31 U.S. special forces and seven Afghans killed.

[RamiTheBullsFan]

U.S. official: About two dozen U.S. deaths in Afghan copter crash - CNN.com

Rest in peace to all. This is the most terrible loss at the wake of one of the greatest victories (killing of Bin Laden) since the war began.

 

[AE23]

damn, thats a lot. GTFO of Afghanistan

 

[RamiTheBullsFan]

The emotional solution is to get out of there and never look back. I don't think that is the practical solution though. Iraq is where we needed to get combat troops out of. They hit shit-all to do with 9/11.

 

[Crystallas]

Go to Afghanistan and tell me we are fighting the enemy.

 

[RamiTheBullsFan]

Go to Afghanistan and tell me we are fighting the enemy.

I have my doubts about that myself. Our country can't make decisions based on emotion though. The main priority is to set up a government that Afghan people can run without influence of the Taliban. The problem is that it probably isn't realistic.

 

[Capt. Serious]

I take back my comment of how I wish I was in the military.

While great to serve your country, what has this really accomplished?

 

[RamiTheBullsFan]

I take back my comment of how I wish I was in the military.

While great to serve your country, what has this really accomplished?

Mainly lowering the cost of oil to retain our standard of living.

 

[Crystallas]

I have my doubts about that myself. Our country can't make decisions based on emotion though. The main priority is to set up a government that Afghan people can run without influence of the Taliban. The problem is that it probably isn't realistic.

We can't set up a government for them. It doesn't work. Forced democracy is a fallacy and contradiction in itself. If we left, we would be far more secure and we could begin repairing relations through diplomacy and trade.

And if you are suggestion I make my decisions based on emotion here, you are terribly wrong. My experience gave me insight to the inner workings and to what happens. If anything, this country should learn from its experience.

Also, we haven't helped oil prices by our continued middle east interference. This is another fallacy. We have made unstable oil prices, we have delayed our own energy independence, and we have helped the military industrial complexes, as well as the fat cats behind it all.

Okay, instead of discussing and debating all of this flawed logic. Answer this, why were were Afghanistan's and the Taliban's allies for so long, then we turn around and start bombing them well before 9/11. And if you think the answer is simple, or it has a main influence on fighting off common enemies, you should dig a little bit deeper than a few wikipedia entries.

 

[RamiTheBullsFan]

We can't set up a government for them. It doesn't work. Forced democracy is a fallacy and contradiction in itself. If we left, we would be far more secure and we could begin repairing relations through diplomacy and trade.

And if you are suggestion I make my decisions based on emotion here, you are terribly wrong. My experience gave me insight to the inner workings and to what happens. If anything, this country should learn from its experience.

Also, we haven't helped oil prices by our continued middle east interference. This is another fallacy. We have made unstable oil prices, we have delayed our own energy independence, and we have helped the military industrial complexes, as well as the fat cats behind it all.

Okay, instead of discussing and debating all of this flawed logic. Answer this, why were were Afghanistan's and the Taliban's allies for so long, then we turn around and start bombing them well before 9/11. And if you think the answer is simple, or it has a main influence on fighting off common enemies, you should dig a little bit deeper than a few wikipedia entries.

The "not basing these decisions on emotion" comment was directed at AgentE, not you.

The problem is that we have already essentially taken over that country and put Karzai in charge. In a lot of ways, their people there depend on our financial support and it would be extremely immoral and irresponsible to turn our back on them in that way.

In essence, I see what you are saying about how our combat presence there isn't helping anything and is, in fact, making things a lot worse and compounding the resentment against us in the region.

And, forgive me if I am not understanding economics well enough, but it seems like the access to oil in that region would generally help lower the cost of oil for us despite it de-stabilizing it. I don't quite understand how it would hurt oil costs to have access to more reserves.

 

[Crystallas]

And, forgive me if I am not understanding economics well enough, but it seems like the access to oil in that region would generally help lower the cost of oil for us despite it de-stabilizing it. I don't quite understand how it would hurt oil costs to have access to more reserves.

Okay, I'll go along with the Oil conspiracy theory, and construct why this concept why it doesn't work in the most simplified form.

It begins, a barrel of oil doubles in price from certain regions. Well, first off, they aren't the only oil supplier in the world, if they want to hold those prices hostage to us, they wont make much money for long before having to lower their prices again. This will happen due to growing their supplies, and having nowhere to store it. The goods become liquidated, and purchasers/investors/speculators become very weary of doing business with them in the future.

We invade those regions. Now we miss seeing a market correction, we spend extra money anyways and cost lives in the process, and on top of all that, our relationship is weaker with them, therefore they STILL don't lower prices to the true market level.

We lose on oil prices, we lose on having a good trade relation, we lose a lot of lives, and we burn up a lot of oil in the process! There is no way that we protect oil prices by doing what we are doing.

It is immoral to hold their natural resources hostage to them. It is immoral to bomb them, injure them, kill them, as well as kill and injure ourselves. It is immoral to give them money for the sake of building things that are destroyed by it's own people. It is also immoral to steal this money from so many Americans who disagree with war for whatever reason.

 

[RamiTheBullsFan]

Okay, I'll go along with the Oil conspiracy theory, and construct why this concept why it doesn't work in the most simplified form.

It begins, a barrel of oil doubles in price from certain regions. Well, first off, they aren't the only oil supplier in the world, if they want to hold those prices hostage to us, they wont make much money for long before having to lower their prices again. This will happen due to growing their supplies, and having nowhere to store it. The goods become liquidated, and purchasers/investors/speculators become very weary of doing business with them in the future.

We invade those regions. Now we miss seeing a market correction, we spend extra money anyways and cost lives in the process, and on top of all that, our relationship is weaker with them, therefore they STILL don't lower prices to the true market level.

We lose on oil prices, we lose on having a good trade relation, we lose a lot of lives, and we burn up a lot of oil in the process! There is no way that we protect oil prices by doing what we are doing.

It is immoral to hold their natural resources hostage to them. It is immoral to bomb them, injure them, kill them, as well as kill and injure ourselves. It is immoral to give them money for the sake of building things that are destroyed by it's own people. It is also immoral to steal this money from so many Americans who disagree with war for whatever reason.

I think a lot of the things I read about in macro-econ class must have went over my head but you broke it down in a fairly simple way to understand and I appreciate that. Yeah, you are right and I agree with you strongly that the U.S. is much better off looking for alternative ways of getting our fuel than going to war essentially to delay that process. I never approved of that at all... ever since the war started when I was still in middle school.

And yeah... there are plenty of good reasons to leave. It is a war that we cannot afford and senseless causalities on all sides are happening. It is building resentment from their people towards our's and vice versa in an endless cycle. It is truly a mess over there and I don't think there is a simple answer. Ron Paul's philosophy on the war appealed to me the most as well. I don't want this country to leave the people there in a social/political/economical struggle over there which is a direct result of us entering Afghanistan. But perhaps that really is the only alternative.