The Fool’s Errand in Afghanistan
What are we fighting for at this point, anyway? The Taliban are never going to surrender. Joe Biden has said they are not the enemy, anyway. American forces have supervised the implementation of an Afghan constitution that enshrined Islamic law as the highest law of the land. Yet Islamic law is nothing like the democratic principles that we went into Afghanistan to defend (over here) and establish (over there). Sharia institutionalizes the oppression of women and non-Muslims, extinguishes the freedom of speech, and denies the freedom of conscience.
Was that what we were fighting for?
Nonetheless, America continued to pour out her blood and treasure for this repressive state, with no clear objective or mission in view other than a never-defined “victory.” No one has defined what victory would look like in Afghanistan. What would victory have looked like? What could it possibly have looked like? Has the Karzai regime ever allowed women to throw off their burqas and take their place in Afghan society as human beings equal in dignity to men? Does the Karzai government, or any Afghan government that would follow it, ever intend to guarantee basic human rights to the tiny and ever-dwindling number of non-Muslims unfortunate enough to live within its borders? Of course not.
And no matter how long American troops stay in Afghanistan, no Afghan regime is ever going to do such things.
In July, the U.S. designated Afghanistan a “major non-Nato ally.” According to the BBC, this gives the Afghans “preferential access to U.S. arms exports and defence co-operation.” Thus unless Afghanistan is stripped of this status, we could be funding the Taliban with billions annually for years to come. And so the next time an Afghan soldier murders a group of American troops, remember: you paid for his weapon.
You make a lot of good points. Hindsight is 20/20, and of course given that we elected Obama something like this was bound to happen, I imagine. But what would you have done differently?
Just criticizing, and sniping at the current administration (and I’m no real fan of their conduct in the war) isn’t really a solution.
There is nothing to win in Afcrapistan, There never was past the first few months there. It is the Ultimate Trillion Dollar Bridge To Nowhere. All the troops there, past those first few months, who have died and lost limbs – it was for only one thing – their see no Islam, hear no Islam, speak no Islam, know no Islam, Perfumed Pimps general’s hubris. COIN/”Winning Muslim Hearts and Minds” is Mad Hatter level insanity using America’s Soldiers and Marines as lab rats in a demented sociology experiment that should rightfully be called Operation Enduring Insanity.
As someone who has followed Robert’s writings for many years, I can assure you that he has been consistently opposed to Bush’s ‘democratisation’ project from the beginning. Take your pick from any number of other options. My preferred option would have been ‘level and leave’.
That’s the easiest question I’ll be asked all day.
Sometime in 2003 or 2004, we should have packed up our stuff, wished the Northern Alliance and Karzai good luck, and left. Maybe we keep a single base there from which we could launch raids in AQ comes back and starts planning operations. Otherwise, we should have been gone. The Afghans would be free to return to the stone age, make a decent country, whatever they want. Nothing there is worth a single taxpayer dollar or drop of American blood.
Instead we sent over heavy units, cranked up a war in which we have no national interest. I have no idea what we are trying to accomplish.
There is only one argument against packing up and getting out of that worthless hellhole (damn shame, 40 years ago when my family visited it was a great adventure tourism spot), but unfortunately it is a powerful argument indeed: The US leaving Afghanistan would be the greatest jolt of confidence and vindication the international Jihad could ever get. Not only did they defeat and destroy the mighty USSR singlehandedly (so the jihadis tell themselves and the world), but they crushed the Americans on the battlefield too! Truly Allah is with them, and they can’t lose! With that wind at their backs, expect a wave of near-psychotic, bloody terror from pole to pole that could last a century. Remember that when Israel finally got fed up with having to fight, and fight, and fight in Gaza, all the while carefully trying to avoid hurting “civilians,” uprooted all its people there and left, the Arab story was that the fearless warriors of the Jihad had defeated and broken the cowardly Jews… and the rockets came even thicker and faster. “Defeating” the USA would prove their righteousness to them incurably. After all, Mohammed’s only “miracle” was defeating superior forces (this is NOT a divine miracle, however, when Jews or anyone else do it).
So what do we do? As the song goes, you can’t win, you can’t break even and you can’t even quit the game!
Now you are putting a catch22 spin on it. We can’t ever leave a worthless crap-hole on the other side of the world because it is tantamount to admitting defeat? So we stay and bleed for nothing.
The Muslim world understands raids – that’s how they fight. We raided there homes and killed their fighters. If they screw with us again, we’ll do the same. Leaving while their dead are unburied, their homes are on fire and their women crying is the big win in Muslim world. Not our WWII reconstruction idiocy.
Exactly right.
Leave. Bounce rubble if they do anything to threaten us grief.
What do we do?
1. We put a permanent travel ban on all foreign-born Muslims. None of them enters the US ever again, not even on a tourist visa.
