Tom Lantos Tells it Like it Is

Dutch Green party officials were upset by remarks from Representative Tom Lantos, D-California. Lantos is a holocaust survivor, and in a discussion of Guantanamo he stated that Europeans seem much more upset over Guantanamo than they were about Auschwitz.

The Greens were highly offended, but while over the top a bit, Lantos statement comes close to truth. The far left parties which represent most of Europe these days are more interested in attacking the US over petty things while the whole subcontinent of Asia teeters on the edge of a dark chasm.

It was neglect and ignorance that led to the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan to begin with, and now the Dutch are debating whether to pull their troops out or not.

I remember listening to NPR during the advance of the Taliban after the Soviets pulled out, and thinking “This is going to be a horror for the people of Kabul.” The Taliban started shelling the city with rockets, and in the end it was pure horror that most did not hear of.

If the Dutch were to pull out then it would cede more to those same Taliban, and if all of Nato pulls out then the march to Kabul starts over. What would be the reprecussions of that afterwards? Gulbuden Hekmatyar and Ayman Al Zawahari are still out there waiting to massacre again.

If Nato leaves then Afghanistan would once more become a death camp from mountains to steppes — so while Lantos’ statement might thrill some, it’s a bad time to be criticizing allies.

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4 Responses to Tom Lantos Tells it Like it Is

  1. Ornery Elephant says:

    OT

    Thanos…is the email address in your “Contact” area, correct? Tried to send one, got it returned.

    Thanks

  2. Thanos says:

    I’ll fix it, I was getting some spam from Russia, and from some Lal Masjid fans.

  3. hass says:

    The Taliban did not exist yet when the Soviets pulled out, moron. The afghan forces then were supported by the US

  4. Thanos says:

    Evidently you need a remedial reading program. “after the soviets pulled out”. The Soviets pulled out in 1989, the governments that came after in Afghanistan were weak, and provinces were being fought over by Warlords, including Gulbuddin Hekmatyar – this led to the Taliban, but there’s still debate about when they formed. We do know that Al Qaeda was first referenced in documents in 1988.

    The Taliban initially had had enormous goodwill from Afghans weary of the corruption, brutality and incessant fighting of Mujahideen warlords. Two contrasting narratives of the beginnings of the Taliban[11] are that the rape and murder of boys and girls from a family traveling to Kandahar or a similar outrage by Mujahideen bandits sparked Mullah Omar and his students to vow to rid Afghanistan of these criminals.[12] The other is that the Pakistan-based truck shipping mafia known as the “Afghanistan Transit Trade” and their allies in the Pakistan government, trained, armed and financed the Taliban to clear the southern road across Afghanistan to the Central Asian Republics of extortionate bandit gangs.[13]

    The basis of the Taliban was provided when, in the early 1980s, the CIA and the ISI (Pakistan’s Interservices Intelligence Agency) provided arms to any group resisting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and started the process of gathering radical Muslims from around the world to fight against the Soviets. Osama Bin Laden was one of the key players in organizing these U.S.-backed training camps for the Muslims. The U.S. poured funds and arms into Afghanistan and “by 1987, 65,000 tons of U.S.-made weapons and ammunition a year were entering the war”.[14]

    The Taliban were based in the Helmand, Kandahar and Uruzgan regions, and were overwhelmingly ethnic Pashtuns and predominantly Durrani Pashtuns. They received training and arms from Pakistan, the U.S. as well as other Middle Eastern countries who had been recruited by the U.S. to thwart the Soviet invasion of this region.

    The first major military activity of the Taliban was in October-November 1994 when they marched from Maiwand in southern Afghanistan to capture Kandahar City and the surrounding provinces, losing only a few dozen men.[15] Starting with the capture of a border crossing and a huge ammunition dump from warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a few weeks later they freed “a convoy trying to open a trade route from Pakistan to Central Asia” from another group of warlords attempting to extort money.[16] In the next three months this hitherto “unknown force” took control of twelve of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, with Mujahideen warlords often surrendering to them without a fight and the “heavily armed population” giving up their weapons.[17] By September 1996 they captured Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul

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