Now do you feel better about our plans in Afghanistan?

by on December 9, 2009 18

hairball
A friend sent this along, reportedly a flowchart posted on MSNBC from a consulting group that works on the American effort in Afghanistan. My head tells me it’s a hoax. My heart is filled with fear that it’s not.

About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in Israel/Palestine, US Politics

{ 18 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. Citizen says:
    December 9, 2009 at 12:48 pm

    There’s no tenable reason to stay in Afghanistan. With what Obama’s plan for Afghanistan
    will cost, we could pay for Obamacare. Literally.
    Instead, we will get the worst of both worlds.
    That’s called leadership, USA style.

  2. Psychopathic god says:
    December 9, 2009 at 2:17 pm

    Almost 1 million Afghanis are refugees living in Iran. A young Afghani I spoke with at a restaurant in Mashad, which is near Harat in Afghanistan, told me that he had been in Iran for over six years. Iran supports Afghani refugees through ‘grade school’ and ‘high school,’ but does not afford them the same access to college education as an Iranian. Further, obtaining a job in Iran, when the unemployment rate for natives hovers around 20% (thanks in part to US / Israeli sanctions), is nearly impossible for an Afghani. This young man worked as a waiter and told me he attempts to strike up conversations with as many Westerners as possible, so that he could practice speaking English in order to more readily make his way out of Iran.

    He told me that returning to Afghanistan was not an option — he would be killed. Our tour guide told me that the young Afghani’s statements were “scripted for the tourist trade.”

    Maybe so, maybe not; it is truly the case that Iran is providing safe harbor for about a million Afghanis and perhaps as many as 3 million Iraqis.

    If US/Israel impose even stricter sanctions on Iran, as Howard Berman is leading over 350 Congresspersons to do, does anyone rationally think that the situation in Afghan will improve?

    Truncate that question — when the Israel lobby is involved, does anyone in the US Congress rationally think?

  3. Pingback: Now do you feel better about our plans in Afghanistan? | Afghanistan Today

  4. Chaos4700 says:
    December 9, 2009 at 2:57 pm

    I’m pretty sure it ain’t a hoax. The truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.

  5. radii says:
    December 9, 2009 at 5:13 pm

    If you haven’t seen it, ZeFrank’s brief video analysis of Afghanistan as the graveyard of empires is terrific:

    http://www.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,45950304001_1931954,00.html

    I heard one talking head on television say that we could pay the 40% of unemployed Afghanis $4 billion a year to rebuild their own country. But instead, because of the neocon zionist influence we will spend well over $400 billion to destroy people and things and destabilize the country further … but israel gets more destabilization in the region and the politically-c0nnected defense contractors get billion$ more in profits. What an ugly mess.

  6. MRW says:
    December 9, 2009 at 5:30 pm

    Phil,

    This first surfaced on the Rachel Maddow Show. She claimed it as an exclusive. The producers got it from our people in Afghanistan.

  7. Les says:
    December 9, 2009 at 6:33 pm

    From a review of, With Zeal and With Bayonets Only: The British Army on Campaign in North America, 1775-1783

    “The author demonstrates that British failure in the war was not due to their tactics, but rather their inability to win the fight for ‘hearts and minds,’ in part due to the very effective political and social controls established by the Patriot movement. In short, the American Revolution was one in which the better army was capable of winning numerous ‘hollow victories,’ which yielded no strategic or political benefits.”

    The US clearly has a better army than its enemy in Afghanistan, even if you exclude the negligible effort of Karzai’s forces.

    After 8 years there has been a failure to capture the hearts and minds, if that was ever the goal. Obama has changed the mission and now recognizes US occupying forces are there for us alone and not for any foolish promises made in the past to the people of Afghanistan.

    Sending 30,000 more soldiers pours gasoline on the ever growing funeral pyre of Afghanistanis and Americans. This failed effort will become all the more bloody for both sides made evident in the growing desperation of those Americans sent to fight. Because Obama, the generals, the Senators, and the Congressmen can’t afford to lose face, there must be sacrifice.

  8. robin says:
    December 9, 2009 at 11:13 pm

    This looks really confusing to me, and when I try to zoom in it expands to way larger than the size of my monitor. Can someone give me a little summary of what this is and what is problematic about it?

    • Chaos4700 says:
      December 9, 2009 at 11:16 pm

      I think what’s problematic about it, chiefly, is that it is physically impossible to give a little summary about it.

    • former coMMenter says:
      December 9, 2009 at 11:54 pm

      robin, I think you already nailed it: “confusing,” “expands,” “way larger than,” etc. At this point in the decline of all its former manufacturing might, and amidst increasingly skeptical international creditors, the U.S. economy desperately needs a war, any war, and it’s the Pentagon’s and corporate media’s charge to define a coherent objective and refined methodology for the unseemly chaos and barbaric slaughter. Enter that lovely chart, or “hairball” as Phil has appropriately titled the mouseover. It is a fucking joke, and the American taxpayer and Afghan peasant are the butt of it. Print it out, wipe your ass with it, and send it in with your taxes next April 15th.

  9. tommy says:
    December 9, 2009 at 11:25 pm

    It takes complex logic, circuitous rationale and sophistry to justify oppression and mass murder by such an advanced civilization over an undeveloped one.

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