A simple question

November 13, 2009 in Political Animals | 5 comments

The warpimps want tens of thousands of additional troops sent to Afghanistan, allegedly because securing that country will protect us from further attacks by Muslim extremists here at home.

If the recent killings at Fort Hood were the work of a Muslim extremist, could someone kindly explain how forty thousand more troops in Afghanistan could have prevented that tragedy?

I’m just askin’…

  1. dan l on November 13, 2009 at 10:37 pm

    Ehhhh I dunno MB.  To pose a similarly absurdly positioned questioned to you:
     
    Thousands of additional troops will go to Afghanistan and kill terrorists.  Wouldn’t you agree that dead terrorists is a fundamentally good thing?
     
    Furthermore, I can understand the whole peace mongering thing.  Really.  You want to make an argument to leave Iraq alone.  Be my guest.  But Afghanistan?  We just made that a better place.  Like seriously:  I haven’t heard of a single soccer stadium execution since we started over there, and there’s women going to school and shit.  Maybe, just maybe, we started some progress in a place that’s so fuckin’ ass backwards, that just maybe 100 years from now the people there will be a little less susceptible to the kind of extremism we see there now.
     
    Like I say, you want to beef with the Iraq thing?  Fine.  Afghanistan?  Takes a lot of balls.
     
    Now back to things you and I can agree on:
    Gribbit is now a shrink:
     
    http://gribbitonline.com/2009/11/13/hasans-murderous-rampage-and-his-ptsd-bs/
     
    And a juicy personal detail:
     
    In 2003 I was in Las Vegas for a Convention for the Paper Allied-Industrial Chemical and Energy Worker’s International Union Annual Convention when I received a telephone call informing me that there had been a shooting at the plant where I worked and represented. A member of my crew to be exact shot and killed 1 member of management and wounded two others before turning the gun on himself. Luckily, these three innocent victims were the only ones. The gunman in this case had much more ammunition than he expended and he also had additional weapons in his car.
     
     
     
    Did we ever establish if he actually has a job?  I could have swore one of his pals told me he was collecting SSI in fine liberal marxist socialist fashion.
     
     
     
     
     

  2. meatbrain on November 14, 2009 at 7:13 am

    Back up a second, Dan. Explain why my question is “absurdly positioned”. You make that assumption, so let’s see you support it.

    I haven’t heard of a single soccer stadium execution since we started over there…

    Perhaps you should listen more carefully. The current Afghan government still carries out mass executions.

    ...there’s women going to school…

    And those same women are subject to legalized rape by their husbands.

    None of what you wrote addresses my question, by the way. How am I personally protected  from terrorist attacks if we send another forty thousand troops to Afghanistan?

  3. dan l on November 14, 2009 at 9:38 am

    Ok.  Here’s what’s absurdly positioned:
    Nobody is asinine enough to tell you that killing some Taliban type over there somehow makes it less likely that a wingnut here is going to go apeshit in a office shooting here.  To expect that somebody is going to tell you that, is either bait (which is fine, if you’re looking to get Gribble over here) or just an absurd question.
     
    Now, if you start rolling the ball of change down there and get them out of the dark ages (and as you point out, things still aren’t ‘great’, but they’re most definitely better than they were 10 years ago) and as they progress, eventually they’ll become more civilized and produce less terrorists.  Now this isn’t something that’s going to happen today, and certainly not tomorrow – but in 40 years?  60 years?
    But I don’t think anybody is deranged enough to say that killing a terrorist in Afghanistan will prevent another Ft. Hood thing.  Of course, we may sniff out some logistics  or recruiting and make that a bit tougher, but that’s hardly a long term solution.
     
    But more to the point MB:  whaddya want us to do?  Walk away?
     
     

  4. meatbrain on November 15, 2009 at 9:30 am

    Nobody is asinine enough to tell you that killing some Taliban type over there somehow makes it less likely that a wingnut here is going to go apeshit in a office shooting here.

    I smell a straw man. “Office shootings” don’t enter into anybody’s Afghanistan calculus, and I don’t recall claiming that it did. But what is the right’s justification for insisting that we send 40,000 troops to Afghanistan, if it is not to somehow magically keep us “safe at home”?

    Now, if you start rolling the ball of change down there and get them out of the dark ages (and as you point out, things still aren’t ‘great’, but they’re most definitely better than they were 10 years ago) and as they progress, eventually they’ll become more civilized and produce less terrorists.

    I would challenge at least two of the assumptions behind your statement:

    1. Is the situation in Afghanistan in fact “most definitely better than [it was] 10 years ago”? Is the quite obviously corrupt government of Hamid Karzai really an improvement over the Taliban? Do we really want to play the “yes he’s a bastard, but he’s our bastard” game all over again?

    2. Is it in fact the case that a “more civilized” society produces fewer terrorists? Consider the IRA, the Red Army Faction, the Shining Path, or ETA.

    I will also point out that the American invasion of Afghanistan was intended to capture Osama bin-Laden and overthrow the Taliban government, and had been planned well before 9/11. Now we are there to “get them out of the dark ages”? This is called “mission creep”, and can well ensure that we never leave Afghanistan.

    What do I want to do? Not “walk away”, certainly, if by that you mean drop everything and withdraw immediately. We are now responsible for the mess that is Afghanistan, and have a moral obligation to do what we can to stabilize that country. But I do not see the logic of the position that simply continuing to pour blood and treasure into Afghanistan will somehow guarantee a favorable outcome; that kind of fuzzy logic reeks of the mentality of underpants gnomes.

    We need an exit strategy. The Bush administration steadfastly refused to even consider creating one. Obama is absolutely correct in refusing to send more US soldiers into harm’s way until we have a rational plan for bringing them home.

  5. Todd on November 25, 2009 at 8:31 am

    Hey Dan, remember, our bastard in the 80’s was a guy named Bin Laden. How did that work out for us? I say spend the money at home.