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Biden: Afghan War Is 'Worth the Effort'
"It is worth the effort we are making," he said, warning that the terror groups on the border with Pakistan could "wreak havoc" on Europe and the US.
US Vice President Joe Biden gestures while speaking with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili in Tbilisi. (AFP/Vano Shlamov) The number of foreign troop deaths has jumped recently, sparking questions in the UK over its involvement in the war.
Mr Biden suggested more sacrifice would have to be made during what he termed the "fighting season".
He was speaking to the BBC's Jonathan Beale during a European trip which has taken him to Ukraine and Georgia.
The vice-president insisted that "in terms of national interest of Great Britain, the US and Europe, [the war in Afghanistan] is worth the effort we are making and the sacrifice that is being felt".
He added: "And more will come".
'Need to succeed'
He said forces were for the first time directly tackling Taleban fighters in some areas of the country.
See a map of ongoing Afghan offensives
"This, unfortunately, is the fighting season [...] the trees are up in the mountains again, people are able to infiltrate from the hills of Pakistan, and in Helmand province - where the Taleban had free rein for a number of years, we are engaging them now."
And he reiterated the Obama administration's rationale for the conflict.
"This is the place from which the attacks of 9/11 and all those attacks in Europe that came from al-Qaeda have flowed from that place - between Afghanistan and Pakistan."
He said the terror groups who sheltered along the Afghan-Pakistan border combined with the country's role in the international drug trade - supplying 90% of the world's heroin - meant the war in Afghanistan needed to succeed.
"It is a place that, if it doesn't get straightened out, will continue to wreak havoc on Europe and the United States," he said.
He said the goal of the US was both "eradicating terrorism and not planting the seeds for its return," underlining the importance of removing the lucrative heroin-producing poppy crop which funds both al-Qaeda and radical jihadists.
Over the last few years, the US has used controversial drone attacks to hit militant targets in Pakistan from Afghanistan.
Pakistan has in the past expressed concerns about the impact of such military offensives in southern Afghanistan on south-west Pakistan as militants seep over the border into the restive Baluchistan province.
'Courageous warriors'
Mr Biden was full of praise for British troops, calling them "among the best trained and bravest warriors in the world".
But he was unable to comment on the standard of equipment that British troops had been given.
A political row has broken out in the UK over the adequacy of British troops' equipment, after Foreign Office Minister Lord Malloch Brown told a reporter that "we definitely don't have enough helicopters".
Lord Malloch Brown later withdrew his remarks.
Critics say British troops' lack of helicopters has made them more vulnerable to roadside explosives.
Mr Biden said that he was "not in a position to make a judgement" but said he assumed they had all they needed.
Detainees
Asked about the recent announcement that a report on the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp was being delayed, Mr Biden said the administration had been busy trying to determine what should happen to each of the detainees held there.
"We are going through every single detainee's records ... to make a judgement about whether or not they should be tried [or] ... released and if so what country might take them if we can't get them back to the country of origin because they're going to be tortured or mistreated," he said.
But he expressed confidence that the camp would still be closed according to the timetable laid out by President Barack Obama in January, and hinted that some of the detainees would be retained at another prison.
"We expect before January - well before January - we will have a decision on each and every individual being held."
- Posted in
69 Comments so far
Show AllJoe Biden passes for an "intellectual" and foreign policy "expert" in D.C.
Hard to believe, huh?
The quotes in this article sound like refried Cheney...if we aren't fighting terrorists in the streets of Afghanistan and Pakistan, we will be fighting terrorists in our own streets.
When I first heard of this, it reminded me of Sec. of State Madeline Albright. As the Wikipedia article on her recounts, 'When asked by (Lesley)Stahl, "We have heard that half a million children have died [as a result of sanctions]. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" Albright replied: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it." She expressed regret for this remark in 2001..." I guess she had some remorse when she realized that 9/11 was partially blowback for this remark.
I wonder haw long it will be before Biden has his blowback? This is the reason we need to have our military out of EVERY forign country, not just Iraq and Afghanistan.
Not in DC!
Poet
Is he up to Sarah's standards though?Tony
Biased Biden, member of a war mongering extremist group himself.
The vice-president insisted that "in terms of national interest of Great Britain, the US and Europe, [the war in Afghanistan] is worth the effort we are making and the sacrifice that is being felt".
