Change in action: Air-raiding villages and killing civilians

basso · Jan 26, 2009

Feel the hope.

[rquoter]
"We've got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there."

Barack Obama
On US troops in Afghanistan
August 14, 2007

Thousands of Islamists protested Obama's "first gift" to Pakistan.
Obama air-raided villages and killed innocent civilians in his first week in office.

Supporters of the Pakistani Islamist party Jamat-e-Islami protest in Karachi, January 25, 2009. The protest was organised by Jamat-e-Islami party against military operations and drone attacks in tribal areas. U.S. drones fired missiles into Pakistan late on Friday killing 17 people, intelligence officials and residents said, in the first such strike since Barack Obama became U.S. president. (REUTERS/Athar Hussain)

Supporters of the Pakistani Islamist party Jamat-e-Islami protest in Karachi, January 25, 2009. (Reuters)[/rquoter]

Ottomaton · Jan 26, 2009

basso concerned with and legitimizing the complaints of Jamaat-e-Islami.

Priceless.

Did al Qaeda have any thing to say?

JuanValdez · Jan 26, 2009

He said "just."

Apollo Creed · Jan 26, 2009

edit: I need anger management counseling ...

pgabriel · Jan 26, 2009

WOW I saw that post before it gets taken down. Creed don't let it bother you like that

SamFisher · Jan 26, 2009

damn that was a meltdown of epic proportions.

rocketsjudoka · Jan 26, 2009

Basso;

Weren't you one of the posters criticizing Obama when he said he would authorizes attacks in Pakistan?

bigtexxx · Jan 26, 2009

The lefties would have been all over W had this occurred under his watch. Then when it happens under Obama, Apollo Creed loses his sanity and has an emotional breakdown.

basso · Jan 26, 2009

rocketsjudoka said:

Basso;

Weren't you one of the posters criticizing Obama when he said he would authorizes attacks in Pakistan?
Click to expand...

it wsn't the policy i was criticizing,rather it was the announcement of the policy I thought was ill-advised.

mccain was right.

DonnyMost · Jan 26, 2009

Holy crap.

Bogey · Jan 26, 2009

Dude, AC went over the line on that one. How do you let someone get to you that much on a message board?

bigtexxx · Jan 26, 2009

Bogey said:

Dude, AC went over the line on that one. How do you let someone get to you that much on a message board?
Click to expand...

What happened is that basso hit a nerve with him. That nerve was the truth nerve. Basso was dead on in calling out the liberals as hypocrites in not criticising Obama for this when they were all up in Bush's shorts for the past 8 years. The truth always hurts the worst.

Major · Jan 26, 2009

bigtexxx said:

That nerve was the truth nerve.
Click to expand...

There's no nerve in the human body (or believe any animal body) that is a truth nerve. You need to re-take basic anatomy & physiology.

Ottomaton · Jan 26, 2009

bigtexxx said:

Basso was dead on in calling out the liberals as hypocrites in not criticising Obama for this when they were all up in Bush's shorts for the past 8 years.
Click to expand...

The facts say otherwise.

bigtexxx · Jan 26, 2009

Ottomaton said:

The facts say otherwise.
Click to expand...

That thread proves nothing.

mc mark · Jan 26, 2009

Somehow I don't think Obama has reached war criminal status that should be swinging from a gallows as of yet.

Bush on the other hand....?

There Are No Files

Seems the criminals in the Bush administration are claiming there are no tapes, no evidence dossiers, no witness profiles, no transcripts of interrogations, no photos, no lawyers' notes, no hard drives, no laptops? NO FILES of Gitmo detainees?

SHINE A LIGHT DOWN THERE, OBAMA!

weslinder · Jan 26, 2009

Worth a repost:

http://townhall.com/columnists/PatrickJBuchanan/2008/12/19/obamas_war

Obama's War
by Patrick J. Buchanan

Just two months after the twin towers fell, the armies of the Northern Alliance marched into Kabul. The Taliban fled.

The triumph was total in the "splendid little war" that had cost one U.S. casualty. Or so it seemed. Yet, last month, the war against the Taliban entered its eighth year, the second longest war in our history, and America and NATO have never been nearer to strategic defeat.

So critical is the situation that Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in Kandahar last week, promised rapid deployment, before any Taliban spring offensive, of two and perhaps three combat brigades of the 20,000 troops requested by Gen. David McKiernan. The first 4,000, from the 10th Mountain, are expected in January.

With 34,000 U.S. soldiers already in country, half under NATO command, the 20,000 will increase U.S. forces there to 54,000, a 60 percent ratcheting up. Shades of LBJ, 1964-65. Afghanistan is going to be Obama's War. And upon its outcome will hang the fate of his presidency. Has he thought this through?

