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Bowe Bergdahl freed by Taliban after five years of captivity

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The Oi said:
Oasis could definitely be a game changer in here.

Tornicade is like a human IED, so his involvement could be helpful as well.
Click to expand...

Okay since Jigo i begging me to post on this topic. I do take request.My take is that Pakistan is trying to Steer the Taliban do take its fight to Afghanistan and the US wpuld prefer the matter settle in Pakistan.
I really dont know why people spend more time on whether the guy was a traitor or wth is going on in the VA when Taliban politics between pakistan and Afghanistan is what people should be looking at.


http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/21/world/asia/pakistani-taliban.html?_r=0
LONDON — When the Pakistani Taliban said they were willing to make peace, many Pakistanis were skeptical that the militants had truly abandoned their dream of transforming the country into an Islamic caliphate.
But since talks with government negotiators officially started last month, the question is not just whether the Taliban wish to deliver a deal, but whether they even can.
An eruption of violent rivalries and internal disputes in the past month has strained the militants’ cohesion, cast doubt on their ability to make peace, and raised the prospect of a militant surge into Afghanistan.
Most immediately, an outbreak of infighting between rival Taliban commanders in the hills of Waziristan left at least 40 militants dead and exposed a violent rift in the movement’s operational heartland, according to Taliban members and locals.
<aside class="marginalia related-coverage-marginalia nocontent robots-nocontent" data-marginalia-type="sprinkled" role="complementary"> Continue reading the main story <header> [h=2]Related Coverage[/h] </header>
</aside> That fight stemmed from a leadership crisis that started with an American drone strike in November that killed the group’s commander and inflamed internal arguments — including a debate over whether to prioritize the fight against Pakistan’s army, or to send more fighters into Afghanistan as American troops are leaving.

And a series of bomb attacks during a supposed six-week cease-fire has raised the possibility that the very idea of making peace has divided the Taliban, with militant cells splintering off rather than speaking with the government.
“We will know where the Taliban stand when they put their demands on the table, but I’m not hopeful,” said Asad Munir, a retired army brigadier and former head of the Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency’s Peshawar office. “There are so many complications. Ultimately, I don’t think these talks can succeed.”
Despite their ferocity, the Pakistani Taliban, formally known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, have never been a very united fighting force.
Since its formal emergence in 2007, the group has been an umbrella organization for Islamist militants — estimates run from 15 to 30 organizations — scattered across the tribal belt along the Afghan border. The unruly coalition was held together by the steely grip of leaders from the Mehsud tribe and anchored in the jihadi havens of North and South Waziristan where a wide variety of Pakistani and international militant groups hold sway.
But the American drone campaign loosened the Mehsud dominance, with missile strikes that killed Baitullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban founder, in 2009; his deputy, Wali ur-Rehman, in May of last year; and the second leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, in November. Now the Taliban is led by a lame-duck figure, Maulana Fazlullah, who has struggled to keep his commanders in line.
Mr. Fazlullah came to power in November with solid hard-liner credentials — his supporters had flogged criminals and attempted to kill Malala Yousafzai, the teenage activist — but a less impressive military record. He was driven from his native Swat Valley, 200 miles northwest of Waziristan, by a Pakistani military operation in 2009. Now, according to Pakistani and Afghan officials, he is sheltering in the eastern Afghan province of Kunar.
“Fazlullah is not a strong leader because he was defeated, he left Pakistan and he remains across the border,” said Rahimullah Yusufzai, a veteran journalist who helped the government make initial peace overtures to the Taliban.
Continue reading the main story
The Taliban chose Mr. Fazlullah, many believe, to quell feuding between rival factions of the Mehsud tribe. But the violence hardly abated after Mr. Fazlullah’s nomination, and it began looking like an all-out turf war in Waziristan this month.
Taliban fighters ambushed each other’s camps, bombed convoys, and took prisoners over six days of tit-for-tat bloodletting in the same remote, forested valleys where C.I.A. drones have attacked militant compounds. By the time tribal elders brokered a hasty truce earlier this month, 40 to 60 people had been killed according to most estimates.
Ostensibly the fighting stemmed from a simmering rivalry between two hotheaded commanders — Khan Sayed Sajna, a onetime contender for the Taliban leadership, and Shehryar Mehsud — who are battling for dominance of the Mehsud wing of the Taliban. Mr. Sajna, considered the stronger of the two, sent a message to his rival that “there cannot be two swords in a single sheath,” according to a senior Taliban commander.
But the fight was about more than clashing egos. According to militant and Western officials, the Sajna group is partly funded by the Haqqani network, a notorious militant group that uses its base in the Pakistani tribal areas to mount audacious attacks on civilian and military targets in Afghanistan. The network’s leader, Sirajuddin Haqqani, wants to draw more Mehsud fighters into his fight against the Afghan government; as a result, he is pushing the Taliban to make peace in Pakistan.

