Congratulations, America! The U.S. war in Afghanistan has now lasted longer than the Soviet war in Afghanistan. That’s nine years and fifty-three days for us, so far, and nine years and fifty days for the USSR. One cool thing about always having wars in the same brown-people countries year after year and decade after decade is that simple people don’t need to keep learning new, weird country names. Just sort of learn to say Afghanistan and Iraq, and you’re set for 20 or 30 years!
Experts say we’re closer than ever to making each Muslim teenager in America willing to blow up a car bomb at a Christmas tree lighting in Oregon as long as the FBI does all the bomb stuff. The next nine years and fifty-three days of the Afghanistan War should be even better than the first nine years and fifty-three days! [LA Times/Newser]
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And look how well that worked out for them!
And with my son preparing to leave his family for ANOTHER tour in a War Zone I can only remember all too well Dubya's campaign rhetoric about a more "humble" foreign policy and having a firm "Exit Strategy" in place before any military engagements on his watch…Gotta go, just threw up in my own mouth.
Hopes and prayers for your son's safe return home.
Also nation-building. Chimpy wasn't gonna do any stinkin nation-building. It's so disappointing to learn now, after all these years, that he was something less than sincere.
Good luck to your son and his family. These kids, and their families, are paying a brutal price for 43's inadequate feelings about 41.
He hasn't built any nations that I've noticed. Destroyed a few.
Are you saying that retiring to Dallas and writing a completely fabricated and plagiarized self-serving memoir isn't an exit strategy?
"If I Did It" by George W. Bush.
O.J. ain't got nothin' on Dubya, that's for sure.
He actually wrote it?
Let us also not forgot W's classic "Bring it on!"
Good luck to your son.
Believe me, I fantasize about it.
There's no rational purpose for being in Afghanistan, either. That's why I continue to suspect GWB was up to something irrational, like speeding up the Rapture and the Second Coming of Jesus. O. just wants to avoid looking like a loser, another bad reason.
I fear all of us, O included are working for the same five men sitting somewhere at an undisclosed location.
As a PhD in history and a confirmed Cynic, let me assure you that giant snafus are far more common than giant conspiracies. Successful giant conspiracies are rarer yet.
No one is in charge, certainly none of the usual suspects.
Do you not think that Multinational Corporations, writ large, are guiding National Policy in America?
Strawberry!? I distinctly remember asking for the Purple Stuff.
WOOO! WE'RE #1 (in endless, bloody wars with no discernible positive outcome)! WE'RE #1 (in endless, bloody wars with no discernible positive outcome)!
USA! USA! USA!
WOOO! WE'RE #1 (in endless, bloody wars with no discernible objective in the first place)! WE'RE #! (in endless, bloody wars where we create our own enemies by weakening the sick fucks that once killed our enemies for us)!!
Maybe it was an accident, but "WE'RE #!" should be the new "!!!1!!!!11"
WE'RE #!
WE'RE #!
Fucking brilliant
It was an absolute accident – so, does that make me a republican (the only time I seem to do something brilliant is due to an absolute fucking mistake!)?
We've been doing this for about 60 years, too, which is a big reason for our economic collapse.
Great. You just gave Olbermann one more bloody ticker to sign off with.
"We did not lose
VietnamAfghanistan! It's a tie!"Um, you forgot Korea. It's a three-way tie!
"Did someone say Three-way?" — Producer, Barely Legal Asians
WE ARE NOT FIGHTING AFGHANISTAN – WE ARE FIGHTING TERRAH!!! AND WE ARE WINNING TERRAH FIGHTING… and stuff.
I still run into old soldiers, mercenary throat-cutters and the like, telling me this shit. I ask them "who holds the battlefield"? and they change the subject.
From the picture: Camo uniforms with reflective belts. Yes…I understand why. But you still have to laugh…Camouflage AND High Visibility Belts
Because brown people are colorblind, like deer?
