Goota love the Afgan sense of sensibilities

[troy2000]

Originally Posted by souljour2000

Yeah..but the Russians and Chinese mining companies are just waiting for a peace deal because even though the US and nato did the hard work...our congressman/Senate will make sure US companies dont get the Lion's share of the new minerals contracts...because the big International congloms will grease their wallets...same crap different post-bellum epilogue...the only new entry into the Great game..and it may be significant..is the Chinese...perhaps offering the Mujahideen/taliban types something that Russia/britain/US couldn't...

How are the Russian and Chinese mining companies going to ship anything out of Afghanistan? Do they have a secret superhighway through the mountains?

It's a landlocked country cut off by mountainous terrain -- no seaports, no rail transportation, no roads worth mentioning, no major airports....

[erik818]

What has bothered me with this thread isn't the fact that some US soldiers have committed a war crime (although not of the worst type) in Afghanistan. That will happen in any war, and it is the responsibility of the armed forces in question to bring their own personnel to justice. This also seems to be happening. From what I understand, the US Army command is acting as it should. What has bothered me is that some people have seen it appropriate to defend or excuse the act. Just recognize it as a crime that needs to be punished and leave it at that.

As for the invasion of Afghanistan, I consider it a legitimate and proportional response to 9/11. Although the Taliban government didn’t organize the terrorist attack directly, they provided a safe haven for the terrorists and didn’t take action and arrest them for extradition after 9/11. An invasion was the best solution given those circumstances. The invasion had and has a wide international support and several countries are there with soldiers, not only the US. More countries than the USA have a stake in the conflict. The goal as I see it is to leave Afghanistan with a decent, stable and responsible government. The international forces have to show respect to the Afghans and act civilized if we are going to win the peace so we don’t have to go there again.

Erik

[Roly]

Yeah. kinda like stealing a pack of gum opposed to beating the proprietor senseless.
Only problem here it happened to dead "people". If they were pissing on a Talibans dead dog who would given a s41t.
Then again there is the "going viral" thing. It has exaggerated the "crime" nth fold.
It is all bs, just like most most media transported news items. The more people know about it the more important the matter becomes.
PR disaster, lack of discipline yes, war crime, get off the grass.
Ya need to get real, this ain't some utopia.

What we do need to do is reverse the trend of bringing up more & more sociopaths by baning video games & TV content that promotes
disrespect, re-introduce discipline in schools. charge magistrates for contempt who don't mete out appropriate sentences. Society has lost
its collective backbone. Charge the parent for juveniles crime.

[hoytedow]

Hard to feel sorry for Taliban. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...ghanistan.html

[beachcraft]

Poor dog.

[ancient kayaker]

- but was it the Taliban? Many Afghans, or other middle-Eastern persons would see nothing particularly wrong in such an act. Animals are not treated very well around there or for that matter in many other parts of the World, and certainly not pampered as they are in the West. Of course, the Taliban treat people almost as badly . . .

[hoytedow]

Originally Posted by ancient kayaker

- but was it the Taliban? Many Afghans, or other middle-Eastern persons would see nothing particularly wrong in such an act. Animals are not treated very well around there or for that matter in many other parts of the World, and certainly not pampered as they are in the West. Of course, the Taliban treat people almost as badly . . .

Here find some info. http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ap1202/muja07.htm

[ancient kayaker]

All this while Islam defenders boast of its history of tolerance!

However, Islamic peoples are discovering how to throw out their abusive leaders and grope their uncertain way towards democracy, even if it temporarily becomes theocracy often as in Taliban's Afghanistan and today still in Iran.

Europe was a theocracy a few centuries ago. Hopefully things move a little faster these days with everything and everybody electronically interconnected. Leaders who fear loss of power, especially religious ones, customarily resort to extremes of suppression and cruelty to inspire fear and - they hope - obedience, as in the somewhat exaggerated Spanish Inquisition.

That seems to be what is happening these days in Islamic countries and others where the Islamic extremists hope to dominate, such as East Africa. That method of retaining power never works for long, whether practiced by leaders of countries or religions, and the backlash is stronger in proportion to the level of atrocity.

The storm of Islamic extremism has peaked and will pass, like Communism, Fascism and Empire-building. The trick is to recognize the next nasty reactionary trend before it gathers too much steam and nip it in the bud, instead of feeding it with justification by intolerance and greed.

[Ilan Voyager]

Dramatic consequence of the video of the American stupid idiots pissing on Taliban corpses...4 French soldiers murdered, one critically wounded, and 14 other wounded...

"The killer has confessed that he was motivated by the despicable video clip, distributed online, showing US soldiers urinating on the dead bodies of murdered Afghani servicemen."

http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=136033

[troy2000]

Originally Posted by Ilan Voyager

Dramatic consequence of the video of the American stupid idiots pissing on Taliban corpses...4 French soldiers murdered, one critically wounded, and 14 other wounded...

"The killer has confessed that he was motivated by the despicable video clip, distributed online, showing US soldiers urinating on the dead bodies of murdered Afghani servicemen."

http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=136033

So he kills Frenchmen for revenge against American soldiers? It occurs to me his bowl of Fruit Loops was only half full to begin with.... I'm pretty sure that if you dig into his motivations, they run a bit deeper than seeing a video. If it hadn't been that, he'd have used another excuse.