As ever in tribal politics, money is a deciding factor: The Haqqani network draws on the proceeds of a vast criminal and fund-raising empire that spans Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Persian Gulf states. The Haqqanis also enjoy a close relationship with the ISI intelligence agency, which has cultivated ties for decades, although the extent of the Pakistani influence remains an open question among experts.
Mehsud tribal elders also favor negotiations. Weary of years of war, including Pakistani military bombardment and the displacement of tens of thousands of villagers, community leaders are pressing the Taliban to talk to the government, said government officials and Waziristan residents.

The Taliban’s fractious nature also leaves it vulnerable to other, mutually hostile influences. Foreign jihadists from Al Qaeda and Uzbekistan, who live among its members in North and South Waziristan offer money and a fanatical ideology. And recently, Afghan intelligence has gotten in on the act, hoping to steer the Taliban away from Afghanistan.

In Kabul, former and serving government officials described a policy of sanctuary and limited financial assistance to Taliban factions that wish to resume fighting inside Pakistan. “It is about convincing these guys about who they should be bothering,” said one former official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “If they want to cause problems in Pakistan, that is something that is not going to be discouraged.”

<aside style="display: block;" class="marginalia comments-marginalia selected-comment-marginalia" data-marginalia-type="sprinkled" data-skip-to-para-id="story-continues-5"> Continue reading the main story</aside>The Afghan spy agency, the National Directorate of Security, has penetrated the Taliban most successfully at the eastern end of the border with Pakistan, where Mr. Fazlullah and his supporters are hiding. Afghan officials said Mr. Fazlullah has received sanctuary and some money; one of his spokesmen is frequently found outside nearby Jalalabad.
Another Pakistan Taliban operative lives under the spy agency’s protection in Asadabad, the capital of Kunar Province, where he produces militant propaganda videos.
Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story

​
The embryonic Afghan attempt to cultivate proxies within the Pakistani Taliban is a response to a widespread perception that the ISI intelligence agency is trying to push the war from Waziristan into southern Afghanistan as American troops withdraw. “They want to move all the vipers and snakes on to the Afghan side and let them fight it out here,” said the former Afghan official.

Equally, though, Afghan officials recognize that Taliban factions are highly unreliable allies. And a Western analyst cautioned that it would be a mistake to see the Taliban purely as puppets of the various spy agencies in the region. “They’ll take money from whoever is handing it out, as long as it suits them,” the analyst said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “But they’ve very much got their own mind.”

As ever, though, militant alliances are constantly shifting and reliable information is hard to obtain. Ascertaining the exact motivation of competing factions can be akin to Soviet-era Kremlinology. Mr. Fazlullah’s weakness is just one factor in decision making. Unlike the rigidly hierarchical Afghan Taliban, Pakistan’s insurgency has a decentralized, almost acephalous quality in which most power rests with the ruling shura, or leadership council.
And the tribal strife comes against a background of unprecedented Taliban expansion in the rest of Pakistan. In the past year, the movement has expanded its reach in Karachi, strengthened ties to like-minded militant groups, and increased fund-raising through extortion and kidnapping.
That complexity is what makes striking a peace deal such a challenge for the Pakistani government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
His government has staked much hope on the peace talks, betting that the Taliban can be persuaded to lay down their arms. Officials said they saw the Taliban’s announcement of the cease-fire’s end on Wednesday as a negotiating ploy, not the collapse of the whole process. The Taliban, too, insist that talks will continue.