2. We put the Muslim world on notice: if you want to keep making pilgrimages to Mecca, you’ll call off the jihad. Otherwise you can pray five times a day toward a hole in the ground. The choice will be theirs. MAD will once again be US policy but now the M will stand for Mecca’s.
3. The next time there’s any kind of natural disaster anywhere in the Muslim world we tell them to go to the OIC for help.
Point number two is priceless…
I agree with werewife August 20, 2012 – 6:27AM. The costs of losing to the jihadists would be incalculable.
First, it would teach Allah’s holy warriors not only that the west can be defeated, but how to do it: persistence.
If we leave, the jihadists could truthfully argue that infidels will, in future, certainly abandon their cause if pressured long enough . . . that material superiority is nothing next to their lack of will and Allah’s grace. And they will be able to point to history.
The guiding principal for our new world is that staying-power will win.
Second, by keeping a physical presence in Afghanistan, we can gather boots-on-the-ground intelligence about both what’s going on in that hell-hole as well as Pakistan and Iran. As a corollary, we would be in a much better position to react rapidly to developing threats than would be possible were we to abandon Afghanistan. This should lessen the chances of another 9/11, at least one originating in that sewer.
About winning. It ain’t gonna happen, at least not like in WW-II.
In the world of Afghanistan (and like places), where asymmetry rules, “winning” must become “not-losing.” And “winning” by “not-losing” isn’t bad if it furthers our interests, as set forth above — “staying-power” will be decisive in this clash of civilizations.
Further, psychological warfare has become the primary battlefield, not unlike Viet Nam. It has to be absolutely terrible for our guys on the ground there, not knowing who their friends and enemies are, but somehow that problem must be addressed head-on by our military commanders. Above all, it must not be allowed to divert us. (Stalin understood: “One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.”)
So – what does “not losing” look like? If you can forgive my cynicism, read on.
Abandon in practice, but not in appearance, the idea that we can build a democracy.
Instead, maintain a reasonably large US presence of (I’d guess several tens of thousands of troops) in country. Use them for intelligence gathering and whack-a-mole operations.
Continue minimal programs of do-goodism in the form of token health care, schools and etc. Do absolute minimal in the way of training police and military. Pay bribes. (As the multi-culturalists might say: “Corruption is part of the Afghanistani tradition . . . a tradition that is no better nor worse than our way of life . . . just different.”). Support a compliant government, but only as long as it serves our interests. These would be fig-leaves only, programs whose purpose is put a smiley-face on our real purpose for being their: furthering our national security.
Is that cynical enough?
Finally, if you think staying in-country is expensive, discouraging and wasteful, just consider the alternative: safe bases for a jihadi resurgence; a huge propaganda victory and the momentum it would impart to jihadism world-wide; and the Paks and Iranians free from worry about on the ground intelligence operations and rapid response incursions across borders.
There are a few problems with this idea. As the British, the Russians, and now we, are learning, the only way to pacify the region would be to level every building, burn every field, and slaughter the native population to the last child, then repopulate by immigration. The American people (thankfully) don’t have the stomach for such a strategy.
The bigger issue is that, not only have we lost control of the Federal Government, the Federal Government has lost control of the Federal Government. It has been turned into a factionalized mess, influenced and controlled by everyone from the Big Business/Big Bank corporate crony network, to the Muslim Brotherhood. Even some local and state governments (think Dearborne, MI) have fallen prey to this sorry state of affairs. The Republic died in all but name in 1913, and the empire that replaced it has emptied the treasury in useless wars of conquest.
We will tuck tail and run from Afghanistan before the end of 2013, simply because we are broke and no longer have the resources to project military power at will. Our only hope now (and it’s a poor one) is that we, the people, can somehow retake our country while simultaneously holding the reborn Ottoman Empire and its U.N. allies at bay. I wonder if the Romans had discussions like this one, just before the legions were recalled from Hadrian’s wall?
@Anonymous: Your long and tedious exegesis sounds like an armchair warrior who doesn’t hesitate to send others to their deaths. This administration and the past one were full of such chicken hawks. The 2003 campaign was swift and brilliant carried out by our CIA and military. After that we should have gotten out.
And don’t let someone tell me about the dangerous nukes in Pakistan. If push comes to shove, we can cancel them out with bombers and missiles, no need of foot soldiers stationed in Afghanistan.
@werewife: Yes, you can leave. As someone who looks on every American soldier as if he were my own son, I want them out of that cesspit. Our family has two men over there, for repeated deployment with Special Ops. One is a surgeon who accompanies Special Forces on their missions. He is dedicated both to the military and his mission to save warriors’ lives. After several deployments, he tells his family that we should get out.
If you want to stay there, convince your loved ones to volunteer. If not, call for getting our brave people home.
Afghan-centric belief system:
1) All roads start in Afghanistan.
