Taliban Prison Break

It's like the Great Escape except Steve McQueen would have a beard and be wearing a Keffiyeh:

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – Taliban militants tunneled at least 480 inmates out of the main prison in southern Afghanistan overnight, whisking them through a 1,000-foot-long underground passage they had dug over months, officials and insurgents said Monday.

Officials at Sarposa prison in the city of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, say they only discovered the breach at about 4 a.m., a half hour after the Taliban said they had gotten all the prisoners out.

The militants began digging the tunnel about five months ago from a house within shooting distance of the prison guard towers. It was not immediately clear whether they lived in the house while they dug. They meticulously plotted the tunnel's course around police checkpoints and major roads, the insurgent group said in a statement.

The diggers finally broke through to the prison cells around 11 p.m. Sunday night, and a handful of inmates who knew of the plan unlocked cells and ushered hundreds of inmates to freedom without a shot being fired.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/as_afghanistan


How long is the West going to keep trying to subdue this rather unsubduable country?

Originally posted by no1marauder
It's like the Great Escape except Steve McQueen would have a beard and be wearing a Keffiyeh:

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – Taliban militants tunneled at least 480 inmates out of the main prison in southern Afghanistan overnight, whisking them through a 1,000-foot-long underground passage they had dug over months, officials and insurgents said Monday ...[text shortened]... How long is the West going to keep trying to subdue this rather unsubduable country?

I think the most important question is, how long are you going to be peddling this defeatism of yours? To take an isolated incident of disorder and conclude that the only feasible path the West could follow is that of fleeing with the tail between its legs is a blatantly defeatist stance at best and a gesture of cowardice mixed with indolence at worst.

Originally posted by generalissimo
I think the most important question is, how long are you going to be peddling this defeatism of yours? To take an isolated incident of disorder and conclude that the only feasible path the West could follow is that of fleeing with the tail between its legs is a blatantly defeatist stance at best and a gesture of cowardice mixed with indolence at worst.

GFY.

What exactly is being defeated? The neo-colonial aspirations of Western elites?

Originally posted by generalissimo
I think the most important question is, how long are you going to be peddling this defeatism of yours? To take an isolated incident of disorder and conclude that the only feasible path the West could follow is that of fleeing with the tail between its legs is a blatantly defeatist stance at best and a gesture of cowardice mixed with indolence at worst.

What is your suggestion? That the US stay there indefinitely and pretend that if we just stop having a defeatist attitude then it'll be ok?

There is a point where you have to realize that there is no way you are going to achieve certain goals and then you stop dumping resources at a cause you won't win - that's not defeatism, it's deciding to stop your quixotic quest.

What is the actual specific goal in Afghanistan? What are and should we be willing to sacrifice in order to achieve it? Is the goal even possible?

Those are legitimate questions that haven't really had public answers - and we should have them.

Originally posted by PsychoPawn
What is your suggestion? That the US stay there indefinitely and pretend that if we just stop having a defeatist attitude then it'll be ok?

There is a point where you have to realize that there is no way you are going to achieve certain goals and then you stop dumping resources at a cause you won't win - that's not defeatism, it's deciding to stop you ...[text shortened]... are legitimate questions that haven't really had public answers - and we should have them.

I say they have two options. They can stay or leave. If they decide to stay, I suggest statehood so those poor Afghany citizens can all be saved by Obamacare!!!

Originally posted by whodey
I say they have two options. They can stay or leave. If they decide to stay, I suggest statehood so those poor Afghany citizens can all be saved by Obamacare!!!

Thanks for the response, but I'll await a serious answer from someone...

Originally posted by no1marauder
GFY.

What exactly is being defeated? The neo-colonial aspirations of Western elites?

Neo-colonial aspirations that's hysterical like Afghanistan has something the west would want it's a pile of sand.

Originally posted by PsychoPawn
Thanks for the response, but I'll await a serious answer from someone...

Who says I'm not serious? It's people like you who want universal health care, so I say this is the best way to go about it. Just start taking over countries and provide them with "free" health care.

Originally posted by Sam The Sham
Neo-colonial aspirations that's hysterical like Afghanistan has something the west would want it's a pile of sand.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html

Originally posted by no1marauder
[b]It's like the Great Escape except Steve McQueen would have a beard and be wearing a Keffiyeh:

[/b]did you bump the table when you read it?

Originally posted by whodey
Who says I'm not serious? It's people like you who want universal health care, so I say this is the best way to go about it. Just start taking over countries and provide them with "free" health care.

Implementing universal health care seems the best way to implement universal health care to me.

Originally posted by Sam The Sham
Neo-colonial aspirations that's hysterical like Afghanistan has something the west would want it's a pile of sand.

Besides its mineral wealth, it's a nice place to have military bases to threaten Iran and intimidate the people of Pakistan.

BTW, it's a lot more rocky than sandy.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html

From your link:

Afghanistan has a national mining law, written with the help of advisers from the World Bank,


How "helpful" of the World Bank.

Originally posted by no1marauder
Besides its mineral wealth, it's a nice place to have military bases to threaten Iran and intimidate the people of Pakistan.

BTW, it's a lot more rocky than sandy.

It's square e4 in the Great Game.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game

Originally posted by Sam The Sham
Neo-colonial aspirations that's hysterical like Afghanistan has something the west would want it's a pile of sand.

Location, location, location:


Ever since the fall of the Soviet Union, Western energy interests have hungrily eyed the massive, untapped oil and natural gas reserves in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. It's estimated that roughly 15 billion barrels of oil and about 9 trillion cubic meters of natural gas lie beneath the soil of Afghanistan's neighbors, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. One calculation puts the potential value of Central Asian fossil fuels at $3 trillion.

Afghanistan itself is not known to have major energy reserves. Instead, the country's most valuable natural resource is its location: It sits smack between the oil and gas fields of its neighbors and potentially huge markets in Pakistan, India, and beyond. So in the mid-1990s, while Russia, China, Iran, and several European nations squabbled over pipelines through Russia and Iran, California-based oil and gas giant Unocal was looking at another route -- from Turkmenistan straight through Afghanistan to Pakistan or India. To build such a pipeline, however, the company would have to dance cheek-to-cheek with the Taliban, who were then rising to power.

http://www.guidetoaction.org/magazine/pipeline.html