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Therefore, what?
Eradicating the US isn't realistic for them, but they are still going to try.
Therefore, what?
It's December 20th, 2008.
How many US troops does Obama command?
about 12, but they're in this forum.
Last edited by clambake; 12-19-2008 at 06:32 PM. Reason: edited four improper usage of wordage.
Yes, we have a strategy. Nation building 101, or simply read the counterinsurgency doctrine.
Given that we will draw down in Iraq, we will commit the resources necessary to do the job.
1) Reconstruction has not quite failed, it simply hasn't been given the resources necessary to succeed. As I noted that will change.Reconstruction has already failed, we don't have enough troops to beat the Taliban, the Afghans hate us, and the national interest in fighting this war now is totally murky. WTF do we, the USA, stand to gain in Afghanistan besides another egregiously expensive fiasco, more dead troops and another hit to our national honor?
2) Our national interest was the same as it was in 2002. Prevent Al Qaeda from having room to freely operate training camps from which to launch attacks. This is what we stand to gain.
Afghanistan is a bit different from Iraq, and Obama will be able to ask NATO for more support and reasonably be expected to get it. The Europeans will not like it much, but they will go along.I would suggest -- like the NATO commanders and our own generals and secdef -- that there is no military solution in Afghanistan. Our supply lines are threatened, our allies are dropping like flies, Kabul is encircled, and our enemies can convalesce and regroup more or less undisturbed in Pakistan. At best, a surge there portends only a slightly better bargaining position to make a deal with the Taliban. The alternative is a more or less endless occupation.
The generals are exactly right that there is no purely military solution to Afghanistan. There never was.
Counter-insurgency and nation-building of the type that is in our interest in Afghanistan are not going to be accomplished purely with bullets.
It will be accomplished by building up the social and physical infrastructure required to give the Afghan people a real choice between the thugs running the Taliban and an actual democratically elected government.
The problems with this are manifold, but not unsolvable.
Because we're so good at it, we need a do-over.
Strategy isn't like a socket set. What works in one place may not in another. Afghanistan isn't Iraq.
Are you so sure we'll draw down? Gen Odierno has already indicated we intend to overstay the summer deadline for withdrawal from Iraqi cities.
And consider:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...6304-3,00.htmlISAF Commander McNeill has said himself that according to the current counterterrorism doctrine, it would take 400,000 troops to pacify Afghanistan in the long term. But the reality is that he has only 47,000 soldiers under his command, together with another 18,000 troops fighting at their sides as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, and possibly another 75,000 reasonably well-trained soldiers in the Afghan army by the end of the year. All told, there is still a shortfall of 260,000 men.
Given that we couldn't find that many troops for Iraq, but had to hire out 100,000 or so mercenaries, where do you think the additional bodies will come from? We only have 149,000 or so troops in Iraq, well short of the number needed, and some of these will remain in Iraq as a rump of support.
This strikes me as optimistic. But you could be right.
Al Qaeda is stronger now than it was in 2003, and has more elbow room. Progress toward the putative national security objective so far does not inspire confidence. Maybe Obama can turn it around, but without Pakistan's cooperation, there's not much he can do.
Very optimistic. Do you have any support for this hunch? I do not gather that enthusiasm for the escalation of war is rising in Europe, and their troops seem to be moving in the wrong direction right now.
With whose money? We're gonna rebuild the USA and Afghanistan at the same time, while 10-15% of Americans are unemployed, and we're spending trillions to keep insolvent finance and US manufacturing on life support?
And we're gonna redesign Afghan society at the same time? This is super ambitious. Do you really think the Afghans will let us? And will the American people go for it?
Therefore, kill them.
Makes sense enough. That it requires the occupation of foreign lands doesn't necessarily follow.
Basically, we (and I) don't have the stomach to truly beat down on them because of the number of civilian causalities that would result. Even if we did, the Russian example does not provide much confidence in a military strategy. There does not seem to be a true Afghan democracy/republican movement either. At least not enough of one to develop a big enough, competent enough army and police.
, if the Afghan people want to be governed by the Taliban (or as it seems, don't have the will to oppose it), let them. Perhaps our strategy should be one of containment rather than some form of surrender. Anytime we see anything resembling a military complex, we bomb it.
The lack of sufficient troops practically guarantees this result. The more we bomb them, the more they'll hate us.
It's not unthinkable they prefer the Taliban to us and the weak, corrupt Karzai regime. Self-determination sometimes means other countries end up with leaders we don't like.
Containment would be a better strategy than endless occupation IMO.
N.B.: Capitulation isn't the only alternative to the present state of affairs. An armistice or peace treaty isn't the same as surrender by a long shot. Eventually, some kind of political deal has to be made. Excluding the Taliban from the parley would only ensure its irrelevance.
Last edited by Winehole23; 12-19-2008 at 10:30 PM.
Easier to kill them that way.
You'd think so. Are we closer to success than 2003, or further away?
Again, there was that small distraction in Iraq.
Yeah, look how well that one went for us. And the Iraqis, too. I hope Afghanistan doesn't turn out to be a rerun.
I said it was a distraction.
I heard you. I'll stand by my comment.
I stand by mine.
I wouldn't have it any other way.
Where nationalism is strong, US military intervention is not necessary.
Where nationalism is weak, US military intervention will not be effective.
Pretending Afghanistan is country is causing us problems. It is just a grouping of feudal societies that occupy the area we call Afghanistan. Put a strong guy in charge and have him on the payroll but more importantly, arm and pay off the warlords. Make it so that it is not in their best interest to have the Taliban in their neighborhoods. It is time to let someone else whack the moles and whacking people is the national pastime over there.
Old man Buchanan is projecting what Afghanistan would have been like had we followed George Bush's Iraqi plan in Afghanistan...
What you're saying isn't quite coherent, Dan. Can you point to something in the posted article that backs this up?
You do get that Buchanan is against the war, don't you? Buchanan never thought the game was worth the candle. On this issue, he's never been on GWB's side. Buchanan (like Ron Paul) harks back to the erstwhile Taft Republicans, who stressed anti-imperialism among other things. There is such a thing as an antiwar conservative.
I never said Buchanan was a Neo-con.....but that he is attempting to project that Obama would follow George Bush diplomacy in Afghanistan....
Recommitting to the war effort in Afghanistan was one of Obama's own selling points, and a new surge of troops there appears to be a foregone conclusion.
Nothing is ever certain beforehand, but Obama is making the wrong sort of noises, for those who were hoping for an end to the war. Signs point to continuity.
There was never a strong movement against the military action in Afghanistan.
I think there's alot of things that people just don't get about fighting extremists like that. I can only quote Ho Chi Minh who said it best...
"You can kill ten of our men for every one we kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and we will win."
All the extremist need to do..and are doing is make the war too costly for America. And that's a strategy that we have no defense against. There's no such thing as a winnable war anymore. Everything that we do will cost us dearly.
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