Afghanistan pullout

[ElNono]

Just curious. What's your answer to containing terrorist groups in Afghanistan? You think these groups won't grow and get stronger w/o our being there?

We've basically just found out Pakistan has been an accomplice with these terrorists and it's widely thought that Pakistan has nuclear capability Iirc.

Were learning worse about the Middle East and your answer to this is what? Because it means nothing to criticize w/o providing a more viable alternative.

So when are we invading Pakistan instead of giving them billions of dollars in 'aid' every year? Wouldn't invading Pakistan be a higher priority seeing they have nukes?

Is the solution to everything terror to invade other countries? Has the invasion of Afghanistan assured that terror won't breed in that area anymore? Could that assurance ever be accomplished?

Some stuff needs to be put into context. Paki's nukes are fairly well monitored by the international community (including largely the US), and they don't really have that much of a long range capability. They're mostly there to counter India's nuke capabilities, since they had pretty nasty border disputes forever. Doesn't mean that Paki's won't all of a sudden turn around and give the US the middle finger (which I think the only reason it hasn't happened yet is all this 'aid' we're handing out).

It's a much more complicated issue than 'if we camp there terrerists will cease and desist'.

I offered an alternative that's a lot less costly, which is to invest all that money in truly securing our borders. You can augment that with running sorties of missions to kill certain targets of interest when the Intel is there, and depending on the cost, you can also keep going with the unmanned drone missions. It's one idea. We just can't keep throwing stupid money at this and pretend it's going away.

[boutons_deux]

"What's your answer to containing terrorist groups in Afghanistan"

best defense is here in USA, not wasting 1000s of lives and $Ts over there.

The FBI is now totally out of control, no oversight and no accountability in spying on Human-Americans, so let's hope at least they don't up again and miss an attack. BigPharma and air pollution kills more Human-Americans every year than terrorist ever have or ever dream of killing.

These backward countries, all of them totally corrupt without any traces democratic ins utions (laws, courts, free elections, etc) and dominated by tribal/ethnic/religious factions, 100s of years behind Western/industrialized countries, will never in our lifetimes be anything different from what they are now.

Remember that AQ got going because the UCA was occupying OBL's sacred sands in Saudi Arabia. We brought this on ourselves, and gave MIC excuses to suck wealth out of Human-Americans' pockets, for decades and decades.

After 10 ing years in Afganistan, UCA's kick ass multi-$T Army has effectively accomplished nothing (infiintely, they just "need a little more time") except enrich the MIC and impoverish Human-Americans.

[Wild Cobra]

I have always been something of a hawk.

That said, Iraq was a bad idea, executed with what amounts to criminal negligence for the first 3 years. Bush deserves to be in jail.

Afghanistan on the other hand was the right war, fought for the right reasons, but fought poorly and without sufficient resources because of Bush's ed adventure in Iraq.

OMG...

You are clearly biased. There were definite clear cut reasons to go into Iraq that were stewing for years. Libya happened too fast.

I see in your eyes, Bush is always wrong, Obambam is always right.

[clambake]

what were the clearcut reasons?

[ElNono]

lol clearly biased

[Wild Cobra]

what were the clearcut reasons?

Sorry, if you didn't understand during those threads, you wont understand now, so I wont waste my time repeating it again.

[clambake]

Sorry, if you didn't understand during those threads, you wont understand now, so I wont waste my time.

why didn't you just say there were no clearcut reasons instead of wasting our time?

[Wild Cobra]

why didn't you just say there were no clearcut reasons instead of wasting our time?

There were clear reasons, but I have no desire to say the same things I said so many times before since I know you will respond the same way as before.

[clambake]

clearly, you don't know what "clear" means.

[boutons_deux]

"There were definite clear cut reasons to go into Iraq"

bull . Every "reason" was proven to be bull at best, a lie at worst. Iraq is all about oil, for the 10,000th time.

[Blake]

There were clear reasons, but I have no desire to say the same things I said so many times before since I know you will respond the same way as before.

the reasons may have been clear, but they were bad reasons.

You're right though in that there's no need for you to post these bad reasons.

[Winehole23]

Sorry I didn't get your "can't draw any logical conclusions from 9/11" memo.

The conclusion that that we need to remain in Afghanistan for decades to come because bad guys might feel welcome there if we don't, is a sad parody of logic.

The reality is that our security threats don't come from large nation states anymore. It comes from the parts of the world with less-than-functional governments.

The reality is that the danger of terrorism, and of Afghanistan to us, is overhyped. You're overhyping it.

The point that we ignored these areas once before and it bit us in the ass, is a very succinct way of summing this up.

It's a big world. A terrorist can hide anywhere. Maybe we should occupy Hamburg Germany to prevent terrorists from regathering there.

[boutons_deux]

The Death of the Bush Doctrine

Meanwhile, the Republican Party is facing a showdown between the forces that want to shrink government and the forces that favor an interventionist foreign policy. The doctrine of small government is trumping the Bush Doctrine. The Tea Party is shoving aside the neo-conservatives.

Why did the Bush Doctrine die? Because it was too expensive. And because we learned a painful lesson in Iraq and Afghanistan: the U.S. military is no good at nation-building. Back in 2000, in a campaign debate with Al Gore, then-Gov. Bush warned, "If we don't stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road." We didn't, and we do.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-s...tml?view=print

[RandomGuy]

OMG...

You are clearly biased. There were definite clear cut reasons to go into Iraq that were stewing for years. Libya happened too fast.