2) All roads end in Afghanistan.
3) The Sun revolves around Afghanistan.
4) The Moon revolves around Afghanistan.
5) The Stars revolve around Afghanistan.
6) If the United States does not keep sufficiently large troop mass in Afghanistan for the rest of eternity, the orbital stability of the Earth will become profoundly unbalanced and all Muslim terrorists will slide into the United States.
Hindsight? There’s nothing “hindsight” about Spencer’s opinion on Afghanistan. It was nailed on to happen from the off. When NATO leaves, the Taliban will take over the entire country again. It will be like the last 14 years NEVER happened. Any evidence we were ever there will be erased. Karzai and his government will flee, or be killed. All the lives and limbs lost, all the money spent is for nothing. Absolutely NOTHING, and Islam wins.
@joe get: 2001 to 2012 is eleven, not fourteen years. Some indication of your knowledge of our involvement in Afghanistan. Who gives a s..t what the Taliban thinks. Our guys are getting killed by the very people they are training. There is no end in sight in this corrupt stone age country, and you want American young men and women to continue to be killed and maimed for what? Ask yourself, are you encouraging your son or other loved ones to enlist in a combat MOS and volunteer for Afghanistan? People who have never seen war should have no say in sending others, most especially a war with no clear purpose or end in sight.
Our Generals’ Operation Enduring Insanity – The Trillion Dollar Bridge To Nowhere in Afcrapistan makes Jerry Moonbeam Brown’s Operation Not So Bright – Hundred Billion Dollar Train To Somewhere Or Another in California, look like absolute genius by comparison. And his moonbattery isn’t going to cost nearly as many American lives and limbs. Our generals should be busted down to private E nothings and spend the rest of their days in Leavenworth for their crimes against those serving under them. May Justice find them and may Mercy scorn them.
Was George Bush supposed to do nothing about Bin Laden and the Taliban? The decision to try nation building in Afghanistan was foolish, but the decision to attack that country was well justified by the terrorist coddling actions of the Taliban. I think we would do well to remember that fighting a war against an enemy does not mean having to rebuild that enemy after the fact. Just win the damned war totally and convincingly and let the offending enemy worry about the rebuilding. I believe that if we had destroyed the Ayatollah Khomeini after the big kidnapping, most of these subsequent terrorist disasters would not have happened. This mess was started by Jimmy Carter’s stupidity and he had lots of subsequent help, over the next thirty plus years, from Presidents of both political parties. By the way, the trillion dollar figure, which gets bandied about on this comment section, applies to the total expenditures for both of the Mideastern wars. Afghanistan has not cost a trillion bucks as of yet. But I fear it will before we finally get oout of that tribal backwater. ABO2012
Obama’s good war is a farce at best, and the Afghani’s have certainly shown us how much freedom means to them. Too bad George W. didn’t have advisors that really understood what Islam is all about, rather than repeating the idiot “Religion of Peace” crap. Obama is one of their ally’s so he knows all about it, and I believe is preparing the way for the annihilation of Israel AND America.
My 2012 motto is RBO2012, REJECT Barack Obama.
The building formally known as the Pentagon has become a G-d damned whore house of servicing Muslims. The Perfumed Pimps there masquerading as Generals have no regard for America and it’s Constitution or their own troops and they are all out sons-of-bitches, traitors, and chronic dhimmis!
George S Patton,(gotta love your choice of ‘handle’)you got it exactly right.
Moreover, the collusion between the Islamist-in-Chief and his military brass is nearly complete.
My blog addresses this issue ‘six ways to Sunday’.
Just as a foretaste, please read, ‘The Anti-American POTUS Tasks His Military Brass…To Do What?..Pouring Fuel Onto A Combustible Flame’,
‘Barack Hussein Obama’s Reflexive Disdain For US Military Power…His Planned Disenfranchisement Of Troops…Ditto His Surrogates’ – http://www.adinakutnicki.com – they can be found in the Aug archives…and others throughout the blog.
Most significantly, the top military brass has been infused with left-leaning ‘social workers’ for years. However, their ingrained ideology has been ratcheted up on warp speed under the Thug-in-Chief.
As is said, the buck stops at the top!
Just a general note of appreciation for PJmedia. Unlike so many other main stream conservative sites that will not touch the issue of Islamic extremism with a 10 foot pole (you know who you are), PJmedia brings the great scholar of Islam Robert Spencer on board, to add to their already extremely impressive array of writers.
It is disappointing that as soon as some conservative bloggers/sites get a bit of traction and a taste of potential earnings they drop the issue of Jihad like a hot potato.
Realism about Islam is still clearly a taboo subject in ‘nice’ conservative circles. Let’s hope it doesn’t take too much time before it can be discussed openly and without fear everywhere, at least in the conservative world.
