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Thread: Afghan War A 'Total Failure' - Should We 'Privatize' It?

  1. #1

    Afghan War A 'Total Failure' - Should We 'Privatize' It?

    Afghan War A 'Total Failure' - Should We 'Privatize' It?



    After 17 years of fighting, the US continues to lose the war in slow motion. Each year the Taliban gains ground. Meanwhile the US spends billions of dollars, kills untold numbers of civilians, and makes negative progress. Blackwater founder Erik Prince wants the US to privatize the war and hire his company to fight it. Is that a viable solution?
    "Foreign aid is taking money from the poor people of a rich country, and giving it to the rich people of a poor country." - Ron Paul
    "Beware the Military-Industrial-Financial-Pharma-Corporate-Internet-Media-Government Complex." - B4L update of General Dwight D. Eisenhower
    "Debt is the drug, Wall St. Banksters are the dealers, and politicians are the addicts." - B4L
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    The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own, and do not represent this forum or any other entities or persons.



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  3. #2
    The private group I would choose to take over was forcibly disbanded by Philip IV in 1312.
    There are no crimes against people.
    There are only crimes against the state.
    And the state will never, ever choose to hold accountable its agents, because a thing can not commit a crime against itself.

  4. #3


    I don't understand. At 3 minutes and 38 seconds is Dr. Paul saying that there is documented evidence that prior to 9/11 the U.S.:

    • Already had plans to invade Afghanistan?
    • Already had the Patriot Act written and ready to be implemented?



  5. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by charrob View Post
    I don't understand. At 3 minutes and 38 seconds is Dr. Paul saying that there is documented evidence that prior to 9/11 the U.S.:

    • Already had plans to invade Afghanistan?
    • Already had the Patriot Act written and ready to be implemented?


    The PATRIOT Act, 342 pages of legalese, was introduced barely a month after 9/11.

    I'm fairly certain it wasn't created from scratch in those 42 days.

  6. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by r3volution 3.0 View Post
    The PATRIOT Act, 342 pages of legalese, was introduced barely a month after 9/11.

    I'm fairly certain it wasn't created from scratch in those 42 days.
    Thanks. That makes sense. I wonder if we the people will ever find out if the invasion of Afghanistan was pre-determined as well. Daniel McAdams makes a good point about how the Taliban were really slandered by the MSM in the 1990s and, so it seems, the MSM were already ratcheting up public disapproval of the group and, possibly, beating the war drums well before 9/11.
    Last edited by charrob; 08-22-2018 at 09:04 PM.

  7. #6


    Here's the article by Eric Margolis that is discussed in this video:



    AFGHANISTAN: THE WAR THAT SHAMES AMERICA



    After 17 bloody years, the longest war in US history continues without relent or purpose in Afghanistan.

    There, a valiant, fiercely-independent people, the Pashtun (Pathan) mountain tribes, have battled the full might of the US Empire to a stalemate that has so far cost American taxpayers $4 trillion, and 2,371 dead and 20,320 wounded soldiers. No one knows how many Afghans have died. The number is kept secret.

    Pashtun tribesmen in the Taliban alliance and their allies are fighting to oust all foreign troops from Afghanistan and evict the western-imposed and backed puppet regime in Kabul that pretends to be the nation’s legitimate government. Withdraw foreign troops and the Kabul regime would last for only days.

    The whole thing smells of the Vietnam War. Lessons so painfully learned by America in that conflict have been completely forgotten and the same mistakes repeated. The lies and happy talk from politicians, generals and media continue apace.

    This week, Taliban forces occupied the important strategic city of Ghazni on the road from Peshawar to Kabul. It took three days and massive air attacks by US B-1 heavy bombers, Apache helicopter gun ships, A-10 ground attack aircraft, and massed warplanes from US bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Qatar and the 5th US Fleet to finally drive back the Taliban assault. Taliban also overran key military targets in Kabul and the countryside, killing hundreds of government troops in a sort of Afghan Tet offensive.

    Afghan regime police and army units put up feeble resistance or ran away. Parts of Ghazni were left in ruins. It was a huge embarrassment to the US imperial generals and their Afghan satraps who had claimed ‘the corner in Afghanistan has finally been turned.’

    Efforts by the Trump administration to bomb Taliban into submission have clearly failed. US commanders fear using American ground troops in battle lest they suffer serious casualties. Meanwhile, the US is running low on bombs.

    Roads are now so dangerous for the occupiers that most movement must be by air. Taliban is estimated to permanently control almost 50% of Afghanistan. That number would rise to 100% were it not for omnipresent US air power. Taliban rules the night.

