mountains in reality. Israel couldn't even flatten Hezbollah with insanely heavy duty conventional munitions in Lebanon (as well as napalm and cluster bombs...). And that was in CITIES.

The Emperor, although even then, not the leading political force, did exert tremendous sway over the average person. In the event of an invasion, if he had exhorted his people to fight, they without a doubt would have done so. Combine that with the simple natural inclination to fight invaders, and coupled with propoganda that had U.S. soldiers commiting attrocities (never mind that is the other way around), then you can see that a determined, and desperate populace would have put up one helluva fight.

It would have been very bloody, all around. We would still have won, but the cost would have been enormous. Both for us, and for the Japanese.

There just isn't a military solution to Afghanistan. If there is, I'd like someone to point out what exactly it is.

Where I lost you was "The enemy we face now does not share the common beliefs and values that this country was founded on or continues to thrive upon. They threaten our very existence and the American way of life. What American citizen wouldn't want to defeat them as quickly and effectively as possible.".... uh... wtf? When was the last time an Afghani or an Iraqi even set off a terrorist attack on US soil, much less annihilate all of Western civilization which is what you're describing. It's utterly ludicrous. The Taliban were not out to destroy any way of life, they were out to conquer Afghanistan. You'd think they might have tried to conquer Pakistan if they really had aspirations outside of their borders, but up until now, when NATO forced them out of Afghanistan, they didn't even raise a fuss in Pakistan's tribal regions despite them being overwhelmingly ethnically and religiously sympathetic. They could have easily laid siege to the rest of Pakistan from there. They could do so even now, yet they aren't (the insurgency in the tribal regions is still mostly a Pakistani-militant thing, which the Afghanis sometimes involve themselves in). And you want me to believe the Taliban are going to somehow conquer the region, then Asia, then sail or fly across half the planet, land a million troops on US soil and conquer everything? Because that's what it would take to actually threaten the Western way of life. Just threaten. To actually destroy our way of life would require a complete annihilation of nearly three quarters of the planet. Last I checked, the Taliban and the Iraqi insurgents didn't know how to crash the moon into the Earth or knock our planet out of its orbit around the sun.

And to say that it's not the Taliban, not the Iraqis, but AL-QAEDA that's going to do all of the above is even more impossible to fathom.

2) The crash of Western economies, ceding momentum to the Chinese, Indians, and maybe eventually the Russians too (though they wield more political/military clout than economic). Although they all have adopted our way of life too.

And yet Saudi-Arabia is one of our strongest and dearest allies.

The Taliban aren't Wahabi/Salafi, they are Sunni. Believe it or not, Afghanistan under Taliban rule was more moderate (in doctrine) than Saudi-Arabia. We would've seen that more clearly had they had any money (and responsibility, such as holding the Islamic holy sites) as tempering influences.

The biggest blunder in contemporary history was the decision of the United States to abandon the Afghanis after their war with Russia. All the elements of what later became the Northern Alliance, the Taliban, etc. were ready to ally in one government for the sake of Afghanistan, all we had to do was pony up the support for them to rebuild. Like I said, even if it were a theocracy (although it wasn't, they came together to form a sort of democracy of all the fighters), it would've been a more moderate one than Saudi-Arabia.

If any country in the world has something to lose, or is actually at any risk, it's Hindu India. Yet they don't care beyond Pakistan.

Why is our way of life threatened? Why is Iran, the Shi'ite embodiment of everything we will fight to the death to prevent Afghanistan or Iraq from becoming (in Afghanistan, it'd be a Sunni version of Iran), so yeah, why is Iran a threat to our way of life (despite the fact that they have our way of life) and not... the Chinese way of life? The Chinese are atheists, the Indians are Hindus, those are more offensive to Muslims like Al-Qaeda who allegedly want to destroy the world?

Truth is, Osama espouses rhetoric, like any good politician. He was ready, after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, to ally with the United States and fight Saddam on behalf of Saudi-Arabia. He was just betrayed when our infidel asses touched down in his country and did it for ourselves and kept a presence there.

Why aren't the Russians scared? They fought and died in Afghanistan. The fundamentalists that allegedly threaten "our way of life" have it in for the Russians considering how much more havoc they wreaked in Afghanistan, yet only a decade later, they don't give a damn about Russia anymore. And yet Russia has its own Islamic problem in Chechnya and other Central Asian territories. But they don't seem to be too worried about being wiped off the map magically and losing their way of life. Hmm.

And to restate, the Chinese, the Russians, the Indians, even the Saudis, slowly but surely, have all either already adopted or are slowly adopting the Western way of life.

Another fact. All the harshest laws of a theocratic "Shariah" state, are already in place in many of our allies, like Pakistan, like Saudi-Arabia. But those laws aren't the ones we're afraid of as human rights violations. The ones we're afraid of are the ones banning Western culture. Because that would hit our wallets.

These guys were not a part of the Muslim League that fought for Pakistan's independence and the two-state solution. They were a part of this group called Jamiat Ulema Hind (wiki it). They were allied with Gandhi's Congress Party and opposed partition. They were a party of the top Sunni clerics from across South Asia. They wrote "fatwas" with signatures of nearly the entire body of clerics saying that their jihad was non-violent struggle with Gandhi to get one united, independent India.

They instituted many of Gandhi's favorite measures like the Quit India movement, and even the first call for Indian independence (rather than autonomy) BEFORE Gandhi and his party did.

These are the same revered predecessors of the Afghani Taliban.

One of them, Maulana Azad got a position in the first Indian government. They name government schools after him in India still. The Indian government still pays respect to these guys (they are called Deobandi because they originated in a city in India named Deoband).

The Taliban revere Maulana Azad and all those guys.

(A splinter group broke off at partition to help the Islamic movements in Pakistan when they realized it was an inevitable reality, they compete in Pakistani politics to this day and helped form the Taliban with the help of the Pakistani intelligence agencies from students in their madrassah network that were from the tribal regions and Afghanistan, with the help of Benazir Bhutto's government)

All this crap about ending our way of life is just that... crap. It's not Western civilization that's at risk. It's Western corporate culture that's at risk. It's not the United States that should worry, it's McDonald's, KFC, etc. They are the ones who benefit from all this.

The defense contractors are already beyond all of this. Haliburton's headquarters are in a Muslim Arab country in the mideast for Christ's sake.

If America ever magically "collapses", it's going to be as a victim of it's own way of life.

Even Western culture will survive any sort of catastrophe in America. It's ironic. If the Taliban or Al-Qaeda or the Iraqis pray to Allah to crash an asteroid into the US to end us (the only strategy that stands a chance of working), then Western civilization and culture would live on over there because McDonald's, KFC, Haliburton, all these guys are over there already and have become a part of them.

How to deal with an Osama figure after 9/11? Clancy would've agreed to the Taliban's offer to turn him over to a Pakistani or Saudi religious court. Let the Saudis try him, convict him, and let a Saudi prince behead him in public. Exactly a scenario from his novels. That just seems so richly plausible, it would've been worth a shot.

I've never seen O'Reilly so humbled before on his own show. And willfully.

The major lesson of that appearance? Clancy said military occupations are destined to fail because soldiers are trained to SHOOT THINGS, not enforce civil law. That's a job for the police.

We could have fixed Iraq by now if we sent in 50,000 SWAT three years ago and were training and arming Iraqi SWAT rather than an Iraqi Army (we should have left the Baathist Iraqi Army intact, but controlled it via puppet generals).

However, the main reason for the invasion of Afghanistan - Tom Clancy notwithstanding, is that the Taliban supported, and protected Al Qaida.

Bin Laden, had given the go-ahead for the attack, and was also protected by Al Qaida. The U.S. - wanting to do all within it's power to destroy or at least severely cripple Al Qaida - and after having suffered a terrorist attack on our soil, perpetuated by said group, it is without a doubt a defensible position to want to destroy such an entity, invaded Afghanistan to do just such.

As a purely military objective, it was a resounding success at first. Far moreso than in Iraq. However, there have been setbacks, and consequences, whether foreseen or otherwise, that seem to indicate that the war there is not going to meet all of it's objectives, and will also result in creating more problems in the future.

The Taliban where ruthless in cracking down on the Opium trade, now, warlords have re-emerged and are using profits from the drug trade to increase their own fiefdoms. We have severely hurt Al Qaida, but have not been able to destroy it. But, I truly beleive we were justified in going into Afghanistan, once the Taliban refused to hand over the Al Qaida leadership.

On September 22, 2001, the United Arab Emirates and later Saudi Arabia withdrew their recognition of the Taliban as the legal government of Afghanistan, leaving neighboring Pakistan as the only remaining country with diplomatic ties. On October 4, 2001, it is believed that the Taliban covertly offered to turn bin Laden over to Pakistan for trial in an international tribunal that operated according to Islamic Sharia law.[109][110] Pakistan, recently recast as an ally of the west, is believed to have rejected the offer (even though they still recognized the Taliban).

On October 7, 2001, before the onset of military operations, the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan offered to "detain bin Laden and try him under Islamic law" if the United States made a formal request and presented the Taliban with evidence.[111] This counter offer was immediately rejected by the U.S. as insufficient.

^ It would've been easy as hell to get them to hand him over to the Saudis. For one thing, the Saudis actually had "Shariah" courts (the Wahabi version where the government can make up any verdict it likes) whereas Pakistan didn't. I still say that 90% of this War on Terror should have ended in 2001 with a Saudi prince standing over the decapitated body of Bin Laden on TV.

Hyprkc is a believer, not a "terrible human being', Jarv. He's the perfect specimen of someone who has bought the propaganda hook, line and sinker. He represents a wide swath of public opinion that has been carefully constructed and promoted. I'm not being conspiracy guy here, public opinion is guided all the time, advertising is the most ubiquitous example, and the kind of things hyprkc is repeating is essentially the end result of a very successful ad campaign.

The architects of these occupations need a scapegoat for the failures, if they truly are failures. Savage Lucy touched on it- regular Americans would most likely be horrified by the truth of what is really happening, the reasons why we're at war in the Middle East (and I'm not claiming that I have those answers, just that they obviously aren't the pre-packaged lies we've been fed) So regular Americans are lied to, but also complicit in the process of being duped. People like hyprkc allow themselves to believe that the 'failures' are somehow caused by some kind of supernatural weakness in the spiritual fabric of America, which is the fault of Americans who don't believe in the war. It's a very clever, self-replicating lie, since it assuages the guilt of the true-believer, while playing on his or her native superstitions/prejudices and promoting strife and conflict within the population that distracts everyone from finding out what is really going on, which in turn gives the people who control the levers of power enough room to maneuver. I think the media play a role in this process, but not in any sort of secret cabalistic way. The media are a tool, but so far still function as the fourth estate, albeit in a withered capacity, compared to recent history. I don't believe people who claim that the media are essentially like the Soviet organ 'Izvestia', which was the 'official' news source of the Communist party. Even Fox news, the closest analog we have to Izvestia, still relies on the degree to which it's players are or aren't indoctrinated in the propaganda coming from the White House.

I think where people like hyprkc come from is a likable but ultimately foolish way of thinking- they associate any failure as an offense to their patriotism. Unfortunately, for one reason or another, they've never figured out that it is in fact the duty of the patriot to question the legitimacy of his or her government. One of my favorite quotes of all time is from Mark Twain: Loyalty to your country always, loyalty to your government when they deserve it."

One of the most popular themes in Izvestia was the constant blurring of the lines between the Nation and the Party, so that the two became indistinguishable from one another. Once that was accomplished, the Party could do anything it wanted, no matter how terrible it was for the Nation, and denounce any dissent as 'anti-patriotic'. Sound familiar?

Lost Jarv, BSB, Node, Stevie,morGoth, Xiphos,Toad, Doc, chuckmc, wereplatypus... Awesome posts all, this has been a frigging weird but amazing talkback.

Too bad Antonius never resurfaced.