Did you see it? OMG. Did you see it!? The tearist fist bump! Doomed I tells ya. Doomed!
I would have wanted to spend time in Afghanistan for one single purpose, which became moot after I got clean.
At what point do we stop calling what's happening in Afghanistan a war and start calling it an occupation?
When and if we kill Karzai and replace him with General for Life Petreus. Until then we are just "helping".
Petraeus want to be pres. of the US.
Only Iraq was a liberation?
Well, a lot of civilians were liberated of life and limb.
But, whatever you call it, don't call it a comeback.
I'd cue Country Joe and The Fish, but this is too depressing, even for me.
And that's saying something,
But let's end on a positive note: Is it too early to open the design competition for the Sixth [Seventh? Eighth?] Afghan War Memorial?
My idea features a large bronzed pallet of shrink wrapped $100 bills, with a grinning Karzai sitting on top, waving a bag of opium. And the arm of a member of the U.S, military sticking out from underneath,
When Neilist emerges from his CONEX box and sees six more years of war, I worry for the country, to the extent that the term "country" excludes Boeing, BP, Lockheed Martin, Louis Berger, URS, etc.
And URS also brought us the I35W bridge collapse in Minnehaha.
Needz moar opie-yum.
The great thing about having a robust, free-market capitalist system instead of a sterile, centralized command economy is that we can afford to get trapped in endless, bloody, useless, military quagmires for a lot longer before the spiralling costs collapse our economy, break our national spirit and leave us a mere shell of the fearsome world power that we once were. I'd say we've got another good 10 years before that happens.
Wohoooo USA, USA, USA!!!!
Another shining example of American Xceptionalism!
Heh, it's not funny, 'cause it's true.
Not if the People have their way, and elect Sarah Palin, no way we'd survive ten years of that.
How long until Afghanistan beats Vietnam to be the longest pointless war America refuses to get out of because we're afraid to admit defeat even long past when everyone in charge knows there's no possibility, or even definition, of victory?
Too late:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/dubo...
Although the wars are like dicks, in that everyone has his own idea of long they are, or should be, or how to measure.
First U.S. advisors went to South Viet Nam in, what, 1954? & Gerald Ford pulled out in 1975? So, 21 &/or 22 years of war… Hhhhnnnghhhh?
Yeah, I know. But if having military advisers in foreign countries constituted being at war, we'd be at war all the time.
And hey, whaddya know, we are! USA! USA!
I won't be impressed until the body count surpasses Vietnam.
- Satan
The US had real economic power in those days. Now it runs on loans from China, Japan, Britain. If they get frightened of hyper-inflation destroying their investment, they'll back off real quick, and we won't be able to do anything, not even evacuate our soldiers in A. "And Crassus's wretched soldier takes a barbarian wife from his captors and grows old waging war for them." (Horace)
Anyone experienced hyper-inflation? I saw it one summer while digging in Israel. Very interesting, if you don't have to live with it.
And to think that you whiners would rather have free health care and bigger paychecks instead of paying for this glorious imperialist adventure (and it's twin in Iraq)!
Americans will forget all about this war (again) as soon as we start kicking some North or South Korean ass.
NUKE 'em ALL! USA! USA!
Probably some pres. in the near future will attempt a proxy war with China.
This is somehow good news for John McCain.
Like AIDS, this conclusion is axiomatic.
But really, we beat the ruskies' record a long time ago, since they took a lot of 3 and 4-day hangover weekends, and our boys have been pretty much 24/7.
Booyah!
I heard BBC World Service interview one elderly one-legged mujahid. He said that fighting the Soviets had been kinda interesting, since they were often brave as individuals. Americans, on the other hand, just stayed in their fortresses.
This is worthy of another Nobel Peace Prize.
Conservatism has always been about conserving one thing and one thing only: class priviledge.
God, I sound like a Marxist.
But it's true.
Yes and yes.
Welcome to the club, comrade.
