Please educate me on the rationality of the new Afghan...US Pact proposal

[Blus4u]

A week or so ago, a video of Rachel Maddow's interview with Richard Engel was posted where Richard Engel was breaking the news about a pact regarding the US maintaining (read paying for & staffing) bases in Afghanistan through 2024 and perhaps beyond.

I admit I did not read the thread as I had seen the segment on Rachel's show the night before. I have since been unable to find that thread and the resulting discussion. That thread and any related threads have been noticeably absent here.

I understood the rationale for the 2001 presence (to hunt down Bin Laden), but we accomplished that.

So WTF are we asking the Afghani's to sign a pact that will keep us mired in that quagmire for another decade minimum?

Please help me understand that!

A link from Reuters where Carney is pressing Afghanistan to sign....

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/22/us-afghanistan-usa-whitehouse-idUSBRE9AL0VK20131122

Peace

[Scuba]

1. Long-term revenue stream for the MIC.

That's the only "rational" reason for staying.

[RKP5637]

3. War, death, destruction, long term stabilization = BIG MIC $$$$$. That, is what

the US has become. In the big picture, WTF have we really accomplished.

[Blus4u]

4. That's the only thing I could think of...

and I was hoping there is something I am missing.
The paradox that has become Obama. (I didn't want to turn this into that kind of thread).
Thank you sir, for your reply.

Peace

[giftedgirl77]

2. It's what they should have done in Iraq as well

See South Korea, Japan, & Germany only supposedly not as long term or as big. The intent is to keep the area more stabilized.

[Scuba]

6. "Stabalized" for the benefit of whom?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

U.S. Identifies Vast Mineral Riches in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON — The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

Let me guess - corporations that don't want to pay any taxes at all want the US taxpayer to fund the "stabalization" of Afghanistan so they can plunder the mineral reserves there.

[giftedgirl77]

12. Well considering we went into their country 12 yrs

ago & wreaked havoc on the entire region just abandoning them & letting it go to shit like Iraq is, is not feasible. The reasons we went there in the first place may not have been genuine but it isn't fair to the people that live there to leave them high & dry.

[Scuba]

19. And of course our one and only option is .... military. No one could have predicted that.

[giftedgirl77]

26. What do you want to do? Put the Peace Corps over

there? Not everyone in the military is a fucking stone cold killer, once you go into sustainment & construction it's a whole different ball game.

[Scuba]

29. Yeah, I seem to recall six years of my life not being a stone cold killer.

The military is ill-equipped for the role you describe. I'd suggest we consider foreign aid administered by an international contingent that doesn't include the US. Any presence we have there is already poisoned.

Please remind me of what other options besides military were discussed; I seem to have forgotten.

[giftedgirl77]

33. My point exactly, i wasn't a stone cold killer either.

I would much rather it be someone other than our military. However, I damn sure do not want it to be any private entity within the US such as KBR or Halliburton, those fuckers are the reason why at 36 I don't know if I will make be around to see my 11 year old graduate high school & if I am I won't be walking or seeing by then.

With that being said my problem is with the constant madness going on there now & there should be some type of initiative to ensure the stability, same goes with Afghanistan. I damn sure don't trust the contractors & would much rather it was out of our hands but don't think we should just wipe ours & never look back.

[Scuba]

34. So what are you advocating?

Your earlier posts seemed to be in support of a continued military presence.

[giftedgirl77]

35. If there is no other option then yes.

I just don't think it's right to say, yes, we invaded your country and fucked it all up but we're done now so you are on your own to pick up the damn pieces.

One, we never should've been in any of them. We should be leaving them all alone. But we need to clean up the mess, we also aren't alone on that. If there is a non-military way then I'm all for it.

[Scuba]

36. So funding an international peace/rebuilding coalition never got any traction?

Or it never even got any consideration?

[giftedgirl77]

37. Honestly, fuck if I know.

I just think it's wrong to leave them high & dry. My job put me in a position where I put our soldiers in jail for doing them wrong as well dealing with locals on the regular when it came to claims & helping them out of bad situations that were usually at our hands.

I think we should leave them in a decent situation. Preferably not by military force.

[Ace Acme]

21. We didn't "abandon" Iraq.

Bush negotiated a withdrawal timetable When the date came up, Obama tried to renegotiate the timetable so he could keep the war going there. The Iraqi government said No Dice, and Obama was forced to adhere to Bush's agreement.

Is there anyone in Afghanistan who is actually asking us not to "abandon" them?