The Chinese have a decidedly Western idealogy. Confucius didn't give them Communism. The Soviet Union, for all its faults, kept up with the "West" in most areas of progress for most of the 20th century. Russia, if it were able to get on a roll now, would be like a leaner, meaner, version of the USSR, without many of the drawbacks. And both of these countries have a decidedly Western culture. China and Russia (and India) ARE the West, the new face of it. They reap all the benefits of Capitalism while sticking to other purely Western philosophies (Socialism, Communism, maybe Fascism one day, etc.)

One way to know that for sure is that if America was wiped off the map, and China/India/Russia took the lead, the global porn industry wouldn't be affected at all. That's probably a better indicator of Western civilization and free speech than what we typically think of when we think of "free speech".

Maybe the Islamic civilization vs. Western civilization would carry on, but China/India/Russia between them are far more experienced in dealing with it, and have better resources (most of the world's population for one thing). All Europe would need to do is replace their American overlords for Russians.

Besides the fact that it didn't work and we didn't actually get Bin Laden. Which should have been a kind of obvious outcome and the main reason we should have tried a different angle to weasel Bin Laden out of there. Although aforementioned principles are nice and all.

The Taliban's offer to turn him over to an Islamic court is playing it by the book. That's basic Islamic law. Muslims do not turn over other Muslims to non-Muslims. They were therefore doing the best they possibly could have by offering to turn him over to one of three nearby Muslim countries, all stong US allies with no moral qualms about manufacturing trials.

That's such a basic part of Islamic law, for Sunnis, Shi'ites, ALL strains of Islam that to even demand that be changed is tantamount to attacking the Qur'an and the religion itself in principle. It's THAT ingrained into the religion. We should at least have understood that in advance and worked around it to get what we wanted. But we expected everyone to conform to our worldview and our exact ethical standards (for the most part, Islamic ethics, and all other systems of ethics are just varying versions of the same thing with subtle political differences here and there... this being one of them).

The Taliban temporized. With the imminent threat of extreme retaliation and invasion, and the destruction of their gov't staring down the barrel at them, they temporized. Why? Because they were complicit. Not in the planning or executing of the attack, but in the care and feeding of the attackers organization.

They would have never turned over Bin Laden to anyone. Think about that. Your country, your poor country, is housing the mastermind behind the worst civilian attack by a foreign - or homegrown for that matter, terrorist on U.S. soil. The same United States that is the single greatest military power of all time. The same United States that has said, unequivocably, we will destroy you unless you hand over Bin Laden. The same United States that has the backing of much of the world in asking for the terrorist to be turned over to them. And what do you do? What Illogical thing do you do? No. I am not illogical. The U.S. was not illogical. The world was not iilogical. The Taliban, and any who try and defend their actions regarding Bin Laden - that who is illogical.

They are usually far more furtive -even when they have the secret backing of some rogue countries.

Such was not the case with Al qaida and the Taliban. Once the link had been established between the attack and Bin Laden, the Taliban presented a true target for a military solution.

The Taliban had a very narrow window for avoiding conflict with the U.S. and they chose to lock that window.

No shit, right? Are you new to these parts, GiLL?

...and you put down religion and faith while preaching that we have faith in scientific theory that does not have the physical evidence to prove many of the conclusions...yes, science tries to fill holes, but in the context of the existence of the planet and life on the planet, and our inability to know what evidence may have been completely destroyed in the history of our planet's existence, going through two, if I remember correctly, cataclysmic periods, one major impact on our planet that created the moon, which could have destroyed any physical evidence that, by the use of simple logic we can determine that science cannot possibly assume. So when you say something absolutely did not exist, based on your 'logic', it really just your belief, science cannot prove a universal negative, and considering such events, he fossil record will never be complet enough to prove the aspects of the theory that make claims on the origin of life, and of man. You can't fill a 'hole' or 'gap' if you don't know what came before the event that destroyed any possible trace or evidence life, much less a fossil

Those who have FAITH in science, often mistakenly use the word logic to mean scientific. That is not necessarily the case. In short, something does not have to be scientifically proven in order for it to be true; science cannot make such a claim because the scientific method cannot prove such a claim. To claim that science is the measure of all truth is to make a claim based on a major assumption, which is a no-no in logic, the assumption being that universe is only made up of the material. It is an assumption because science has no way of proving it, not even by its own method.

So, unlike science, philosophy would not dismiss myth as pure fantasy, as Tolkien and Lewis always preach. Truth is also reflected in myth, because myth is a reflection of our true and objective desire. Like the objectivity of love and trust, science is too limited in scope to even consider desires to be objective, but just because objective desire cannot be physically proven, it is not a contradiction in logic. The same goes for a miracle. Science cannot prove the supernatural source, it can only admit its limit and say there is no scientific explanation. Philosophy however can use logic and deduction, and bring in the authority of history to determine the possibilities outside the physical dimension. Science is too limited to have a say on the truth of the spiritual possibilities, but the natural effects can serve as evidence when no natural cause can be found, in favor of the supernatural. That argment can be expanded to the existence of the universe, its complexity, and the many "why" questions science cannot explain. For example, one major question is 'why is there something rather than nothing?' when it comes to the victory of matter over anti-matter. This implies a finely tuned imbalance of matter and anti-matter in the early universe, but the laws of physics says is practically not possible...a major 'hole' they have yet to fill...but it is an example of the physical evidence of science supporting an Intelligence that may have 'finely tuned' the universe.

You ask how one distinguishes between fact and myth in the Bible, the answer is simple literary interpretation of each portion, determine as much as possible about the author and their intention, was it poetic, was it a historical, eyewitness account? Was it a song that reflects historical truth? It is literary and historic interpretation, along with logic and reason. The gospels for example are clearly meant to convey an eyewitness account of actual historical events that occurred. The simple fact that a miracle is reported doesn't make it a myth, or purely metaphorical; reporting that Jesus cured a blind man is what the author meant to convey from either his or another's witnessing of it. But the point of this argument is, science can't really contribue to this argument, the supernatural being out of its scope.

Again, in short, science is based on a major assumption, therefore limited. It assumes that the measure of reality is its physical nature, that only the material equals reality. A major presupposition.

Hysterically, he also includes the plaintive mewl “According to the Constitution, I have a right to express my views, same as anyone on this post” whilst advocating that the media (and indirectly us) should just shut the fuck up and let the troops get on with doing whatever they want.

Hyprkc- The reason I resorted to name calling so early on is that I find your mindless doublethought vile, odious and deeply offensive. Plus I am lazy. I will however, dissect your last post point by point:

1) “Clearly my point in using Carpet Bombing as an example was missed. I never proposed carpet bombing Iraq or Afghanistan. I was simply illustrating what can be accomplished by the military when civilians and the media do not interfere with the job of the military,” erm, no. You clearly drew the parallel as something that could be achieved by the military with a free hand. Not only is this inaccurate, but it displays absolutely no knowledge of history- even the erroneous example you give shows that. Mass bombings do not equal victory.

2) “which is to achieve victory over an enemy and protect the interest of the people it servers (at least in the United States of America).” How on earth do you think this war is in your interests. Have you not read the paper recently? Just wow.

3) “I think the media and many civilians criticize the U.S. military far too much, to the point that it renders them unable to carry out their duties as effectively as they could otherwise.”- no, examination and criticism is essential for the effective operation of the democracy you hold sacrosanct. You forget that the military is the martial wing of democracy- democracy is not the political wing of the army. The military represents you, and therefore it should be answerable to the standards it is supposed to be supporting. However, you complain when we attempt to silence your ill informed idiocy and yet you would like us to keep shtum regarding whatever horrors we can see. This is base hypocrisy and a thoroughly loathsome viewpoint

4) “The enemy we face now does not share the common beliefs and values that this country was founded on or continues to thrive upon. They threaten our very existence and the American way of life.” Complete rubbish. Where did you get this hysterical nonsense from- have you not seen Team America “There’s someone who wants to kill you. They’re Terrorists and they hate you”.

5) “What American citizen wouldn't want to defeat them as quickly and effectively as possible. That seems logical. It is a shame the civilians are too often killed in war, but again, that is the nature of war. I'll ask again, would you rather see your family killed or that of your enemy? I think its a fair question. Would you rather maintain your way of life, or have a foreign aggressor or religion force its way upon you?” Empty party rhetoric and not worth a comment. But I will anyway- basically, you advocate a quick end to the war, this is obviously attractive, but often the end does not justify the means. Furthermore, your repeated usage of the scare card (which is overrated anyway) because you think it is your trump is fallacious simply because you are trying to overegg the pudding with a fat layer of emotion. This strangles discourse, and is frankly unanswerable. Stop doing it. Furthermore, as you have pointed out we live in western democracies, and one of the joys of living in a democracy is that we DON’T give the military free rein to commit atrocities and we DON’T curtail free speech. And yet these are things you are advocating. I’m glad we don’t live in what you believe to be an acceptable country, but I would question why you wish we did.

6) “Lost Jarv, I mentioned the Syrians and Iranians in my previous post, because they have alot to due with the war in Irag. The supply weapons to insurgents that are in turn used on American and Coalition forces.” Hmm, evidence? But more despicably, you propose enlarging the war on the basis of heresay and bullshit. Syria and Iran? Marvellous, why not just go for the whole fucking Arab World. You do not know what you are saying.

7) “Switching gears, I understand many of you disagree with my post. That is fine, and understandable. What's with the name calling and personal attacks though? How does that advance your arguments? I assure you that if you think it hurts my feelings, you are wrong.” THIS IS TALKBAAAAACK- insult and irrational rage is the lifeblood of the forum.

8) “According to the Constitution, I have a right to express my views, same as anyone on this post” Don’t hide behind the constitution when you are advocating behaviour that is highly unconstitutional. Have the stomach to go all the way with your suggestion 9) “That is what our soldiers are fighting to protect. Freedom.” No it isn’t. Don’t be fooled

Hyprkc = pwnd

Good work!

When the Grand Canyon Opens I'm gonna bag me a DINOSAUR. Yee-haw motherfuckers.

Regarding the material observation, just because we can't see it doesn't mean that someday we won't be able to- and it will be part of the material universe you keep writing about. However, this is a far smaller and more reasonable assumption than that of a benign designer.

Neither Tolkien or Lewis were scientists, so their opinion on this subject is irrelevant- if ID is to be considered science. If it is philosophy (which is probably what it should be) then that is another matter.

It's superbly awful and not to be missed.

Here's a taste:

http://tinyurl.com/3kuuxt

...Coolio!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt04 52668/

Now if they can just work a Leprechaun in there....

seriosuly dude, I don't know what your issue is with me, except for the fact that I laughed at homewreckers digs on you. Am I really the bad guy for enjoying the tennis match you two had? Are you really that fucking insecure that i can't fence sit? Must everyone be a minion to you or forever hold their faces in shit?

So what is homewrecker is a jew hating homophobe. Richard pryer was a white hating coke head, but he's still one of my favourite comedians

when was the last time you made anyone laugh? I mean intentionally.

Greengrass is a different story which is why I think he could pull off a great movie with this one. We shall see.

Bwa ha ha ha!

The whole thing bores me really.

And I'm really surprised by your criticism of a TBer's claim that global climate change will/can change our way of life. Food supply, weather patterns, disease are all affected by global climate change. How does that possibly not affect our way of life? If you're looking for ways to bash science to advance ID you're gonna have to do better than that. But the real joke is watching you try.

And yeahI'm really looking forward to The War.

Write their name on a piece of paper, and put it at the bottom of a container. Fill the container with water, cover it, and put it in the freezer. You are now effectively freezing out from your life. I've done it, and it works. Maybe it's a miracle, maybe it's magic, or maybe coincidence. I don't know, but it sure worked for me.

