Compelling, unusually neutral news article

[dolfan]

Opinions about this?

[MacUser]

Question: Is the dithering not intended to embolden our enemies and disenfranchise our volunteer military?

[dolfan]

Maybe it is. Or maybe that's just a rhetorical scoring point. I don't know. It has been in my mind for a long time, before Obama even, that no one has ever vanquished Afghanistan and that we shouldn't fight wars in order to rebuild nations. I really think that unless we can utterly wipe out the Taliban and al Qaida, we need to pull away and concentrate on protecting our own borders. We can't wipe them out, of course. Not totally. You can't eradicate an idea. We could nuke them, but we won't. Short of wholesale destruction like that, we're fighting to win what I think is an impossible battle. If that means we leave, or "cut and run", then I think we have to live with that label and reconsider the future of the deployment of our force. Unless we're willing to just raze a country and totally wipe out everyone inside it, and unless we actually fight that way, we'll always wind up with these kinds of long-term missions that build up even longer term resentments that lead to future wars. If you kill them all, you don't have to worry about that so much.

After a point, extraction has to be part of the mission. I think we're near or past that point in Afghanistan. I wonder what our young people are dying for there now. I'd really appreciate it if someone could demonstrate it in concrete terms what we're actually doing instead of what we'd like to do, and to show me that it is worth the lives of our military. IMO, nuke 'em, America First, eliminate the enemy, might makes right, etc. We're trying to be humane killers; this isn't euthanasia. It may be, to some extent, suicide for our people. I just don't want what was a right and just war to devolve into that. Seems like it is to me.

[MacUser]

that no one has ever vanquished Afghanistan and that we shouldn't fight wars in order to rebuild nations. I really think that unless we can utterly wipe out the Taliban and al Qaida, we need to pull away and concentrate on protecting our own borders. We can't wipe them out, of course. Not totally. You can't eradicate an idea.

Like I said.. the point is to call it useless and demoralize.

This can be won if we listen to the Generals on the ground and respond accordingly with a clear mission with clear objectives. Set specific goals to be reached and supply the necessary resources/pressure to get it done. Then when these goals are reached to the margin of error.. claim victory for the mission. Then outline an exit strategy. Obama would be a Hero... but he is unable to do such and thus the result is as it is.

Btw we ARE protecting our borders by taking the fight to that soil.

[dolfan]

Btw we ARE protecting our borders by taking the fight to that soil.

The way it is being done now? See, that's the problem I have. I think we're saying the same thing. "The fight", in principle, is not something I quarrel with; the execution of it and why is. I'm not convinced, though, that even the advice of the generals will get this done. Closer? Well, let me say it this way --- I trust them more than I do Obama about it, even though they may be as wrong as he is on the outcome.

[forestwalker]

It's not often you see an article in a national paper describe accurately EU and US nation building efforts:

"He concluded, he said in his resignation letter, that the war 'has violently and savagely pitted the urban, secular, educated and modern of Afghanistan against the rural, religious, illiterate and traditional.'"

Imagine the reaction to 60,000 blue-helmeted UN troops being plopped down in Texas to "civilize" the place and you have a pretty good analog to the majority of the insurgency in Afghanistan.

[dolfan]

The scorekeeping, as I see it, ought to read this way:

al Qaeda 3,000
United States -- population of Afghanistan

You can't control termites with treating where they've already eaten through. Conventional warfare is just exactly that. Now, what we're doing is a rehab mission. Can't be done with these people. As the USA, we had the power and the ability to eliminate the colony and all possible outlets it may have found in Afghanistan, but only if we destroyed Afghanistan 100%. It is too late to do that now. The colony spread beyond Afghanistan.

So, the scorecard actually reads this way:

al Qaeda 3,000 plus the number of NATO troops killed, and counting
United States, a few hundred thousand (?) Afghans/al Qaeda, and counting

That scorecard has no end. That's the problem. We surely don't win like that. We're leveraging our young lives against a higher number of lives of Afghans for what? More dead? It may reach a point where the number of our casualties in the war exceeds the casualties from any future, eventual terror attacks. There's no one who can say that won't happen, or give a reasonable alternative to what we now see. If we're not fighting to eliminate the threat by vanquishing an enemy, then we shouldn't be fighting a military combat war. That's just my opinion. As it is, I cannot see where the continued operation in Afghanistan secures us anymore. And, "as it is" is not going to improve in that regard. Even Bush/Cheney were engaged in nation building. History proves that Afghanistan cannot advance beyond where it was 1,000 years ago, functionally, except for a few most corrupt leaders who profit off its misery and a hefty market for heroin. It's peeing up a rope. Not worth killing our people anymore as near as I can tell it.

[MacUser]

If the President doesn't support our troops.... Bring our people home!

But.. If the President wants to accomplish ANYTHING during his 1st year of his Presidency.. listen to his Generals under him and give them what they need.

[oletimer]

MacUser Posted:
If the President doesn't support our troops.... Bring our people home!

Beter ideal, send him, the VP, and Speaker of the House. Might help him make up his mind quicker.

[Mike Vande]

This can be won if we listen to the Generals on the ground and respond accordingly with a clear mission with clear objectives.

If that's what it takes, we lost the moment we walked in. Nobody is listening to the generals since the last election, I doubt they were listening much before it. The political realities made that impossible. War is too important to be left to the generals, remember?

Btw we ARE protecting our borders by taking the fight to that soil.

No, we would be if we were listening to the generals...