US Casualties in Afghanistan Up 500% under Obama.

crap
do try to stop inciting hatred, violence and war

In fact, the present-day phenomenon in this context has become an obligatory part of populist rhetoric in which American involvement is blamed for everything — from terrorist attacks, to the energy crises, to perhaps even the break of dengue fever! (link)​

 

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The alternative is to fight it right. Use only air power and special infiltration by Delta Force commandos, and stop trying to help -- to the tune of billions of dollars building infrastructure and schools (and repairing schools blown up by the people we are protecting them from) -- Afghani Muslims try to become Jeffersonian Democrats like us.

 

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I wouldn't be surprised that Afghans invaded themselves, and tried and failed to occupy themselves. They're that barmy.

Muslims fight and kill Muslims all the time; that doesn't make their internecine violence less Islamic. In fact, that epitomizes Islam -- violent outside and in.

 

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Well, that was a bass-ackwards reading.

 

We could have said the same for christians during the reformation. I'm sure the protestants didn't see it coming during the St. Bartholomew's massacre. The fact that its Christians, and american ones at that waging wars on a regular basis with everyone else in the world should surely sour your point except that I hardly consider those elites or even the people themselves to be really christian. I would say that muslims ARE killing muslims but its not because they are muslim unless you want to ascribe every civil war on someone's religion. The target should have been radical extremism, it should have been that small percentage of radicals that actually are engaging in terrorism but you cannot fight an ideological movement with a war, they should have employed other means of doing that. The excuse for Afghanistan has changed, there is no more Al Qaeda in Afghanistan as they can operate from anywhere, they can also return anytime they want because the US will eventually have to leave and the Karzai government is seen as an illegitimate American puppet. The Taliban will return in force into Afghanistan. What you are chasing right now is a ghost and your wasting all your money doing it.

Afghans invade themselves? Read it and weep. The americans will bend and come out as exhausted and broke as the Russians. If they bothered to take a look at history itself and learned from it, it may have deflated their hubris.

Everyone I met who has spent significant time in Afghanistan (pre and post Taliban) de-miners, NGO workers and your even your boys don't ascribe Afghans as crazy or loony, what they do all say is that they are hard, very hard. I mean you can imagine what it must be like for them to come across these soft, coddled westerners whom they've come across before, bringing all of their heavy equipment to protect themselves from the lowly Afghans. I mean it must be somewhat of a funny thing for them because they expect the elephant to have a strong hide and then they realize they're all soft and stupid to boot. They would have to be stupid to enter into a lengthy war in the one location in the world that has never been successfully conquered. I'm sure they just chock it up to the coca cola.

 

We could have, but you're not....? I'm confused.

There are data throughout the Muslim world of a degree of fanaticism that indicate a systemic problem with the sociopolitical culture which Islam inculcates (however "diverse" it may be), not merely ordinary problems which beset every society. Why is it the law in Afghanistan to kill a person if they leave Islam? A nation that has a law like that seems to be part of the same ideological disease that breeds that "tiny minority of extremists". And where that one example of medieval fanaticism can be adduced, there are 1,001 others throughout the Muslim world of various flavors and spices; all quite "diverse", but still medievally fanatical -- and all easily traceable to the Sunna (or its Shia equivalent) and the Koran.

 

No actually I am because I did. You say muslims are fighting muslims but so what? Civil wars generally mean that you will end up fighting your own. That's not the same as saying its their religion or something of that kind. Even the war between Iran and Iraq was directly attributed to the US and its support, otherwise Iraq wouldn't have had the means to do so.

Why shouldn't they become fanatic? You have the US killing them in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and now Libya. You have Israel continuing to deny Palestinians statehood and human rights. You have Russia attacking them in Chechnya. It isn't a fantasy on their part that the US and western forces are interfering and killing their people so of course there's an increase in fanaticism.

Show me evidence to support your claim that there is a law in Afghanistan that a person is killed if they leave Islam?

