David Rohde's Insights Into What Motivates the Taliban

Maybe I got confused which idiot I was speaking to. There are several choices ya know. LOL.

Last time I checked, the Taliban ceased to exist as a governing power. They got sent off to snipe from the sidelines like the good little terrorists you love elsewhere. Their short joyride as the masters of Afghanistan ended because they were arrogant and dumb. They no longer get to enforce their sadistic religious preferences at the point of a gun before crowds in the stadium.

Sorry to have to break it to you, but your Taliban heroes are losers in every sense of the term. The place may not have turned into a bed of roses the day after, but it's been a cesspool for many years. It'll probably remain one for a long time. Still it's better without a government trying to drag the land back a few hundred years to the good old days when guys like them werent just an ugly anachronism.

 

you got confused not only once.. but several times .. during the course of this discussion ... if the idiots can get you confused so easily than I wonder what will happen when you will argue with the intelligent

now, this might be your personal opinion but your Generals certainly don't seem to agree with it .. and this is from the Generals ... the independent analysts would have a even more harsh opinion

 

As much fun as it might be for observers, playing post ping-pong with someone that misreads much of what he sees isnt worth consuming my day with. OK, the Taliban are still running the government of Afghanistan. Who cares if it's inaccurate as long as you get to feel better knowing your terrorist thug heroes didnt really lose control of their toy.

I havent any idea how to perform the mental gymnastics required to look on losers like them with admiration, but if it was an Olympic sport you'd win gold. How sad for you.

 

I blame this solely on that there Fox News and Glenn Beck! Bastards!

 

Yesterday David Rohde appeared on the Charlie Rose show on PBS. His comments reflected what he wrote in the NY Times series.

Rohde's comments are totally different from how New presented them. What New did was a complete and utter distortion of what David Rohde wrote and said.

In fact Rohde spoke about his first hand experience with his Taliban captors in which they force feed a very distorted one-sided view to the young Taliban who are training to be suicide bombers.

As Rohde described, it is an alternate universe. The suicide bombers are disconnected from the real world, their families, their everyday experiences, and turned into "robots" who see death as a suicide bomber as a more appropriate alternative than life.

I found one question and answer particularly interesting. The interview took place after the very recent news about the Pakistani army attacking the taliban and fundamentalists in South Waziristan.
(Rohde was primarily kept in the North Waziristan region. He described in writing and in the interview how North Waziristan was essentially a totally Taliban controlled region. Of particular interest, in both his writing and in the interview he described how totally the Taliban controlled North Waziristan and how the Pakistani military tacitly acknowledged this.

When a passenger car and a Pakistani military vehicle approached one another on the road the civilian vehicle has to stop. If the civilian vehicle is controlled by the Taliban, only the driver is forced to get out of the car. Everyone else can stay in the car. If its not a Taliban vehicle everyone must leave the vehicle.

In other words, the Taliban are free to drive any kidnapped person around in North Waziristan and the army won't interfere.)

In any case, relative to the recent attack of the South Waziristan region by the Pakistani military, Rohde was asked his impression of whether or not the Pakistan military and government was now taking the fight to the Taliban.

Rohde responded that time will tell and it depends on whether or not the Pakistani military ultimately attack North Waziristan, where the Taliban are entrenched.

3 other interesting comments by Rohde.

A). Drone attacks: He said they were pretty effective in targeting and killing Taliban leaders. They were terrifying. The Taliban used the drone attacks to recruit new and additional suicide bomber recruits and exaggerated the civilian death totals from them.

B). Does the Pakistani Intelligence Service have some sort of allegiance with the Taliban? This is a hotly debated issue by US and Western intelligence. Rohde could only offer opinions but no hard evidence about this question.

C). Why had the US not suffered another attack of consequence on its soil since 9/11? Rohde, again with opinion suggested that US based Muslims had primarily successfully rejected the efforts from extremist and fundamentalist muslims for the most part....and that is a large part and reason for the lack of attacks on US soil.

New: Its one thing to argue your point of view. Its another thing to outright lie about something, distort it, twist it and then try and present it as facts.

I still don't get how Islamic supporters here can support the Taliban, who send their suicide bombers to kill other Muslims and then cheer about it when they kill a bunch of Muslims in a Mosque.

 

I think, I had already replied and acknowledged that it was a misunderstanding that I forgot to mention Glenn's name along with Rhode. but I guess you are having hard time understanding that ?

and link to commondremas from where I had copied the content (which was Glenn Greenwald comments + what David wrote) was already there in the 1st post of thread .if it was a lie ,.why would I give a link !

what do you want to achieve by repeating the same thing over and over again ?
and there is nothing 'fact' about it .. both what rhode wrote in nytimes or what Glenn said were their opinions on a topic ...and you can agree or disagree with it ..


and while you accuse Taliban of doing suicide attacks ... have your even thought that what prompted Taliban to do suicide attacks ... ? how many suicide attacks were happening there ..before America decided to jump in with death and destruction ?


I am sure you would have also noticed what Rhode said

and do you know .. how usa has been treating the prisons .. they have been abducting and kidnapping people from all over the world and they have been held in unknown locations for years .without any trial and their families are unaware if they are even alive or not

if am sure, you would have read the Glenn's comment

can you please help me to understand that how exactly the us invasion of Afghanistan would be any different from the USSR invasion from the point of a common afghan man ?
but of-course you thought that .. those fighting against USSR were freedom fighters and now who raise their voices are terrorists ?

 

Yeah, before that they limited themselves to homicide attacks.