B.S.!!!
'National interest' is code for oil company interests.
Remember Taliban said no to UnoCal pipeline request in August 2001 and U.S & Brits are against pipeline from Iran to Pakistan and India.
But I could be wrong !
Did it leap to any one else's mind that we've heard this kind of insensitive statement from high U.S. officials: specifically Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, with her "it was worth it" response to the countless deaths and other miseries associated with U.S. sanctions against Iraq? If we have officials who have such thoughts, couldn't we at least afford to buy a few muzzles for their mouths when they go overseas and further inflame world opinion against us?
I was thinking of the same comparison.
Perusing these threads hours later, I belatedly affirm that I also made the Albright connection.
· Yr Obd't Servant
"Mr Biden suggested more sacrifice would have to be made during what he termed the "fighting season"."
Biden sacrifices nothing as he throws American youth into the meat grinder of Afghanistan.
It is always the "fighting season" to our leadership of the last 50 years.All war all the time.
Biden= asshole with a bad haircut and a cheap suit.
It's always the old who lead us to the war, its always the young who fall.
Look at all we've won with the saber and the gun, Tell me is it worth it all?
Phil Ochs
Just another arch criminal in the elite cabal. Joe Biden in the lineup of war criminals to be prosecuted when the day of reckoning comes!
Biden: Afghan War Is 'Worth the Effort'
Then go put both your ass and your hair plugs on the line for it. That'll be the day.
Biden is resurrecting the same arguments made about the Vietnam War, and the Iraq war. The military industrial complex owns the man. Anytime the US attempts to micro manage various ideologies and fit it comfortably into their own world view the results are predictable.
You have some on this site arguing that the Kurds will be wiped out if the US pulls out of Iraq. As if it is the US who is reponsible for all the world's ills insisting that we act as the world policeforce so to correct every injustice. But as we have seen, such an ideology corrects nothing and only contributes to injustice and deepens the problems. A guy like Bidden thinks he can save the Afghans from their own culture and transform it based on management principles he learned in business school. Bidden is devoid of any sense of conscience or respect for innocent human life and only perpetuates the cycle of violence.
Biden and Obama are creating another Vietnam in Afghanistan and wining the hearts and minds of the Afghans by covert air strikes on non-combatants that have claimed over 500 lives by recent reports from numerous drone strikes. The US then issues a 500.00 check to the families to wash the blood off of their hands.
Biden nor Obama never set foot on a battlefield but knows what is best for the rest of us. Meanwhile, US troop casualties continue to climb to its highest numbers since the US began to occupy Afghanistan. The whisper of Vietnamm lingers on their false promises.
The US has used identical methods in all the aforementioned wars. They arm oppositional war lords who latter turn those weapons on US forces.
They pour billions for infrastructure projects that are never built, but are rather channeled into the coffers of corrupt politicians/corporations in the US and their puppets who are using the funds to create lavish life styles when the house of cards comes crashing down.
To even provide space for Biden is participatory in his crimes against humanity. As a Viet Vet, I find Biden and his military handlers appalling. It is pretty clear that the lessons of history are never learned with our handicapped representatives. No occupying force in the history of warfare has ever prevailed against a guerrilla force.
Despite the obvious they continue to view human life through an antiseptic lens; they send young people to their deaths; they claim thousands of lives and then characterize those deaths using vocabulary frames like, “collateral damage” as if those lives carried no meaning or value whatsoever.
Then the sheeple line up in droves to elect another status quo politician like Bush, Cheney, Obama, and Bidden perpetuating the dysfunction of violence simply because their sorry arse is not on the line. And yet the herd will dismiss a guy like Dennis Kucinich for proposing a Dept of Peace.
Man, the corruption is so fucking deep and the herd forever Obedient to the forces of our collective decline.
I guess the global war on terror is morphing into a regional war on heroin trafficking.
Bill from Saginaw
What a great idea! Combining the "war on terror" with the "war on drugs." That's a winner. Maybe we can fold in the "war on obesity" they're promoting now. These insanely arrogant and greedy warriors will drag themselves to Hell in relatively short order. Unfortunately, they'll take most of us with them.
More like who's going to do the trafficking.
