Anyone remember East Germany - GDR - The German Democratic Republic? Of course, since they said they were Democratic and a Republic, they must have been, and they were just as good or bad as another self-professed democratic republic, the United States of America. The anti-war/pacifist, angry at the US policy resulting in civilian deaths in Afghanistan, paints the US in the same colors as the GDR. To say there is a difference is to fall prey to "American exceptionalism".

The above kind of reasoning has crept a bit into this discussion here, in my opinion.

I bet in response to this post, I will be asked - when did GDR last invade anyone? If anything, isn't the US worse than GDR?

(Yeah, yeah! I'd be happy to lose the bet, though.)

IMO, why the anti-war movement is so pathetic compared to the previous major effort (Vietnam) is in part precisely because of this style of anti-war reasoning.

Turkmenistan-Afganistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) natural gas pipeline to be build by US/Europe oil multinationals is the reason why US/NATO tries to stabilize the region. This is common knowledge in Asia, Russia and Middle East, i.e. in places out of reach of US/Europe governments propaganda arms.

I think this is bullshit.

There is a proposed Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline - if you look at the map, it doesn't go through Afghanistan - but India-Pakistan mutual suspicions keep it from being built, though Iran is quite keen on it.

The same will hold for any Turkemenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline.

You have to realize that Pakistani support for the Taliban is because Pakistan wants a kind of control over Afghanistan to have "strategic depth" against India. A pipeline in Afghanistan is something Pakistan would want control over.

There is nothing US/NATO can do to change that. For any such pipeline, India and Pakistan have to be the prime movers. If such pipelines get off the drawing boards it will be because of a India-Pakistan partnership and not because of anything US/NATO does.

With the understanding that conditions are not uniform in Afghanistan, improvements some women have seen since the Taliban are:

1. some of them can get educated

2. some of them can see doctors

3. some of them can work

4. there are some women in government

5. some of them can leave home without a male escort and burkha.

Under the Taliban, the numbers for 1,2,3,4,5 was essentially zero.

I've often thought that the only way to take the Israeli bogey of security off the table is to station US troops there, just like in Korea and Germany. Then, Israel cannot claim its small size makes it prone to be overrun, and it needs each extra square meter of land it can get. With US troops stationed there, give the Palestinians their state.

It would be very fitting to have a US base in Israel - less close allies like Japan, UK, Germany all have US bases :)

The point is that the initial war was not a terrible thing for Afghans (unlike the Iraq war). After the Taliban were ousted the country had a chance.

I've provided stats only from 2004 (none from 2002).

If you read 2009 reports, the situation now is bleak compared to 2004. That is the failure.

http://www.peacewomen.org/news/MiddleEast/June09/Afghanistan_Women%27sRights.html

or click on signature.

"Reports from one tribal village can be bright and optimistic while another locale only a few miles away will be rife with atrocities towards women and girls. "Problems in Afghanistan tend to be local in nature, not nationwide," says Stephen Brown, a humanitarian aid worker with the La Jolla Golden Triangle Rotary Club in San Diego, California who has been in and out of both Pakistan and Afghanistan since 2002."

"By Vorgetts' account, the prospects for Afghan women were thought to have improved in the years following the Taliban's fall, but hope quickly dissipated when the Bush administration's priorities shifted to Iraq. The little aid directed towards Afghanistan in the following years was allocated to the military, leaving almost nothing for vital improvements in education and infrastructure, laments Vorgetts."

"To many, the differences appear insurmountable because of what is often described as the entrenched tribal culture prevalent in rural areas. But Vorgetts, who grew up in Afghanistan and remembers far better conditions for women just 30 years ago, promptly dismisses this argument. "It means it's not culture, it's forced by the fundamentalists," she says, adding that she believes education to be the most powerful weapon against these "root causes of terrorism.""

http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/afghanistan_23471.html

NEW YORK, 28 September 2004 – The first comprehensive study of the situation of children and women in Afghanistan in nearly a decade has been released today. It shows that fewer infants are dying and more children are going to school. But it also shows that the majority of the country still has no access to clean water, and mortality rates remain high.

....

The survey shows that four million children are now attending school and there have been great improvements in health-related indicators. The number of cases of polio and measles has declined.

But there are still millions of girls who don’t go to school and a large portion of the population has no access to clean water. Diarrhoea causes the death of many children and health care for women in rural areas is limited.