 

Interesting news keeps pouring in

U.S. official resigns over Afghan war
Foreign Service officer and former Marine captain says he no longer knows why his nation is fighting

in a move that has sent ripples all the way to the White House, Hoh, 36, became the first U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war, which he had come to believe simply fueled the insurgency.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...0/26/AR2009102603394.html?sid=ST2009102603447
resignation letter in full http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/hp/ssi/wpc/ResignationLetter.pdf

@rob
does this give some more food for thought?

 

We're not... That's where the problem is. We have a leader that wanted to play president. He's got the job, yet does not seem to want anything to do with the responsibilities that go along with it.

This is Obama's shit or get off the pot moment.

 

New:

I believe you misquoted this deliberately. I had read excerpts from the Rohde article.

This is the way it hit me.

1. I was kidnapped.
2. It was terrible.
3. The guys who kidnapped me lied, threatened me and my colleagues, and held us for ransom.
4. I escaped. Boy that is great.

The tone of the Salon article was....

This is someone's opinion. He places blame on American media.

Anyone with half a brain who read the articles could see that.

Only someone who wanted to misrepresent the articles would have done what you did.

I'm a big believer in the health of the American Democracy. It supports contrary views. Sometimes the back and forth of those views gets very difficult. Most of the time it doesn't turn to extremism or violence.

Greenwald gave an example of that. He pointed the finger at America's media for not addressing wrongs that might have been done by America.

I disagree entirely. All of those wrongs were addressed. If anything they contributed to the change in the administration by election. Moreover, most, if not all of those wrongs were committed during the Bush administration. They were hotly debated in the Press, in the government, and by the public.

A different administration is in place and many of those wrongs are and have been addressed.

That is what a healthy democratic society does. It might not be smooth, but change occurs.

I contrast that with the example Rohde gave of how the Taliban cheered when they saw pictures of a suicide bomber blowing up a Pakistani mosque and killing about 50 moslems there for prayer.

Big big difference.

The resignation and letter by Mr Hoh is another example of how America deals with opinions.

The guy resigned. His letter is public. His reasoning is public. It gets filtered through society.

The Taliban, on the other hand, search out and accused natives of North Wazirstan, of possibly targeting sites/people for attack by drones.

Then they disembowel them, kill them, and hang them for all to see.

Big difference. In fact nobody knows if in fact anyone is North Wazirstan is a source for the drones or not. The Taliban don't care. They just find someone, disembowel them, kill them and hang them out there as a warning.

Ugly people.

Frankly, most of Islam has played pussyfoot with extremists for many decades. They encourage them. They financially underwrite them. They support them.

Now the extremists kill their own. They enjoy blowing up mosques. The taliban in Rohde's articles see themselves marching into Saudi Arabia and freeing the holy cities. They plan to overthrow the Saudi Government.

They don't plan on doing this in a peaceful way.

Frankly, I like the way, Rohde articulated how to deal with these issues.

Rohde never said, "stop fighting". While he acknowledged the conundrum of drone attacks, he didn't say stop them.

He spoke with natives. He suggests that moderate Islamics in Pakistan, Afghanistan, in Iraq, and elsewhere need the US to embrace them and assist them in combatting terrorists, extremists and fundamentalists. It requires a long term effort.

Cheney said that. But Cheney really only wanted to bomb, shoot, kill, and torture. I don't think Cheney was a propoent of planting Westerners in Islamic lands to assist the moderate natives in growing stronger and combatting the terrorists for the minds and souls of the population.

I believe that is what it will take. Its a big effort. In effect that is part of what Hoh said. He also doesn't think the US has it to do so at this point.

He is entitled to his opinion. Fortunately for him in American society he will not be disembowled, killed and hung for all to see as a threat.

That is not the Western way. It is the way of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists.

 

@earl
You can believe whatever you want, it does not matter

and while you keep repeating the negative things what rhode said about Taliban .. you deliberately ignore the points which were not negative ... and you don't need to tell that what crap rhode uttered at some tv show or whatever .. he is not the Quran that we have to follow ...

and again .. you failed to answer the questions by me about American occupation of Afghanistan

you said about Taliban executing the spies ... I quoted in last post that how America treats its prisoners ....and I am sure .. if you are living at a place where drones are showering bombs on daily basis than you will have a different opinion ..... Drones have killed about 600 people in north-west Pakistan since August 2008. ... how many of these are women, children and innocents ? which law allows usa to attack parts of Pakistan and do arbitrary executions like this ?

in 2006 usa had killed 80 in a single strike from drone . majority of those killed were children
but of-course , these things don't matter to you .

 

If they were Jewish kids, that'd be ok with you though, right?

 

no, that too would not be OK
however I do know one thing
I those were Jewish kids than all hell would have broken lose and I can image that ww3 would have started ..and dozen more countries would have been bulldozed

but since those who got killed were Muslims .. so no one even knows about it!
like always America can still chant 'our freedom' (while sitting on blood of thousands)

 

Translation... If them there was dirty joos, that'd bin just fine, but it'd bin dem damn dirty joos fault!

You're one classy guy new!

 

News on the latest terrorist bombing that just happened today:

New: I suppose you support this bombing, don't you? I guess you'd like to blame the US for it, huh?

 

These threads stand as a testament to the way some people process information. I think we all know what credence to attach to new's future posts.

 

not surprised, you fail to answer any question and yet continue to whine about Taliban

what evidence do you have to say that it is work of Taliban?

Taliban have denied any involvement
http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal...-involvement-in-peshawar-blast_100267050.html

blame the US .. you are saying as if holy US has never pricked anyone with a needle