The same D-MBNA sure knows how to keep those war machines all oiled up ! So what's next in Afghanistan and his boss ruins what's left of it, putting the Afghans on "credit card" life time debts to keep them as slaves ? I wonder if there's something Biden's corporate cronies plan to exploit of the Afghans once in occupation mode that we don't know about. Just another way to guarantee that Afghanistan will HATE US for generations to come !
Biden, let me put this as clearly as possible....I think those hair plugs are infiltrating your grey matter. You corporate lacky!
The BBC and Biden will get along just fine. I can see the populations of Europe particularly the UK swallowing such garbage. In spite of their efforts to the contrary it is a losing battle they are fighting now. And it is going to get a heck of a lot worse. Politicians speak for themselves but they do not reflect the mounting distrust and anger that is unfolding within their populations. They see bail outs and corruption, war and lies. Biden is a Zionist and a war monger. He speaks for the multinational energy companies and the criminals contracted in Afghanistan to grab the dope and the other resources of that area for their benefit. But if citizens think times are getting bad at home they should look abroad to what is an ongoing occupation and aggression.
He appears to find trees growing on mountains disturbing. Agent Orange them Joe. Al-Quaeda was a western intelligence setup. CIA in particular. Just a list of names, either directly or indirectly connected to their payrolls on a disc to be activated whenever the need might arise.
So, the aim is to eradicate terrorism forever? Poor people slaughtered by foreign armies directed by the likes of Joe Biden to fight CIA proxy armies? To keep everyone safe, forever? Amen.
Lbanus July 23rd, 2009 12:14 pm..." Al-Quaeda was a western intelligence setup....CIA in particular. Just a list of names, either directly or indirectly connected to their payrolls on a disc to be activated whenever the need might arise". ...You have that right!..."The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaida.
And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda
campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity
representing the 'devil' only in order to drive the TV watcher to accept
a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism.
The country behind this propaganda is the US . . ."
- Robin Cook
Former British Foreign Secretary
The BBC and Biden will get along just fine. I can see the populations of Europe particularly the UK swallowing such garbage. In spite of their efforts to the contrary it is a losing battle they are fighting now. And it is going to get a heck of a lot worse. Politicians speak for themselves but they do not reflect the mounting distrust and anger that is unfolding within their populations. They see bail outs and corruption, war and lies. Biden is a Zionist and a war monger. He speaks for the multinational energy companies and the criminals contracted in Afghanistan to grab the dope and the other resources of that area for their benefit. But if citizens think times are getting bad at home they should look abroad to what is an ongoing occupation and aggression.
He appears to find trees growing on mountains disturbing. Agent Orange them Joe. Al-Quaeda was a western intelligence setup. CIA in particular. Just a list of names, either directly or indirectly connected to their payrolls on a disc to be activated whenever the need might arise.
So, the aim is to eradicate terrorism forever? Poor people slaughtered by foreign armies directed by the likes of Joe Biden to fight CIA proxy armies? To keep everyone safe, forever? Amen.
Joe Biden: "It is worth the effort..."
Yeah, maybe in YOUR bank account...
The war on Afghanistan is an elective war for pipeline plunder. Biden will say anything Tel Aviv wants him to say - that's why AIPAC appointed him as the President of Vice. It's our blood and treasure and their plunder.
Does being eligible for election to public office today require that a candidate have short-term memory loss?
No, only the ability to say the exact opposite of what you intend to do if elected.
'The graveyard of umpires."
Biden is a fool. I am starting to believe that he makes GW Bush look Presidential.
Biden really means that protecting the gas and oil routes are worth the effort.
ZOG's beloved White House point man. OK, Zio Joe, well done, now hurry and go report back to AIPAC for your next public speaking assignment.
"Biden: Afghan War Is 'Worth the Effort'"
Meaning "this time the Crusades will succeed"...in turning the entire Muslim world into terrorists, raising the price of heroin with junkie/drug gang crimes and private gulags, increasing the world's distaste for Zionism, impoverishing Americans further, enriching war and oil profiteers and establishing an Orwellian dictatorship.
I wonder if Biden would think it was worth the effort if his whole near and extended family were slowly burnt to death by white phosphorous?
P.S. Not much was made of the report that Afghan Freedom fighters attacked a USA base with white phosphorous.
