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anitram

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A riot broke out in Kabul today, a per Reuters:

Security forces opened fire on protesters killing at least eight Afghans on Monday after a fatal road accident involving a U.S. army truck sparked violent demonstrations in the capital.

The truck, part of a U.S. convoy, had crashed into a dozen vehicles, killing five people, according to a statement from Afghan President Hamid Karzai's palace.

A health ministry official said at least eight more people were killed and over 100 wounded during the subsequent protests.

After the accident a furious crowd hurled stones and smashed windows of the convoy vehicles, and one of the besieged U.S. vehicles appeared to fire in the air, according to a U.S. military statement.

Afghan police also opened fire when they came to the assistance of the U.S. troops.

...

A Reuters reporter at the scene saw one man shot dead and several wounded people being taken away, while rioters set alight two police cars. Several television cameramen were beaten by protesters, journalists said.

...

Several hundred more congregated at an intersection leading to the heavily fortified U.S. embassy chanting slogans of "Death to America" and burning American flags.

...

Some demonstrators tore down a billboard poster of Karzai, who is regarded by many Afghans as dependent on U.S. support.

"We don't accept Karzai any more as a president. We protest against him: death to Karzai!" Jaweed Agha, one of the protesters, shouted.


From The Times Online, an eyewitness report:

"We managed to get to within about a half-hour drive of where the accident happened and could hear gunfire. We stopped to ask what was going on.

"The mob crowded around the car and people were shouting: 'Let's get them - let's skin them alive'. We got out of there pretty quickly and as we were leaving we noticed a car was following behind.

...

"I've been in Kabul for nine months and there has never been anything like this before. There is a real feeling in the air that today Kabul changed. There has been a lot of fighting in the south but this has mainly been between the militias and the American forces."

...

"They are angry at the Americans who they see driving around as if they own the place and who appear to have caused this accident and then tried to drive away."

...

"The Americans are saying that this was just one day of unrest, but I was speaking to one guy and he was shouting: 'Death to America - death to Karzai...'


Mission accomplished!
 
a sizable, and real majority agreed with Afghanistan

the problem is the poor execution
and taking "eye off the ball" before it was completed

Afghanistan is far from a success
 
A_Wanderer said:
So now Afghanistan is the wrong war, wrong place and wrong time.

No, Afghanistan an example of a complete FUBAR because the Bushes were so happy to move on to Iraq that they let this place lapse into chaos. The north is controlled by the warlords, the south by the Taliban (remember those guys?) and Osama's free.

This administration has absolutely no foresight at all. None.
 
not true - they had the foresight to know iraq had weapons of mass destruction when noone else believed them.
 
Zoomerang96 said:
not true - they had the foresight to know iraq had weapons of mass destruction when noone else believed them.
Exactly, except for the minor detail that practically everyone believed that they had WMD stockpiles, the disagreements centered over how to deal with this.
 
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We got people saying "Let's get them - let's skin them alive." And we fall back to blaming the administration?

What steps should be taken? How far do you want to go to completely eliminate insurgents, warlords and the like?
 
nbcrusader said:

What steps should be taken? How far do you want to go to completely eliminate insurgents, warlords and the like?

Problem is, these people weren't insurgents, they were regular people on the streets who seem to have had enough.

A few more opinions:

"It was all the Americans' fault," said Tahir Murad, 50, who witnessed the accident and its aftermath. "This kind of incident makes people feel more against the Americans."

...

Some of the leaders carried banners saying ``God is Great." Others carried posters of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the anti-Soviet guerrilla leader who was assassinated in 2001. Shouts of ``Down with Karzai" and ``Down with Bush" were heard.

And from the Guardian:

Anger at civilian casualties from US bomb strikes may also have fuelled the rioting. Last week the US military admitted that it killed 16 villagers during an air strike on a Taliban hideout in Kandahar province. Local human rights activists estimated the death toll as high as 34.

When American troops arrived in 2001, they aroused hopes among Afghans for an end to gnawing poverty and incessant violence. Today, many say they are bitterly disappointed

After four years and $12bn, £6.5bn, in foreign aid, the majority of Afghans still scrape through life without electricity or clean water. More than seven million people are chronically hungry, according to the UN, and 53% live on less than a dollar, or 54p, a day. The sight of foreigners earning large salaries and driving large vehicles protected by private security companies has focused frustrations. More recently, a spate of civilian deaths in US anti-Taliban bombing has aroused public anger in a country with a history of violently ejecting foreign occupiers. The government and its western backers argue that, since reconstruction started from an impossibly low base, much progress has been made. The west and north are peaceful, smooth roads stretch through the countryside, and the economy is projected to grow by 10% this year. A record number of children attend school. But faith in the Karzai government, dogged by violence in the south and allegations of corruption in Kabul, is faltering.

Many Afghans believe their $12bn in aid has been squandered or stolen.

Insurgents and warlords are one thing and frankly there is such an entrenched culture of corruption and lawlessness in Afghanistan that it may never be possible to eradicate it.

But it seems like the tide is turning and now you're getting extreme reactions from regular people, not some militia bandits in the desert with a Kalashnikov.
 
A_Wanderer said:
Exactly, except for the minor detail that practically everyone believed that they had WMD stockpiles, the disagreements centered over how to deal with this.

uh. not exactly.

remember how many wmd's the un inspectors found in their last round of inspections?

right... about as many as you and i have.
 
And all through the 1990's Saddam played the same cub and ball game with UNSCOM until he ultimately kicked them out. All the major powers intelligence services were pointing towards Saddam having them, it was taken as a given.
 
no, wanderer. it WASN'T a given. is 2002 too long ago for you to remember?

why the hell did you think noone except the coallition of the idiotic were willing to go into iraq in the first place?
 
A variety of reasons including serious bribes from Hussein under the oil for food scam in some cases. Every party had a vested interest in Iraq and Iraqi oil, not one power opposed the war for altruistic reasons.

You had former inspectors like Rolf Ekeus and Richard Butler saying that Iraq had hidden their remaining weapon stockpiles, the Clinton administration had operated a policy towards Iraq on the basis of hidden weapons, this was inherited by the Bush admin. The British, French, Russian and German intelligence were all saying that Saddam still had WMD.

What is shocking is just how much of the assumed knowledge was wrong, both before the first war when his capabilities were underestimated and after the 2003 invasion when the stockpiles just didn't exist, of course there were banned missiles and a whole array of dormant weapons programs ready to be activated when sanctions were lifted.
 
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