Arrogance exists on both sides of the equation. And neither science nor religion can answer all questions. With regard to science, I remember about ten years ago, some nitwit scientist proclaimed 'All of science has been discovered. There will be no new science'. His point was that physics explains it all, and we just need to understand what it is we are seeing. Well he was wrong. Science is constantly evolving, and new science constantly emerges. Scientific theory constantly is adjusted as new information, and new enlightenment is obtained. As the 'certainty' of what we know now, is replaced by the 'certainty' of what we will learn in the future.

It is sheer arrogance to assume that we will discover or have discovered all that is to be discovered.

Faith, religious faith - true faith, can not be shaken by what is unknown or what science can and will discover. That is why it is called faith. But what starts the fights is: inflexibility. On both sides.

For those who denigrate faith, I ask a simple question: What harm comes from believing in a supreme being? Countless billions beieve in a deity of some sort. A belief in deity does not preclude a belief in science. I am a beleiver in God, but also a believer in science.

For those of faith I ask: when presented with incontrovertible evidence - such as the age of the earth, and the fossil record, why can you not accept that the Bible and genesis is not the beginning? That does not mean a supreme being did not influence the creation, it just may mean we have no idea how and why the being did so.

One last thing. Human minds are are sometimes slow to accept the truly grand design of the universe. In both a scientific and metaphysical manner. There are Billions of galaxies out there. With untold billions of stars within them. There are discoveries and mysteries that we can not even guess at - because we do not even know the questions to ask. What if the universe - all 14 billion years of it, is just one in a long line of universes? What if the supreme being - who has a time reference beyond any mere human calculation, set in motion events beyond our understanding? Look for common ground, argue your points as best as you can reason, but do not attack a belief in religious faith or science simply because it challenges your own closely held beliefs.

End of sermon.

DocP, were those movies part of a bundle?

http://tinyurl.com/3kuuxt

"They would have never turned over Bin Laden to anyone. Think about that. Your country, your poor country, is housing the mastermind behind the worst civilian attack by a foreign - or homegrown for that matter, terrorist on U.S. soil. The same United States that is the single greatest military power of all time. The same United States that has said, unequivocably, we will destroy you unless you hand over Bin Laden. The same United States that has the backing of much of the world in asking for the terrorist to be turned over to them. And what do you do? What Illogical thing do you do? No. I am not illogical. The U.S. was not illogical. The world was not iilogical. The Taliban, and any who try and defend their actions regarding Bin Laden - that who is illogical."

^ you got me on. It is illogical. But that's their religion. And they ardently believe in it. They'd rather get dragged into a 50-year war than go to Hell for disobeying Allah.

I guess what I mean to say by our side acting illogical is that we acted stupid, because we should have known there was no way in hell we were ever going to catch Bin Laden unless he was handed over to us. And btw, they WOULD have handed him over. The same logic that tells them to not hand him over to the USA at all costs would have told them to hand him over to an Islamic court, particularly when such a court in Saudi-Arabia for instance, would be far stricter (in doctrine) than even any Taliban court would be (because the Taliban are Sunnis and the Saudis, like Bin Laden, are Wahabi/Salafi). That would have saved their asses and they wouldn't have had to worry about violating "Allah's Law" and all that (which as we've just shown is something they genuinely care about, otherwise why throw away their country over someone who wasn't really benefitting them any).

I wouldn't bother if I was him.

The more I thought about it, the more I came to the conclusion that no matter what the Taliban did, the United States would have gone into Afghanistan. To destroy the Al Qaida bases at the very least. However, the Taliban itself, would have probably been left untouched - unless it decided to fight with Al Qaida.

I may be wrong about this, but I do not think we would want a base of operations to remain intact. It would have been an interesting dance on the Talibans part. Invite in the 'infidel' or suffer invasion. I suspect they would have fought anyway, and I further suspect the Taliban knew that it would not get away with simply handing over Bin Laden, - so they chose to fight it out.

And as for strictness of doctrine, I disagree, the Taliban were known to have the strictest Sharia law in all of Islam. So, if they had intended justice, swift justice, they would have done it themselves.

I've also settled on the double feature of Them!/Beast from 20,000 fathoms. They were selling just the Beast as a stand alone, but for the same price I get Them! A no-brainer. And I just had to get the original War of the Worlds. I'm giddy like a little school child now.

It's scary how common sense is so easily accessible but still sorely lacking in some corners.

The thing regarding SWAT teams is what I don't get. I know that we need to re-build the Iraqi Army, and that their Army is the best bet against Shi'ite militias, but the Iraqi Army is mismatched against "Al-Qaeda In Iraq" (which, btw, illustrates the difference between Salafis/Wahabis and Sunnis... because the Reawakening Councils we've heard so much about are all Sunnis whereas "Al-Qaeda In Iraq" is Salafi/Wahabi). The only thing that would have success against something like that is pretty much a SWAT team.

From the Wiki page on it:

"SWAT (Special Weapons And Tactics) is an elite unit in many American police departments, which is trained to perform exceptionally dangerous, high-risk, counter-terrorism operations that fall outside of the abilities of patrol officers. These can include serving high-risk arrest warrants, performing hostage rescue and/or armed intervention, preventing terrorist attacks and counter-terrorism, and engaging heavily-armed criminals. SWAT teams are equipped with specialized firearms including assault rifles, submachine guns, shotguns, carbines, riot control agents, stun grenades, and high-powered rifles for marksmen (snipers). They often have specialized equipment including heavy body armor, entry tools, armored vehicles, and night vision optics."

On the bottom of the page it lists equivalent departments in police forces around the world. There are only two in the Middle East. Israel and Egypt. Egypt, btw, which is home to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is the granddaddy of ALL 20th century Islamic terrorism. Egypt owned them so bad, they're now a mainstream political party that might eventually wrest control of the country through democratic elections (they've modernized, renounced terrorism, and all that stuff... which was always just based off interpretations of their founder's work, Sayyid Qutb, wiki him too).

Ayman Zawahiri came from Egypt and was inspired by the same fanatical interpretations that the Muslim Brotherhood, still considered a terrorist organization by many, ascribed to.

Yet here Egypt is, for the most part, safe and sound as can be. In no danger of becoming an Afghanistan, an Iraq, an Iran, or even a Pakistan. Why? Because whenever they've had to deal with shit, their security forces (although misused and abused by those in power for sure, and used as a sort of secret police sometimse, definitely) were able to deal with shit.

Pakistan doesn't have such a thing, but they just use their Army commandos in civilian ops and get messy results (see: Lal Masjid fiasco where they slaughtered a Mosque full of civilians and considered it a success, yet if American SWAT were put in charge of the operation there wouldn't have been such an outcome). What the Pakistanis do is just take military casualties instead of going too apeshit on their own people (a little bit is okay, apaprently). They lost some high-ranking officers on a mission that even a bunch of prepubescent CounterStrike players with guns could have won, albeit by killing all the civilians.

It sounds almost ridiculous to imply that the answer to all our problems is SWAT of all things (LL Cool J and Samuel Jackson > Stallone as Rambo? Cue SWAT theme music), but it should at least be like an Obama talking point or something. Or the generals there, Petraeus for one, should be talking about how we plan on upgrading the Iraqi police to take on Al-Qaeda while we simultaneously upgrade the Iraqi army to take on Shi'ite militias. We CANNOT do this one thing at a time, there needs to be progress ACROSS the board to foster the environment for small moments of peace to coalesce that hopefully get longer every interval (spaced around the inevitable failure of letting a terrorist attack through every now and then).

Also, on that list from the SWAT wiki article, there are other Muslim countries, like Indonesia and the Phillipines, who are also suffering from the same Islamic fundamentalist/terrorist issues but we never hear about them having any real problems in the news...

Instead, we get that "Man, fuck SWAT" attitude from Eddie Murphy in BHC.

Sunni Islam is split into four schools of thought, based off four major Sunni Imams. These schools are Hanafi (practiced in Central Asia, Turkey, South Asia, Southeast Asia, including Afghanistan/Pakistan), Maliki (Africa), Shafi'i (parts of the Arab world and Southeast Asia), and Hanbali (the most parochial one, in a few Arab countries). All these schools consider the other to be valid interpretations of law. Not only are they schools of law that agree with each other as valid interpretations of Allah's Law as derived from the Qur'an and the example of the Prophet Mohammad (which is called the "Sunnah", thus the name "Sunnis"), but they also share creed or doctrine.

Creed/doctrine is kind of like theology... What is God? What is the nature of God? What is the nature of Free Will? etc. etc. These four Sunni schools of law follow two Sunni schools of creed, called Ashari and Maturidi, named after the Imams who founded those. These are actually the most interesting for non-Muslims because this is all that classical philosophy stuff you hear about in textbooks. Most of the methodology used by Asharis for instance, is essentially a predecessor of what we call sociology today. The guy himself (Ashari) draws comparisons to Immanuel Kant, despite coming some centuries before him.

So anyway, one of the questions which these schools of creed deal with is the nature of God. When the Quran talks about "the hand of God" or whatever, does it literally mean God has a hand? Or does it mean something purely metaphorically? This seems obvious to us to understand, and it really is for them too, but to get that understanding down onto paper as a codified logical process is difficult and yet absolutely necessary because the Ashari/Maturidi schools of creed arose in response to new influences on the Islamic religion during its expansive age from the other religions it would come into contact with. They needed to preserve their original religion but not dogmatically, through superior, sound logic, because only that could stand the test of time (as opposed to what happened to Christianity... where the religion was completely subverted in order to allow progress). Throughout this age, in fact, the Islamic religion helped drive civilizational progress. What ironically happened later is that some people believe the Asharis/Maturidis despite coming to conclusions that are still logically sound and philosophically undefeated, they kind of sent Islamic civilization into a stun phase, and a few major Islamic philosphers later, that was exactly when Western civilization (no longer just 'Christian civilization) overtook Islamic civilization in terms of 'worldly progress'. Now that's not a question I, or even many major Islamic scholars, historians, academics of all fields can answer. Everyone has their theories. The closest relationship I can see is that the Ottoman Empire took advantage of these new doctrinal trends (which fostered spiritual progress in that Sufism took off within Islam, this is where Rumi became popular) in order to keep their population on a leash. I think the problem was politics, not philosophy or theology.

Anyway, Salafis (I'll stop referring to Wahabis here, though they are slightly different in that they follow one specific line of "scholars", and are named after one such person), are a new, modern movement which tires of these four schools. They say Muslims should go straight to the original Hadith (sayings/traditions of Mohammad) to get the religion literally. Whereas the four schools of thought have commentaries, dissertations, and scholarly lineages going back to within the first generation after Mohammad, the Salafis (named after the "Salaf", a term for the original Muslims, because they feel they best represent them somehow) don't have any of that. They just go read a Hadith, and follow it literally or whatever meaning they can come up with. They do the same for Quranic verses. What this amounts to is taking everything way out of context. This is how Bin Laden (a Salafi) can quote the Quranic verse to "slay them wherever you find them" and say, idiotically, that means to kill all Westerners. None of the poor students of his get up and ask, "Why should we accept YOUR definition of 'them'?". What that verse obviously means is, taking into account the rest of the Quran, and where it allows war, when you DO fight war, you "slay them whereever you find them", and even what "them" means is laid out clearly by similar means (i.e, combatants vs. non-combatants). You see how a sane, comprehensive, war policy is derived from a very short original work (the Quran) that only touches on the issue. Most of this is done through the example of how Mohammad and his predecessors managed things. And the scholars of the four Sunni schools of law are within that tradition, carefully documenting and reasoning everything.

So the Sunnis have the answer to all of Osama's woes. What to do when Islamic civilization has fallen? GET BACK UP. Fix yourselves, get the will of the people involved, get a proper government going that isn't just Islamic but actually represents the people (Sunnis don't believe in enforcing Shariah on a population that doesn't want it, because that can only mean everything goes wrong), institute any foreign policy changes as are relevant to internal progress, etc. All common sense to anyone who's studied even a modicum of political science in High School or Undergrad, but way too complex for someone as impatient as Osama.