To win the Taliban’s confidence, the government has agreed to free at least 12 low-level Taliban prisoners and is considering demands for several hundred more. But the crunch will come when the Taliban make a formal list of demands. The omens are not promising. Already, one hard-line commander with links to Al Qaeda, Omar Khalid Khorasani, has announced that he will not settle for anything less than the imposition of Shariah law across Pakistan.

Such statements greatly worry Pakistanis who say that the Sharif government has already conceded too much to Taliban militants who may be using the talks to build legitimacy among ordinary Pakistanis — all the while priming their weapons for the next round of fighting.
Reporting was contributed by Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud from Islamabad, Pakistan; Matthew Rosenberg from Kabul, Afghanistan; and Ismail Khan from Peshawar, Pakistan.



Also look at the Group that took Bergdahl had fallen into

http://www.infowars.com/sgt-bergdahl-release-arranged-by-cia-terror-group/


http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2014/01/afghan_us_forces_tar_1.php
 
natedagg said:
^great eulogy. Gave me the chills...

I spoke to a colleague of mine who is a marine, and we talked about all of the facts that might never be known:
1. Bergdahl might have intelligence and it's being utilized right now.
2. There might be some other unspoken agreements between the "bad guys" and the US, not just the prison exchanges. E.g. - we release these 5 guys, then you keep attacks from your people off of our soil.
3. The 5 released guys aren't necessarily safe. They might meet a fate far worse than Gitmo, and they might not be "released" totally, per se.

I haven't had the time to read the ins-and-outs, but there's quite a few possibilities out there to consider. I think it's fair to say that, on the surface, this is a real head scratcher, so my next line of thought isn't "what a blunder?!?" but more "what else don't we know?"
Click to expand...

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/06/04/analysis-bergdahl-talks-with-taliban-had-wider-goal/

Analysis: Bergdahl talks with Taliban had wider goal
Published June 04, 2014Associated PressFacebook5 Twitter10 Gplus0

The announcement that the U.S. government had secured the release of missing U.S. Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl and that it was freeing five senior Taliban figures from Guantanamo Bay has been portrayed first and foremost as a prisoner exchange. But the four-year history of secret dialogue that led to Saturday's release suggests that the main goal of each side may have been far more sweeping.

It was about setting the stage for larger discussions on a future peaceful Afghanistan.

As The Associated Press first reported in 2011, talks about releasing the five senior Taliban reach back to at least late 2010, following nearly a decade of war. In the beginning, the name of Bergdahl, who was captured in mid-2009, was not even part of the equation.

The Taliban have sought a prisoner release from the beginning of their contacts with U.S. negotiators, while the U.S. side was looking for confidence-building gestures to keep the conversation going, with the ultimate aim of bringing hostilities in Afghanistan to an end.

In recent days, Republicans and some Democrats have been incensed about the release of the Guantanamo Five, warning that this will inspire other militants to target more Americans for abduction. They say the exchange was too hasty, without even a month's warning to Congress as the law requires. They also imply that the five are dangerous leaders who will quickly return to the battlefield and that it was too high a price to pay for a soldier who may have abandoned his post willfully and wandered into Taliban hands.

The Obama administration has justified its decision by saying there was an urgent need to retrieve Bergdahl from captivity and ensure his safety before most U.S. forces leave Afghanistan this year. Judging from the earlier stages of negotiations, the Guantanamo prisoners were not seen as critically important in their own right to retain as prisoners.

In the context of today's Afghanistan, the Guantanamo Five, while important figures, are not likely to change the balance of the war in any significant way. Although they held leadership positions, they weren't pivotal in policy decisions. And after having been away from Afghanistan for more than a decade, they are not likely to secure the loyalty of broad numbers of Taliban foot soldiers.

The five are Abdul Haq Wasiq, once the Taliban's deputy minister of intelligence, Mullah Norullah Nori, a former senior military commander, Khairullah Khairkhwa, a former governor of Herat, Mohammed Nabi, a former local security chief, and Mohamad Fazl, who allegedly presided over the mass killing of Shiite Muslims in 2000-2001. While some indeed were ruthless when in power, they were by no means considered the worst of the Taliban

As part of the deal, the emir of Qatar has guaranteed that all will be kept and monitored inside the small Gulf emirate for at least a year, meaning that they will be essentially isolated until after the bulk of U.S. forces have left Afghanistan.

