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WebWord Weblog Posting Posting Date: October 27, 2002 Blast Rocks U.S. Base in Southern Afghanistan -- "About 8,000 American soldiers are in Afghanistan pursuing remnants of the Taliban and bin Laden's al Qaeda network. Kandahar airport has become one of the main U.S. bases." (Comments: Are there really only 8,000 American soldiers in Afghanistan? Is the United States military doing more than the media is reporting? Was the "war" in Afghanistan as clean and easy as the media made it sound? How skeptical of the media are you?)
Reader Comments...
All of the media has it's hidden (or not so hidden) agenda. I think the trick is to get as wide a selection of biased reports as you can. Newsweek says, "The benefit in fighting a proxy-style war in Afghanistan was victory on the cheap-cheap, at any rate, in American blood. "The cost, Newsweek's investigation has established, is that American forces were working intimately with 'allies' who committed what could well qualify as war crimes." The film tells what happened after the fall of the city of Konduz to allies of the US. Thousands of prisoners were packed into airtight containers, 200-300 in each box. On route to prison about half of them suffocated to death or were shot. Others were butchered as the containers were tipped into a mass grave in the desert. "The Americans talk about the Taliban and Al Qaida. What is Al Qaida to me? This is my home, my children, my land, and it is all in danger because of these fighters who are with the Americans."
It helped that lots of Afganis did not really like the Taliban or the non-Afgans (Suadis, Yemenis, etc.) that were in their country. Once the tide turned on the Taliban, and it was apparant that the Americans were in the fight for real, the local support dried up and they had nowhere to go. There is still low level insurrection and tribal warfare going on, I think this will continue for the foreseeable future because tribal conflicts have been a part of the region for generations. The locals can be pretty cruel to each other. It's a problem to associate with the "Northern Alliance" and then not get tarred by their retributions and feuds with the other groups. It's a tough balancing act. Posted by: mcw on October 29, 2002 11:11 AM
> tribal conflicts have been a part of the region for generations Would you call the cold war, the vietnam war, the korean war, the american revolution, the american civil war, ww1, ww2, etc. etc. a 'tribal conflict'. Posted by: Mac on October 29, 2002 03:46 PM
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