Al-Qaeda aside, there are Salafis who are peaceful, because obviously, there's a spectrum. There are those Salafis who actually pick and borrow from the various schools as they see fit, so are very close to the Sunni idea of law. By the way, I should mention here, Salafis don't actually have a system of Shariah. This is why the Saudis are more strict than the Taliban ever could be. The Taliban's Shariah is straight from classical Hanafi works, any problems there are due to the fact you have poor, sometimes illiterate people trying to enforce and interpret/apply them. The Saudis on the other hand, you can see where "their" Shariah led them, banning bicycles earlier in the 20th century, and all sorts of craziness. In fact, nowadays, Salafism and Wahabism are on the decline. There's growing awareness within the Muslim community of what really is their "old" Islam that they hold allegience to, and what is the Islam of these new people that nobody likes. So Salafis have started to become closer to Sunnis, and nowadays Salafis even say that when they mean Shariah, they mean for instance, the Sunni Hanafi Shariah, or the Sunni Maliki Shariah. Most Salafis will even perpetrate as Sunnis, but as those of the Hanbali school. Because the Hanbali school is the most parochial and least codified of the four schools. A lot of the Saudis pretend that they're Hanbalis too. Even today, Al-Qaeda, even OSAMA from rumors in Pakistan, are trying to pass themselves off as Hanbalis in order to attract more mainstream Sunni attention (a response to the Iraq situation where Sunnis turned on Salafis/Wahabis). So you can see how some Salafis are often counted as Sunni, but others just stray so far out of bounds. I mentioned this in a post earlier.

Now. What really distinguishes between sects of Muslims is Creed/Doctrine/Theology, NOT Law. This is the answer to all of the above. What makes a Sunni is not really following one of the four schools of law, but following one of those two schools of creed (Ashari and Maturidi). What does this really mean? Well, if you're a person who has the creed of Asharis/Maturidis (there is a book by an American Islamic scholar, Hamza Yusuf, called "The Creed of Imam Tahawi", it is a translation of a classical Islamic work, it's gotten huge attention within the academic community because it's the best to date in English. It's a short, concise, point by point account of what actually is in the creed of Sunnis), then you are not the same Muslim as someone who follows another creed. By Islamic standards, your prayers behind an Imam of a different school of creed are invalidated. You see how big this becomes? This isn't some new thing either, this is in the very nature of how Islam works. You have Muslims today, obviously, who are like "that's all nonsense, Muslim's Muslim, we'll pray together", but Mohammad, the original Muslims, all the original scholars (there are an uncountable number of published works of Islamic scholarship from the last millenium and a half that Sunni and Shi'ite scholars specialize in, that Salafis all ignore), followed this logic. If someone's idea of the nature of God is different than you, then your prayers aren't really to the same entity. It's up to God to judge what's in people's hearts, but for your own sake, worry about making your prayers count. Therefore, you will never find a knowledgeable Sunni (of traditional/classical scholarship, not a new-age-feel-good scholar which is basically just a Westerner or someone else encapsulating Islam... not that that's a bad thing, but that's just not going to answer our questions about the other billion Muslims now is it?) who will pray behind a Salafi. In literal terms, Sunnis, though being very delicate about it, don't even consider Salafis to be Muslims (just as how technically, Shi'ites and Sunnis are not Muslims to one another except maybe in a political sense to avoid all out war).

I should mention that Salafis have this sort of phantom third school of creed, called Athari (not Ashari), but if you look it up on Wikipedia, it will say that it's the third school (when it's not), and that it has essentially... nothing to its name. There are no Athari philosophers like the Ashari/Maturidi ones which are famous and studied still in all academic circles related to Islam.

Now... the Sunnis of South Asia, the Deobandis, to which the Taliban belong, are believe it or not, VERY, VERY, CRITICAL of Salafis. They are the strictest anti-Salafis one can find. And yet somehow the Taliban had a love-affair with Al-Qaeda? Names to throw out there, Shabbir Ahmad Usmani, the Deobandi-affiliated cleric whom Jinnah had raise Pakistan's flag (and read his own funeral prayer), Mufti Mahmud (the father of current Pakistani politician, Maulana Fazalur Rahman), this guy signed the first fatwa declaring Jihad on the Soviet Union for their invasion of Afghanistan. He is a Pashtun, he is revered by the Taliban. He agreed with all of this and was critical of Salafis to this extent. He was also the Pakistani politican who not only defeated Zulfiqar Bhutto (the socialist) in elections, the only one who defeated that guy back then, he also rejuvenated the Islamic political party of Pakistan (now known as the JUI-F, led by his son). This guy was mainstream traditional Islamic scholarship at its best. So wherever you look, you'll find this to be the case. You can look up the Deobandi article on Wikipedia provided it hasn't been defaced by random other groups. They're essentially a "back to basics" movement within Hanafi Sunni Islam. As mainstream as they can get. Most Muslims in the West, and their Imams, are Deobandi affiliated in terms of religion (though obviously so few are practicing).

So why did the Taliban ally with Al-Qaeda? First of all, Osama pretends to be a Hanbali Sunni, follower of this 'Athari' creed. The Taliban, Mullah Omar, whoever, don't question other Muslims, particularly those who are funneling millions of dollars into their country while they've been blacklisted by the West, and those who helped them fight off the Russians. Osama worked his ass off for that marriage. Yet despite that, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda remain distinctive organizations. Mullah Omar's last interview reinforced this. The Taliban are still just a Pashtun movement focused on Afghanistan, and their Al-Qaeda guests have delusions of grandeur and want to annihilate the West. Al-Qaeda had no part in running Afghanistan with the Taliban, it was an alliance, not a merger. The closest field on which they 'merge' is the battlefield, and even then, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, from everything we see here in Pakistan (we get many more news reports of the fighting going on around the Pakistani-Afghan border between NATO and insurgents) indicates, don't fight together. The Taliban employ classical military tactics. Al-Qaeda go for terrorist attacks. They merge once again, militarily, when the Taliban decided to use that tactic as their answer to NATO airpower like I mentioned above.

Now, the Saudis aren't just Salafis, they are Wahabis... Wahabis rely less on Salafist logic and more on a dogmatic adherence to what the Arabs after World War 1 derived from Mohammad Ibn Abdul Wahab. Who, by the way, wasn't a Salafi-type himself. His works/writings were misappropriated. He was a Sunni.

Another point of distinguishment between Sunnis and Salafis is Sufism. Sufism is "Islamic Spirituality" and is very much a part of Sunni Islam, all four schools of law, and the two schools of creed. Salafis and Wahabis view Sufism and spirituality as heretical. They aren't big fans of Rumi. Yet the Deobandi Afghan clerics, some of whom still fight with the Taliban, will always refer to Rumi, the same guy who is the bestselling poet in the West, as "Maulana Rumi Rahamtullah Alayhi" meaning, "Cleric Rumi, May Allah Have Mercy on him", a very reverent title of respect. They refer to him in all their sermons which are often very laced with poetical assertions of love for God and all that stuff. You don't find any of that within Salafi Islam. It's ugly, to say the least. It's what happens when people devoid of any sort of spirituality, which is or SHOULD BE the basis of religion in my opinion, because it keeps it straight, try to get religion. Muslims view Salafis like most modern athiests or agnostics view organized religion, although Salafism isn't organized. The irony is that Salafism is borne out of Western philosophical principles. They believe everyone can derive religion for themselves as they see fit. They don't realize this means that all those people with emotional angst for whatever reason (the sad state of affairs in the Muslim world perhaps), like Osama, will just start interpreting things within this context, clouded by emotion. In Islam, unlike Christianity, classic/traditional scholarship means logic and even rational thought. Islam's dark ages weren't 1000 years ago, they're now. For the most part, the way Western civilization works these days is that we have an information overload. And that information is knowledge. In Islamic civilization, knowledge is sacred and must be true. Information is something else. This is why someone who reads the verse "slay them wherever you find them" and his brain can only think of those people whom he is emotionally at odds with as the definition of "them", couldn't have gotten support to do anything even 200 years ago within the Islamic community. It's a side-effect of Westernizing/Modernizing/whate ver the Muslim world. Muslims will tell you that Al-Qaeda (and all such movements inspired by the aforementioned Muslim Brotherhood, read up on them, Sayyid Qutb, like Osama, was an expert in secular, Western knowledge, had no qualifications in classical Islamic scholarship) is a curse that "you have put on us".

If Tom Clancy should run for President, he should get a sociologist to be his running mate. The world is a very complex place. The answer isn't some simple trick to divide through by some lowest common denominator, like American foreign policy is today. We've spent a century working tirelessly in the fields of Psychology, Sociology, History, Political Science, Philosophy, etc. For what purpose? THIS is why we did that. To use them NOW to help us interact in the world with other people. Not to fill random textbooks. And you wanna know something? You know damn well the founding fathers of America, and probably the majority of past Presidents, would be with me on that.

Sorry, I didn't have time to check through this for errors.

Also, a lot of what we know about the Taliban was just plain bad publicity. They were strict as hell, but a lot of that is due to simply being uneducated (the wars killed off most of the most knowledgeable Sunnis in their ranks), and having no means to actually DO anything.

I've been to the places in Pakistan which are considered "Taliban country", I know people who are Sunni scholars, who sympathize with the Taliban (yet always maintain their seperate political affiliation as Pakistanis, not Afghanis or Taliban), and I'm telling you. The Taliban were really not a bunch of boogeymen. They were definitely scary. But scary in the sense that I'd piss my pants if I had to walk around these areas without a guide because it's just scary looking Pashtun men with Kalashnikovs wandering around. You take one wrong look at someone's woman (despite her being in a burqah) and you're dead. That's some scary shit. (Though they're harsh simply because they expect you to know you just don't do that there, and if you do cross their customs, it must be willingly, and that's like some sort of challenge to them or something). I don't think these people would've needed Rambo's help in reality. But that's their culture, not their religion.

Of course, if you go with a guide, or are properly introduced, get off on the right foot, these same areas of "Taliban country" are the most hospitable parts of Pakistan, and probably the world. Most Western journalists whose works I've read who've been here, literally fall in love with the place. Not just due to the amazing scenery (Kashmir-like... remember the Led Zeppelin song? It looks like paradise, literally), but because of how incomprehensibly NICE these people are.

Now when you cross the border into Afghanistan, you enter a war-torn country where millions died, leaving a disproportionate populace left to run things, and simmering leftovers of civil war emotions.

Here's an interesting article about the Taliban I was forwarded a while back:

http://tinyurl.com/59p yog

I don't know if I buy all that. All I know is, the Taliban are pretty damn mainstream. Most of Afghanistan still likes them. Most of Pakistan (150 million people) sympathizes with them, because of the common religious and ethnic ground. Though Pakistanis, unlike Afghans (which you can attribute to their different recent histories), don't want a religious society, they still have a soft spot for Islam and respect those who do.

In other news, today, the Pakistani Taliban announced a ceasefire. See BBC.

There are two militants of importance in Pakistan. Baitullah Mehsud, a smart and shrewd leader of a local Waziri tribe (the Mehsud tribe), who has been known to fight in Afghanistan in the past, under the command of the Afghan Taliban there. If you piece together all the articles on him from Western journalists from mainstream news organizations, you get a picture of a guy who's passionate about his religion and more importantly, about his tribal ties and loyalties to the Afghanis. You also get a picture of a dangerous man who is not easy to cross.

On the other hand you have "Maulana Fazlullah", he's pretty much a Taliban-wannabe. He doesn't fight in Afghanistan, he just pretends like he's badass enough to. He prefers to just pick on locals. He's the son-in-law of Sufi Mohammad, an old Pakistani guy (referred to in BBC's article today) who had his own tribal/militant organization. Sufi Mohammad got arrested for fighting in Afghanistan against NATO. While he was in jail, his loose cannon of a son-in-law took over, invited random foreign militants (Uzbeks, Arabs, whatever) and started nonsensical campaigns of local fighting against the Pakistani Army in order to institute some phantom Shariah (he took over some land... the Shariah never came).