For the U.S. side, getting Bergdahl back was hardly the main aim when the Obama administration first opened the door to negotiations with the Taliban.

In those early talks, the U.S. was seeking gestures of goodwill from the Taliban, such as a public declaration of the wish for peace. The talks, which went through Germany with help from Norway, appeared to be the first sign of forward movement.

In 2011, the names of the five detainees the Taliban wanted freed were already known, and the U.S. seemed amenable. U.S. officials were cautious, however, about bringing up Bergdahl's name.

But when Afghan President Hamid Karzai found out about the talks, he was furious, and they fell apart.

U.S.-Taliban talks began again in earnest as the Taliban prepared to open a representative office in Qatar in 2013. The plan at the time was that the discussions would be followed by talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government. The five prisoners were the first item on the agenda.

The process of swapping them for Bergdahl was meant to take two months, giving time for Congress to be notified. Halfway through the process, the Taliban would be required to give proof that he was alive. Then the five detainees would be released to Qatar, and Bergdahl too would be released.

However, the Taliban office was shut down within days of opening in June 2013, amid another uproar from the Afghan government. The Taliban then struggled to re-sell the talks to their foot soldiers, young fighters who felt they were winning and didn't need to give anything away.

In January of this year, it became clear that the U.S. and the Taliban had begun talking again. A new video of Bergdahl surfaced, and Bergdahl's statement referenced the death of Nelson Mandela, who had died in December.

That seemed to be the proof of life that the U.S. had been looking for.

Why did the Taliban go for the exchange now? One possibility is that the older generation of Taliban, which has been more interested in negotiations, wanted to show that there was an upside to talking to the United States by getting its prisoners back. In other words, it was a way of proving to a younger, more skeptical generation of Taliban fighters that talks with the U.S. and the Afghan government are worth pursuing.

The U.S. wants out of Afghanistan, but it doesn't want to leave behind complete chaos. In the past, it at least wanted to start a process of talks that could have some traction.

As the Taliban insurgency rages on, the question is whether the next Kabul government will risk talks with the militants, and whether the Taliban themselves may wish to negotiate for a share in power or will stay on the course of war.

In either case, the deal that came about this week after such a long gestation was about more than six men and their respective paths toward captivity and now freedom.
 
Talks a few years ago, because we had what amounts to a date certain for pulling out, might have had some value. Now, when they know they'll have forced us out and be able to claim victory in only a year or so....why would they give up anything of substance in any talks?

The talks wouldn't be about us actually obtaining peace. They'd be about us wanting a piece of paper we can wave around, and so claim that our withdrawal was negotiated, rather than unilateral. It'd be worth a hell of a lot less than the Vietnam treaty that ended in disaster, because at least that had a promise of significant U.S. military force behind it. This will have...essentially nothing.
 
The Human Q-Tip said:
Talks a few years ago, because we had what amounts to a date certain for pulling out, might have had some value. Now, when they know they'll have forced us out and be able to claim victory in only a year or so....why would they give up anything of substance in any talks?

The talks wouldn't be about us actually obtaining peace. They'd be about us wanting a piece of paper we can wave around, and so claim that our withdrawal was negotiated, rather than unilateral. It'd be worth a hell of a lot less than the Vietnam treaty that ended in disaster, because at least that had a promise of significant U.S. military force behind it. This will have...essentially nothing.
Click to expand...

We are withdrawing from Afghanistan because the American people are opposed to the conflict there. It serves no purpose, thus why continue it? Our incursion into Afghanistan accomplished next to nothing, and the Taliban still control large areas of the country's territory, let alone politics.

Again, while not defeated militarily; the previous administration simply did not have any realistic end-game planned, so we leave as we entered - with the Taliban and Al Qaeda still a force in that region of the world. One has to question the geopolitical philosophy that evolved from our Cold War worldviews, from the likes of Allen Dulles, Dick Helms and James Angleton to the neoconservative movement of Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and John Bolton among others. In essence, all the aforementioned firmly believed in a policy of nation-building; a.k.a. "regime change."

