It costs the US $50 million to kill each member of the Taliban
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  It costs the US $50 million to kill each member of the Taliban
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Author Topic: It costs the US $50 million to kill each member of the Taliban  (Read 1233 times)
tpfkaw
wormyguy
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« on: October 11, 2010, 10:54:32 AM »

http://kabulpress.org/my/spip.php?article32304

Ugh.
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Beet
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« Reply #1 on: October 11, 2010, 12:13:47 PM »

The objective isn't to kill as many Taliban as possible. If it were, we would just carpet bomb the whole region. The objective is to create some kind of state in Afghanistan that is non-Taliban controlled and stable.
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John Dibble
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« Reply #2 on: October 11, 2010, 02:17:26 PM »

The objective isn't to kill as many Taliban as possible. If it were, we would just carpet bomb the whole region. The objective is to create some kind of state in Afghanistan that is non-Taliban controlled and stable.

Pretty much this - killing Taliban isn't the only thing they are spending money on.
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tpfkaw
wormyguy
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« Reply #3 on: October 11, 2010, 02:56:27 PM »

The objective isn't to kill as many Taliban as possible. If it were, we would just carpet bomb the whole region. The objective is to create some kind of state in Afghanistan that is non-Taliban controlled and stable.

Never in the entire history of the "country" has there even been "some kind of state," much less a "stable" one.  It's an impossible task.
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angus
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« Reply #4 on: October 11, 2010, 03:01:20 PM »


one assumes it will get cheaper as time passes.  The first CD cost about nine billion dollars to produce.  Each one after that cost about nine cents, so the average cost goes down over time.  

Also, as has been pointed out, it's kinda misleading to count costs this way.  The HeNe laser, for example, was developed for purposes other than putting a dance tune in your head.

As for afghanistan, we yankees don't like to learn vicariously, do we?  If we did, then we'd rely on the fact that the Soviet Union went broke fighting the Taliban for a decade, and we would not need to perform this experiment to learn first-hand that the Taliban can't be easily dissuaded by bullets.
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Хahar 🤔
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« Reply #5 on: October 11, 2010, 03:35:05 PM »

The objective isn't to kill as many Taliban as possible. If it were, we would just carpet bomb the whole region. The objective is to create some kind of state in Afghanistan that is non-Taliban controlled and stable.

Never in the entire history of the "country" has there even been "some kind of state," much less a "stable" one.  It's an impossible task.

Your grasp of history is appalling.
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Silent Hunter
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« Reply #6 on: October 12, 2010, 02:18:43 PM »

The objective isn't to kill as many Taliban as possible. If it were, we would just carpet bomb the whole region. The objective is to create some kind of state in Afghanistan that is non-Taliban controlled and stable.

Never in the entire history of the "country" has there even been "some kind of state," much less a "stable" one.  It's an impossible task.

Your grasp of history is appalling.

Quite. It was pretty stable until 1979, IIRC.
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #7 on: October 12, 2010, 02:41:30 PM »

Eh... well it wasn't notably unstable until the toppling of Mohammed Daoud Khan in 1978. The things turned seriously sh!tty seriously quickly. Though he came to power by ousting his own cousin, and there were all sorts of tensions bubbling under the surface.
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k-onmmunist
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« Reply #8 on: October 12, 2010, 03:03:42 PM »

The objective isn't to kill as many Taliban as possible. If it were, we would just carpet bomb the whole region. The objective is to create some kind of state in Afghanistan that is non-Taliban controlled and stable.

Never in the entire history of the "country" has there even been "some kind of state," much less a "stable" one.  It's an impossible task.

Your grasp of history is appalling.

Quite. It was pretty stable until 1979, IIRC.

This could apply to Britain as well as Afghanistan.
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tpfkaw
wormyguy
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« Reply #9 on: October 12, 2010, 03:30:47 PM »

The objective isn't to kill as many Taliban as possible. If it were, we would just carpet bomb the whole region. The objective is to create some kind of state in Afghanistan that is non-Taliban controlled and stable.

Never in the entire history of the "country" has there even been "some kind of state," much less a "stable" one.  It's an impossible task.

Your grasp of history is appalling.

Quite. It was pretty stable until 1979, IIRC.