God, I'm so offended that you're saying conservatism is JUST about class privilege.
You're forgetting white privilege, male privilege, straight privilege, cis-privilege, Christian privilege…
Sadism. Half the fun of being rich in a 3rd world country is degrading the poor.
Anyone read Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger? It's real good on this.
Well, for his time, you have to admit Marx's observations of class struggle were pretty spot-on. It was his predicting the results of it that were off.
No, no, not a Marxist.
A Communist Pinko Liberal SKUM-ist.
There. Fixed.
we're just about the stupidest, most pathetic fucks since god divided the chaos. i'm not sure we've ever intentionally won a war. we just stick around until the other side gives up. if the other side doesn't give up, we squawk about how we got what we wanted after all, and we go home and return to our blissless innocence.
We beat Mexico's brains out in the 19th century and got a whole bunch of nice stuff as well as a very accommodating neighbor. Haiti's probably the way it is on purpose. That's all I got.
Japan, circa autumn, 1945 would prolly disagree with you.
i concede the point.
Indian Wars.
But our allies in Kabul will kick in on all cylinders at any moment, take full responsibility for nationwide security, extinguish corruption and foster a pluralist, stable state! Um, wait, those were our allies in Saigon…
we don't have any allies in kabul, and we didn't have any allies in saigon. all we've had in either place were victims and shills, the first waiting for us to get out, the second hoping we'll take them with us when we leave.
They sure act like it as long we're handing out absolute shitloads of money.
Spoiler alert , I know how this tee-vee war ends. Helicopters evacuating the last Americans and friends of Americans from the roof of the embassy in Kabul followed by complete take over of the country by the Taliban. Then in 20 years they'll be making our shirts there.
Those helos fleeing Saigon were crash-landing on aircraft carriers a couple hundred miles away. That's not possible from Kabul.
If you're going to spend more money on defense than the next 18 highest spending countries combined, you gotta blow up shit, kill people, and test the flying robot assault weapons some where.
Afghanistan has been the perfect host country for the world's war lovers and militants to share ideas and improve the trade of the globe's robust "Blood Shedding Community".
Kabul-yeah!
I am certainly no historian, but I believe that in 18th century England, when the terms "liberal" and "conservative" took root, liberals were the ones with an appetite for adventuristic wars, and conservatives were the homebodies who wanted to be frugal.
Same here in the early 20th Century and the Repug isolationists.
Sometime in the 1950's, the "conservatives" figured out that war was a good business, once we showed we could maintain a domestic economy AND buy all sorts of neat gadgets. Ike figured that out, a bit late. Of course, it helped that everyone else in the world was still picking up broken bricks from "the Good War" to give us any competition.
Whigs followed on from the Roundhead Puritans. Tories followed on from the Cavalier Royalists. Neither had much use for proles like you and me, save to screw us bent over the railing on London Bridge.
We may have moved ahead of Russia, but Great Britain is still holding the record for Longest Afghani Quagmire.
For now, maybe. You just wait!
Britain has the record for most colorful defeats in Afghanistan, too. Read _Flashman_ for a great account of the First Afghan War, in which all the Brits, save one, were killed.
Fanta-stic!
Not only did we win the useless war contest, but it generated an eloquent slur to be used against the homeland of Sarah Palin fans: Dumfuckistan.
How much longer do I have to wait to plan my vacation in Afghanistan?
I was hoping to tour the poppy fields, take a hike in the mountains while avoiding the land mines and attend a wedding dodging a missle or two.
And if you're married you can pick up that burka that your wife has always wanted. No more bad hair days!
It was a common destination in the '70s.
We totally should have seen this coming when the Russkies moved out with a black eye and applying for an order of protection.
Just heard the other day that the new 21st Century Superpower (PRC) will never invade any country.
They will just invade economically.
Nee-how!
they don't need to invade. they're already at the center. all they have to do is wait while everyone else falls into them.