    Taliban are not and never were ‘terrorists’ as Washington’s war propaganda falsely claimed. I was there at the creation of the movement – a group of Afghan religious students armed by Pakistan whose goal was to stop post-civil war banditry, the mass rape of women, and to fight the Afghan Communists.

    When Taliban gained power, it eliminated 95% of the rampant Afghanistan opium-heroin trade. After the US invaded, allied to the old Afghan Communists and northern Tajik tribes, opium-heroin production soared to record levels. Today, US-occupied Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of opium, morphine and heroin.

    US occupation authorities claim drug production is run by Taliban. This is another big lie. The Afghan warlords who support the regime of President Ashraf Ghani entirely control the production and export of drugs. The army and secret police get a big cut. How else would trucks packed with drugs get across the border into Pakistan and Central Asia?

    The United States has inadvertently become one of the world’s leading drug dealers. This is one of the most shameful legacies of the Afghan War. But just one. Watching the world’s greatest power bomb and ravage little Afghanistan, a nation so poor that some of its people can’t afford sandals, is a huge dishonor for Americans.

    Even so, the Pashtun defeated the invading armies of Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, the Mogul Emperors and the mighty British Raj. The US looks to be next in the Graveyard of Empires.

    Nobody in Washington can enunciate a good reason for continuing the colonial war in Afghanistan. One hears talk of minerals, women’s rights and democracy as a pretext for keeping US forces in Afghanistan. All nonsense. A possible real reason is to deny influence over Afghanistan, though the Chinese are too smart to grab this poisoned cup. They have more than enough with their rebellious Uighur Muslims.

    Interestingly, the so-called ‘terrorist training camps’ supposedly found in Afghanistan in 2001 were actually:


    • Guerrilla training camps run by Pakistani intelligence to train Kashmiri rebels and
    • CIA-run camps for exiled Uighur fighters from China.


    The canard that the US had to invade Afghanistan to get at Osama bin Laden, alleged author of the 9/11 attacks, is untrue. The attacks were made by Saudis and mounted from Hamburg and Madrid, not Afghanistan. I’m not even sure bin Laden was behind the attacks.

    My late friend and journalist Arnaud de Borchgrave shared my doubts and insisted that the Taliban leader Mullah Omar offered to turn bin Laden over to a court in a Muslim nation to prove his guilt or innocence.

    President George Bush, caught sleeping on guard duty and humiliated, had to find an easy target for revenge – and that was Afghanistan.

    Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2018
    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...shames-america

  8. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by charrob View Post
    Thanks. That makes sense. I wonder if we the people will ever find out if the invasion of Afghanistan was pre-determined as well. Daniel McAdams makes a good point about how the Taliban were really slandered by the MSM in the 1990s and, so it seems, the MSM were already ratcheting up public disapproval of the group and, possibly, beating the war drums well before 9/11.
    I think so, but this is difficult to prove.

    The evidence for a long-term plan to destabilize Iraq, Syria, and Libya is better.

    I'm not aware of any pre-9/11 documents of that kind which discuss Afghanistan.

  9. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by charrob View Post
    Thanks. That makes sense. I wonder if we the people will ever find out if the invasion of Afghanistan was pre-determined as well. Daniel McAdams makes a good point about how the Taliban were really slandered by the MSM in the 1990s and, so it seems, the MSM were already ratcheting up public disapproval of the group and, possibly, beating the war drums well before 9/11.
    IIRC, both the Taliban and Osama Bin Ladin had been fairly well demonized, especially by neocons like Bill Kristol and John McCain.

    A story from Mar 12, 2001, pre 9/11. There were already sanctions, and a “humanitarian crisis” that needed “solving”.

    After 1,700 years, Buddhas fall to Taliban dynamite

    THE world's two largest standing Buddhas - one of them 165ft high - were blown up by the Taliban in Afghanistan at the weekend.

    After failing to destroy the 1,700-year-old sandstone statues of Buddha with anti-aircraft and tank fire, the Taliban brought a lorryload of dynamite from Kabul. A Western observer said: "They drilled holes into the torsos of the two statues and then placed dynamite charges inside the holes to blow them up."

    The operation to wreck the statues carved into a cliff in the Bamiyan Valley in the Hindu Kush mountains of central Afghanistan was supervised by Mullah Obaidullah, the Taliban defence minister. There has been an international outcry since Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader, issued a special edict on Feb 26 ordering the destruction of all non-Islamic statues.

    Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary-General, had pleaded with the Taliban's foreign minister, Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, in Islamabad yesterday to save Afghanistan's cultural heritage. He was told that all other "moveable statues" - including more than a dozen smaller Buddha statues in the Kabul Museum - had also been destroyed.
    ...
    Mr Annan added that it was "not going to be easier now to raise money" from the international community for the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Afghanistan. More than one million people have been displaced by the fighting and drought. But, no government has told me categorically that they would not help the desperate people of Afghanistan."
    ..
    The destruction of the statues is almost certain to lead to even greater condemnation and the isolation of the Taliban by the international community. In January, the United Nations Security Council imposed sanctions on the Taliban.
    ...
    More: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...-dynamite.html
    "Foreign aid is taking money from the poor people of a rich country, and giving it to the rich people of a poor country." - Ron Paul
    "Beware the Military-Industrial-Financial-Pharma-Corporate-Internet-Media-Government Complex." - B4L update of General Dwight D. Eisenhower
    "Debt is the drug, Wall St. Banksters are the dealers, and politicians are the addicts." - B4L
    "Totally free immigration? I've never taken that position. I believe in national sovereignty." - Ron Paul

    Proponent of real science.
    The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own, and do not represent this forum or any other entities or persons.



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  11. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by charrob View Post


    I don't understand. At 3 minutes and 38 seconds is Dr. Paul saying that there is documented evidence that prior to 9/11 the U.S.:

    • Already had plans to invade Afghanistan?
    • Already had the Patriot Act written and ready to be implemented?


    As a kid I heard some guy on the radio say that the PA was already & waiting & that no one in Congress bothered to read it before signing. I looked up the person speaking- it was a guy named Ron Paul. That was the beginning of my education and path into Liberty.
    There is no spoon.

  12. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by r3volution 3.0 View Post
    I think so, but this is difficult to prove.

    The evidence for a long-term plan to destabilize Iraq, Syria, and Libya is better.

    I'm not aware of any pre-9/11 documents of that kind which discuss Afghanistan.
    Totally agree. Here's two sources discussing middle eastern countries the U.S. planned to destroy other than Afghanistan:

    • Article from Paul Craig Roberts: "9/11 was the neoconservatives “new Pearl Harbor” that they wrote they needed in order to launch their wars in the Middle East. George W. Bush’s first Secretary of the Treasury said that the topic of Bush’s first cabinet meeting was the invasion of Iraq. This was prior to 9/11. In other words, Washington’s wars in the Middle East were planned prior to 9/11."

    • Link to video interviewing 4-star General Wesley Clark where he explains how the Bush Administration planned on destroying 7 countries in 5 years. In this interview Wesley Clark says the following: "About 10 days after 9/11 I went through the Pentagon and saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say 'hello' to some of the people on the joint staff who used to work for me and one of the Generals called me in. He said: “Sir you have to come in and talk to me a second.” He said: "We've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq." This was on or about 9/20/2001. I said: "We're going to war with Iraq, why?" He said: "I don't know." He said: "I guess they don't know what else to do." I said: Did they find some information connecting Saddam to al qaeda? He said: "No, there's nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq. [...] So I came back to see him a few weeks later. By that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said are we still going to war with Iraq? He said: "No. It's worse than that." He said: "I just got this from upstairs from the Defense Secretary's office today. This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out 7 countries in 5 years -- starting with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off Iran.”
    Last edited by charrob; 08-23-2018 at 10:15 PM.

  13. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    IIRC, both the Taliban and Osama Bin Ladin had been fairly well demonized, especially by neocons like Bill Kristol and John McCain.

    A story from Mar 12, 2001, pre 9/11. There were already sanctions, and a “humanitarian crisis” that needed “solving”.
    Thanks for this article Brian. So the edict to blow up the statues was given on 2/26/2001 and 3/12/2001 the Taliban blew up the statues. But it was in January of 2001 the UNSC imposed sanctions on the Taliban, so before the west knew about the statues. And well before the edict on 2/26/2001, there were one million people who had been displaced by fighting and drought.

    I don't even remember what fighting was going on in Afghanistan prior to 2/26/2001, or why the UNSC would put sanctions on them. Dr. Paul's belief that the plans to go into Afghanistan were laid before 9/11 even occurred become clearer in another context: the speech by Col. Lawrence Wilkerson at last weekend's RPI Conference in D.C. where he says:

    We have been in Afghanistan for 3 reasons:

    • It is the only hard power the United States has that sits proximate to the central Belt Road Initiative of China that runs across central Asia. If we had to impact that with military power, we are in position to do so in Afghanistan.