We put Karzai in power, kept him in power. Are we to believe that the Afghan people do not notice how corrupt their government is? Of course we shouldn’t ignore the radical and violent Islamic element in that country, but there is plenty of plain old frustration and despondency as well.
@JayKay, Amazing how some people have a pipeline direct to illiterate Afghani peasants in their mud huts. “Despondent”! That better fits the mood of those who want to end this endless war and prevent further American casualties in a war that the Chiefs of Staff cannot justify.
Pres. Johnson is on tape in the oval office saying he was not going to be the first American President to lose a war. Therefore the Vietnam War continued at the cost of over 55,000 American dead. That’s how politicians think and the top military brass salute and keep their jobs.
Kabul is a city of some 6 million people. I’m sure a few of them climb out of their mud huts, watch one of the 16 or 17 TV stations and see that things aren’t going very well.
The concept of nation building is complete garbage. You can’t turn illiterate, tribal people into Jeffersonian republicans and you’re a fool to try. I have learned this from our idiotic Iraq campaign and the fiasco that is Afghanistan.
After seeing the complete failures in Vietnam, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan the US needs to go back to an older concept in warfare. It’s called severe punishment.
When we were attacked, that attack came from two primary locations, one in Afghanistan, the other in Wazeristan via the Paks. Our campaign in response should have been extremely violent and short, with a definable goal the attrition of our enemies into a more managable opponent, greatly weakend. The campaign would have lasted less than a year, in all likelihood. Rules of engagment would have been simple, any opponent outside of defined rearguard areas would be considered an enemy combatant who should be attacked and destroyed. Any interference by a foreign power would be viewed as a causus bely for the engagement and destruction of that opponent. You can read Pakistan there.
A combined arms campaign, conducted along these lines with our weapons and training would have weakened Al Queda or destroyed it very quickly and done the same to the Taliban. There would be no distraction from “nation building” or other foolishness. We could have also gone after Al Queda’s other elements world wide in similar fashion and, no doubt, very effectively. There would have been no sanctuary in Wazeristan. The Paks would have been educated early on that any interference in Wazeristan would mean the end of them and a full turn to India. We would have been in and out of the theater in a year or so and probably suffered far fewer casualties than we have over the last 11 years.
Pathetic that we foolishly chose the fools errand. Blue Green casualties are a symptom of a failed strategy at conception. Warfare is about killing people and breaking things. If yous stick to that, your success rate goes way up.
Samizdat, I think we should have pulled out and let the Northern Alliance do or not do what they wanted. If AQ returned, bomb them to hell. By the way, one trivial correction– casus belli, cause for war. Forgive the pedantic correction, six years of Latin leaves a mark.
Well said, Mr. Spencer!
Our defeat in Afghanistan is going to be worse than our defeat in Vietnam — not because of the numbers of our casualties but because our defeat will reverberate among the ummah and fire them all up about the will of Allah destroying the Great Satan.
Another good essay on the topic:
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20128\18\story_18-8-2012_pg3_6
Let me try that link again. Sheesh.
The title of the essay is “Saigon in Slow Motion.”
The problem is islam. It’s a POLITICAL ideology masquerading as a religion. As a nation we still recognize that the Nazis were bad guys but islam gets a pass. Politically they are indistinguishable. Islam and America cannot peacefully coexist no matter what your leftist friend’s bumper sticker says.
We need to get out of Afghanistan now.
The New World Order, Globalists,CFR gangsters and their media whores love Islam because of it’s totalitarian,violent,intolerant and ruthless bent.
It keeps the masses under complete control,submission to god ,whether its the taliban,ayatollah or Egypt’s M.B.’s Morse. That is why they keep importing them into the US as they’ve done with Somali’s many of whom have gone back to fight their jihad there ,soon to fight their jihad here.
Dearbornistan,Michigan with it’s many safe and federally protected Islamic terrorist’s cells is another good example.
The government has intentionally sown the seed of our destruction from the economy to immigration in order to bring their evil MWO out of the coming chaos they have sown.
The link still doesn’t work! Apologies for the errors!
Google search Saigon in slow motion.
The essay is in the Pakistan Daily Times and was written by Tammy Swofford. Absolutely worth reading!
Say it ain’t so, Bush hating lefties! The “good war” is not so good? Ignoring the history of land wars in Asia was a dumb strategic move? Really?
After he served 18 months in the Sunni Triangle during the worst of the fighting my son told me Iraq had a chance, albeit slim, of becoming a modern democracy. He also worked for a private contractor in Afghanistan for 2 years (2010 & 2009) training Afghani police and Spec Ops troops in weapons.
His conclusion after coming back was that Afghanistan doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell. There are numerous tribal dialects and they don’t even understand each other. Corruption is rampant and heroin is king. The terrain is a nightmare and the tribal mindset in ingrained.