By contrast, Baitullah Mehsud's beef with the Pakistanis is basically "hey, I hate America, let me fight them in Afghanistan. Leave me alone here otherwise I'll fight you too". He has stated (this is all from BBC/CNN, you've all probably read these before) that he's hesitant to fight the Pakistani Army because it's a "national institution" and he sees himself as Pakistani. So far, I don't see any signs of this crazy destroy-the-western-way-of-lif e-and-death-2-america movement even amongst the most hardcore extremists in the most hardcore extremist corner of the world.

Anyway, Baitullah Mehsud is also the one blamed for Bhutto's death by the Americans and Musharraf's government. Whereas everyone in Pakistan here, including Bhutto's family, calls bullshit on that. He himself has said that to attack women goes against all of his ethnic and religious sensibilities. He's not into the whole attacking civilians in Pakistan thing either, that's Maulana Fazlullah.

But. They both operate in the same area and are therefore, "allies". Baitullah's the head honcho. Part of the agreement for a ceasefire was to release Maulana Fazlullah's father-in-law, Sufi Mohammad. I'm pretty sure all parties involved, the Afghani Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban (Pakistanis who fight in Afghanistan), and the Pakistani government, were all happy to oblige. They're hoping he beats some sense into that idiot of his and gets his group under control again.

What the Pakistanis were initially trying to do was walk a fine line. So some people hate America, and NATO. Fine. Go fight them. It's an actual war there. There are only American military personnel there for you to fight. Go do it in a fair fashion and see who wins. Just don't do it from our country. But the Pakistanis in the tribal regions have issue with that. Though they don't actually stage outright attacks from Pakistani areas, they do retire to Pakistan to rest, meet their families, take care of business, etc. The "fact" that arms are being supplied to the Taliban in Afghanistan through Pakistan (and that they rearm and restage here) is just something we all take on good faith from the CIA. Because they've never shown proof of this, and Pakistanis are acutely aware of this.

Pakistan's policy was also to covertly help one branch of the Taliban, the one that actually does most of the fighting, at the expense of the other branch (the leaders in hiding, who are allied with Al-Qaeda). Pakistan sought to drive a wedge between Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, hand over Al-Qaeda to the West, then watch the rest of the 'mainstream' Taliban defeat NATO and re-take Afghanistan (in the best interests of Pakistan, strategically speaking). That all fell through when the main Taliban guy who was the alternative to Mullah Omar died (because as the 'sincere' Taliban are won't to do, they don't hide like Mullah Omar or Osama, they're out there fighting for whatever it is they believe in, they don't hide in Pakistan like cowards, if they're gonna get their asses kicked by NATO, so be it). That's the problem with sincerity these days. The people who ascribe to it tend to die off quicker.

There's also the fact that these guys wouldn't mutiny against their leader (Mullah Omar). The OTHER problem with sincerity.

So now Pakistan's got a democratically elected government that wants peace in the tribal regions. They've made it clear they don't give a rat's ass about America's war in Afghanistan. They're going to try and get that peace, even if it means returning to the status quo of having "Pakistani Taliban" sneaking into Afghanistan to fight NATO during the off-season or whatever. Now the US is in a tough position. If they can get clear evidence of what's going on and show it to the world, they force Pakistan's hand. They'll have to stop them in the tribal regions. Until they do so, they have to respect the democratically elected government of Pakistan and the Pakistani people's wishes.

I think the optimal scenario for Pakistan would be to withdraw from the tribal areas but control the border. The Pakistani Taliban cannot admit to fighting in Afghanistan. So then they'll be bound to their peace agreement, but when they try to sneak into Afghanistan, Pakistan catches them and stops them.

I also think it was a bad idea to reach this point. What the tribal people wanted earlier was for the PAKISTANI GOVERNMENT to give them Shariah. They said "there is no law and order here, we want shariah. YOU give it to us, it is YOUR responsibility, the Pakistani Constitution says SHARIAH is the law of OUR land". And Musharraf, idiotically, repealed ALL of Zia ul Haq's Shariah laws from the '80s. Instead of cleverly subverting them (they were heavily flawed and were abused... a woman getting stoned for being raped is not what happens in Islamic law but what happens when you mix three lines of Islamic law with a British system of evidence, enforced by random uneducated people in the tribal regions), he took away the only thing that legitimized Pakistan's government as "Muslim" in other people's eyes.

But from today's events, it looks like the militants still see Pakistan as more or less a fellow Muslim entity and Pakistan dodged a bullet there.

Religions, are created by man, whether they have been given the imprimatur of a deity or not, they are institutions of mortal manufacture. As such, they are subject to mortal failings.

No religion is immune to that. One can debate, which have been more susceptible to such failings until the end of time, and still come to no conclusions.

I do thank you for providing me - and others, with such a rich foundation upon which to expand our knowledge of Islam. It is always a pleasure to encounter such opportunities that allow for growth.

We may continue to disagree on some points, but I truly enjoy the process of friendly suasion.

That's why Pakistan and Pakistanis value their tribal regions as is. When you've got India on the other side, this is their trump card. India cannot occupy Pakistan. India has to be careful about simply starting wars with Pakistan lest they get millions of angry and heavily-armed tribesmen storming their borders, making way for the significantly armed and sized Pakistani Army (what is it like the 5th or 6th largest army in the world, an Air Force that is similary styled to the USA's and Israel's to check India's which is based on the Russian model, and oh yeah... nuclear weapons). That's an unbeatable combination.

The reason it can't be used to actually attack India is of course, mutually assured destruction. India's got a million troops and nukes of their own.

If Pakistan loses the tribal regions and Afghanistan as sort of their "backup", then the balance is completely thrown out of whack. For a little while there, Musharraf had Pakistan in a precarious position where India had nothing to lose militarily, and everything to gain from storming Pakistan right now and simply annexing one or two of its provinces. Luckily, Pakistan is in the West's favor at the moment, and India's going through some kind of weird mid-life nihilistic crisis.

I do agree with Musharraf's idea of just ending the Kashmir issue as is. Just let India keep what they got, let Pakistan keep (or even give over) what they got. Pakistan doesn't need Kashmir when they have the tribal regions already. Plus Kashmiris are not like Pashtun. They're passive people, of a different strain of Sunni Islam. That's why they don't quite rise up in an insurgency against Indian rule like Pakistanis would prefer. I know Musharraf is still bitter about how his plans in Kargil failed to inspire the masses to rebellion (it was Pakistan's umpteenth try at this).

Also I want to apologize if I come off sounding insensitive regarding American troops fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan. I realize that the reasons they're there might be bogus, but I don't think that they deserve to die at all. So even if I say that the Taliban who decide to try and fight it out with America ought to do so with the US Army, I mean that in a principled sense. Our soldiers put their lives on the line so we don't have to. They've agreed to do our fighting for us (the civilians).

Most of my conclusions about the situation in Iraq (re: that whole SWAT article) was based off experiences of close friends of mine who were stationed in both Iraq and Afghanistan, including a marine, and one who's actually a Pakistani-American.

And as I was implying, most of the things you know about the Taliban, who they executed, for what, when, is likely bull. You haven't seen any evidence for any of these claims, and most of these are fed to the media by the same people who told us Iraq had WMDs. When you actually try to look up records of where these reports come from, you run into the same things this guy did.

The people I've met (including women) who've been to Afghanistan during the Taliban rule haven't seen any of those things.

That movie, "Road to Guantanamo Bay"? Is useful for another purpose. A glimpse into Taliban-run Afghanistan, right before the invasion. Notice how they're running around in Afghanistan like everything's normal, shopping in Western-style stores (albeit run down) and everything.

A few things I know for certain:

Kiteflying was outlawed because it was, believe it or not, dangerous. Musharraf outlawed Kite-flying in Pakistan. People were killed by that crap in Lahore. The ban obviously refers to a certain type of celebratory kite-flying, for some ethnic holiday, I don't remember what it's called, but it's not an Islamic thing. Anyway, that got blown out of proportion.

I already mentioned how the biggest thing that upset us about the Taliban were that they dared to ban Western culture (TV, music, etc.). If you look at what Afghani culture had before Western music, and TV (which is a different issue because Islam prohibits images of people's faces), then that kind of "music" never really was banned, though it never really made it into mass-produced circulation either. Though the Taliban ascribed to a purified form of Sufism that didn't believe in musical instruments (an actual legitimate injunction in all flavors of Islam), they tolerated the Sufis who did use music by playing instruments and all that during their meditations. Sufi "music" is basically the same as their traditional Pashto music, except the latter's got simplified worldly lyrics (you know, i got drunk, fell in love, bitch left me, etc. etc.) while Sufis use less music, more chanting, with religious lyrics about God. Aside from this, I'm sorry to say, Afghanistan didn't really have much of a thing for pop/rap/rock music until we brought it there. Us bringing it there doesn't make it a superior form of culture either. They definitively banned the sale of music and movie CDs, etc. because these were all Western (specifically American) things invented for distributing their culture. They obviously didn't ban the technologies because they had Afghani and religious stuff on CDs available all over the place in the cities.

Even Al-Qaeda PRODUCED CDs from Afghanistan. With VIDEO on them. Violating Taliban laws. Salafis tend to cut corners like that.

The Internet wasn't banned... they didn't even HAVE the Internet to ban it. They certainly would've been interested in Chinese-style moderation to filter out 1) pornography 2) anti-islamic stuff like the danish cartoons, the dutch movie, etc. that we have today. The Deobandi madrassahs from which the Taliban graduated ALL HAVE WEBSITES. The biggest one in South Asia, in Karachi Pakistan, has their newest students who know English translating classical works and uploading those, and sermons, online weekly from their computer lab. These are the same clerics the Taliban would visit, kiss, hug, and pray behind when they would come to Pakistan for fund-raising trips. The same clerics who are employed by Western banking institutions who have "Shariah Advisory Boards" for their Middle Eastern presences (I know HSBC has one), and who advise various governments about Islamic law/Shariah, including the Pakistani government.

When the Taliban took over Afghanistan, they immediately segregated schools based on gender. The problem? There were no girls' schools. So until they got the money to build them, girls would have to go to Pakistan for schooling. And please. I KNOW you saw the coverage of the Islamabad Red Mosque thing on CNN. That was a GIRL'S SCHOOL. That was a MADRASSAH. With THOUSANDS of students. The militants holed up inside were Maulana Fazlullah's men (the Taliban-wannabes). Not a few of those students (pre-2001 at least) were DAUGHTERS of Taliban officials who could afford to send them to Pakistan. They just could not afford to build such a school in Kabul. Because you know... Western countries immediately sanctioned Afghanistan when the Taliban came into power.

And again, women barred from working... they weren't banned from "working" per say. They were banned from working unless in an environment where Islamic standards of gender-segregation could be observed. I'm assuming you read all the newest articles about Saudi modernization in the mainstream press lately. That is Saudi-Arabia, one of the richest countries in the world. THEY are too lazy to meet the demands of their women to make suitable opportunities for them to work (i.e, business offices where women can do their own thing I guess). I don't wanna start restating things that are posted like right up on CNN and BBC. How would you expect a bunch of rag-tag Afghans to do that? They actually paid women who previously worked to stay at home (or those who found themselves needing to work). It's just that they couldn't afford to pay them much. But it was a considerable percentage of what they did have.

Women were prohibited from leaving their homes without either a male relative or a male servant because that is Islamic law. They weren't beaten or shot for that, that's ludicrous. That goes against the very essence of how Islam, specifically Sunni Islam, views women. If the Taliban come upon a woman alone randomly wandering the streets, they ask her where she's going and escort her there. Hell, ANYBODY in the world would do that. For their brand of Islam though, women are to be protected at all costs, even at threat to one's own life, never to be harmed. That's something even Salafis will tend to do because that's literally related in many Hadith.

