Article

2008-08-04 Afghanistan

NYT: Ragtag Taliban show tenacity in Afghanistan

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by ryuge 2008-08-04 05:32|| || Front Page|| [3 views ] Top

#1 First sentence - and first paragraph - Six years after being driven from power, the Taliban are demonstrating a resilience and a ferocity that are raising alarm here, in Washington and in other NATO capitals, and engendering a fresh round of soul-searching over how a relatively ragtag insurgency has managed to keep the worlds most powerful armies at bay.

It's easy, if you have the all-powerful New York Times on your side! And there's only one of the world's 'most powerful armies' engaged, if you can call it that.

Posted by Bobby 2008-08-04 06:08|| 2008-08-04 06:08|| Front Page Top

#2 There's not much "soul searching" required. The Talibs live in Pakistain and they commute to Afghanistan, where they can be killed. But they're raised across the border, and until we kill them there they'll continue regenerating. See Laos and Cambodia, 1968.

Posted by Fred 2008-08-04 08:05|| 2008-08-04 08:05|| Front Page Top

#3 Fear not. Obama will stay the course.

/sarcasm off.

Posted by Keystone 2008-08-04 09:36|| 2008-08-04 09:36|| Front Page Top

#4 New quagmire same as the old quagmire. New surge same as the old surge? New Petraeus same as the old Petraeus?

Change you can believe in.

Posted by superstitiousGalitizianer 2008-08-04 09:47|| 2008-08-04 09:47|| Front Page Top

#5 Resilient! Tenacious! Ferocious!

Whatever are we to do?

/send out for more hand lotion, in the Fall's newest scent: Despair.

Posted by Seafarious 2008-08-04 10:17|| 2008-08-04 10:17|| Front Page Top

#6 Soon to appear: stories touting the upcoming "brutal Afghan winter".

Sigh.

Posted by MarkZ 2008-08-04 10:54|| 2008-08-04 10:54|| Front Page Top

#7 Six years after being driven from power, the Taliban are demonstrating a resilience and a ferocity that are raising alarm here, in Washington and in other NATO capitals, and engendering a fresh round of soul-searching over how a relatively ragtag insurgency has managed to keep the world's most powerful armies at bay.

I think the Times is abusing the use of the phrase "at bay". The traditional meaning is "hold off". The Taliban haven't held anybody off - they've just avoided combat most of the time, and sought refuge in Pakistan. In no sense have the Taliban held anyone "at bay". They've fought, lost, run back into Pakistan to lick their wounds, and repeated the cycle endlessly. This problem hasn't been solved once and for all because the nature of American wars - we don't do genocide, the kind of thing the Chinese did to the Dzungars centuries ago.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2008-08-04 12:27|| http://timurileng.blogspot.com]">[http://timurileng.blogspot.com] 2008-08-04 12:27|| Front Page Top

#8 "brutal Afghan winter"

Certainly conflicts with 'Human Global Warming'. I sense a red on red in MSM coming this winter :)

Posted by Procopius2k 2008-08-04 12:36|| 2008-08-04 12:36|| Front Page Top

#9 It was to stop quagmires like this that armies in the old days would line a road with hanging corpses or heads on pikes. Pretty effective in changing the psychological dynamic of the enemy. And it probably saved a lot of lives on both sides.

It wouldn't break my heart to see infiltrating Taliban forced to negotiate a fence strung with the severed heads of the ones that infiltrated before them.

Posted by knerfley 2008-08-04 13:35|| 2008-08-04 13:35|| Front Page Top

#10 tenacity or a willingness to die?

me thinks the $200 a month AQ pays their cannon fodder is pretty good money in goat and flea country.

Obviously, the NYT guy who wrote this article is absolutely clueless about where these "dead men walking" come from or their motivation.

As long as you have people willing to die for a couple of "C" notes and the same people view dying with a rifle in their hand as a ticket to eternal paradise, you are going to have to kill them....

Obama!!! HEY!! Are you going to negotiate with THESE guys?? Get serious. They are not into anything except pedophilia and a culture of death.

Posted by James Carville 2008-08-04 15:39|| 2008-08-04 15:39|| Front Page Top

#11 NYT: Ragtag Taliban show tenacity in Afghanistan

Well, as far as we can tell they only have one battlestar, so we should be ok.

Posted by Abdominal Snowman 2008-08-04 16:59|| 2008-08-04 16:59|| Front Page Top

#12 Don't NYT mouthpieces read their own publications? Last week their magazine wrote of the Taliban's heroin industry take. They get their 15% take in June, and use it to conduct the Summer offensive.

Did anyone else see "Bad Voodoo War"? Members of the National Guard unit, serving in Iraq, accused the Iraqi military of planting IEDs, and they went on video to accuse Pentagon and field brass of not having a clue. Ditto, Afghanistan. No heroin money or Paki contributions; no Taliban. If soldiers are not permitted to win wars, said wars will be lost.

Again, the slog mentality: we have to do it this way, because we have to do it this way. Screw the human ability to reason, and act with common sense.

Posted by McZoid 2008-08-04 19:47|| 2008-08-04 19:47|| Front Page Top

#13 NYTimes' "Operation Foot-Bullet" continues apace. Losing credibility and stock price as quickly as possible.

Posted by OldSpook 2008-08-04 21:29|| 2008-08-04 21:29|| Front Page Top

#14 Make money - Short the Times.

Posted by OldSpook 2008-08-04 21:30|| 2008-08-04 21:30|| Front Page Top

#15 See TOPIX > TALIBAN RECRUITING MORE WOMEN, YOUNG CHILDREN [Five-year olds?] FOR JIHAD?

Okay, I'll bite - Five y.o.???

Posted by JosephMendiola 2008-08-04 22:26|| 2008-08-04 22:26|| Front Page Top

23:56 OldSpook
23:55 gorb
23:43 OldSpook
23:37 OldSpook
23:35 gromky
23:21 gromky
23:16 phxrav
23:05 bigjim-ky
22:57 bigjim-ky
22:43 AzCat
22:42 ed
22:41 JosephMendiola
22:41 AzCat
22:39 Pappy
22:38 ed
22:34 AzCat
22:31 AzCat
22:29 Pappy
22:26 JosephMendiola
22:23 ed
22:22 JosephMendiola
22:17 OldSpook
22:05 Zhang Fei
22:04 Keystone