Just like in Vietnam, if we don’t intend to use overwhelming force to pacify and educate that hell-hole, we need to get out. The rules of engagement our troops are under are a joke, or we would not be losing troops in this manner. Fight to win, or bring ‘em home.
Nation building what a joke, didn’t work in Vietnam, Iraq, and it sure as hell isn’t working in Afghanistan. The only thing we should be concerned with is killing Jihadists. The rules of engagement in Afghanistan are ridiculous written by perfumed officers only concerned about their careers at the behest of politicians that think making nice to barbarians is going to save the day. We started out under Rumsfeld fighting the war the way it should have been. Special Forces working in small units finding and calling in B52′s orbiting 45,000 feet overhead to utterly destroy a Terrorist location. Then there is the Mantra of “Pakistan is our friend” har-dee-har-har. I work at a VA hospital and I see the sad wreckage them comes back both physical and psychological. I also work with a number of Indian Nationals I have asked them about this and the can’t understand the United States India knows all about Pakistan. Instead of being held hostage by a country that is assisting their Jihadist bud’s we should tell Pakistan if you don’t play along India sure will. Do you really want to keep the Kashmir?
It actually did work fairly well in Vietnam and spectacularly well in Korea. But those are very different cultures. It won’t work in Afghanistan.
Old Soldier knows his history – pay attention.
Although I believe and supported our initial entry to Afghanistan, we should have gone in, killed our targets and left. Our time there should have ended long ago, we have nothing to accomplish there now.
Here’s my suggestion… withdraw all of our troops and contractors, all our citizens. On the way out, we should destroy all the improvements we have paid for with our money and blood, roads, schools, airports, infrastucture; destroy it all, they don’t want it. Then, as a parting gift, we should napalm all of the poppy fields. Should they resist, make big smokey holes in the landscape, leave them nothing. After all, they have earned it.
By far the best post here. COIN does not, has not and can not work, thank goodness Romney didn’t pick Petraeus as floated. The word “islam” means “submission” and that is what we failed to put these barbarians into.
It’s high time we stop rewarding those who attack us or harbor those who attack us with new roads and schools. . . and shiny new rifles to kill our sons with.
I’d add to Scott’s plan that the the villages these murderers came from should also be left as smokey holes.
When will we finally stop looking at foreign culutres and thinking we see “people with the same desrire for freedom that we have”? Afghanis are inbred hillbillies who are utterly incapable of civilization – which is OK, since they have absolutely no hankering for it.
I’m not one of those people who says “We shouldn’t play global cop” (although I’ll admit, it seems more like we play global superhero instead) but I think when we do play global cop, we should go in, slam them hard, say, “You mess with us again and we’ll be back to give you some new craters; you mess with us 3 times and you get nuked,” and then leave! It’s not “global cop” that bugs me as much as “global social worker” and “global career counselor.”
We definitely have to stop playing “global rich uncle!”
“you mess with us 3 times and you get nuked”
The ultimate ‘three-strikes-and-you’re-out’ policy!
Who believes the outright nonsense and lies our media keep telling us about these cold blooded murders ?
If I was a soldier today I would refuse to serve in the latest American ‘stupid’ war.
These murders keep happening because Islam is evil.
Our nefarious politicians and evil media keep defending this evil and lying to us saying it is a religion of peace when anyone honest and truthful knows full well this scourge upon the earth has been steeped in genocidal murder,theft of everything imaginable including women and children,lying and destruction since it’s birth.
The fruit of our wasted time and lives in Iraq and Afghanistan bear out everyday in so many ways.
This is what happens to a nation when corrupt,untrustworthy and amoral people lead us.
Meanwhile in Yemen,Iraq,Somalia,Afghanistan,Pakistan this is how Muslims are treating each other,but don’t worry,President’s Bush and Obama told us often that Islam is a religion of peace.
A gunman opened fire on a mosque during Eid prayers in southern Yemen on Sunday, killing seven people and wounding 11, a security official at Defence Ministry said.In a separate attack on Sunday, a suicide bomber with suspected links to Al Qaeda blew himself up in the southern Abyan province, killing three and wounding two, an official from the province told Reuters.
It really is appalling, the price Americans have paid in Afghanistan.
Iraq isn’t much better.
Looks like that ‘winning hearts and minds” COIN thing didn’t work out well in Afghanistan. I guess teaching poppy farmers and goat herders to brush their teeth isn’t an effective strategy in a 7th century collection of hostile Islamic tribes. Who’d of thought? Don’t be surprised if we have to fight our way out of Afghanistan.
Did I read that the soldiers were not allowed to carry guns at night? No, couldn’t, I must’ve been dreaming!
AFGHANISTAN IS OBAMA’S WAR. He is about as concerned about it, and the men/women fighting it, as he is about the middle class, the upper class, the poor class, the blacks, the whites, the gays, the asians, the hispanics, the unemployed, etc. No you are only useful when I’m running and need money.