Biden probably brushes his teeth with white phosphorous.
-TIA
I suggest sending every politician who suggests that a certain war is 'worth the effort' right to the frontline battles. ... And don't forget to send Madeleine Albright back to Iraq, because she thought that a 100.000 dead children from the sanctions was 'worth it'. Let's see whether she can defend that viewpoint in front of her new Iraq neighbours.
Isn't it a shame that the American people all want us to get out of Afghanistan and the corporations want us to stay so they can make more money at the expense of our troops?
What a country - the USA!
Why does the vice president think Saudi Arabia is between Afghanistan and Pakistan?
Yes, bingo, why endeed? It seems that twenty-something high school dropouts from Utah must be sent to kill or be killed in Afghanistan so that millionaire Saudis won't bankroll flight lessons in Florida for future 9/11 kamakaze attackers. Got that logic? Good, now you can explain it to me.
The U.K. is certainly not alone in questioning its involvement. So is most of Europe and Canada too. It may be worth repeating here what I said under another related article.
The broader and more significant issue may be whether the NATO alliance as a whole can survive the Af-Pak domination attempt, regardless of its end results being defined as a success or a failure. If not, and many of NATO's recent departures from its original raison d'être are beginning to look quite shaky, the geopolitical implications could be enormous.
Especially if considered in conjunction with such manifestations as SCO-BRIC discussions regarding world reserve currency issues, we may all be in for some very unpleasant global instability in the not too distant future.
AIPAC approved message.
Is it worth taxing the rich to pay for it instead of borrowing money to wreck US with debt?
No?
Then it's not really worth it, is it, Joey?
"Worth the effort?" Why? Because of the multi-trillion dollars worth of oil under its surface? The natural gas? The gold? The diamonds? Perhaps one or more of the other super-valuable natural resources placed in, on, and under the soil of Afghanistan? What?
Anyone who advocates war to halt terrorism is insane. Biden is a madman, plain and simple. Madmen have run governments for far too many centuries.
Joe's argument, as displayed in this article, really is lame. Has anybody dared to think (not too loudly, please!) that maybe we have these people on the ropes? Finish them off, please, don't let them slide sideways and come back with more of this, or it will go on forever.
Jeevee
Have you ever noticed that most of the demonic cheerers for war have never been in the "service"?
You zee. Itses in zee interest of zee great fuhrer in zee US and UK. Sieg Heil Zion! Vork vill set you free! Ve are not Varlikers, Ve vant piss!
The "national interest" is a fascinating subject.
If you are rich, it's not an interest, it's a dividend.
If you are poor or middle class, the "interest" is about 70 cents on the dollar.
So the next time you hear a politician talk about OUR "National Interest", just ask him what is this "OUR" shit?
You want us to fight and die and then have our families and poor and middle class community pay for our machines, material and funerals plus your 20% off the top?
Fuck you, sir!
Very classy -- the "sir" at the end. Liked it a lot -- and the post.
Much obliged.
Using Biden's logic, I guess what the Nazis did in World War II was "worth the effort" because it opened up the fields of medicine, law, and accounting to a lot of non-Jewish Germans, which I'm sure those non-Jewish Germans were very grateful to Hitler for.
Look, why don't you all just chill out and take comfort in the fact that we live in the greatest country on Earth. Just ask the Africans we enslaved for 200 years.
Or the Natives we decimated when we invaded their home country.
Or the 200,000 pieces of human charcoal we created in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for NO REASON AT ALL.
Or, to reference several other posts here, the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children we murdered in the 1990's through our "sanctions," just because they couldn't figure out a way to topple Saddam Hussein (Question: could you have toppled W, in the "freeest" country on Earth, when he was running roughshod over the rest of the world? No? Then how did you expect the Iraqis to topple THEIR leader in the most REPRESSIVE society on Earth?!)
Or the millions of people who lost their jobs -- in food service, travel, tourism, etc. -- when gas went to $4.50 per gallon, while Exxon/Mobil racked up $44 billion in profits.
Or the millions of people who've lost their health coverage, while United Healthcare in Minnesota saw its profits increase by 155% this past year -- right after awarding their former CEO a $1.78 billion retirement package.
Yep: greatest country on Earth. Just ask the people who've raped it, and the world along with it.