There has not ever been an Afghan "government" that has had any sort of effective control of anything beyond the immediate vicinity of Kabul.  The rest is controlled by various tribal warlords or coalitions of warlords.  "Stable" governments in the past have merely avoided irritating the warlords in the rural (for lack of a better word) areas too much.  The idea that Afghanistan can be made some sort of unitary state is historically, culturally, ethnically, linguistically, economically, militarily, and logistically (since much of the country is inaccessible from other parts except by horseback or even helicopter) impossible.  For good reason - "Afghanistan" as a country is an entirely artificial construct brought about by the fact that it was such a crappy and ungovernable scrap of land that neither Britain nor Russia ever felt like including it in one of their 19th-century annexation sprees.

You may want to broaden your grasp of history beyond Wikipedia.
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Stranger in a strange land
strangeland
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« Reply #10 on: October 12, 2010, 03:41:17 PM »


one assumes it will get cheaper as time passes.  The first CD cost about nine billion dollars to produce.  Each one after that cost about nine cents, so the average cost goes down over time.  

Also, as has been pointed out, it's kinda misleading to count costs this way.  The HeNe laser, for example, was developed for purposes other than putting a dance tune in your head.

As for afghanistan, we yankees don't like to learn vicariously, do we?  If we did, then we'd rely on the fact that the Soviet Union went broke fighting the Taliban for a decade, and we would not need to perform this experiment to learn first-hand that the Taliban can't be easily dissuaded by bullets.

The Taliban didn't exist until 1994, five years after the Soviets withdrew.
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Silent Hunter
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« Reply #11 on: October 13, 2010, 12:41:44 PM »

The objective isn't to kill as many Taliban as possible. If it were, we would just carpet bomb the whole region. The objective is to create some kind of state in Afghanistan that is non-Taliban controlled and stable.

Never in the entire history of the "country" has there even been "some kind of state," much less a "stable" one.  It's an impossible task.

Your grasp of history is appalling.

Quite. It was pretty stable until 1979, IIRC.



There has not ever been an Afghan "government" that has had any sort of effective control of anything beyond the immediate vicinity of Kabul.  The rest is controlled by various tribal warlords or coalitions of warlords.  "Stable" governments in the past have merely avoided irritating the warlords in the rural (for lack of a better word) areas too much.  The idea that Afghanistan can be made some sort of unitary state is historically, culturally, ethnically, linguistically, economically, militarily, and logistically (since much of the country is inaccessible from other parts except by horseback or even helicopter) impossible.  For good reason - "Afghanistan" as a country is an entirely artificial construct brought about by the fact that it was such a crappy and ungovernable scrap of land that neither Britain nor Russia ever felt like including it in one of their 19th-century annexation sprees.

I do read other sources than Wikipedia; I'm currently reading a book on the history of warfare with footnotes.

It doesn't have to be a "unitary" state. A federation or confederation is perfectly possible. India works with even greater diversity; many of the states in Europe were Afghanistans earlier in their history.
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fezzyfestoon
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« Reply #12 on: October 13, 2010, 02:30:42 PM »

Haha that is some shoddy logic, even for politics.
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Silent Hunter
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« Reply #13 on: October 13, 2010, 03:10:08 PM »
« Edited: October 13, 2010, 03:19:35 PM by London Man »

Haha that is some shoddy logic, even for politics.

Explain, please.

Afghanistan wasn't an "artificial" Anglo-Russian construct; although its borders were. The country came into existence in 1747.

Being an "artificial construct" hasn't stopped a number of countries from being stable democracies either; Jamaica, Ghana, Slovenia, even the United States.

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fezzyfestoon
Junior Chimp
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« Reply #14 on: October 13, 2010, 03:30:28 PM »

Haha that is some shoddy logic, even for politics.

Explain, please.

Afghanistan wasn't an "artificial" Anglo-Russian construct; although its borders were. The country came into existence in 1747.

Being an "artificial construct" hasn't stopped a number of countries from being stable democracies either; Jamaica, Ghana, Slovenia, even the United States.



I meant the article, sorry. Smiley
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Silent Hunter
Junior Chimp
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« Reply #15 on: October 13, 2010, 03:45:13 PM »

Haha that is some shoddy logic, even for politics.

Explain, please.

Afghanistan wasn't an "artificial" Anglo-Russian construct; although its borders were. The country came into existence in 1747.

Being an "artificial construct" hasn't stopped a number of countries from being stable democracies either; Jamaica, Ghana, Slovenia, even the United States.



I meant the article, sorry. Smiley

No problem. Smiley
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