NATO strikes fuel tankers in Afghanistan, many dead

Originally posted by TheCoffinman

Residents of Chahar Dara district in northern Kunduz province say more than 150 civilians were killed and 20 others wounded in Friday's air strike by NATO-led forces

www.rawa.org...

The word civilians loses in translation.
Are we under the impression that the Taliban are in uniform and have an organized army that is in uniform and are fighting on a battlefield are these people are hired to be full time fighters?
Ummm. It doesn't work like that.

Instead: Islamic principle that if an Islamic land is attacked, jihad becomes fard ayn, or incumbent upon every individual believer to join or to aid in any way he can.
The Taliban rely on all muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan to be warriors and fight. That means civilians.

Originally posted by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi

Originally posted by IDK88
They are not freedom fighters they are being led to their deaths and you support this?

Hell yeah I support it. I'd even be fighting for them if I didn't put Canada's interests ahead of my own. They are Afghans fighting for their country, they are not part of some American proxy government that will fail like every other conventional Afghan government.

Afghanistan was meant to be ruled by the people, and the US or any other imperial army will never conquer it. They've been beaten and raped and massacred and # on so many times in history that they know to only trust themselves and to fight off any invaders bringing "freedom" by bombs.

Afghanistan is a proving ground, and whoever will unite that country will be the rightful champion of the world (hopefully somebody understands what I mean by that). It will never be won by guns.

The Taliban and/or Al Qaeda can't win because it would be a violation of sub-atomic realities. On Earth as it is in Heaven...Ringing any bells in your massive brains? Since not many people have seen the relation between Quantum Mechanics and the structure of the Nation State...

Now we're getting all philosophical, eh? I don't know anything about quantum mechanics, but what I have figured out is that nation states have the same relation as an individual person. In fact, I believe that true and stable nations could (and should) have a single individual leader to represent everything their country stands for.

Sometimes I even look at countries as if they were people and I consider their personalities, strengths, relationships, etc. Consider what Afghanistan would be if it was a person, hardened in all aspects by constant fighting and totally against anyone trying to walk all over him.

[edit on 6-9-2009 by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi]

Maybe you have forgotten that Afghanistan is ruled by the Northen Alliance, leaders of the former Afghan mujahideen and diaspora with Karzai head of state.. The only thing Taliban wants is to destroy the lives of women, educated people, artists, musicians, any individual that wants to deploy its owns skills in a free and open society..Something your country fights for as well, if you support the same people who brutaly kill your own countrymen with IED's and the most cowardly tactics, then that's your choice..I dont think great countries such as Canada win wars or peace with people like you...



[edit on 6-9-2009 by Foppezao]

It's not like Canada is some mythical land where everything's different--I've been there and it's pretty much the same-just colder and less friendly.

No, it's much different and don't ever forget it. We are all born and raised with the skills of nature, and it unites us probably on some spiritual basis. We are not out to get each other like warmongering capitalist dogs.

And for your information, only people who know how to use guns responsibly own them up here. By responsibly, I mean all aspects of how to use them and when to use them. If we started killing people because they're robbing us, then we should expect to be killed by robbers. It's called mutual respect and every intelligent Canadian has it, regardless of which end of the spectrum they are from.

If you want some facts, I'll give you one that I learned from my firearms instructor. Many more people commit suicide in Canada from guns than the one or two hundred murdered by guns. That is why control is so important, but at least a third of the people I know own guns anyways (mostly for hunting).

And even if I was being robbed, I couldn't shoot the guy anyways because I would end up in prison for murder and I would lose all of my guns and licenses. I would only be justified if he shot me first, and trust me, he better make the first shot count.

Maybe you have forgotten that Afghanistan is ruled by the Northen Alliance, leaders of the former Afghan mujahideen and diaspora with Karzai head of state.. The only thing Taliban wants is to destroy the lives of women, educated people, artists, musicians, any individual that wants to deploy its owns skills in a free and open society..Something your country fights for as well, if you support the same people who brutaly kill your own countrymen with IED's and the most cowardly tactics, then that's your choice..I dont think great countries such as Canada win wars or peace with people like you...

I am quite aware of who Karzai is. He may have been mujahideen against the Soviets, but he is definitely a puppet of the Americans. He turned on his fellow fighters just for the power.

Taliban has their own culture. Americans may think it is barbaric, but Taliban thinks American culture is extreme. And guess what? Afghanistan is home territory of the Taliban and the US has no business going in there and telling Afghans how to live, especially when it is just a cover to make the US look like they are doing something positive when they obviously went there for more discreet and profitable purposes.

You think Canada is there to support the American invasion? Yeah right, we're just involved to give our troops experience and to give Afghans a chance of recovering from war. You know why Canada doesn't have a huge, imperialist army? It's not because we aren't capable of it, it's because we've decided that we will fight in the interest of the world's future. We are there to support, not to destroy.

German war minister Jung now made a statement, that possibly not only Taliban were killed, but most actually were Taliban.
www.spiegel.de... (it´s in german)

Afghanistan Rights Monitor (ARM), a non-governmental group funded by domestic rights campaigners, said in a report based on more than a dozen interviews with local residents that between 60 and 70 civilians died in the September 4 strike in the Char Dara district of Kunduz province. "Preliminary reports received by ... ARM indicated 60-70 non-combatants died," said the Kabul-based group. "Even if all the victims were supporters of the Taliban the fact that most of them were unarmed and were not engaged in any combat activity does not warrant their mass killing."

www.reuters.com...

A new english SPIEGEL article:
www.spiegel.de...

[edit on 7-9-2009 by euleberlin]

Originally posted by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi

Taliban has their own culture. Americans may think it is barbaric, but Taliban thinks American culture is extreme. And guess what? Afghanistan is home territory of the Taliban and the US has no business going in there and telling Afghans how to live, especially when it is just a cover to make the US look like they are doing something positive when they obviously went there for more discreet and profitable purposes.