But on the other hand, there’s basketball, golfing, fund raising, shmoozing with hollywood, and being bossed around by jarrett and michelle.
What a fun guy! Too bad he’s our president.
Please, please vote him out! Let him spend all the time he wants on a golf course or playing basketball – vacationing in hawaii or martha’s vineyard. Unfortunetly it will be on our dime!
Just some thoughts:
Kurdish Proverb:
“The devil takes a hand in what is done in haste.”
Heinrich Heine:
” I called the devil, and he came,And with wonder his form did I closely scan; He is not ugly, and is not lame, But really a handsome and charming man. A man in the prime of life is the devil, Obliging, a man of the world, and civil; A diplomatist too, well skill’d in debate, He talks quite glibly of church and state.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning:
“The devil’s most devilish when respectable.”
Alan Valentine:
“Whenever science makes a discovery, the devil grabs it while the angels are debating the best way to use it.”
I wonder why all these quotes come to mind?
Nov 5, 2008, I began advocating for an immediate withrawl from Afghanistan, because with a lifelong committed leftist in charge of the governement, it wasn’t certain what would happen there, but it was certain to be horrible. And it has been. Thousands of heros have died for worse than no reason, for polital demagogery.
But frankly, we shouldn’t have been in Afghanistan anyway. It was possible to make a case for Iraq, and the ultimate outcome there is certainly in question, and more likely to be awful than good anyway. But Afghanistan? If patriots in the US government (if there are any left) and the military thought we needed to stay for strategic reasons, then we should have built fortresses that could be defended and supplied, and used them to control the countryside.
But as the author says, changing the hearts and minds of people stuck in the 9th century was always a fools errand.
What are we fighting for at this point, anyway? The Taliban are never going to surrender.
Don’t care if they surrender, competent military leadership would make it a moot point. Lacking that, it’s a travesty to have good Americans lose their life to incompetent military and political leadership, and to such scum. Each such loss we suffer teaches wrong lessons and hurts whatever small progress we have made in Afghanistan.
In a ceremony they gave him a LOADED gun?? Please explain???
I’m sure the family of those murdered troops are asking the same question?
Why do we trust savage, feral mud people with weapons. And why is it ( after the fact ) we we now “suggest” that all troops carried LOADED weapons?
Isn’t the whole of Crapistan a combat zone? So why wouldn’t soldiers be allowed to carry live ammo? And under what circumstances are they required to “safety” their weapons? Are we delusional or just plain crazy…with our military commanders?
Although I supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, I think we should pull out entirely now. Those people/countries are not worth one more American life.
In the future, before any American troops enter a country, there should be an unbreakable agreement that Americans determine the rules.
“I think we should pull out entirely now….”
And we should leave nothing behind that they can use. Everything that we’ve built should be razed, bombed and destroyed. We shouldn’t leave one building standing that we paid for…because in short time…that dung heap of a “country” will eventually go the way of the ‘Arab spring’, muslim, shira law…and insanity.
And that phony leader…what’s his name…ought to get his useless bony but on a plane to Paraguay….I don’t want the mutt here living in Malibu with a Rolls Royce supplied by us…do you?
In a real and just world….we’d hang this bum. Just like Saddam.
The Russians lost 10,000 dead and 4 times wounded.
But they stayed till the Mujad started shooting down dozens of fixed wing aircraft, choppers and blowing up tanks.
Then it was time to go home.
How long before we get out?
“till the Mujad started shooting down dozens of fixed wing aircraft…”
With shoulder fired missiles supplied by….us and one US Senator.
My solution…10 Afghani’s for every American hero.
CCR Soldier Boy, Circa 2012:
Just about four years ago I set out on Obama’s Afghanistan road
Seekin’ my fame and glory, lookin’ to turn the Mullah’s Hemorrhoid into a pot of gold
Well, things got bad, and things got worse, I guess you will know the tune
Oh ! lord, stuck in Obama’s Afghanistan yet again
Flew in yet again on a big plane, I hope I’ll be in one piece flyin out when I go.
I was yet again just passin’ through, must now be yet another 3 tours or more.
Running out of time and patience [Not to complain but whatever the hell happened to my youth?!"], looks like they took still more of my friends.
Oh ! lord, Im stuck in Obama’s Afghanistan yet again.
The Hope and Change man in the White House said yet again I was on my way.
Somewhere I lost his connection, he ran out of words to say.
I came into Kabul, yet another one year stand, looks like the plans fell through yet again
Oh ! lord, stuck in Obama’s Afghanistan yet again.
Mmmm…
If I only had a woman ["Hey Jack, do you remember what a woman is?"], for evry Obama tour Ive done.
