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New York, 2:22 AM
Mon Nov 30
13 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/13/09
I don't know what a shit storm looks like, but the more I read about Afghanistan/Pakistan and the marauding hordes that rule its nether regions, I am definitely getting an image.
And it is not pretty. #davidrohde
11/13/09
11/13/09
I, for one, wouldn't want Mr. Rohde's job, not so much for the obvious danger posed but because the act of communicating what he is learning as the result of being embedded as he is has to be beyond comprehension to most people. #davidrohde
11/13/09
11/13/09
I would hope that people like yourself would wait for Mr. Rohde to have the luxury of some time to distill the sheer viscerality of that experience, and then see what analysis he puts forth. Given what he has been through, it not only seems fair but necessary if we are going to learn anything beyond what he has already imparted. #davidrohde
11/13/09
I would recommend Seth Jones's book In the Graveyard of Empires for a much better understanding of our situation in Afghanistan right now, and how our actions along with local Pashtun culture and history have contributed to the rise of the insurgency in the last few years.
[www.amazon.com] #davidrohde
11/13/09
11/13/09
I didn't mean to imply that all Afghans are Taliban sympathizers. In this you are correct. But they're a lot more scared of the Taliban than they are of us. If the Taliban (and I'm using Taliban as shorthand for the various insurgent networks active in Afghanistan) tells them to never breathe a word when Americans are around or they'll kill their family, you can bet they're not going to be overly helpful. On top of this, the rural areas are still much more conservative and more likely to be sympathetic to the Taliban than they are to us. Our COIN strategy, if we choose to keep following it, has us supposedly withdrawing from these areas as they are so hard to control. These are the areas where you get your battles of Wanat or battle at COP Keating. #davidrohde
11/13/09
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12/29/08
Vapid.
12/29/08
12/28/08
12/27/08
Golda Meir said there will be peace when the Arabs love their children as much as they hate the Jews.
There will not be peace when one side wants the kids to go to Michigan and some of the other side ( not all) want their kids to become martyrs.
12/28/08
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12/28/08
12/27/08
12/27/08
12/28/08
12/27/08
But anyway. Mainstream news media has lost all credibility in my eyes. I avoid watching it altogether. It makes me so pissed off. Why? To try to sum it up in one sentence; Because they misinform and sensationalize.
12/27/08
12/27/08
12/27/08
* By "that motherfucker" I mean the figurative Pope -- this ex-Nazi one and all the others that would prefer Africans die from AIDS as punishment for pre-marital sex than bring Catholicism into the 21st centruy by promoting the use of contraception as the greater good. But now we digress. . .
12/27/08
Can we please get back to nasty people doing tacky things? This serious news shit is really bringing me down, and frankly, i don't need the help.
12/27/08
12/27/08
Tit = Launching little rinky-dink missiles with 10-mile ranges into homes in places like Sderot that damage homes but whose residents have been amply warned and protected by an Israeli state that actually cares about its citizens (as opposed to the Hamas government, which doesn't give a shit about its civilians and is little more than a two-bit gang of corrupt Arab big men assholes backed by pan-Arabist dictators with heads up their asses hoping to exploite the Palestinian cause so as to keep their own populaces form hacking their heads off).
Tat = Massive Israeli air assault (with weapons the US practically gives to them) with only general efforts to avoid killing too many civilian non-combatants: 200 dead, 700 wounded (so far). But by creating so much meat, Israel also creates more people that want it to be destroyed. Anything that kills non-combatants as collective punishment against strong men that have iron grips on these people and treat them like shit is bound to end up being a bad thing to do.
Answer: Happy New Year! Have another drink! I know I will. Chin chin! Thank God, Allah AND YHVH that I 'm not over there!
12/27/08
12/27/08
That being said, the one thing I've ever enjoyed that Keith Gessen wrote was when he called the Israelis assholes and the Palestinians idiots. Idiots should learn not to provoke assholes. My major problem with Israel is it's failure to reward Gaza for the truce. True, it wasn't the most maintained truce, but if they give you six months of relative peace, you need to concede something, to show them it was worth it.
Oh and also, Owen, this was a remarkably stupid post. Were you trying to give us some big picture insight a la "Even though it's the holidays, people in the world are still mean and don't care!" Brilliant observation.
12/27/08
12/27/08
I've never been to anyplace in Gaza, either, but I suspect that mommies are concerned about their babies walking home from Palestinian schools, too.
And statistically speaking, those mommies should be more concerned, since their babies have a grater chance of dying. Mommies, babies. We're always appealing to those mommy/baby things aren't we? What about grown men? Don't they count? Ir is it like Bill Hicks says: "once you turn 18 you're off my love list."
12/27/08
12/27/08
Big bad Israelis launching well-armed military incursions, or the only democracy in the area trying to preserve its right to exist in the face of myriad and explicit attempts to wipe it off the map? Terrorists and dupes of regional powers who really don't want these people (Palestinians) on their soil targeting civilians in Israel, or a guerrilla response on the part of an elected government in the face of vastly superior fire power?
It's just another iteration of the circle-jerks of blood and violence in the region. I agree with you this far, yes, both sides have come to depend on the blood and violence. Without them, they have no raison d'etre. As Stalin said, one death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic, and this conflict is well into the realm of the statistical.
12/27/08
@gawkimo: I'm just saying that a purposeful act of murder by one side is as bad an act as a larger military action by the other. Both have the intention of murder, regardless of the outcome. It's just that one has larger means and ability than the other.
12/27/08
I'm not sure you can say it's "obvious" i've "chosen" one side over the other. What is this, grade-school PE? "Coach, coach! I want the Israelis on my team, everyone knows how athletic Jews are!"
Big bad Israelis launching well-armed military incursions, or the only democracy in the area trying to preserve its right to exist in the face of myriad and explicit attempts to wipe it off the map? Terrorists and dupes of regional powers who really don't want these people (Palestinians) on their soil targeting civilians in Israel, or a guerrilla response on the part of an elected government in the face of vastly superior fire power?
That's choosing a side? Huh.
Insofar as it's pertinent, yes, i sympathize with the Israelis. Terrorists and suicide bombers do nothing for me but want to call in an air-strike to burn them out root and branch. That said, and thinking here too of American actions in Iraq, were i in the position of burying my young son because of this, i'd be hurling Molotov cocktails and strapping TNT to my chest, too.
As i said, there are no easy answers, and every individual death is a tragedy. All of them together on both side are still tragic, and the entire situation approaches an ancient Greek drama in the scale of the tragedy. Unfortunately, we have no deus ex machina to solve it. Hillary Clinton will have no more luck than Kindalousy Rice.
12/28/08
Palestinian militants kidnapping soldiers does not equal the response of raining cluster bombs over half of Lebanon.
Some may believe that military response that kills civilian non-combatants is OK if those uppity civilians don't do something about the terrorists in their midst.
Some may also beleive that they have a right to target civilians on land they say was stolen from them.
Some beleive the land didn't belone to anyone, therefore it was there for the taking.
That's what the British said when they started taking land in North Ameirca. The Native Americans didn't claim the land the way Western mentalities claim land, with flags and nations, but they nevertheless lived on it and farmed and otherwise had ownership of it until a superior military force pushed them off of it, labeled rebels as terrorists, and target them and their families for annihilation each time they rose up and fought, sometimes doing bad things themselves (like scalping settlers).
And when the Indians fought back, sometimes killing inncent civilians, they were labeled terrorists and massacres by a superior military force. Eventually they were relegated to reservations to live in poverty until they submit by being culturally broken to integrating with the dominant society.
Such is history!