“A Taliban spokesman said Monday that the terror group would use “all our strength” to kidnap or kill the U.K’s Prince Harry, who has just begun serving a four-month tour of duty as a chopper pilot inAfghanistan.”
http://news.yahoo.com/taliban-threatens-kill-prince-harry-205425273–abc-news-topstories.html
These guys are just grasping at straws at this point…
I was surprised they have a spokesman. Good to see those communication majors finally getting some work.
as long as they leave Middleton alone, its all good…
Don’t be so sure these guys are desperate. If anything they’re speaking from a position of strength. In the post-US landscape in Afghanistan, these guys are going to be influential again.
how come the US was unsuccesful at weeding these guys out? are they really that strong? do they have a lot of real members?send the russian mob in there or something
Russians had less luck than we did.
Imagine using an assualt rifle to shoot a swarm of bees. That’s not to say we’ve been unsuccessful. We’ve done quite well really.
Now the problem is less about actual fighting and more so who steps up to lead the country after we leave? There’s a huge void and the Taliban are the only likely candidates. It’s pretty much the exact same thing as when the Russians left.
Probably a lot of rural Afghanistans oppose the US - they just don’t do anything violent on their own. So if some Taliban recruiter goes around giving them bombs, 1% of these people will say “sure, I will put this in the US embassy”. Taliban would not be influential if parts of the population didn’t actually share their ideology, at least in part. They are basically like the Afghan version of rednecks, just more extreme.
Frankly, from what I’ve heard, we just didn’t do what was needed to be done, which is eradicate the enemy basically. Russia was doing quite well I believe until we got involved.
So now we are leaving the job unfinished, which is something that will probably just come back to haunt us even worse next time.
Have you seen Rambo 3? In the end of Rambo 3, Rambo and a huge mob of Afghan “freedom fighters” shoot the shit out of a bunch of Russian army guys. In the closing credits, there is a line saying “this film was dedicated to the gallant people of Afghanistan”. Well guess what - those gallant people are now the Taliban. This film was made in 1988. It’s pretty surreal to see the parallels to the 2012 situation with the US.
Sounds like Rambo needs to go back to Afghanistan. Rambo 3 - Part 2: Electric Boogaloo.
i personally would volunteer on the weekends to capture talibans in Canada…i heard they have a couple units here as Canada is very lax
The Taliban must have felt excluded after seeing the partay photos in Vegas.
Very interesting…had not thought about this
Oh. Irony.
In the days before 9/11 in the 90s, (i remember reading this back in elementary school), the media used to refer to the Taliban as a “puritanical sect”.
I remember learning that Sunnis were peaceful and Shias (called them Shi’ites)were terrorists in grade school. I wonder what else I will learn is wrong in the next 15-20 years…probably that any and all blanket generalizations are incorrect, some more so than others.
You guys were learning about Sunnis and Shias in elementary school? Perhaps this is a regional dialect thing, but where I come from elementary school is K-6th. Grade school also usually referred to the years before high school.
No I went to elementary school in US. I just used to read a lot. In retrospect I now realize how odd that was.
Yes, in 4th or 5th grade I think…but this was during desert storm so it was topical.
I was Sweden in our 5th grade European Fair. Good times.
Many have tried to capture Afghanistan. It’s hard for outsiders to succeed there with all the hidden caves and harsh winters.