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The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Read up a little more, and you'll find that once the Russians came to Afghanistan, they took over and would not leave, even after they were asked to.
Read a little more then whatever propaganda you are reading because they needed to be begged to intervene and even then they started by sending a few advisors and helpers.
As for good intentions, that describes our intentions and situation also.
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They offered to hand over Osama bin Laden, and America decided to invade anyway. I disagree with the politics that got us there, but that's water under the bridge now, and we have a job to do. If we do not complete this job, we will have to do it again in the near future. No one in Afghanistan who remembers what their country was like before the Russians invaded wants the Taliban to come back, and they will come back if we leave right now
You are wrong. They demanded proof, something we would have demanded, and bush wasn't going to waste anymore time for the war he wanted. Your version just makes us look worse.
As for the logic about how we got there being water under the bridge, thats just BS logic. How we got that invalidates everything just as surely as our own laws deal with illegally obtained evidence being inadmissable even if its a smoking gun. I suppose if those big bad nasty soviets said the same thing you would agree or if China invaded Australia and said that a few years down the road it would be just as valid?
The truth is that people don't want the violence but guess what, most do in fact want the taliban to play a role in Afghanistan as evidenced by the reporters asking the people and echoed by Karzai himself. The only stumbling block is the fact that the taliban are saying "all foreigners out before talks can begin"
I suppose these people are the same ones who demanded the removal of dutch and danish soldiers over the cartoons are the reasonable ones who want us there? How about if they knew what opionin of their religion the war supporters actually held and that they viewed the religion as something to be destroyed? Would they love us being there then?
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None of it would have been possible, because the Taliban wouldn't have allowed it.
Bollocks. They would have loved it and they would have loved the world attention. In truth it was what some people were saying back then but nobody cared because they were just a bunch of dirty muslims and once their usefulness in bleeding the USSR dry was gone so were we.
You are ignoring the fact that the taliban arose because the very people we helped overthrown the only legit gov't of the day turned out to be nothing less then violent criminals and that originally the taliban was hailed as saviours under the notion that peaceful students would make things better.
I believe that we could have achieved everything we have know without the massive loss of life. We certainly made no effort in the least to even try.
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Afghanistan had emancipated women, and even had women's colleges before the Taliban took over. These are not foreign concepts to them, nor are they concepts that are being forced.
Really? So women had it better under the very gov't we helped overthrow and which was the defining reason the taliban came to power. Women certainly had it far better under soviet rule didn't they?
What happened was that after decades of violence being waged by communist, capitalist east-west powers and the subsequent pack of "freedom fighters" we helped install these "peaceful students" decided that perhaps their way of life would be better. The rose up and in short order defeated the very people who drove the USSR out but in reality just defeated a fragmented bunch of warring tribesman and were quickly supported by alot of former mujahadeen and the support of the people.
Unfortuantely theocracies never ever work well and they had the same problems trying to get everyone to agree that they resorted to using violence to achieve their vision,
just as we are now.$1:
We? Who is 'we'? America gave weapons to the Mujehedin to fight the Russians, not Canada. I do not agree with what they did, since it helped to create the conditions that led to Taliban taking power. But this was the way the Cold War was fought. Had America sent in its own troops, Russia might have seen that as a direct act of aggression and started World War III.
I hate that so many fair weather Canadians simply absolve themselves of any action the US does in the name of western society because its convient. Thats dishonest. Canada supported those actions. We supported bycotting the Olympics to protest the "soviet invasion". If we had the capacity to provide covert assitance we would have and may very well have.
You can't condemn everybody else while somehow justifying this war simply because Canada is involved.
BTW, when I say "we" in debates concerning international events/wars and historical events concerning western society and others I refer to all western society. I'm not going to simply "blame the Americans" for something Canada could have and likely did help in. The problem is that to often us "western countries" simply distance ourselves form other western countries actions when its convient and expect to held blameless when thats not the whole truth.
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I am not one of those people. Most people in Afghanistan want us to stay there until they are a stable country that can fight for itself. This is not about Muslims, or any religion, it is about defending a country that can't defend itself.
We did not liberate Afghanistan from the invading mongols, or romans, or cylons.
We went in to affect a change in gov't because we didn't like that gov't or what it was doing and that is very very different.
We can't ignore the fact that we helped create the situation and we cannot ignore the illegality or illegitamacy of the way we got there. We cannot simply absolve ourselves of the guilt then pat ourselves on the back because we built a few hospitals.
We build a whole country with good will and intentions, Yugoslavia. That turned out well didn't it? Idi Amin was a western educated and civilized leader installed by the UN. That went well.
The fact is that unless we can bring all sides to agree to live in peace we will never ever achieve success and the only people who can decide that are the afghanis.
For better or worse they have to be left to sort their own lives out and whatever gov't they decide to have or whatever gov't they achieve is something we must accept. We are free to offer them whatever help they want and they are free to accept whatever help they want and the best we should hope for is that they learn from us and their own people find a way to bring peace.
Using the military to enforce our will on them, even if its only a segment of them makes us as guilty as the people we oppose.
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