Anyone can go down that road.... suppose our guys claim they did what they did because of the beheadings they've seen on the internet? Then again, according to Roly maybe they just played too many video games while they were growing up.

[troy2000]

Originally Posted by erik818

What has bothered me with this thread isn't the fact that some US soldiers have committed a war crime (although not of the worst type) in Afghanistan. That will happen in any war, and it is the responsibility of the armed forces in question to bring their own personnel to justice. This also seems to be happening. From what I understand, the US Army command is acting as it should. What has bothered me is that some people have seen it appropriate to defend or excuse the act. Just recognize it as a crime that needs to be punished and leave it at that.

As for the invasion of Afghanistan, I consider it a legitimate and proportional response to 9/11. Although the Taliban government didn’t organize the terrorist attack directly, they provided a safe haven for the terrorists and didn’t take action and arrest them for extradition after 9/11. An invasion was the best solution given those circumstances. The invasion had and has a wide international support and several countries are there with soldiers, not only the US. More countries than the USA have a stake in the conflict. The goal as I see it is to leave Afghanistan with a decent, stable and responsible government. The international forces have to show respect to the Afghans and act civilized if we are going to win the peace so we don’t have to go there again.

Erik

I haven't seen anyone in this thread excusing or condoning what those soldiers did. I've seen a few point out that it's being blown out of proportion though, especially compared to the things the Taliban routinely do to their own people -- while they're alive.

Nonetheless, it was extremely stupid of them not only to do it, but to let videotape of them doing it get out.

[swabbie]

Originally Posted by Ilan Voyager

Dramatic consequence of the video of the American stupid idiots pissing on Taliban corpses...4 French soldiers murdered, one critically wounded, and 14 other wounded...

"The killer has confessed that he was motivated by the despicable video clip, distributed online, showing US soldiers urinating on the dead bodies of murdered Afghani servicemen."

http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=136033

Have to pull you up on this one IV, the Taliban are not servicemen, not freedom fighters, not fighters against dictatorship, fundamentalist regime or injustice, instead they are the supportors of extremist and irrational fanatical religious zealots that have remained unchanged and unenlightened for 3000yrs so please, do not insult regular servicemen who fight for a democratically elected govt whether the govt purpose is somewhat naive or otherwise. ok

[Roly]

I rest my case. They FILMED it.
Virtual & real all mixed up. Values are down the toilet.
What beats me is some parasite is making money off vid games glorifying real antisocial **** and brainwashing young minds in the process.

How many times would that of happened in the history of war that wasn't recorded & flashed world wide for the enemy to use as propaganda? More than a few I bet.
Not honourable, but war is hell as we have established. If it wasn't pee it probably be tears.
No wonder Megaupload hasn't got bail......for what here is basically a CIVIL offense.
Someone wants to make some changes. I hope they are rational ones.

[ancient kayaker]

The people who make up the “Taliban” come from many tribes but we of the West lump them all together, what one does is a basis for dealing with the others. It should be no surprise that they do the same, lumping the French, English, Canadians and Americans as “they satanic enemy” and treating all alike. The behavior of the marines was contemptible and if any of us were Taliban we would have no difficulty justifying any action we felt appropriate against foreign occupying troops, because that is what they would be to our mind set. If you cannot think like the enemy you cannot deal with him. If you cannot control your own soldiers they become barbarians. It has always been thus,

[Boston]

although I'm sure some of you folks will start coming unglued at the mere suggestion, its far from every having been certain who is responsible for the events of 9/11

From Noam Chomsky's reaction to the death of bin Laden
http://www.guernicamag.com/blog/2652...eaction_to_os/

In April 2002, the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, informed the press that after the most intensive investigation in history, the FBI could say no more than that it “believed” that the plot was hatched in Afghanistan, though implemented in the UAE and Germany. What they only believed in April 2002, they obviously didn’t know 8 months earlier, when Washington dismissed tentative offers by the Taliban (how serious, we do not know, because they were instantly dismissed) to extradite bin Laden if they were presented with evidence—which, as we soon learned, Washington didn’t have. Thus Obama was simply lying when he said, in his White House statement, that “we quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda.”

The simple facts are that the FBI was unable to determine who was responsible for the 9/11 attacks and no definitive proof has ever been established to this day.

both the taliban and bin Laden consistently denied responsibility for the attacks

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/a...afghan.denial/

Now I'm no fan of the Taliban but I am a fan of at least some form of justice, granted its a naive expectation in our world today, but still. I for one would kinda like to know who pulled off 9/11 and why. Even if some folks respond with rabid furry at the mere suggestion.

It seems pretty obvious that if either of those two had done it they would have "told it on the mountain" yet; they denied responsibility ??????

doesn't anyone else think thats just a tad off, given how vocal these guys have been about how they feel about western culture and "the great satan"

typically every terrorist act is accompanied by countless claims of responsibility, so why among what claims were made was no one able to be proven responsible ????????????

I think maybe before we go discussing the ethics of how we trash someones nation for having committed a crime we might investigate and be able to show evidence of them having committed the crime in the first place.