[giftedgirl77]

28. Exactly, the Iraqis didn't want to put a SOFA

in place which is ironic considering in 2011 we still had troops there tearing shit down. Iraq is all kinds of fucked up on so many different levels. It will never be fixed. Bush fucked it up, & yes they are asking for troops to stay in Afghanistan until like 2025 or some crazy shit.

[Blus4u]

7. But, as a nation, we cannot sustain that.

We cannot sustain that economically or in the cost of the human toll, and our very presence there breeds more of what we went there to eliminate.

Peace

[giftedgirl77]

13. We have been shutting down bases in Germany

for years & considering how much we are scaling back the size of the military with the drawdown. As I said in my response to Scuba we may have gone under false pretenses but it's not fair to the people that live there to just say alright bye one day & leave them in turmoil.

[Scuba]

20. And as I suggested in my reply to you above, we chose continued military involvement ....

... over any other possible way to help.

The could be the best option, but I sure don't remember any discussion of alternatives.

[rusty fender]

31. We've been there 12 fucking years!

We're just not leaving them one day. The Afghans have had 12 years to prepare for our departure!

[NuclearDem]

15. Apples and oranges.

The former Axis countries were occupied to be demilitarized and rebuilt after the war, and were further convinced of the need for US bases due to the looming threats from the USSR and China. South Korea has US bases as the result of pushing back against NK's aggression, and is still legally in a state of war.

Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq are anywhere near those situations. One was an already unstable government occupied by veterans of the previous guerrilla war against an invader and the other was a country with borders hastily drawn during decolonization and a powder keg that exploded after an illegal war of aggression and an incompetent occupation.

[Laelth]

5. We're not done with Iran.

Plus, we have a new pipeline through Afghanistan. Thus, U.S. bases must stay.



Or, so the theory goes.



-Laelth

[Scuba]

8. No wonder Iran is deemed a threat. Look how they put their country right in the middle of our bases.

[Laelth]

10. Precisely. (sarcasm) n/t

-Laelth

[NuclearDem]

17. Persians, getting in the way of freedumb and capitalism.

[Proud Public Servant]

9. I spent several years working on Afghanistan policy

Here's the simple, not-so-secret truth: it's not about Afghanistan. It's about Pakistan. The U.S.'s greatest fear is that Afghanistan will collapse into civil war after we leave, and one of three things will happen: (1) Pakistan will back the Taliban again, and we'll end up with the Taliban in power again, and the last 12 years will have been for nothing; (2) Pakistan will back the Taliban, Iran will back the northern alliance, and Afghanistan will become the staging ground for a proxy war that will destabilize the whole region, or (3) The Afghan Taliban will not only come to power (either on their own or with an assist from Pakistan's ISI), but will embolden the Pakistani Taliban, who in turn will destabilize Pakistan's government and end up with control of Pakistan's nukes.

Any of those are plausible. All of them should keep you up at night. I am very decidedly not a fan of our Afghanistan strategy, but I understand the corner we've painter ourselves into.

[Laelth]

11. Very interesting. Thanks for the post. n/t

-Laelth

[Blus4u]

27. "but I understand the corner we've painted ourselves into."

above from Proud Public Servant's response.....

regrettably we have a house with too many corners and apparently way too much paint!
above from me.

RE: Pakistan, we have poured way too much money into that country to have them continue to be the extreme wild card they are.
Goes to show you can't buy friends.

Peace

[Ace Acme]

39. Not even if you give them the F-16s demanded by the kidnappers of Daniel Pearl. nt

[avaistheone1]

14. Hillary helped negotiate it so it must be good.

[jazzimov]

16. Taliban. They're real. nt

[Agnosticsherbet]

18. The concern that the Taliban will reassert control from a government

that can not yet control its own country, and lead to a state like Afghanistan before 9/11 or a failed state. Ultimately, there are rational reasons to be involved in the world. The question is whether they outweigh rational reasons not to be involved.

[Ace Acme]

23. It's not the job of the USA to bring stability to every country in the world.

It's the job of the UN to enforce laws against aggressive war, war crimes, and human rights violations--not that of the sole superpower on earth and rogue terrorist state, the USA.

Kennedy in a speech to the UN endorsed a proposal for total disarmament that would have left military forces only in the control of a UN police force and internal state stability forces.

[Agnosticsherbet]

25. The OP asked for a rational reason.

The UN has no authority to enforce laws against aggressive war, war crimes, or other human rights violations. They have no enforcement ability or police force. They rely on individual countries to act for them.