How do we win this war, if by winning we mean establishing a pro-Western democratic government in control of the country that has the support of the people and loyalty of an Afghan army strong enough to defend the nation from a resurgent Taliban?

We are further from that goal going into 2009 than we were five years ago.

What are the long-term prospects for any such success?

Each year, the supply of opium out of Afghanistan, from which most of the world's heroin comes, sets a new record. Payoffs by narcotics traffickers are corrupting the government. The fanatically devout Taliban had eradicated the drug trade, but is now abetting the drug lords in return for money for weapons to kill the Americans.

Militarily, the Taliban forces are stronger than they have been since 2001, moving out of the south and east and infesting half the country. They have sanctuaries in Pakistan and virtually ring Kabul.

U.S. air strikes have killed so many Afghan civilians that President Karzai, who controls little more than Kabul, has begun to condemn the U.S. attacks. Predator attacks on Taliban and al-Qaida in Pakistan have inflamed the population there.

And can pinprick air strikes win a war of this magnitude?

The supply line for our troops in Afghanistan, which runs from Karachi up to Peshawar through the Khyber Pass to Kabul, is now a perilous passage. Four times this month, U.S. transport depots in Pakistan have been attacked, with hundred of vehicles destroyed.

Before arriving in Kandahar, Gates spoke grimly of a "sustained commitment for some protracted period of time. How many years that is, and how many troops that is ... nobody knows."

Just two months after the twin towers fell, the armies of the Northern Alliance marched into Kabul. The Taliban fled.

The triumph was total in the "splendid little war" that had cost one U.S. casualty. Or so it seemed. Yet, last month, the war against the Taliban entered its eighth year, the second longest war in our history, and America and NATO have never been nearer to strategic defeat.

So critical is the situation that Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in Kandahar last week, promised rapid deployment, before any Taliban spring offensive, of two and perhaps three combat brigades of the 20,000 troops requested by Gen. David McKiernan. The first 4,000, from the 10th Mountain, are expected in January.

With 34,000 U.S. soldiers already in country, half under NATO command, the 20,000 will increase U.S. forces there to 54,000, a 60 percent ratcheting up. Shades of LBJ, 1964-65. Afghanistan is going to be Obama's War. And upon its outcome will hang the fate of his presidency. Has he thought this through?

How do we win this war, if by winning we mean establishing a pro-Western democratic government in control of the country that has the support of the people and loyalty of an Afghan army strong enough to defend the nation from a resurgent Taliban?

We are further from that goal going into 2009 than we were five years ago.

What are the long-term prospects for any such success?

Each year, the supply of opium out of Afghanistan, from which most of the world's heroin comes, sets a new record. Payoffs by narcotics traffickers are corrupting the government. The fanatically devout Taliban had eradicated the drug trade, but is now abetting the drug lords in return for money for weapons to kill the Americans.

Militarily, the Taliban forces are stronger than they have been since 2001, moving out of the south and east and infesting half the country. They have sanctuaries in Pakistan and virtually ring Kabul.

U.S. air strikes have killed so many Afghan civilians that President Karzai, who controls little more than Kabul, has begun to condemn the U.S. attacks. Predator attacks on Taliban and al-Qaida in Pakistan have inflamed the population there.

And can pinprick air strikes win a war of this magnitude?

The supply line for our troops in Afghanistan, which runs from Karachi up to Peshawar through the Khyber Pass to Kabul, is now a perilous passage. Four times this month, U.S. transport depots in Pakistan have been attacked, with hundred of vehicles destroyed.

Before arriving in Kandahar, Gates spoke grimly of a "sustained commitment for some protracted period of time. How many years that is, and how many troops that is ... nobody knows."
Click to expand...

durvasa · Jan 26, 2009

How many civilians were killed in the attacks Obama authorized?

The question I have is to what extent these attacks were motivated by politics (demonstrate Obama is "tough" on terror) as opposed to military/tactical considerations. Pakistan is a very volatile, dangerous part of the world. We should tread carefully.

mc mark · Jan 26, 2009

durvasa said:

How many civilians were killed in the attacks Obama authorized?
Click to expand...

America doesn't do body counts. Just ask Rumsfeld.

durvasa · Jan 26, 2009

mc mark said:

America doesn't do body counts. Just ask Rumsfeld.
Click to expand...

Yes, but usually reports of civilians deaths will be reported by the local population or some other humanitarian groups.

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Change in action: Air-raiding villages and killing civilians

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