And with regards to Vietnam and the Paris Peace Accords, one must understand that the entire war from it's opening moves, it's very long duration, and the final withdrawal of American forces were all politically motivated. This was not simply a civil war between the North and South, two supposedly equal sides of equal opinion. This was a proxy war between the communist bloc and the Western world. America simply had no business getting involved in the first place, as we had relatively no interest there and it was an unmaintainable situation. Again, our involvement in Vietnam was brought about entirely by the exact same thinking that got us involved in Afghanistan for 13+ years, not to mention the Iraq War.

I'm not making a pacifist argument, or an isolationist argument. I'm neither of those things. My point is that it's important to understand the history behind these events so that we don't get trapped in talking points of any single ideology. We withdraw from Afghanistan because we have no need to be there. We withdraw from Iraq because we never should have been there, and our continued presence there does more harm than good.

p.s.
The Paris Peace Accords were hollow, as every actor involved knew the United States once withdrawn could not successfully defend Saigon. The South Vietnamese lacked resources and capital to sustain their military - many of their soldiers walked around barefoot in the streets, disorganized and disheveled. There was no will to fight from the "South Vietnamese People," and thus there was no 'organic' counter-revolutionary force. The South Vietnamese government was just a propped up puppet regime, like many the CIA put into place during this era.
 
natedagg said:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/06/04/analysis-bergdahl-talks-with-taliban-had-wider-goal/

Analysis: Bergdahl talks with Taliban had wider goal
Published June 04, 2014Associated PressFacebook5 Twitter10 Gplus0

The announcement that the U.S. government had secured the release of missing U.S. Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl and that it was freeing five senior Taliban figures from Guantanamo Bay has been portrayed first and foremost as a prisoner exchange. But the four-year history of secret dialogue that led to Saturday's release suggests that the main goal of each side may have been far more sweeping.

It was about setting the stage for larger discussions on a future peaceful Afghanistan.

As The Associated Press first reported in 2011, talks about releasing the five senior Taliban reach back to at least late 2010, following nearly a decade of war. In the beginning, the name of Bergdahl, who was captured in mid-2009, was not even part of the equation.

The Taliban have sought a prisoner release from the beginning of their contacts with U.S. negotiators, while the U.S. side was looking for confidence-building gestures to keep the conversation going, with the ultimate aim of bringing hostilities in Afghanistan to an end.

In recent days, Republicans and some Democrats have been incensed about the release of the Guantanamo Five, warning that this will inspire other militants to target more Americans for abduction. They say the exchange was too hasty, without even a month's warning to Congress as the law requires. They also imply that the five are dangerous leaders who will quickly return to the battlefield and that it was too high a price to pay for a soldier who may have abandoned his post willfully and wandered into Taliban hands.

The Obama administration has justified its decision by saying there was an urgent need to retrieve Bergdahl from captivity and ensure his safety before most U.S. forces leave Afghanistan this year. Judging from the earlier stages of negotiations, the Guantanamo prisoners were not seen as critically important in their own right to retain as prisoners.

In the context of today's Afghanistan, the Guantanamo Five, while important figures, are not likely to change the balance of the war in any significant way. Although they held leadership positions, they weren't pivotal in policy decisions. And after having been away from Afghanistan for more than a decade, they are not likely to secure the loyalty of broad numbers of Taliban foot soldiers.

The five are Abdul Haq Wasiq, once the Taliban's deputy minister of intelligence, Mullah Norullah Nori, a former senior military commander, Khairullah Khairkhwa, a former governor of Herat, Mohammed Nabi, a former local security chief, and Mohamad Fazl, who allegedly presided over the mass killing of Shiite Muslims in 2000-2001. While some indeed were ruthless when in power, they were by no means considered the worst of the Taliban

As part of the deal, the emir of Qatar has guaranteed that all will be kept and monitored inside the small Gulf emirate for at least a year, meaning that they will be essentially isolated until after the bulk of U.S. forces have left Afghanistan.

For the U.S. side, getting Bergdahl back was hardly the main aim when the Obama administration first opened the door to negotiations with the Taliban.

In those early talks, the U.S. was seeking gestures of goodwill from the Taliban, such as a public declaration of the wish for peace. The talks, which went through Germany with help from Norway, appeared to be the first sign of forward movement.

In 2011, the names of the five detainees the Taliban wanted freed were already known, and the U.S. seemed amenable. U.S. officials were cautious, however, about bringing up Bergdahl's name.

