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Afghanistan

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opuslola View Drop Down
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  Quote opuslola Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Afghanistan
    Posted: 29-Jul-2010 at 05:36
Facts;
The following was written by E. E. Moise

http://www.clemson.edu/caah/history/FacultyPages/EdMoise/viet8.html

"The Tet Offensive was militarily a defeat for the Communists; it had weakened them very substantially. However, in public relations it was a Communist victory. There were several reasons for this.

1) The most important was the way the optimistic statements US spokesmen had been making about Communist weakness contrasted with the strength the Communists had shown in this battle. US spokesmen had been saying for months that the Communist forces were weakening. The Tet Offensive made it obvious that the Communist forces were far stronger than US spokesmen had admitted. When the same spokesmen said after the Tet Offensive that the Communists had been badly weakened, they were telling the truth for a change, but they had a lot of trouble persuading anyone to believe them. When General Westmoreland, the US commander in Vietnam, asked for 200,000 more American soldiers to be sent to Vietnam, this made people even less willing to believe that the Tet Offensive had been a brilliant American victory.

2) The Tet Offensive made the brutality of the war very visible to Americans. The US Air Force had been bombing South Vietnamese villages for years; during Tet the Air Force was bombing South Vietnamese cities. The ARVN had been killing prisoners for years; during Tet the American television viewing public actually got to watch a prisoner, with his hands bound behind his back, being shot through the head by a South Vietnamese general. The Communists also committed atrocities, of course; the Communists appear to have killed several thousand civilians in the city of Hue during the period they held parts of that city. That, however, did not happen within sight of American television cameras.

3) Tet, although militarily it was a clear American victory, had not been a cheap victory. The total number of US soldiers reported killed in Vietnam during the year 1968 was about 14,000, the highest number for any year of the war.

4) The US and ARVN forces shifted their activities toward the cities for a while as a result of the Communist attacks on those cities. Therefore, the weakening of the Communist forces in the countryside was not immediately apparent.

For all of these reasons, the Tet Offensive made the US news media, and the US public, much less enthusiastic about the war than they had been previously. General Westmoreland did not get the 200,000 additional troops he had requested, and in less than two years the US began withdrawing substantial numbers of troops. Negotiations began between the US and the Communists, and for most of the time the negotiations were going on, the US imposed limits on its bombing of North Vietnam. One might reasonably say that in the long run the Tet Offensive was a victory for the Communists, because of the way it reduced the American will to fight."


Edited by opuslola - 29-Jul-2010 at 05:39
http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/history/
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TheGreatSimba View Drop Down
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  Quote TheGreatSimba Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29-Jul-2010 at 07:07
Originally posted by DreamWeaver

Carol, the simple justification for NATO invading Afghanistan is thus. Osama bin Laden, figuatorial head of Al-Qaida, used Taliban controlled Afghanistan as base and safe haven. From where the 9/11 and other attacks were plotted etc. NATO invades in 2001 after 9/11 because a NATO member was attacked. The Taliban supported and sheltered him, and were in control of a large section of the country, so they became the target along with bin Laden.

Is that what you were looking for, or is there more, other themes and ideas you wish to discuss leading on from this?


Carol, I apologize for not answering your question, but yes, if you are looking for the official explanation, DreamWeaver is correct.

@Opuslola: You say you were born in 1946, which means in 1966 you were 20. Did you or did you not serve in Vietnam? If you did not, then why not? If you supported the war so much, why didnt you volunteer? With that said, do you have any children or grandchildren? Why dont you send them to Iraq or Afghanistan?






Edited by TheGreatSimba - 29-Jul-2010 at 07:08
I use CAPS for emphasis, not yelling. Just don't want to have to click the bold button every time.
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01-Aug-2010 at 22:01
Okay, DreamWeaver, I really did need the full explanation.  To be honest, I so hate war, I stick my head in the sand.   It doesn't help that I know Afghanistan is desirable because we want to run oil pipe lines through it.  I didn't pay attention to the given explanation for invading.   I am not 100% certain, 9/11 happened the way we are suppose to believe it happened.  I don't trust the people behind the New Century American Project.   Like if there are terrible people in Afghanistan, why didn't NATO  let the USSR resolve the problem?  Why did we give Laden and his people military training and weapons, if the people of Afghanistan are so bad?   Why use our tax dollars and the lives our our people, to fight a war, the USSR was willing to fight?   I think the give reason is BS, and honestly didn't pay attention to what it was.   

A recent Time magazine has a picture of a beautiful 18 year old Afghanistan girl on the front cover.  Her husband cut off her nose and ears.  Frankly that so angers me, it makes me think the war is justified.  But then I have to ask if war is the best way to create change, and I don't think so.  I would love try a new way.  What if we took all the money we spend on war, and empowered women around the world?   What if the harmed woman had the power to punish her husband for the harm done to her?  Or help all the women escape these men, and leave the men to do as they will, but without women to hurt.   



Edited by Carol - 01-Aug-2010 at 22:32
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  Quote DreamWeaver Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16-Aug-2010 at 17:44
NATO didnt let the USSR resolve the problem, because it wasnt a problem at the time. The mujahadeen, Bin Laden, were afterall the good guys as far as Nato and the west were concerned back in the 80's. The Taliban itself only became a problem after the USSR left Afghanistan, they were ultimately the victors of the civil war that devestated the country further. Afghanistan was a relatively afluent and up coming country before 1979, a popular holidaying destination for some. It wasnt the Afgahn people themselves per se who were terrible (no more than you might find anywhere else) but the brutalisation fo the country duing the war with the USSR and then the Civil War.

The USSR couldnt have sorted anything out, because there was notjing to sort out. Once again we, the West, made a rod for our own backs.
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