I see in your eyes, Bush is always wrong, Obambam is always right.

I supported the Bush administration when it went into Afghanistan.

I do not think the draw down in Afghanistan by Obama is a good idea.

I think that the Obama adminstration is clearly in violation of the War Powers act when it comes to Libya.

Sorry, your own bias, once again, leads you to completely miss reality.

The only thing I am really biased against is stupidity. This probably explains why your opinions generally drive me up the wall.

[RandomGuy]

The conclusion that that we need to remain in Afghanistan for decades to come because bad guys might feel welcome there if we don't, is a sad parody of logic.
The reality is that the danger of terrorism, and of Afghanistan to us, is overhyped. You're overhyping it.
It's a big world. A terrorist can hide anywhere. Maybe we should occupy Hamburg Germany to prevent terrorists from regathering there.

Starts with a strawman, and ends with a strawman, and *I'm* the one who is being illogical?

It isn't a matter of being welcome so much as being able to operate active training camps and run recruiting drives for the disaffected across the muslim world. This provided a direct operational capability that was leveraged into an active and very real threat.


The determination of the people who adhere to the AQ philosophy to kill you has in no way slacked off in the last decade. Your at ude is akin to someone who stops taking an antibiotic the instant they feel better.

I don't advocate occupying every country that might harbor a terrorist, that is your second distortion. Germany, and other developed countries with real functioning governments can do it themselves. If Afghanistan was as developed as Germany, we wouldn't be there, simply because we wouldn't need to be.

In general, I do think the threat posed by these asshats is quite overhyped. The measures we take to get on planes long ago passed any sane trade off between security and cost, in my opinion.

If you want to say that the danger of these people is "overhyped", then you will have to flesh that bit out. How? What would be the appropriate level of concern/action?

[coyotes_geek]

The conclusion that that we need to remain in Afghanistan for decades to come because bad guys might feel welcome there if we don't, is a sad parody of logic.

Seems like a fair point RG. It's been damn near a decade. How long are we supposed to stick it out there?

[ElNono]

It isn't a matter of being welcome so much as being able to operate active training camps and run recruiting drives for the disaffected across the muslim world. This provided a direct operational capability that was leveraged into an active and very real threat.

The determination of the people who adhere to the AQ philosophy to kill you has in no way slacked off in the last decade. Your at ude is akin to someone who stops taking an antibiotic the instant they feel better.

So your suggestion for stopping the breeding grounds for these people in Pakistan, Syria, Iran, Palestine, Egypt, Northern Africa, etc (I'm sure i'm missing a few) is? We invade them all? How long we stay?

[RandomGuy]

Seems like a fair point RG. It's been damn near a decade. How long are we supposed to stick it out there?

That isn't quite what he said, but this is a much better question/point.

Until the country can field an army fairly capable of providing its own security.

The problem is that the religious and clan chiefs are the only law/justice/social system. One has to provide a rational alternative to the zealots, both in terms of the rule of law, but also in terms of actively improving people's lives.

I think that will take the better part of another decade. To be able to afford that, though, I think we should drastically draw down, and fully withdraw from Iraq.

Staying is a hard call to make, but would finally put to bed the general perception that we don't have the stomach for the long haul. Not that we should stay just to prove that point, but that would be one of the benefits, i.e. credibility.

[RandomGuy]

So your suggestion for stopping the breeding grounds for these people in Pakistan, Syria, Iran, Palestine, Egypt, Northern Africa, etc (I'm sure i'm missing a few) is? We invade them all? How long we stay?

No, we should not invade them all. We should simply not ignore them.

We also need to make plain that the consequences for harboring these kinds of camps is that we will come knocking.

Most of those countries you named had semi-functional governments that allow us to negotiate with.

When you dont' have that, you may have to step in and nation-build to fill up the security vacuum. It is in that security vacuum that our threats come from.

Each instance has to be measured carefully. I am not for willy nilly adventurism, but measured, considered responses to threats.

[ElNono]

But the general american population does not have the stomach for the long haul, that's not a myth or perception... part of the reason the guy that's in the WH is there is because he ran on a end-the-wars platform.

How long is 'the long haul'? What's the criteria for finally GTFO? Do we need to do nation building there? How much that is going to cost us? Are they even willing to?

[Winehole23]

Until the country can field an army fairly capable of providing its own security.

How long will that be?

[ElNono]

No, we should not invade them all. We should simply not ignore them.

We also need to make plain that the consequences for harboring these kinds of camps is that we will come knocking.

Most of those countries you named had semi-functional governments that allow us to negotiate with.

When you dont' have that, you may have to step in and nation-build to fill up the security vacuum. It is in that security vacuum that our threats come from.

Each instance has to be measured carefully. I am not for willy nilly adventurism, but measured, considered responses to threats.

But we known for years that a lot of those nations do that. Heck, we even armed some of those nations. We pay hard cold cash to some of them and call them 'allies'. We only went there when they finally knocked on our door.

Where does it end? When does it end? We rationally cannot keep this military spending, much less expand it.

[Winehole23]

If you want to say that the danger of these people is "overhyped", then you will have to flesh that bit out. How? What would be the appropriate level of concern/action?

It should be more in line with the statistical risk of mortality and a mature estimate of the stability and security of the United States vis a vis particular terrorist groups.

[Winehole23]

If terrorists gathering on the other side of the world is a proximate threat to the USA, only a global empire can protect us from them.

[Winehole23]

-coffeetime -