And evry time Ive had to fight while cheered on by CINO’s, Obama sat back home oblivious to Islam and power drunk.
You know, Id like to catch the next plane back to where Im from.
Oh ! lord, Im stuck in Obama’s Afghanistan yet again.
Oh ! lord, Im stuck in Obama’s Afghanistan yet again.
“Vietnam in Retrospect: Could We Have Won?” from the US Army War College Quarterly, Winter 1996-97.
Some excerpts -
Norman Podhoretz, who believes that American intervention in the Vietnam War was “an attempt born of noble ideals and impulses,” has concluded that “the only way the United States could have avoided defeat in Vietnam was by staying out of the war altogether.” His judgment, in retrospect, appears to be as reasonable as any. The United States intervened in the Vietnam War on behalf of a weak and incompetent ally, and it pursued a conventional military victory against a wily, elusive, and extraordinarily determined opponent who shifted to ultimately decisive conventional military operations only after inevitable American political exhaustion undermined potentially decisive US military responses. Even had the United States attained a conclusive military decision, its cost would have exceeded any possible benefit. Vietnam was then, and remains today, a strategic backwater, and the US decision to fight there in the 1960s was driven by a doctrine of containing communism that in the 1950s was witlessly militarized and indiscriminately extended to all of Asia. Bernard Brodie observed in the early 1970s that “it is now clear what we mean by calling the United States intervention in Vietnam a failure. We mean that at least as early as the beginning of 1968 even the most favorable outcome could not remotely be worth the price we would have paid for it.”
Clearly our current generals with their Afcrapistan costly folly (even the most favorable outcome could not remotely be worth the price we would have paid for it) have learned nothing from Vietnam and nothing from ten years of Afcrapistan itself. Or they just don’t give a damn beyond their own careers and their hubris.
The war in Vietnam started when President Kennedy forced Ngo Diem to resign after a Buddhist monk had burned himself to death because Diem was trying to impose Roman Catholicism in Vietnam. The war could have been won, for North Vietnam was a tiny, weak nation, but the pacific Senator Hubert Humphrey persuaded President Lyndon Johnson not to prosecute it as a war. Johnson was continually “sending signals” during the war. In 1964 he called the Republican candidate for President, Senator Barry Goldwater, a “warmonger” for having proposed the sound military tactic of mining Haiphong Harbor. So Johnson denounced the rival candidate for being a “warmonger” during a war!
Sometime in the future … …
Faced with an ineffective and corrupt Afghanistan government, an extremely ineffective Afghan Army, continuing failure to win primitive Islamic “Hearts and Minds” and “Unicorns and Flowers” and with no end in sight, fatigue and deteriorating morale among the over used and abused American troops who were given the job of bringing Afghan Muslims into at least the sixteenth century, resistance to continue the war on the part of the American people, and a rebellion in Congress with a threat to cut off funding, a reluctant fifth term President Barack Hussein Obama (who had been declared in a 4 to 3 vote by the Supreme Court, after 2 conservative justice had gone for a late night swim the the Potomac and drown, as being the only person in America eligible to run for President) finally agreed to bring American forces home.
The failure of the Afghanistan war supporters to admit that President George W. Bush and President Barack Hussein Obama and David Howell Petraeus’s Afghanistan Islamic Great Society Nation Building policies had been ill advised and a profound failure would have a huge impact on their psyches and its impact would be manifest in their desire to involve the American nation and it’s military in yet another war and Islamic Great Society Nation Building sociology experiment that they felt could be won this time thus bringing them vindication.
Many Islam ignorant internet web sites and Islam ignorant radio talk shows would support the false idea that President George W. Bush and President Barack Hussein Obama and David Howell Petraeus’s Islamic Great Society Nation Building policies had been going very well in Afghanistan and with just a few more decades and just a few more tens of thousand of still more American troops and just a little more surging and a little more COIN’ing and a little more stay the course the Afghanistan Islamic Great Society Nation Building sociology experiment would have resulted in the building of a successful democratic, rule of law Afghanistan nation that would be an ally in the war against terror and serve as a shining example for the rest of the Middle East.
They believed that President George W. Bush and President Barack Hussein Obama and David Howell Petraeus’s Afghanistan Islamic Great Society Nation Building sociology experiment had been visionary and brilliant and would have soon succeeded, except for being betrayed at home by the likes of Robert Spencer, Diana West and Jed Babin, the infamous ‘Stab in the Back’ theory. (Similar to the myth and betrayal theory [Dolchstosslegende] popular in Germany in the period after World War I which attributed Germany’s defeat to a number of domestic betrayals instead of failed geostrategy.)
This ‘Stab in the Back’ theory would become hugely popular among many Islam ignorant internet web sites and Islam ignorant radio talk show hosts who found it impossible to accept the fact that President George W. Bush and President Barack Hussein Obama and David Howell Petraues’s Afghanistan Islamic nation building occupation policies had been an utter disaster.