But when Afghan President Hamid Karzai found out about the talks, he was furious, and they fell apart.

U.S.-Taliban talks began again in earnest as the Taliban prepared to open a representative office in Qatar in 2013. The plan at the time was that the discussions would be followed by talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government. The five prisoners were the first item on the agenda.

The process of swapping them for Bergdahl was meant to take two months, giving time for Congress to be notified. Halfway through the process, the Taliban would be required to give proof that he was alive. Then the five detainees would be released to Qatar, and Bergdahl too would be released.

However, the Taliban office was shut down within days of opening in June 2013, amid another uproar from the Afghan government. The Taliban then struggled to re-sell the talks to their foot soldiers, young fighters who felt they were winning and didn't need to give anything away.

In January of this year, it became clear that the U.S. and the Taliban had begun talking again. A new video of Bergdahl surfaced, and Bergdahl's statement referenced the death of Nelson Mandela, who had died in December.

That seemed to be the proof of life that the U.S. had been looking for.

Why did the Taliban go for the exchange now? One possibility is that the older generation of Taliban, which has been more interested in negotiations, wanted to show that there was an upside to talking to the United States by getting its prisoners back. In other words, it was a way of proving to a younger, more skeptical generation of Taliban fighters that talks with the U.S. and the Afghan government are worth pursuing.

The U.S. wants out of Afghanistan, but it doesn't want to leave behind complete chaos. In the past, it at least wanted to start a process of talks that could have some traction.

As the Taliban insurgency rages on, the question is whether the next Kabul government will risk talks with the militants, and whether the Taliban themselves may wish to negotiate for a share in power or will stay on the course of war.

In either case, the deal that came about this week after such a long gestation was about more than six men and their respective paths toward captivity and now freedom.
Click to expand...

this guy stole my thesis
 
The Human Q-Tip said:
Talks a few years ago, because we had what amounts to a date certain for pulling out, might have had some value. Now, when they know they'll have forced us out and be able to claim victory in only a year or so....why would they give up anything of substance in any talks?

The talks wouldn't be about us actually obtaining peace. They'd be about us wanting a piece of paper we can wave around, and so claim that our withdrawal was negotiated, rather than unilateral. It'd be worth a hell of a lot less than the Vietnam treaty that ended in disaster, because at least that had a promise of significant U.S. military force behind it. This will have...essentially nothing.
Click to expand...

This about pakhistan trying to make things worse in afghanistan than they already are.. Hey taliban. we pakis are an organized military and we can really wreak havoc on your little civil were why not go fight it out in afghanistan for a bit.

US responds to assist afghan in keeping out those guys diplomatically.
 
Tornicade IED said:
This about pakhistan trying to make things worse in afghanistan than they already are.. Hey taliban. we pakis are an organized military and we can really wreak havoc on your little civil were why not go fight it out in afghanistan for a bit.

US responds to assist afghan in keeping out those guys diplomatically.
Click to expand...

Maybe you don't know this or don't care Torn, but "Paki" is a very offense remark, it's no different than "N*****" or "chink" or "kyke." Not just to Pakistanis, but to pretty many Muslims in general who are called "Pakis" by Whites who don't give a damn where they're from.
 
gourimoko said:
We are withdrawing from Afghanistan because the American people are opposed to the conflict there. It serves no purpose, thus why continue it? Our incursion into Afghanistan accomplished next to nothing, and the Taliban still control large areas of the country's territory, let alone politics.
Click to expand...

I don't see the relevance to the trade.

Again, while not defeated militarily; the previous administration simply did not have any realistic end-game planned, so we leave as we entered - with the Taliban and Al Qaeda still a force in that region of the world. One has to question the geopolitical philosophy that evolved from our Cold War worldviews, from the likes of Allen Dulles, Dick Helms and James Angleton to the neoconservative movement of Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and John Bolton among others. In essence, all the aforementioned firmly believed in a policy of nation-building; a.k.a. "regime change."
Click to expand...

Again....

And with regards to Vietnam and the Paris Peace Accords, one must understand that the entire war from it's opening moves, it's very long duration, and the final withdrawal of American forces were all politically motivated. This was not simply a civil war between the North and South, two supposedly equal sides of equal opinion. This was a proxy war between the communist bloc and the Western world. America simply had no business getting involved in the first place, as we had relatively no interest there and it was an unmaintainable situation.
Click to expand...