 

The fact that you don't know this is telling (but, alas, not surprising).

This past February, as this Telegraph article reported, NATO chief Anders Rasmussen appealed to the Afghanistan government to spare the life of a Muslim, Musa Sayed, who had left Islam to convert to Christianity -- who was sentenced to death according to its "moderate" constitution which is explicitly based in Sharia Law.

And from a CNN story back in late 2010 on the same case:

"According to Afghanistan's constitution, if there is no clear verdict as to whether an act is criminal or not in the penal code of the Afghan Constitution, then it would be referred to sharia law where the judge has an open hand in reaching a verdict," Shenwari said.

Under sharia law, converting from Islam to Christianity is punishable by death....

(I'm amazed a mainstream news source actually recognized that unremarkable yet horrific fact; since we are usually coddled with the milk & honey of assurances that sharia law is benign.)

The Afghan constitution identifies the country as an Islamic republic, and says that "followers of other religions are free to exercise their faith and perform their religious rites within the limits of the provisions of law, " but "no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam" (Chapter 1, Articles 1-3).

An amendment in the tenth chapter of the constitution adds: "The provisions of adherence to the fundamentals of the sacred religion of Islam and the regime of the Islamic Republic cannot be amended."

And, of course, sharia law is part of the Sunna, which is based centrally on the hadiths (or "ahadith" for those who are precise about their transliteration from Arabic) -- which are the Sayings of Mohammed, whose Dos and Don'ts preserved therein are the very heart of all Islamic law. The most authoritative collection of hadiths is Sahih Bukhari. According to Bukhari:

Muhammad says, "Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him."

-- Sahih al-Bukhari, 9.84.57.

Other hadiths back this up, for example, Jami At-Tirmidhi:

...the Messenger of Allah said: It is not permissible to shed the blood of a Muslim, except a man who committed adultery after being married, or one who reverted to Kufr after becoming a Muslim...


And Sunan an-Nasa’i:

It is not permissible to shed the blood of a Muslim except in one of three cases: A man who reverts to Kufr after becoming Muslim, or commits adultery after being married, or one who kills a soul unlawfully.


(as well as the hadiths of Abu Dawud, Ibn Majah, Malik, Tayalisi, and Ibn Hanbal).

Back in 2006, another Muslim in Afghanistan was similarly sentenced to death for leaving Islam ("apostasy"), Abdul Rahman. Only concerted international pressure convinced the Afghanistan government from relenting and sparing his life. (After all, they don't want to annoy the Americans who give them billions annually in the form of cash and the construction, and reconstruction (after frequent destruction by their homegrown and imported fanatics), of infrastructure projects.). An Afghanistan court ruled that he was "mentally ill" (which is one way to avoid getting killed under sharia law for apostasy, since sharia law stipulates that only if a person is an adult and mentally capable should he be killed for leaving Islam -- wow, how rational of them to be so obsessive-compulsively punctilious about their grotesque fanaticism!).

And so, Rahman was spirited away to Italy for his safety, since after being released from jail, Islamic clerics threatened that they would incite the people to "pull him into pieces" if they could.

From an AP story, reproduced by the Washington Post at the time:

Senior Muslim clerics demanded Thursday that an Afghan man on trial for converting from Islam to Christianity be executed, warning that if the government caves in to Western pressure and frees him, they will incite people to "pull him into pieces."

That AP story also has this precious quote and information on one of those clerics:

"Rejecting Islam is insulting God. We will not allow God to be humiliated. This man must die," said cleric Abdul Raoulf, who is considered a moderate and was jailed three times for opposing the Taliban before the hard-line regime was ousted in 2001.


Also this MSNBC report at the time:

Senior clerics condemned Rahman as an apostate.

Rahman had “committed the greatest sin” by converting to Christianity and deserved to be killed, cleric Abdul Raoulf said in a sermon Friday at Herati Mosque.

“God’s way is the right way, and this man whose name is Abdul Rahman is an apostate,” he told about 150 worshippers.

