Operation Junkyard: US scraps 'tons' of equipment as Afghan exit looms

[DeSwiss]

RussiaToday·Published on Jun 21, 2013

As the U.S. army rushes to complete its pull-out from Afghanistan, parts of the country are already turning into huge junkyards. The Pentagon is destroying U.S. vehicles and other military equipment, despite the war already having cost American tax payers more than 630 billion dollars. RT's Gayane Chichakyan investigates, RT is also joined by author and activist David Swanson. READ MORE: http://on.rt.com/dwtr3z

RT LIVE http://rt.com/on-air

[Jackpine Radical]

1. Can't have all that surplus equipment cluttering up the arms market.

We'll want brand-new stuff for Iran.


Nothing new here, BTW.
A cousin of mine was in the S Pacific after WW2 & told of all the jeeps, tanks, trucks etc. we pushed off the ships to sink in the Mindanao Trench or somewhere after the end of the war.

[GiveMeFreedom]

5. Syria first, need to surround Iran before we attack.

I am certainly not for anymore war, except here at home, in the good ol' USA. Revolution?

[Jackpine Radical]

6. I'm for nonviolent revolution at home and everywhere else, for that matter.

Now, where'd I put that soapbox?

Oh--Here it is. (Clambers up)

See Chenoweth & Stephan, for example:

http://www.amazon.com/Why-Civil-Resistance-Works-Nonviolent/dp/0231156839/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1371926710&sr=1-1&keywords=chenoweth+nonviolent

For more than a century, from 1900 to 2006, campaigns of nonviolent resistance were more than twice as effective as their violent counterparts in achieving their stated goals. By attracting impressive support from citizens, whose activism takes the form of protests, boycotts, civil disobedience, and other forms of nonviolent noncooperation, these efforts help separate regimes from their main sources of power and produce remarkable results, even in Iran, Burma, the Philippines, and the Palestinian Territories.

Combining statistical analysis with case studies of specific countries and territories, Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan detail the factors enabling such campaigns to succeed and, sometimes, causing them to fail. They find that nonviolent resistance presents fewer obstacles to moral and physical involvement and commitment, and that higher levels of participation contribute to enhanced resilience, greater opportunities for tactical innovation and civic disruption (and therefore less incentive for a regime to maintain its status quo), and shifts in loyalty among opponents' erstwhile supporters, including members of the military establishment.

Chenoweth and Stephan conclude that successful nonviolent resistance ushers in more durable and internally peaceful democracies, which are less likely to regress into civil war. Presenting a rich, evidentiary argument, they originally and systematically compare violent and nonviolent outcomes in different historical periods and geographical contexts, debunking the myth that violence occurs because of structural and environmental factors and that it is necessary to achieve certain political goals. Instead, the authors discover, violent insurgency is rarely justifiable on strategic grounds.

[GiveMeFreedom]

7. Sure non violent revolution is better all around.

However, I do not see that working all that well here in the US when the time comes. Our voices are ignored by the elected rabble that supports corporate interests in Washington. The people's voices are loud now, but Obama does not listen, nor does any other, except maybe Bernie. Not even Warren is above the special interest that drive politics in Washington. We can vote, but with the gerrymandering that exists, it's not really an election, it's more of just a process to elect the candidate that the 1% want us to elect. Most of the time we elect the lesser of two evils. Peace.

[madrchsod]

2. the army-navy did the samething in veitnam

[Clyde Tenson]

3. There are plenty of junkyards there...

...just find the russian ones.

[PatrynXX]

4. Irony. have a Question for Russia....

hey what did you do with your old stuff.. in that country?? oh wait. think the bad guys got it. X_X

[DeSwiss]

8. Irony indeed....

...since our shit don't stink, who are they to criticize us? Right?