Even when it comes to domestic conflict, it's very bad to air your dirty laundry out in public. A husband isn't to raise his voice at his wife in public (and it's bad to do it in private of course). How the hell would the Taliban justify BEATING a woman in public randomly? It's forbidden to even lay a hand on a strange woman, or to look at her. Even their sentence of stoning as a death penalty... if applied to a woman, it leaves the woman covered to make sure no one can see what they consider to be her private beauty (a.k.a all of her). Strange men can't even touch a dead woman's corpse. The thing is, unlike Saudi-Arabia or Iran, which can afford women cops, women soldiers, create opportunities for women to run businesses while maintaining Islamic culture, Afghanistan could not afford any of those things. Those things would have to come like 20 years down the line after the country's rebuilt. The vast majority of males couldn't find employment in Afghanistan, how can people complain about a handful of women? Not to mention that handful were from cities, and were leftovers of Afghanis loyal to the old communist parties that once held sway throughout the country and "invited" the Russians in. Those are the women that started airing their "grievances" to media organizations. They were the only ones who even knew enough English to do such a thing.

"A woman caught wearing fingernail polish may have had her fingertips chopped off."

Actually, permission from her husband or father is enough. She doesn't need to be physically WITH a male guy necessarily if it's an urgent-enough task.

Btw, though I'm an American, I do have Pakistani family links. A lot of the people I've been introduced to through family, or the familes I've stayed with, have had religious "branches" of the family.

I've met women (distantly related in some cases, though more just because I like to brag) who were not only students of Red Mosque-style Madrassas, but had completed the studies (they have like a 4-5 year undergrad course, years 6-8 are like graduate study, and then they do a Ph.D. equivalent type thing to get 'Mufti' status... meaning they are authorized to write fatwas in Sunni Islam... contrast this to Salafis like Osama who has ZERO education in Islam and just 'writes' them willy nilly), they've made it all the way to the highest level. Meaning this one particular woman who has been like a mother to me, this stranger who can't even speak her language, is a MUFTI. That is the Sunni equivalent of a Shi'ite AYATOLLAH. Mullah Omar and all the Taliban are BOUND to listen to her religious rulings because she outranks them all. Btw, we communicate fine because she knows English. Because she's also a doctor (yes, of medicine). And she's also got the Quran committed to memory. And she's not married because she can't find a man who's man enough essentially. She drives herself to school. Her teacher, one of the most conservative clerics (a Pashtun) in South Asia, who could boss around senior Taliban members if he so wished, specifically wrote a new fatwa about how women are allowed to drive and under what circumstances (it's preferred for their husbands/fathers to get them drivers) just because of this one lady.

Osama, if he really be a Sunni, is bound to listen to her. And all the other women like her in Pakistan because at times it seems like women outnumber the men in Madrassas. And all these women turn around and exhort the men in their families to man up and become more "religious". Pakistan's graduate schools (the normal ones) are also filled mostly with women.

It honestly makes me wonder what the hell the men are doing...

And a lot of these people are ethnic Pashtun or Pathans... not living in Afghanistan for some generations, but who probably have relatives who are "Pakistani Taliban".

Not a few of these women probably order their men to go fight against the Pakistani Army or against NATO in Afghanistan I'd wager.

Check the population of Afghanistan, and then get back to me with how many exactly constitute "droves" and whether they accurately represent ALL constituent areas of Afghanistan (i.e, not just from a few major cities).

There's also the fact that the Taliban are obviously not angels. But they weren't evil devils either as the American administrations made them out to be. They were just Pashtun. And likely were guilty of ethnic violence on other minorities. Not a few of the women with grievances against the Taliban were from these minorities (from the Northern areas who fought in a civil war against the Taliban).

It's all horrible, but it's also retarded to imply they targeted these women because they were women while they also targeted the men right with them. You'd have to look at their treatment of the women who were under the 80% of Afghanistan or so that joined the Taliban, especially the Pashtun. And oh boy, you are not going to find a significant % (again, read: percentage, not just number, because even a hundred women are dwarfed by the 10+ million Pashtun women living in Pakistan alone) of Pashtun women who are going to bash the Taliban.

What about the oppression of women under the Taliban? -- Isn't it true that they deprived women and girls of education and health care, that they deprived women of the opportunity to work and that they forced women to wear a burka in the street?

If you ask almost anyone in the USA what they think the first woman executed in Kabul after the Taliban came to power was executed for, they would probably answer "blasphemy or adultery".

If you ask how long the judicial procedure was -- from the time of the apprehension for the crime to the time of the execution, they would probably answer "a few hours to a few weeks".

If you asked how long after the Taliban came to power in Kabul was the woman executed, they would probably answer "a few days to a few months".

And what is the reality - as reported by the wire services -- ?

The woman was executed for "beating her husband to death with a hammer as he slept."

The woman was executed after a judicial procedure that took about two years-- from the time of the murder to the time of the execution.

The execution took place more than three years after the Taliban came to power in Kabul.

The discrepancy between the reality and the media generated expectation in this case is suggestive of what one might actually find if one were in a position to investigate the other points in detail.

Would anyone imagine from what they "knew" about the Taliban that they opened several centers to train women to be doctors? They did!!

As for the burkas, it appears to be the case that outside of areas like Kabul, where a substantial percentage of women had gotten used to dressing in western fashions, women went on dressing the way they had dressed for decades, if not centuries -- with their bodies, hair and faces more or less covered depending on where they were. In and around the home in the countryside, they wore a simple headscarf. In towns, they were more covered up.

The English speaking, college educated women in Kabul -- who were often not only anti-Taliban but anti-religious -- were the people who were most adversely affected by the Taliban and were the most able to communicate their troubles to the Western Media. These women and their Russian speaking counterparts were not, in so many cases, innocent beleaguered secularists caught in a web of religious oppression. They were, quite often, the very people who had been doing their best for over a decade to undermine the cultural foundations of Islam in Afghanistan. It would have been remarkable, in this light, if the Taliban had just left them all alone.

While the educated women – including so many who had been Russian collaborators -- were very adept at manipulating the media, the very traditional women -- who constitute the overwhelming majority of the women of Afghanistan -- were almost completely ignored.

Thus far, based on a LexisNexis wire service and NYT search: No reported executions for adultery in Kabul or Herat during the Taliban Period; No reported executions for adultery in Kandahar after 1996; No executions for adultery by Taliban in Afghanistan after 10/02/00, A total of 4-6 executions for adultery 1/01/97-9/11/01 by Taliban in all of Afghanistan –equally divided between men and women. The most attention getting case – partly responsible for the reporter, Robert F. Burns of the NYT getting a Pulitzer Prize, actually involved the execution in Kandahar of a 40 year old woman with her 38 year old married stepson in late August of ‘96. This story, which included notices of several other executions for adultery in Kandahar and elsewhere in Taliban controlled Afghanistan, was published just after Kabul came under Taliban control. It was followed 6 weeks later (12/14/’96) by an AFP story that cited 3 males stoned to death in Kandahar and 4 males stoned to death in other Taliban controlled areas – all for adultery -- in the prior six weeks. No other wire services report any of these executions in the stated 6-week time frame. It is likely that this AFP story is a garbled version of the Burns report, where people became men, men became “males” and 6 months became 6 weeks. Another garbled story, by veteran AP Afghanistan reporter Kathy Ganon, dated 3/07/01, mentions two women hanged for adultery in Kandahar two weeks before. Other wire service stories covering the same event – such as a UPI report by Amir Shah, on 2/24/01-- say that the two women were executed for prostitution and “corrupting the society”. The combination of attention getting and garbled reports may account for the widespread belief that the Taliban executed many people for adultery in Kabul. The importance of this is that it suggests that the Taliban were careful to observe the rules of evidence in capital cases under Moslem law – four reliable male witnesses to the act of intimacy.

While we are considering media distortions, it is interesting that the full text of the post 9/11 interview between the veteran VOA Pashtun language journalist, Spozhmai Maiwandi, and the head of the Taliban, Mullah Omar, is still not in the public domain.

The thing is, Pakistan's a pretty lawless place. The safest areas are actually the tribal regions if you get local guides or someone 'sponsors' you as their guest.

If you come with a group of journalists, or with friends/family who live here, then you're alright. You can visit all these places and people you hear about in the news.

Yeah, you can probably try to arrange a meeting or interview with some of these Pakistani Taliban's PR guys. Or better yet, tell them you're a visitor who would like to see how they live for a little while. I know it's probably impossible to do this unless you're of a journalist background, but it's all the same to them. They'll put you up, you can live with them, see how they live, and actually figure out things.

Hell, you can just wander around out here alone if you dress up like the locals. Any white/caucasian person would blend right in with the people in the northern/northwestern areas.

The next best thing to do is scour old archives of news sites (I specifically remember BBC posting several of these) for articles relating trips/excursions like these.

Even by religious standards, the Taliban leaders average like 2-4 years of Islamic school before they drop out to go fight. That's not enough to really learn anything about the religion, as far as war and politics are concerned.

The same thing applies for the Taliban that applies to the Bush administration. They need to make greater use of the knowledge and education that their civilizations have worked for centuries to provide them. At least the Taliban have an excuse.

You think getting chopped up is bad? Sorry for the insensitive way of putting it. Try getting kidnapped, being sold into slavery, having your limbs cut off, and being forced to beg in the streets. The non-Islamic parts of Pakistan are frightening.

I mentioned earlier, I rarely accept anyone's interpretation at face value. I did some checking and no, not Wikipedia.

The first thing I looked at were the executions, I remembered seeing a CNN documentary on how women were treated by the Taliban - it was called Beneath the veil - http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Program s/presents/index.veil.html.

There were far more executions than you mentioned and even the ones you did mention, you appeared to dismiss - because they were accused of prostitution.

The second thing I looked at were the RAWA sites -and I add for the sake of balance, that these sites are created by Afghan women who supported the overthrow of the taleban, but it has links to several non-RAWA sites that confirm the harsh treatment of women. http://www.islamfortoday.com/a fghanistanwomen1.htm.

Here is a list of Rules the taleban had, not just for women http://www.rawa.org/rules.htm.

The taliban are also mounting a propganda offensive www.sipri.org/contents/conflic t/foxley_paper.pdf - not a very good one, but You GiLL do seem to be picking up the slack for them.

And finally the State Dept. assessment of the treatment of women under the Taleban -http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rl s/6185.htm

I openly admit that relying solely on western resources for information, does not present a clear picture, which is why i did enjoy reading some of what you had to say about Islam and the Taleban. However, you appear to be in the revisionist vein when it comes to the documented and incontrovertible attrocities commited by the taleban. And the almost cavalier attitude in the way you dismiss some of the most heinous aspects of their rule, leads me to believe that you are indeed nothing more than a mouth organ for - if not the Taleban itself, then for the policies they promoted. And I do not believe your last assertion that you do not 'LIKE' the Taleban.

Re-read your own posts. You practically glow with appreciation for their tactics.

The internet is mostly anonymous, I have no idea who you really are, and what your purpose really is, but I strongly suspect the reason behind such voluminous posts, is, more propoganda, than objective information.

The thing is, though the oil pipeline thing is a strong theory, made even stronger by the fact that the Taliban were trying to sell the idea of this pipeline themselves in order to make money and do something with the country, it still just doesn't exactly add up.

It's certainly possible that we only went in for oil and made a huge error. But an error THIS huge? There is no end in sight for Afghanistan. And the only ends we see are bad news for us. The oil pipeline is a pipe dream now. I guess it's not unreasonable to assume it was a mistake that most people could have made, because it looked like for a year or two there, that our strategy in Afghanistan was going to work. But then the Taliban did exactly what everyone pegged them to do before the war.

There are lots of people who believe a war with Afghanistan was pre-planned and that we either let 9/11 happen, made it happen, or exploited it in this regard.

All I know is, every decision the West has made with Afghanistan stopped making sense after World War 1, like most decisions by Western nations. The British Empire at least used to make sense, despite being a bunch of ruthless genocidal murderers (their mismanagement of Indian agriculture starved to death more Indians than all the people the Nazis killed in WW2).