Again....relevance?

The reason I brought up Vietnam was only to draw a distinction between the Paris Peace Accords and whatever deal we may be bringing here. The Paris Peace Accords were negotiated while we still had forces in country, and were promising to retain significant air and naval assets there. That gave North Vietnam a real incentive to make peace. That is not the case here because we've already told them we're leaving, and so have given up virtually all of our real leverage. Of course, the Paris Peace Accords fell apart when we refused to provide the promised Air and NGF support in '75, but here, we don't even have the threat of that support.

Again, our involvement in Vietnam was brought about entirely by the exact same thinking that got us involved in Afghanistan for 13+ years, not to mention the Iraq War.
Click to expand...

Again, I don't see any relevance at all to the issue of this prisoner exchange. But I will disagree that our involvement in Vietnam was "brought about entirely by the exact same thinking that got us involved in Afghanistan." What got us involved in Afghanistan was an attack on American soil. Iraq is a different story, and there's no point in debating that here. I just don't think a little thing like the murder of 3000 Americans should be overlooked.

I'm not making a pacifist argument, or an isolationist argument. I'm neither of those things. My point is that it's important to understand the history behind these events so that we don't get trapped in talking points of any single ideology. We withdraw from Afghanistan because we have no need to be there. We withdraw from Iraq because we never should have been there, and our continued presence there does more harm than good.
Click to expand...

Again, so what? IF we're pulling out in a year anyway (except for leaving 8000 or so targets behind), and won't have any ability to enforce any treaty that is signed, then why do we give a fuck about it anyway? It won't be worth the paper it's printed on. That's the point.

The Paris Peace Accords were hollow, as every actor involved knew the United States once withdrawn could not successfully defend Saigon. The South Vietnamese lacked resources and capital to sustain their military - many of their soldiers walked around barefoot in the streets, disorganized and disheveled. There was no will to fight from the "South Vietnamese People," and thus there was no 'organic' counter-revolutionary force. The South Vietnamese government was just a propped up puppet regime, like many the CIA put into place during this era.
Click to expand...

There's a lot of crap in there, but it's not really worth debating a war than ended nearly 40 years ago. Leaving all the politics out of it, I'll just say that you may want to read a book or two about what happened militarily between the withdrawal of U.S. ground combat elements, which was essentially completed in 1972, and the Fall of Saigon in 1975. Linebacker II and the Easter Offensive would be a good starting point.
 
One other thing that pisses me off. We've got a few American civilians that are being held captive by the Taliban as well. Saw the daughter of one of them (an aid worker working for USAID) on TV last night worrying that the backlash from this deal will make it harder for her father to be released. She said that she spoke to people in the Administration, but has been told that Bergdahl was a "special case" because he was a soldier.

What. The. Fuck.

We now abandon American civilians and consider them less value than the military who is supposed to protect them? I'd have been happier if they'd traded for that civilian rather than the deserter. There used to be a time when being American was a form of protection because the government would hunt down anyone who harmed our people. Guess that's changed now.
 
gourimoko said:
Maybe you don't know this or don't care Torn, but "Paki" is a very offense remark, it's no different than "N*****" or "chink" or "kyke." Not just to Pakistanis, but to pretty many Muslims in general who are called "Pakis" by Whites who don't give a damn where they're from.
Click to expand...

Well, it's different to me, and likely to some other Americans as well. "Paki" is easier to say than "Pakistani". Like saying "yank" instead of "American." It's not calling them a raghead, towel jockey, or haji.

If "Paki" is used by some other folks elsewhere -- like in Britain -- with a different, more perjorative meaning, and not just as shorthand for "Pakistani", that ain't our problem.
 
The Human Q-Tip said:
Well, it's different to me, and likely to some other Americans as well. "Paki" is easier to say than "Pakistani". Like saying "yank" instead of "American." It's not calling them a raghead, towel jockey, or haji.

If "Paki" is used by some other folks elsewhere -- like in Britain -- with a different, more perjorative meaning, and not just as shorthand for "Pakistani", that ain't our problem.
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'Merica
 
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