It is a question as to whether we are the sole super power now. and we certainly won't be in a few years. Russians have moved aggressively back into the world power arena and China is busy doing the same thing. Even India is moving to assert itself.

None of those items were relevant to the OP. There are rational reasons to stay. There are also rational arguments made not to stay.

[Ace Acme]

32. Chapter VII of the UN Charter authorizes the UN to take military action

Last edited Fri Nov 22, 2013, 11:54 PM - Edit history (1)

Article 42 provides that the UN "may take such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security."
http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/chapter7.shtml

Kennedy in a speech to the UN in September 1961 endorsed a proposal for total disarmament that would have left military forces only in the control of a UN police force and internal state stability forces.

[Agnosticsherbet]

41. The UN has no military. They authorize members to fight for them. Only the Security Council can

authorize the military to be used. As a permanent member of the Security Council, the US can veto anything. Kennedy, great President, long gone. Haven't read that speech in a while, I'll get back to you about my take o n what that says.

[Ace Acme]

42. The USA is not authorized to engage in unauthorized military adventures. nt

[Agnosticsherbet]

44. The US and any state can act within their interests for self defense.

and the do so on a regular basis. The UN can complain, but they have zero authority to do anything about it. Russia, the US, China, France, and Great Britain have all acted militarily without UN Sanction with only the thinnest reference to self defense.

The UN can't do dick about it.

The UN certainly has a bit more authority than the League of Nations, its predecessor. But without a police force or military, and with the US and other members of the Security council able to veto anything they don't like, it has no real authority.

[Ace Acme]

45. Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, and Yemen are not a threat to us.

Aggressive war against them is not self defense.

[Agnosticsherbet]

43. Now I know the speach you were talking about. unfortunately, not one item of he speach was

was every implement by the UN. The General Assembly could no do that. The individual nations themselves must be the ones to put such a thing in place, and no one did. There simply was no interest in the nations to disarm and put the UN in Charge.

Nuclear disarmament talks continued under Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Clinton. Salt treaties were signed. But at no time did the UN ever have any power to legislate such a program because no member ever willingly gave up their arms.

[Ace Acme]

46. Doesn't change the fact that JFK endorsed a proposal for TOTAL disarmanent nt

[Agnosticsherbet]

50. He did that while leading the nation in a war with Veitnam, and after

bringing the world closer to nuclear war than anyone before or since. One thing doesn't make his record. You have to look at the whole picture.

[Ace Acme]

52. He proposed total disarmament, he proposed a joint USSR/USA moon landing, he pledged

... that the USA would never start a war, he vetoed the Operation Northwoods plan and kicked out the head of the Joint Chiefs who endorsed it, he fired Allen Dulles, and he wanted to pull out of Vietnam.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

22. Favorable PR for a lost war fought for PR.

As in, "We didn't really lose."

[Ace Acme]

24. That Democrats are so quick to validate Republican mistakes is quite dismaying. nt

[Scuba]

30. +1

[CFLDem]

38. Because if we don't stay

Al-Qaeda will just rebuild shop as soon as we leave. And let's face it, we half assed the war by not rooting them out of Waziristan and wherever else they happen to reside.

This is probably because the MIC has figured out as long we don't totally defeat them, we can keep the jig up in perpetuity.

It is what it is. Fact is this country empire is inextricably built upon war. Millions of Americans depend upon its existence.

War is good money, and that's all that matters.

[demigoddess]

40. there is none.

stupidity reigns.

[ConcernedCanuk]

48. ^_^_^_^_^_^

.
.
.



you got it!

CC

[bluestate10]

47. There is nothing new about the USA keeping some troops in Afghanistan until 2024.

The Press, again, didn't get off it's sorry ass and check past televised statements from the President. When President Obama went to Afghanistan in 2011 to announce that US forces would start to draw down, he rather clearly stated that the US would keep a residual force in the country for up to 10 years and that the size of that force was yet to be negotiated. The fucking Press is pathetic, it does nothing but walk around with it's head shoved up it's ass being wannabe Fox News supplicants.

[Egalitarian Thug]

49. The same rationale that caused us to go in in the first place...

The TAP

We're bleeding and killing over there for our corporate masters. Unfortunately the people are really tired of being bankrupted in the name of spreading Democracy (is that still the most popular reply?), but if we leave the Afghans would almost certainly claim that there stuff belongs to them, so we have to stay there to protect our master's rightful claim to their stuff.

[magical thyme]

51. O.I.L.

Pipeline from oil-rich countries behind Afghanistan through Afghnistan to shipping ports (I forget where and am too lazy to google it.)

That's why the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan way back when.