    • The second reason we are there is because we are cheek by jowl with the potentially most unstable nuclear stockpile on the face of the earth in Pakistan. We want to be able to leap on that stockpile and stabilize it if necessary.

    • The third reason we are there is because there are 20 million Uighurs and they don’t like Han Chinese in Xinjiang Province in western China. And if the CIA has to mount an operation using those Uighurs as Erdogan has done in Turkey against Assad (there’s 20,000 Uighurs in Idlib in Syria right now – which is why the Chinese might be deploying military forces to Syria in the very near future to take care of those Uighurs that Erdogan invited in) well the CIA would want to destabilize China and that would be the best way to do it. They would foment unrest and join with those Uighurs in pushing the Han Chinese in Beijing from internal places rather than external.
    Here's a link to that part of Col. Wilkerson's speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91wz5syVNZs&t=20m36s.

    Here's his entire speech:




    So perhaps that's it. Perhaps this whole charade our military has been in since 9/11 had nothing to do with 9/11. Which finally makes sense to me as i never understood why we went into Afghanistan, especially after the tiny number of al qaeda our government said were there had been destroyed or captured within a few months. The Taliban are indigenous Pashtuns, not international terrorists who want to harm the west. The Taliban leader at the time was willing to hand Osama Bin Laden over to be tried to see if he had, indeed, been involved in 9/11. Bush refused their offer. (Most likely because, as Paul Craig Roberts wrote, he was in a Pakistani hospital at the time dying of renal disease.) However, 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi. The plans for 9/11 were made in Europe (unbeknownst to European govts). The training for 9/11 occurred at airports in our own country because of lax immigration policies. Results of court trials of victims families show large parts of the Saudi government being completely complicit in those attacks. The pilots were not even religious - just international terrorists. The training camps in Afghanistan at the time were controlled by 2 entities according to Eric Margolis' article posted above:

    • Pakistani intelligence who trained Kashmiri rebels for war against India.
    • CIA who trained Uighurs to use as proxies in their never ending wars around the planet (including Syria).

    So now we know, despite the talking heads on news media, that our military and cia are not at war against Islamist terrorists -- instead they are in bed with them. They trained and armed al qaeda in Libya to overthrow Gaddafi. They trained and armed al qaeda in Syria to overthrow Assad. And as Col. Wilkerson states at the beginning of the above video, according to the recent blockbuster AP investigation (report here), (more discussion here), U.S. military ground forces are currently fighting against indigenous Houthi rebels in Yemen along side of al qaeda. So it's all a farce. If there is any reason for any of this insanity, it is to contain China, Iran, and Russia. Now that our cia and military are responsible for entire countries and millions of innocent people being blown up and tens of millions maimed for the rest of their lives, countries and peoples that never threatened us or harmed us, our country is now truly hated by most of the world. Mission Accomplished, the security of the American people is now threatened because of our government's actions overseas.
    Last edited by charrob; 08-23-2018 at 11:44 PM.

  14. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Ender View Post
    As a kid I heard some guy on the radio say that the PA was already & waiting & that no one in Congress bothered to read it before signing. I looked up the person speaking- it was a guy named Ron Paul. That was the beginning of my education and path into Liberty.
    Dr. Paul has taught us all so much. I know I will always be eternally grateful. And upon thinking about this pre-9/11 stuff, there's a third element in all this too that Bill Binney said in an interview years ago well before the Snowden documents came out. He said NSA had already began embarking on a new system that could spy on the American people without a warrant. He said after 9/11 hit, that's when they pushed forward real hard and got it done. But the plans were there before that. So, prior to 9/11, the following were the U.S. government's plans:

    • Invade Afghanistan.
    • Write software to spy on American citizens without a warrant.
    • Pass the Patriot Act that lets the Government spy on American citizens without a legitimate warrant via a phony, rubber-stamp, FISA Court.
    • Invade Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran --all in 5 years.

    What do the Masters of the Universe have in mind for us?
    Last edited by charrob; 08-23-2018 at 10:00 PM.

  15. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by charrob View Post
    Dr. Paul has taught us all so much. I know I will always be eternally grateful. And upon thinking about this pre-9/11 stuff, there's a third element in all this too that Bill Binney said in an interview years ago well before the Snowden documents came out. He said NSA had already began embarking on a new system that could spy on the American people without a warrant. He said after 9/11 hit, that's when they pushed forward real hard and got it done. But the plans were there before that. So, prior to 9/11, the following were the U.S. government's plans:

    • Invade Afghanistan.
    • Write software to spy on American citizens without a warrant.
    • Pass the Patriot Act that lets the Government spy on American citizens without a legitimate warrant via a phony, rubber-stamp, FISA Court.
    • Invade Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran --all in 5 years.