While I prefer the oil pipeline theory, there's another one that makes dangerous sense. That we just want to dominate the world, and that means not allowing the possibility of a Sunni version of Iran to ever exist. Because unlike Shi'ites, Sunnis are 90+% of the Muslim population, and the leaders of such a state would get priority in terms of allegience from all these Muslims across the world, even ahead of their home countries. I didn't see that as a big deal, but if you're looking to dominate a world order, that could look like a nightmare. The proof for this is in Somalia.

Read the wiki on what happened there. Essentially, just like what happened with civil war-era Afghanistan during the 1990s, a few Somalis took things into their own hands and started making their own Islamic Shariah courts to institute law and order in Somalia. It worked. Eventually all the scattered courts (most were Sunni, some were Salafi) allied into one Union with a Taliban-like militia. They took over the country in short order, brought law and order everywhere, opened up the airport, ports, etc. Just like how the Taliban stopped opium growth, the ICU in Somalia stopped piracy and all that jazz.

The US immediately accused the ICU of being Al-Qaeda. I can understand accusing some of its Salafist elements of having links with Al-Qaeda, but even those were overblown, and never proven. No attempt was made at even MAKING UP SHIT. They just said "Damn if that ain't some of dem Al-Qaeda right thurr" and peace in Somalia reigned (a slightly liberal version of Taliban-style peace though) for a short while before Ethiopia invaded Somalia to end it all. And now you can see the news updates about what's going on there recently. They are blatantly targeting Islamic targets, not insurgents. They associate Islam itself with the insurgency. Ethiopia, with the complicit acceptance of the "transitional Somalian government", a government elected outside of Somalia by phantom Somalis, kills random Somali civilians and religious clerics.

There is no rational explanation for the US' behavior there other than this conspiracy theory of a clash of civilizations between the US and Muslim countries.

An interesting anecdote is that immediately afterwards, the US amabassador said the transitional Somali government should incorporate the "moderate" elements of the ICU immediately to prevent civil war. The transitional government of course, refused. Who are these moderate elements? They meant all the Sunni leaders and courts that made up the ICU. It's now UK and US policy to acknowledge Islamic extremists as "Jihadi Salafists" (a hot word in Britain), and Sunnis as 'moderates'. Yet these Somalian Sunnis were essentially their version of the Taliban. And the US is calling them moderates. Crazy.

Anyway, all the major leaders fled into exile. Meaning, all the educated people. It's the poor kids left behind who fight for the ICU in an insurgency now, kids who don't know jack about Islam, leaving the door open to abuses during warfare.

Somalia was just something truly embarassing for me as an American to hear about. The USA actually supported an alliance of Somali warlords against the ICU. Including the same warlords who fought UN troops and killed our guys back in the 1990s (the bad guys from 'Blackhawk Down'). Can you believe that shit? The warlords were/are terrorizing Somalia, and they were STOPPED. And we didn't even ATTEMPT dialogue, we immediately supported Ethiopia's invasion. And then there was that "reintegrate the moderates" bit as an afterthought.

Why did this happen? Why don't they ever release evidence that links these random people to Al-Qaeda? Doesn't anyone else notice how most of the people we KNOW to be affiliated with Al-Qaeda are NOT SHY of that fact? I know I tend to group all Salafis together, and relate them to Al-Qaeda especially, but I don't actually accuse them of literally being Al-Qaeda, only of holding to the same dangerous doctrinal flaws. Not to mention only a minority of the ICU were Salafis, the most were the Sunni 'moderates', including the leaders.

In the year 2000, the courts formed a union of Islamic courts, partly to consolidate resources and power and partly to aid in handing down decisions across, rather than within, clan lines.[15] Yet the ICU remained firmly established in the Hawiye clan.[16]

As the courts began to assert themselves as the dispensers of justice they came into conflict with the secular warlords who controlled most of the city. In reaction to the growing power of the ICU, a group of Mogadishu warlords formed the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT). This was a major change, as these warlords had been fighting each other for many years. By the beginning of 2006, these two groups had clashed repeatedly, and in May 2006 it escalated into street fighting in the capital, claiming the lives of more than 300 people. On 5 June 2006, the ICU claimed that they were in control of Mogadishu.[17]

Meanwhile, in the United States the Bush administration neither confirmed nor denied support for either side. However, it was reported that American officials had anonymously confirmed that the U.S. government was funding the ARPCT, due to concerns that the ICU is linked to al-Qaeda and is sheltering three al-Qaeda leaders involved in past terror attacks, including the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.[18]

On 6 June 2006 the ICU further claimed it was in control of all the lands up to 100 kilometers (62 miles) inland from Mogadishu. The warlords were reported to have either been captured or to have fled the city, abandoning most of their weapons, with the majority fleeing to Jowhar, which was taken by the ICU militia on 14 June.[19] This brought ICU in control of much of the weaponry in the country, which made a resurgence by the warlords difficult without outside support. The ICU also controlled significant territory outside the capital, including the important town of Balad. In mid-August, ICU militiamen swept into the port town of Hobyo, 500 kilometers north of Mogadishu, meeting no opposition.[20] The ICU organized a clean-up campaign for the streets of Mogadishu on 20 July. This was the first time litter and rubbish had been collected in the entire city since it collapsed into chaos over a decade earlier.[21]

On July 15, 2006, the Islamic Courts reopened Mogadishu international airport, which had been closed since the withdrawal of the international forces in 1995. The first airplane chartered by the Arab League flew from the airport for the first time in 11 years picking up Islamic Courts delegates to the Sudanese capital of Khartoum.[22]

On August 15, 2006, the ICU captured Haradhere, some 500km northeast of Mogadishu, which had become a safe haven for pirates, who had forced shipping firms and international organisations to pay large ransoms for the release of vessels and crews.[23]

On August 25, 2006 the Islamic Courts reopened historic Mogadishu seaport, which was formerly one of the busiest in East Africa but had been shut down for 10 years.[24]

On October 5, 2006 the Islamic Courts declared the formation of the supreme Islamic Sharia court of Banadir province, ending all tribal Islamic Courts in the capital.[25]

Ethiopia invaded them a few months later. Americans ordered airstrikes to help them. Damn those damn dirty Somalians, eh?

Everything I say about the Taliban, I say from experience, of meeting Pakistanis and Afghans both back in New York where I'm from, and in Pakistan who've been to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, and to the tribal regions.

I'm not saying the Taliban NEVER committed atrocities, though I'm not sure if the word atrocities should be applied if it's not exactly to a large scale. None of those links do what I asked you to do, give me a % of women living in the 80% of Afghanistan that supported the Taliban, who protested being victimized by the Taliban on the basis of culture/religion/whatever. Even if you bring me, what, a thousand women, two thousand women, three thousand woman? Out of the tens of millions in Afghanistan, what does that mean? We've killed more Iraqi women and children than that, many times over. So what exactly does that mean?

We just won't be able to see eye to eye and agree on this, the point of difference is simply the faith you put in the American government, and the media. Despite the fact that the former weighs heavily on the latter, and despite the fact that there've only been glowing accounts of "Pakistani Taliban" from Western news outlets, yet these people transform into monsters magically when you cross the border into Afghanistan.

Look at how the Brits hid the fact that Prince Harry (if that's the one) was in Iraq. They obviously forgot to ask the Drudge Report to keep a lid on it, probably because it's still a niche internet news source. But if after just that example (and everything that's happened in Iraq, and all the stories constantly published on CNN, MSNBC, BBC, even Fox, that relate how the government repeatedly invented the intelligence it desired), you can trust even a SINGLE word from the American government, well... suit yourself.

That's also taking into account that the Bush administration's actions in Afghanistan were mirrored in Somalia, the only other case of a Sunni Islamic state popping up anywhere, and there's much more objective information available on Somalia, especially on the main news outlets. BBC were like ecstatic when the streets re-opened, although you had to laugh when they said that not being able to loudly play music in the streets was a real drawback to peace in a place with one of the most violent recent histories ever.

The reason that Islamists like the Taliban in Afghanistan and the ICU in Somalia get support, if you go back to my original posts, is because WE did not get involved in the PROPER way. That is what I had been advocating from the beginning. Everything I say about the Taliban is meant to be as a backup to that. The number one stance of mine was that the United States should not have left Afghanistan after the Russian war. Even Hollywood just made a movie about that. And the rest of my posts go to show, that wasn't the only error. It was the first in a long line of inexplicable errors, that I encourage you to try and rationalize for yourselves.

"There were far more executions than you mentioned and even the ones you did mention, you appeared to dismiss - because they were accused of prostitution."

That, btw, was not me. I copy/pasted that from the other link. I said it was interesting reading, and that that sort of investigative research ought to be done into all the claims surrounding the Taliban... we're not totally at odds, you should just search through more media sources, rather than sites like RAWA's.

Also, the issue was not punishing prostitution with death. The issue was punishing women for being women with death. There's a massive difference, even if the former is pretty drastic compared to Western laws and customs.

The claim by the State Department of the United frickin' States was just waived off on principle.

And most people in the world would have done the same thing.

Even more ridiculous is that somehow, toadkiller's posts reflect some sort of moral conflict between the US and the Taliban. Now keep in mind, I have issues, moral issues, with our politics in that region, and especially with the lies propagated there. But I never once suggested that the Taliban are a more moral entity, or a greater force for good, or whatever the hell you want to call it than America. That's kind of ludicrous. And yet, toadkiller, your post automatically seemed to give off the vibe like America's integrity was in question. I don't mean their political integrity, but like the very moral integrity of America. And all that at the hands of a bunch of Afghani yahoos in turbans holding Kalashnikovs.

When people say the US is in a bad way these days, they aren't kidding.

You think that's bad, go to some European forums.

Slightly related, the opinion of Americans by most Pakistanis hasn't really changed that much in the last few years. They sure as hell hate America, but I've had noone question me or my own personal beliefs about America's foreign policy here. They just automatically assume that all Americans are sane and disagree with their totalitarian leader who rigged his way into power twice. They just can't comprehend us being... well... what some of us really are. It was not the reaction I had been expecting.

RAWA was highly critical of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, emphasizing casualties among the civilian population. The organization went so far as to threaten to sue United States authorities for unauthorized use of four photos from their website that were used in propaganda handbills that were dropped on various cities in Afghanistan during the 2001 invasion. [3] After the defeat of the Taliban regime by U.S. and Northern Alliance forces, RAWA warned against the Northern Alliance as being equally fundamentalist and dangerous. They continue to charge that the current government led by President Hamid Karzai has no support in most areas of Afghanistan, and that fundamentalists are enforcing anti-woman laws as they were under the Taliban. These claims are supported by media reports about the Herat government of Ismail Khan, who has created a religious police that forces women to obey strict dress and behavior codes, as well as many reports by Human Rights Watch. [4] [5]

That kind of makes me look bad in my last post.

The past is, in the end, done with and over.

All of this discussion was supposed to give everyone insight into the variable at play. So now what?

Does anyone have any clue on how to win the war in Afghanistan? How to defeat the Taliban?

And if you don't, and if the Taliban win, then what?

To those who believe that the Taliban will then line up 20 million women and start chopping off their fingers, do you honestly expect to see this on CNN one day in a few years when it seems we might inevitably fail?

What if the Taliban get ELECTED into power? Women vote in Afghanistan. The people have been overwhelmingly electing ex-Taliban religious-types. How do we explain this? Is it just the fact that we're not that much better off than the Taliban at their worst (re: RAWA's anti-US stance). Or is it that we're WORSE than the Taliban if you include the sheer destruction we've inadvertently wrought on Afghanistan's infrastructure (much like what we did in Iraq).

What's going to happen in a world where Afghanis think the Taliban is better for them than America? The fact that they're more popular than NATO in many parts of the country is something that even the NATO commanders have attested to.