Save for the fact that wealth & privilege are like being a Brahmin or member of a Calvinist sect: predestined. If you have it, you have it because you deserve it, intrinsically. If you don't, well, you ain't never gonna get it.
& this is the Gospel according to En Vogue.
And for much of America, especially for young men, the military is no longer even the employer of last resort: it's the only form of employment one can imagine that does not inevitably lead to incarceration or a violent death in your own neighborhood.
Bush's wars are a Republican WPA.
The Socialism that's guaranteed in the Constitution.
So does this mean that Bin Laden, like Reagan, is going to take all the credit?
Oligarchic city-states with crippling poverty in the outlands I can handle, the next several generations of mad bombers campaigning on the platform of reviving the spirit of Bin Laden – ugh, spare me.
He already took credit for breaking up the Soviet Union, although Pope J2P2 had a competing claim.
♪♫ Drea-ea-ea-ea-eam, dream, dream, dream
Drea-ea-ea-ea-eam, dream, dream, dream ♫♪
So the mess halls are still segregated in the Air Force?
Too bad Dubya didn't follow a similar pattern.
Apparently not in the Air Force.
Who will be her Vice President &/or Cheney? Will she import Sean Parnell from Alaska, who social-right svengali during her Governor's term?
This is why we need to stop abortions now, so that we can feed all the unwanted children at 18 to useless wars. Perhaps with this argument we can get the "conservatives" to allow stem cell research; we can convince them that it will help us to "clone soldiers" and then we can have wars all the time.
Didn't the ruskies install a puppet government then invade when that didn't work out? I think we're doing it wrong.
The hell with a timetable, as long as we can say "We win, you lose!" we can keep our xceptional nation status.
Don't you guys get it? We can't lose. All the politicians have to do is say, "Our brave men and women are over there, fighting for our freedom" and, as long as we are free – WE WIN!!! Who gives a fuck about a real military objective? It is kinda like the geek who stood up for the slut's honor in that high school movie – yeah, he got his ass kicked and she was still a slut (as was evident by the fact she then fucked a geek), but at the end of the movie, everyone loved him BIGLY (except nobody really died in the movie and the geek didn't REALLY get the hot little POA after the director yelled "CUT!!").
WOLVERINES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I may be the only snow skier in this motley bunch of Wonketeers, but I think a heli-skiing vacation in Afghanistan would be heli-awesome! And there's no landmines in the snow, plus plenty of choppers in-country to give you a lift.
People did in the '70s. Trout-fishing, too.
Think of all the happy contractors who supply military hardware, and personnel for those companies that took on outsourced, privatized tasks that regular army people used to do. Lots of gold cigars in their Christmas stockings, for another year!
What of the matter of being from the same state? I know, with Bush-Cheney, Ol' Dick had to reclaim his status as a Wyomingian — even as he had lived in Texas ever since leaving the Bush-41 admin — but I don't see Todd &/or Sarah being able to manage something similar. Would Sarah be allowed to claim Idaho, as she went to college, there?
We still have higher milestones to reach:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_years_war http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_years_war
USA! USA!
I suppose you could call the period since 1950 "The Sixty Years War." The US govt. has certainly been picking fights continually in that time.
But, but, love is a battlefield. That's what Pat Benatar told me, and she ain't never been wrong, amirite?
Yeah! Continuation of "The Right War." USA! USA!
Well, I understand the feeling entirely, and I hope somebody, someday, does punish him and all his co-workers as they deserve. But don't get caught. Don't boast about anything subversive in any e-media, not even in morse code SW. At the same time, it's quite true that a determined individual can accomplish things that the usual cast of thousands conspiracy can't.
