-- James A Donald wrote...
What made [Afghanistan] a breeding ground for terrorism was not civil war, but diminuition of civil war. The problem was that the Taliban was damn near victorious. If the US government had maintained the relationship with our former anti communist allies, and kept on sending them arms, we never would have had 9/11
Tyler Durden
Well, that's not particularly convincing. First of all, even during the Taliban's reign there were plenty of warlords that ran some regions of Afghanistan.
I seem to recall you lot claiming that the Taliban had successfully restored order - (you see the Taliban being able to massacre civilians unoppose as order) There was some truth in that claim. They controlled 95%. Had their been less truth, the Taliban would have had less ability to make trouble.
More to the point is that a long term period of chaos and turbulence causes the locals to be willing to open the door to the like of the Taliban, as long as they offer some kind of peace.
So we should therefore make sure they cannot offer some kind of peace. In Iraq, the Pentagon cannot supply peace. Why then should we allow those who wish to destroy us provide peace? If we cannot have peace, no one should.
The period between Soviet withdrawal and the Taliban was uglier than practically anything imaginable...one batch of warlords would take over, killing the men loyal to the previous batch and raping the women,
Nonsense. The ugly thing about the period before Taliban rule was that the Taliban, or people of much the same ideology, would persistently destroy murder and rape in order to get people to submit to their rule. When opposition largely collapsed, their massacres did not cease, though their rapes became more discrete. Instead, they decided to expand their terror onto a wider stage. The war was not warlord vs warlord, it was radical Islamists vs the rest, the rest being warlords and conservative Islamists. The radical Islamists won, but victory did not appease their appetite for terror.
and then another batch would take over and do the same thing.
All the big crimes were committed by the Taliban or their ally Hekmatyar. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG iMxmau6gQqD0z0pAMUXMXDaFhYeKeIIMk+RxXM7G 4oThdqbZEnQ5o4UXBwjhmlFI92anV7zx78zQop+f4