Americans get upset when others tell them how to live, yet they are happy to force their ideals on others, usually at the end of a gun.

The Afghans have fought invaders since Attila the Hun, to date no one has been able to subjugate them, the Taliban was setup with the help of the US, give a single Afghan a lot of power and they revert to a stone-age mentality.

Yes, it is a barbaric country, but so is Nth Korea, but NK has no oil, no pipelines nor mineral wealth and no border with Russia's satellite states (or former states) but Afghanistan does have a long border with Iran, a potential jump off point.

reply to post by IDK88


An army commander in Somalia has said that the interim government has lost control of a strategic town in the central regions to insurgents, Radio Garowe reports.

Gen. Muktar Hussein Afrah, who commanded Somali government forces in Beletwein, capital of Hiran region, told reporters Wednesday that the town is under the control of Al Shabaab and Sheikh Abdirahman Ibrahim Ma'ow, Hiran's Islamist governor who recently withdrew support to the Somali government.

reply to post by TheCoffinman



Market manipulation describes a deliberate attempt to interfere with the free and fair operation of the market and create artificial, false or misleading appearances with respect to the price of, or market for, a security, commodity or currency.

I provided you with the above definition, not to educate you about well known manipulative behavior common in the financial markets, but to illustrate that concepts from one area can be applied to other areas. What's going on in the press concerning Somalia seems to be a lot like Ramping, Wash Trades and Churning forms of manipulation.

Someone, the press is the tool but not the source, is trying to make the Somalia situtation to appear more volatile and uncertain than it really is...we've been trading information about that particular city/region for 2 weeks now. As a secondary layer of deception they are trying to make the rebels military operations appear more robust than they acutally are and apparently they are now providing a name for Al Shabaab leadership...to make it appear to be an organized and focused operation.

At the same time the TFG is made to appear as a militarily effeminate and politically impotent organization that lacks morals or a common sense of decency.

Somalia is an enigma and cannot be accurately deciphered. Until the rebels are working from the Palace in Modgadishu and no foreign troops are on its soil...nothing has happened there.

[edit on 9-9-2009 by IDK88]

Some member who should remain unnamed criticized me for what he calls and culturally insensitive remark regarding who Afghan people move themselves from point A to point B.




I hope this image above serves as support to the idea that most Afghans shouldn't waste their time and lives stealing fuel but grain for their Donkey and that a hijacked grain truck wouldn't have been bombed.

reply to post by IDK88


If you are this concerned with the events in Afghanistan then I suggest you head on down to your local recruitment office and sign up for a hitch. I served 4 years in the debacle that was Viet Nam and saw and smelled my share of corpses. It was not pleasant. You may beg to differ.

reply to post by concernedcitizan


Well...if I remember correctly...I didn't think America should go to war over there. It seemed like a set-up....but 70% of American's according to many polls really wanted to go in there bad. Yeah, you guys were totally hot for war 8 years ago. Even Ted Kennedy voted affirmative for that particular war. Oddly enough he voted no on Iraq...the war that's now over and from where troops are headed home.

But since we are there I've taken the position that we should do a adequate job and convince the villagers to stay out of the way, so that we can hunt down and kill Zawahiri and bin Laden and all of their friends.

You think I should sign up, huh? Believe me you don't want me to go to Afghanistan...that would be the real tragedy...at least that's what I heard once when discussing the men in my family that have appeared on a battlefield. If I go to Afghanistan, You will smell the corpses from your house.

Originally posted by IDK88
Some member who should remain unnamed criticized me for what he calls and culturally insensitive remark regarding who Afghan people move themselves from point A to point B.

Kabul traffic:




rural traffic:



This is a quick google search, most photos of vehicles in Afghanistan are of vehicles destroyed in the recent conflict.

The only thing you have to realize is that this is not a black and white issue of why Afghans don't have cars. There's many reasons why they don't use cars, mostly due to the war going on:
- Cars are hard to use when there's no gas for them
- Most roads in Afghanistan are dirt roads best suited for pack animals and are now only being rebuilt by NATO engineers and contractors. Insurgents still enjoy blowing them up too, and you can't drive a car over a giant crater.
- Cars are loud and give off a large heat signature, easy targets for insurgent IEDs, tribal hijackings or NATO airstrikes.
- Pack animals are much more easily maintained and produced. Plus they are traditional means of transportation so why fix something that isn't broken?

Simply put, Afghan terrain is harsh and most of it can only be traversed by pack animals. Trust me, I grew up in an area similar to Afghan terrain (as judged by the military) and we can't ride a car through the bush but we can use horses no problem. This isn't to say that vehicles aren't used in a limited manner to access remote Afghan regions, because they are.

My point here is that you are wrong in assuming that Afghans are primitive because they use donkeys. They choose to use donkeys because they are much more efficient than vehicles in Afghan terrain.

reply to post by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi


"My point here is that you are wrong in assuming that Afghans are primitive because they use donkeys. They choose to use donkeys because they are much more efficient than vehicles in Afghan terrain. "

...and... You can eat them when they break down!
Yum yum

G

Note to self: When hanging out with the Taliban don't stand next to fuel trucks!

That kind of seems like a no brainer .

It's always sad when the civilians get killed.

Originally posted by TreadUpon
reply to post by TheCoffinman

 

Just for the record, lets not forget that Robin Hood was no Marxist. The people were over taxed. The gov't taxed the people into starvation and poverty. Hood stole back from the tax collectors and returned the peoples money to them.

I cant let you lefties steal this legend too....

He stole from the rich and gave to the formerly and soon to be rich again.

The poor all died from neglect and starvation.