During the actual Afghanistan Islamic Great Society Nation Building Charley Foxtrot, many of the Islam ignorant had already became obsessed with this idea, especially laying blame on what they called “traitors”, “White flag wavers”, “defeatist cut and runners” and “surrender monkeys” in America for undermining the Afghanistan Islamic Great Society Nation Building effort. To the Islam ignorant, and so many of their followers their fellow Americans, the clear majority of whom did not support President George W. Bush and President Barack Husein Obama and David Howell Petraues’s Afghanistan Islamic Great Society Nation Building sociology experiment, would become known as the ‘Defeatist Criminals’.
@ Feral Cat…..”as being the only person eligible in the country to run for president” … totally hilarious. If I were a publisher, I would accept your proposed outline and send a sizeable advance. I can’t wait to read the whole book.
Maybe someone already said it, but after the first incident everyone of my soldiers would be required to carry right upfront and center, so that every Afghan would know. Oh and at this point give them guns that are not loaded, geez.
Yep…we’re having a mini Ft. Hood every day. By the same type of degenerate, insane mutts that the murdering, treasonous, seditious nut job did there.
The chicken hawks on our side and the haters on the left want us to stay the course in Afcrapistan. To what end? There is no justifable reason to stay there any longer. And if anyone really thinks we should, I will invite you to a tour of my or any VA facility and see what carnage we have done to our children as brave and honorable as they are.
Someone above said that to withdraw now is to give that cesspool an opportunity to reunite aq and taliban and possibly attack the US. As someone also above said, we deny any new passports from the ME and SEA.
And as a bonus, we sit SSNs in the Arabian Sea or Persian Gulf and lob in Tomahawks at any new aq clubhouses being built-preferably around 1am. And if that does not work, we apply the Gen Curtis LeMay principle.
When the Congress created an independent Air Force in 1948, in passing they decapitated the Armed Forces, rolling the heads into the Joint Chiefs, an advisory group that was to follow the White House line and advise when asked questions, but not before. Civilian appointees controlled the military with the uniformed person being below the Secretary and Undersecretary. The 5 amphibious landings in Korea were cancelled. Blunders like the Laotian Peace Treaty became “good moves.” Civilians have run it every since. A German Chancellor would be envious.
Civilian skill in the military field is demonstated by how the Humvees fared against mines. They trucked on until the House Armed Services Committee could call for contracts, do testing of prototypes, whittle it down, and then do more testing and choose new safer models. In the meantime, the APCs sat in storage. When the mine goes off, which would you rather be in or on?
Note the S. African science fiction movie about Area 9. Those tall white trucks are just existing V-hulled mine beaters we could have bought, new or used. They also have or had a mine-detecting vehicle design with the ground pressure of a cat.
Note the shopping list for what is needed for the buildup was an almost exact procedural repeat of the shopping list for what to do about the unruly colonists in the New World. The commanding general made up the list, anticipating the nuts in Parliament he then cut it to a little less than the bare bone and submitted it. Nutty parliament sat on it for many months, cut it by about a third more, and that is what landed in NY. We know how that worked out.
Now that the Congress is sick of it, the end is plain.
The US and others have made severe errors not following Cowboy Foreign Policy. The spurs clink as the cowboy approaches the poker table and sits, banging his six-gun on the table at the same time. We don’t do that. We did not do that when the Japanese put the Strait of Malacca in check. We did not do that in WWI. The Muslim world tends to be a trader society, something we are not familiar with as we do not pay attention to any difference. They know the value of the six-gun plopped on the tabletop, as well as the big X chalked on the door. When Daladier & Chamberlain went to Munich, where was the six-gun? They did transactional stuff, with no bluffing. At the very least, we should bang the gun on the table and tell them to lay off the Dhimmi and quit crucifying Christian children, and if the Dhimmi are to be rationalized, there may be accidents happening such as loss of things or even forming a big candy dish.
If we cannot bear the game, we should at least consider the fallback position is to leave them to achieve the civilizational heights of Sharia rule and we follow the guidance of the 10th-11th century reforms in dealing with them and not pollute Muslims by having anything to do with them. Or, not letting their foreign students study subjects which are not Koran-compliant. When their level of achievement rises to the stratospheric levels they anticipate, we can consider if we should do something different.
Spencer is right. Spencer is nearly always right.
Afghan centric belief system:
1) All roads start in Afghanistan.
2) All roads end in Afghanistan.
3) The Sun revolves around Afghanistan.
4) The Moon revolves around Afghanistan.
5) The Stars revolve around Afghanistan.
6) If the United States does not keep sufficiently large troop mass in Afghanistan for the rest of eternity, the orbital stability of the Earth will become profoundly unbalanced and all Muslim terrorists will slide into the United States.