    What do the Masters of the Universe have in mind for us?
    The Matrix.
    There is no spoon.

  16. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Ender View Post
    The Matrix.
    I need to see that movie. Sure seems like a lot of people are living in a false reality -- endless jingoism, flag waving, hero worship of militarism -- with no intelligent dialog about the completely unnecessary, illegal, unconstitutional, war crimes our country's government forces are actually perpetrating overseas; no debate, no thinking outside the box by the MSM (or the people who watch it). Mob mentality. And if you dare mention this to those inside the Matrix, instead of opening their eyes, they get mad and insist their false reality is accurate. Others may disagree, but imo the vehement anger against Colin Kaepernick because he dares not stand during patriotic crap at a football game, is a good example. For the life of me, i don't know how i can possibly be proud of a country that just blew up 60 innocent people, 51 of them children in a school bus, in Yemen. The only explanation is that the flag wavers have chosen to live in an alternate, fictional reality. ie. they're insane. What other explanation can there be?




  17. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by charrob View Post
    I need to see that movie. Sure seems like a lot of people are living in a false reality -- endless jingoism, flag waving, hero worship of militarism -- with no intelligent dialog about the completely unnecessary, illegal, unconstitutional, war crimes our country's government forces are actually perpetrating overseas; no debate, no thinking outside the box by the MSM (or the people who watch it). Mob mentality. And if you dare mention this to those inside the Matrix, instead of opening their eyes, they get mad and insist their false reality is accurate. Others may disagree, but imo the vehement anger against Colin Kaepernick because he dares not stand during patriotic crap at a football game, is a good example. For the life of me, i don't know how i can possibly be proud of a country that just blew up 60 innocent people, 51 of them children in a school bus, in Yemen. The only explanation is that the flag wavers have chosen to live in an alternate, fictional reality. ie. they're insane. What other explanation can there be?



    My POV is that The Matrix is one of the most important movies made in the last couple of decades. It shows exactly what is going on if you have eyes to see.

    There is no spoon.

  18. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by Ender View Post
    My POV is that The Matrix is one of the most important movies made in the last couple of decades. It shows exactly what is going on if you have eyes to see.

    Thanks Ender. Have put it on our Netflix queue and look forward to seeing it!



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  20. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by charrob View Post
    Thanks Ender. Have put it on our Netflix queue and look forward to seeing it!
    YES!

    There is no spoon.

  21. #18
    @Ender @charrob
    Quote Originally Posted by charrob View Post
    Dr. Paul has taught us all so much. I know I will always be eternally grateful.
    What do the Masters of the Universe have in mind for us?
    Ron Paul

    'Battlefield America The War on the American People': John Whitehead at RPI Media & War Conference

    Rutherford Institute President John Whitehead warns us about the greatest threat to our freedoms and our way of life:
    an increasingly militarized government at all levels in the United States.


  22. #19
    In before someone posts an interview of Eric Prince and Stefan Molyneux telling us how much of an Austrian he is, like that is supposed to make anyone feel good about US imperialism

  23. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by goldenequity View Post
    @Ender @charrob


    Ron Paul

    'Battlefield America The War on the American People': John Whitehead at RPI Media & War Conference

    Rutherford Institute President John Whitehead warns us about the greatest threat to our freedoms and our way of life:
    an increasingly militarized government at all levels in the United States.

    I'd +rep you again, if I could.
    There is no spoon.

  24. #21
    WIKI

    Omnibus Counterterrorism Act of 1995, US Senate bills S.390 and S.761.[1] were introduced by Senator Joe Biden on behalf of the Clinton Administration on February 10, 1995.

    (Patriot Act)

    What a coincidence!

    Oops! Looks like you might have a little destabilization down the road due to less individual liberty, better prepare for that with a plan for less individual liberty...

    Hillary is down for privatizing.
    Last edited by bunklocoempire; 08-26-2018 at 08:54 PM.
    Fear of man will prove to be a snare, but whoever trusts in the LORD is kept safe. Proverbs 29:25
    "I think the propaganda machine is the biggest problem that we face today in trying to get the truth out to people."
    Ron Paul

    Please watch, subscribe, like, & share, Ron Paul Liberty Report
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