The Sunglasses crowd have had my number for many years. So far they have not approached me directly. I am well known to them as a loose cannon and documented killer but have avoided prison for nearly 70 years, although I deserve that fate or worse. My fantasy revolves around my concept of justice in a perfect world. Dubya has inflicted unspeakable horrors on hundreds of thousands of undeserving humans. I frankly would not go out of my way to harm him, but if he were to fall into my lap, I would probably take it as a Divine Intervention and follow through with a journeyman's zeal. I honestly do not believe in justice in this world, as I say, I have avoided prison for nearly 70 years. I do appreciate your views, thank you for making the effort.
Don't hesitate to take a long vacation to Thailand or some place warm and cheap. There's no extradition from China, either.
Well, I've often written about trampling drunken elephants and other things I learned of from ancient/Byzantine history. But I live outside the USA, where 'the mountains are high and the emperor is far away.' Be careful, seriously. I don't want to read about your arrest like that stupid Somali kid in Portland yesterday.
I have avoided explicit threats against Dubya. I would not go out of my way to harm him, he is not worth losing my freedom. He may or may not be living in a just world; I know I've never gotten what's coming to me, thank God. I honestly believe there are enough ignorant racists out there keeping the Secret Service busy on behalf of our sitting President, I can't believe they would divert resources in my direction anytime soon, but if they do, all I can say is: “Fuck'em if they can't take a joke!” Your thinking is sound and your motives righteous, thank you for making the effort on my behalf.
You can always sleep in my spare bedroom, if you like.
I kind, if not wise, offer. Thank you. I keep a valid passport but cannot imagine myself in China of my own free will. Now that your offer is “on record” I doubt if it would do either of us any good now; it is no doubt on record with Big Brother and made a part of my (very thick, I happen to know) file. Thanks anyway.
We're on the way. Look up Dmitri Orlov and his sardonic essays at Club Orlov.
The Chinese army owns a lot of factories and does a fair amount of civil defense. It's not at all like the US Army.
Karzai doesn't want to end up like Najibullah, hanging, n*t-less,from the barrel of a tank. Hence, he's negotiating as hard as he can with the other side(s).
Yeah, but back then we had tax increases and conscription, except for rich kids and NFL stars. The current wars are shared-sacrifice-free! This great leap forward for war technology ensures that wars will never stop having wars until we run out of the ability to borrow money.
I doubt that they co-operate more than cop agencies or "intelligence" agencies do. Nor do I think that the people running them are very smart. Look at out-sourcing factories: Henry Ford knew his workers were his customers. Why didn't the Pres. of Sunbeam (for example) think of that? Or remember those GM execs, 30 years ago, boasting about how they weren't going to raise wages, but give the workers real big retirement benefits instead, so they wouldn't have to pay anything for 30 years! Well, 30 years went by, as they always do, and GM was SOL.
I live in a Chinese city where lots of foreigners come to learn Chinese. A couple years ago, I met a low-level "bankster" who was studying Chinese so he could do financial crapola in Shanghai. He had previously worked for Bear-Stearns in London. While he denied to me that he was avoiding prosecution, others tell me he was on shaky ground back in Blighty, and was trying to figure out how to sneak a sh*t-load of money out of the UK before it was confiscated. I spoke with him at local bars numbers of times, and he was clever, but in a limited way. Like someone good at playing Monopoly, but with no sense of the Big Picture. I think a lot of our multi-national corps. are full of people like that. Or dumber.
Not that I'm a genius, but I do try to keep the Big Picture in mind.
National Policy is guided by vanity ("American Exceptionalism"), fantasies about the End of the World or Defeating the Nazis or Cowboys and Indians. It's one short-term, short-sighted, decision after another.
I've found that greed and fear cloud the judgement of otherwise clear thinking people. Intelligence is great, but without sound judgement; not so much. I've never been interested in money. I find it boring. I use it , appreciate what it does for me and mine but don't have any interest is having lots of it. Unions have shit in their own nests beyond redemption. Corporate greed is running amok and all our Politicians can think about is their next election and their next blowjob. I've pretty much given up and resigned myself to sitting on the sidelines taking verbal potshots when I can.
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