This counts as a defeat for America in every possible interpretation. What the hell's it mean for the world when the weakest possible opponent defeats the United States? What does this mean for the direction of political influence (assumingly in the direction of China)? What economic ramifications will this have on the current state of the economies in the West?

What will America do next? React logically? Or irrationally to these developments? And in what form? And will an irrational reflex reaction by America result in anything other than something disastrous?

Can Obama stop any of this? Right now I think our only prayer is that half his rhetoric is there just to appease the conservatives, and that if he were to take office, he'd take charge and fix shit.

Yes, I do think the the Bush Administration made an error THAT huge. How? Total hubris and lack of understanding of consequences by the civilian leadership comprising the lead NeoCons, most of whom are already gone - Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, etc. They ignored all warnings of occupying Iraq and Rumsfeld in his infinitesimal wisdom, deliberately did so with a smaller than necessary force because his ulterior motive was to downsize (streamline) the military in order to shift funding to the private contractors (mercenaries) who could operate beyond American jurisdiction.

I appreciate your information and links provided, it really gives me a lot of food for thought to examine Afghanistan more closely. Whether the goal of controlling the oil and gas output in Afghanistan was successful or not, I don't doubt it being a primary motive on the Administration's part. Later ...

Everything goes bad. From Iran likely possessing supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles from China that can sink aircraft carriers (which they have no defenses against), to triggering an Iran vs. Isreal air-war, and a Hizbollah vs. Israel war in Northern Israel. Now the economy is really in the shitter.

What's going to happen at home? Do you honestly think Americans are going to take this in stride? Need I remind you that Americans are not the same people we were in the 1920s. We have massive issues with gangs and crime. There was that documentary that compared parts of Miami to Iraq for Christ's sake.

In the event of a complete breakdown of law and order in areas of the United States, gotham_night, perhaps even YOUR town, what will you do? Obviously nobody will be giving a rat's ass about the Taliban then. But what are YOU going to do if one day somehow the UN has to send peacekeepers to the United States?

Or worse... the US deploys the military in its own cities... you know what I said earlier. Military is not police. And we don't have enough SWAT teams to run an entire country.

This all sounds crazy and far-fetched but the situation today sounded even more far-fetched just a few years ago.

Perhaps people need to stop worrying about the Taliban, or Creationism vs. Evolution, or Conservatives vs. Liberals, and other shit like that.

PS: I have absolutely nowhere to go with this, no answers or theories of any sort, just throwing out all the questions that keep me up nights.

"America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success." -Sigmund Freud

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies... if the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency... the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of their property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." -Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States

"A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men who, even if their action be honest and intended for the public interest, are necessarily concentrated upon the great undertakings in which their own money is involved and who necessarily, by very reason of their own limitations, chill and check and destroy genuine economic freedom. We have restricted credit, we have restricted opportunity, we have controlled development, and we have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world--no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men." -Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States

"Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule--and both commonly succeed, and are right... The United States has never developed an aristocracy really disinterested or an intelligentsia really intelligent. Its history is simply a record of vacillations between two gangs of frauds." -H.L. Mencken

"The theory behind representative government is that superior men--or at all events, men not inferior to the average in ability and integrity--are chosen to manage the public business, and that they carry on this work with reasonable intelligence and honesty. There is little support for that theory in the known facts..." -H.L. Mencken

"The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." -H.L. Mencken

"The men the American public admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth." -H.L. Mencken

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -H.L. Mencken

Talk about hero factories. Mercenaries working for multinationals! Now we can all be our favorite video game characters from "near-future" scenarios in real life. In the near future. I swear, don't they all start off as working for some multinational corporation's private SWAT team? I think you just figured out my issue with Iraqi security for me. The reason we haven't been training the Iraqi police with our own experienced police departments and their special tactical units? Perhaps the private security firms were supposed to be doing that on the average Iraqi taxpayer's dollar.

"I appreciate your information and links provided, it really gives me a lot of food for thought to examine Afghanistan more closely. Whether the goal of controlling the oil and gas output in Afghanistan was successful or not, I don't doubt it being a primary motive on the Administration's part."

Yeah, I do too. But the apocalyptic clash of civilizations is just so much more exciting.

I don't suppose you've heard of any good ideas, even cockamamie ones? I was thinking perhaps the government should start subsidizing oil costs to lessen the impact on consumers. We can just add it to our debt, it's so huge anyway... but then... what is to be gained from making life easy for us?

The other thing that will correlate I think is more military adventures abroad to establish our dominance over resources like oil. The basis of credit and wealth is essentially faith in the system in the end, right? That's what's backing the dollar, trust. Nothing to establish faith in America like the fact we control oil and shit. Even the places where we have no intention of developing anything (the Afghanistan oil pipeline theory).

The Chinese are playing it like they don't care what we're up to. I wonder what they're planning.

They approve random people like "we r hate it the amerika YOU STUPID YOU" or "We can't let the terrorists threaten our way of life..."...

:|

toadkiller, I did kind of brush off your accusations of me just spouting Taliban propaganda before.

Here's why.

When I mention "sincere" Taliban, I refer to those factions within the Taliban who actually try to strictly follow their understanding of Islam (which falls under the Sunni branch). Make sense?

And that these "sincere" Taliban are to be distinguished from Mullah Omar and the factions allied with Al-Qaeda. Like how the Pakistani government and intelligence agencies were briefly hoping to divide them and encourage the 'mainstream' Taliban that were left to join up with Karzai's government or defeat it and take over.

*The US's plan is not much different.*

The US is actively courting Taliban members to defect to the Karzai government. They make a huge show of the ones that do on BBC/CNN/etc. where I've run into several pieces during the last year about who's who amongst the ex-Taliban and what they're doing now in Karzai's government. *None* of these people have changed. They have the same views on religion, women, everything. Yet now they'e back in government. And the US doesn't care. We never cared about how they treated the women. Not because we're sick evil fucks too, but because we might have been overemphasizing the extent to which they were.

The plan to "win" Afghanistan is to HAND IT BACK OVER TO THE TALIBAN.

If they can't drive an immediate wedge between Mullah Omar & crew and Al-Qaeda, they'll do it bit by bit, slowly.

Remember the bit in the news about the two British government agents arrested and deported by Karzai's government for trying to meet with Taliban officials while having like $20k of cash on them? It was on CNN, BBC, NYTimes, everything. What do you think they were doing?

Slowly, but surely, the US plans on bringing over enough of the Taliban to the Afghan government's side... enough to deplete the insurgency (notice how the Taliban couldn't even muster up a spring offensive this year, though US intelligence expected it), enough to pass the critical threshold where the Afghan government is now no longer "alien" and Afghans go back to it in droves, and the US can get the hell out of dodge.

Karzai does NOT want this. He wants NATO to stay, the Taliban to be defeated militarily. He turned down Paddy Ashdown for that reason. He deported those Brits caught trying to meet Taliban reps for that reason. He is terrified that when NATO leaves, they'll be leaving him with a government full of Taliban who hate his guts.

We are not only giving Afghanistan BACK to the SAME PEOPLE who have done all these "horrific" things (impyling either that we're okay with these things or that they never happened to begin with as we said they did), we are giving them an Afghan Army and Air Force! And billions of dollars.

Yes, this is completely crazy. Whether the Taliban are evil or not, who the hell cares. The point being, they are now going to be pretty damn pissed off. The balance of power in the region is upset once again. If the Taliban were dangerous before, imagine now. The name "Taliban" is a trick in and of itself. Any religious Sunni Afghan who wants more religion in government is essentially TALIBAN. That's like three quarters of the bloody country.

We don't care that we're about to set up Afghanistan even worse relative to us and our future than we did after the Russians left! We just want to get out with a 'W' on our record.

Worst case scenario: Afghanistan goes on a rampage in 2030 and conquers/unites many Central Asian states under the banner of "radical Islam" (well it's not entirely radical as I've set up before, it's just Islam). Afghanistan will be able to bend Pakistan to its will... Because half of Pakistan will support Afghanistan so the other half will go along. Nukes for the Taliban within 50 years! Something that was impossible, that we claim to want to avoid, we will help cause.

Oh well, I guess it'll be Russia's problem again.

You also certainly have a keen grasp of the part of the world in which you live - by the way Gill is a fairly common surname in India and Pakistan, I do not know if you ever identified yourself as an ethnic Indian or Pakistani, although you alluded to relatives there, not that it really matters.

That grasp of your environment means that you are particularly adept at diseminating certain information, obscuring others, and flat out lying about the rest. You have impressed some with the length, if not breadth of your knowledge of Islam, but you hoisted yourself on your own rhetorical petard with comments like these "...how can people complain about a handful of women? Not to mention that handful were from cities, and were leftovers of Afghanis loyal to the old communist parties that once held sway throughout the country and "invited" the Russians in. Those are the women that started airing their "grievances" to media organizations. They were the only ones who even knew enough English to do such a thing." The thing is, they were not justr a handful of women. Yes, they were the only ones who can speak English, the only ones brave enough in a country that killed women who spoke to men other than family members. The only women who COULD stand up for the way there were being treated to make their case. You never answered regarding the Beneath the Veil documentary. For those not familiar, it was undertaken, with EXTREME personal risk by a female journalist, travelling and interviewing equally brave women. It showed video footage of at least three women being publicly executed in a soccer stadium. I listed other abuses - and I also provided links besides RAWA that showed the enormous abuse of girls and women by the taleban abuse. Iwill conceed one thing, a lot of that abuse happened and was reported within the urban centers, but that is because the women in the rural areas had no one to advocate for them, and suffered just as much if not worse.

But concerning RAWA, just because they are advocating for better treatment of women, it does not make their claims false. As for the State Dept. I suppose you can pick and choose what you want to believe, but when it is only one of many reports concerning the abuses, well I chose to believe it.

Your backpedaling on 'sincere' taleban is also specious. Your earlier posts made no distinction betweeen the Taleban of the late 1990's - the ones who oppressed and abused and killed, and your new and improved 'sincere' taleban.

As for Western media loving the pakistani taleban, where is that?

Regarding your Lexis/Nexis search for execution and adultery, that is just laughable. First, you tried to limit the search for executions to just 'adultery', then you tried to use Lexis/Nexis as proof that there were few if any executions. Well, sure, Lexis/Nexis will not be reporting murders/executions of women in Afghanistan during that time period because the entire wetserm media - all media, were kicked out! There was no covereage within afghanistan by media - credible or otherwise. It took the efforts of the above mentioned Beneath The veil (which you did not address) to shed any light on the truly brutal regime.

Another canard from you regards women voting for the taleban -from everything I have read, not only did women not vote in large numbers for the taleban, they did not vote in large numbers at all. And most of that voting was in urban areas - which you stated yourself would be comprised of educated women who would be inimical to the taleban. And added to that, the taleban did not WANT them to vote, and threatened them with death.

You have a unique view, and insights that can provide for stimulating conversation, and I encourage you to continue to share some of those views, but I find your statements about and for the taleban to be very troubling, not to mention revisionist and propaganda.

I am not, and never will be, a person who marches in lock step with any ideology, and though I am a very proud former member of the American military, I concede that America is not the sole moral autority - and I never said that either (another thing you falsely inmplied about me).

As I have said, you have a unique view, but you will find me implacable with regards to revisionism of any kind, but especially with regard to those who have commited documented attrocities.

Basically, they stripped away the bullshit accounting practices that the US government indulges in (not declaring things yet to be paid for) and when it came out the total cost was frightening.

They also pointed out how some cheapskate (unbeievable in this context, but) measures had saved a couple of mill at the time but cost hundreds now (there was one example about transport that was shocking).

Fucking scary stuff.

Tax cuts for the super rich.

I'm going back to kicking Braffed in the other TB.

Have a good weekend.

And I'd take away the 2nd Amendment in a heartbeat.

But you are quite correct, malpractice insurance is totally out of control, and while I do not like putting too hard of a limit on tort reform, some type is need to reign in costs and litigation.