Another cleric, Ayatullah Asife Muhseni, told a gathering of preachers and intellectuals at a Kabul hotel that the Afghan president had no right to overturn the punishment of an apostate.

He also demanded that clerics be able to question Rahman in jail to discover why he had converted to Christianity. He suggested it could have been the result of a conspiracy by Western nations or Jews.

At a fruit market in Kabul, many ordinary Afghans said they supported the death penalty, but some wanted more investigation before meting out the punishment. [Gee, how discerning of them!]

Really, you need to brush up on your Islam. There's no excuse for this Islamo-illiteracy in the year 2011.

 

P.S.:

By the way, 76% of Pakistani Muslims favor the death penalty for apostasy [leaving Islam].

Source.

(The survey linked contains other sordidly fanatical beliefs as well supported by the majority of Muslims there.)

 

And this affects you how? What do you care what the government of Afghanistan or Pakistan does with its citizens? You wanted them to have a government, if you want them to enact laws that mirror your society then why don't you just ship off all of your public officials to live in Afghanistan and occupy the government forever. Its their country, its their culture, its their laws they can do what they like. They would criticize our abortion laws and gay rights but that's none of their business is it. You are arrogant enough to think you can change their society or culture but would balk at anyone trying to do the same for yours. Mind you business your country has enough problems of its own.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QDv4sYwjO0

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Initial OP, I would of suggested it was likely that less "Mercenaries" have been used due to budget cuts, causing the normal forces to be used in situations they wouldn't have initially been used for, thus increasing their likelihood of suffering causalities. (The team can't sit on the back bench forever)

Also as "Mercenaries" the causalities wouldn't be reported, so the numbers might have been falsified previously.

 

That's hysterical! The mockery is great but its exactly what they are calling for And its exactly what they don't understand the consequence of. You should check out this thread to see how they worship self-interest at the expense of the common good: http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=108879&page=2

Myself and Adoucette discussing firemen allowing someone's house to burn down over a pittance and him explaining of why this is a righteous thing to do. Plus the joys of being persecuted by a judge who wants to give a lesson in 'respect'.

 

What budget cuts?

Not for the military. And mercenaries are in increasing use, all over that theater.

 

It's evidence of the kind of sick fanaticism that is inculcated and breeding in the Muslim world and which is spilling out into the rest of the world in the form of terrorist attacks -- regardless of the "diversity" of it.

I don't want them to have our form of government -- chiefly because I don't believe they want it or are capable of it. I don't want us to be there at all (except in terms of surgical strikes now and then by air and using Delta Force-type commando operations only when absolutely necessary; e.g., to nip some jihadist cell in the making, or to take out some influential figure Obama-vs.-Osama-style). I don't want to help them -- either with money, or our men and women's lives and limbs, or with ideas of any kind. I just want to let them stew in their own grotesquely sick and ghoulish and outrageously anti-liberal fanaticism, and contain them there and not let them come into the West.

 

@Hesperado

And how does that affect YOU? What is sick and fanatical is a country going broke in order to control other people's resources after propping them up and then claiming their regime change plans are really for the benefit of all involved. American obsession with what muslims are and are not doing even if it has no affect on their lives seems just as fanatical.

So if you don't want to be there at all then stop focusing on what they are and are not doing and focus on lobbying your government to bring its troops home.

 

Actually I think he just argued for that.

 

Cf. supra.

 

It doesn't affect you one bit, its just easier to go on about muslim this and that than it is to CONFRONT the fact that you have NO WEIGHT on what your government does in regards to your wishes in terms of the wars. It doesn't matter whether it be a democratic or republican government, you the people have little leverage in terms of what you would like to see happen, so instead you sit around obsessing about muslim this and muslim that because its EASIER than confronting your own government that is unresponsive to the desires and needs of its own people. If it were not so, you wouldn't really care what they are doing or what they believe because you would be too busy pressuring your own government in what you want them to do in alignment with what you believe!.