Wonder if this has anything to do with General David Petraeus taking over in Afghanistan:
American and Afghan forces have been routing the Taliban in much of Kandahar Province in recent weeks, forcing many hardened fighters, faced with the buildup of American forces, to flee strongholds they have held for years, NATOcommanders, local Afghan officials and residents of the region said.
A series of civilian and military operations around the strategic southern province, made possible after a force of 12,000 American and NATO troops reached full strength here in the late summer, has persuaded Afghan and Western officials that the Taliban will have a hard time returning to areas they had controlled in the province that was their base.
Let’s hope this leads to more successes in the Afghan theater — and hope as well that further victories may cause the president to reconsider his commitment to start withdrawing our troops in July 2011.
While the commanders in the field and the brave men and women who executed the plan deserve the bulk of the credit, we should also acknowledge President Obama who wisely chose to put Petraeus in charge of Afghan operations.
I’m reserving judgement. I’ve read several accounts of the Rules of Engagement that not only hamstring our outstanding men and women, but actually put their lives in danger. This is bullshit. War is ugly, gruesome, horrible, but once we’re in it, the goal should be to win with minimal casualties on our side.
Sometimes they are routed, and other times our troops chaperone them to their dinner dates:
http://www.enduringamerica.com/home/2010/10/20/afghanistan-nato-assists-taliban-leaders-in-talks-with-gover.html
‘Talks to end the war in Afghanistan involve extensive, face-to-face discussions with Taliban commanders from the highest levels of the group’s leadership, who are secretly leaving their sanctuaries in Pakistan with the help of NATO troops…In at least one case, Taliban leaders crossed the border and boarded a NATO aircraft bound for Kabul, according to an Afghan with knowledge of the talks. In other cases, NATO troops have secured roads to allow Taliban officials to reach Afghan- and NATO-controlled areas so they can take part in discussions. Most of the discussions have taken place outside of Kabul, according to the Afghan official’
…forcing many hardened fighters, faced with the buildup of American forces, to flee strongholds they have held for years….
Flee? Really? Or have they read Sun Zi? On what basis are conclusions reached that the Taliban’s hardened (read experienced) fighters aren’t simply fading away, letting the blows fall on empty air, to return when the Afghan and American forces depart?
More interesting would be actual data: how many Taliban “hardened” fighters were estimated to be in the area when the present fight began, how many were estimated to be entering the area to reinforce their comrades (and on what basis were these estimates made), and how many Taliban has the current fighting killed? If the killed can legitimately be estimated to be a significant per centage of the original number, _then_ it would be reasonable to claim the Taliban will have a hard time returning.
What they said.
Roger,
You sound much like the union General who’s name you share. (This is a good thing).
E Hines, I believe you are correct. They’re delaying National Guard deployments to Afganistan citing the increased risk. That tells me that things are worse than they appear.
I hope you’re correct, Dan. One of the truths about the Afghan people is that they always win their wars because, since Genghis Khan in the 12th C, Afghans side with the winner… even if it means switching sides in the middle of a battle or over the course of a war. That’s why Biden’s and Obama’s seemingly strong commitment to pulling out in 2011 is troubling for all… and has the Pakistani Intelligence (if that isn’t an oxymoron) Services hedging their bets… if America & NATO are no longer in this effort to win, the average Afghan will be sliding over to the other side sooner than later… and Karzai better get his robes & hats packed into the steamer trunk pronto.
Any war worth fighting, is a war worth winning.
The race is now on! It’s a race between the General who wants to win the war, and an anti-colonialist President who wants to surrender. Who will win?
The Taliban were never willing to negotiate for peace before. When they thought they were winning, they fully supported a fight to the death. After claiming that ‘Allah’ wanted them to fight with everything they had, all of the sudden they are willing to concede something??? Did Allah change his mind?
With a literacy rate hovering around 24%, i question whether people who could never read the Koran in the first place, could actually be Muslim. It’s a totalitarian fascist state, and should get none of the special respect normally granted to any “moral” religion.
The Taliban doesn’t have any ‘Rules of Engagement’.
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Furthermore, if the president believes this war to be immoral, then no amount of casualties should be tolerated! There is no acceptable number when you’re talking about ‘senseless’ deaths.
– If he believes this war is wrong, he is morally obligated to withdraw immediately.
– If he believes this war is necessary, he is morally and logically obligated to seek victory. To knowingly act against the interests of the American people is treason.
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Color me “wavering.” I am not for nation building in a cess pool. Never was. We didn’t catch bin Laden. Obambi can’t catch him. If Obambi put John F’n Kerry on the task of doing it smarter, Kerry wouldn’t succeed. Maybe bin Laden is so dead there isn’t enough left of him to spread on toast. Maybe not. But, Afghanistan is not a jewel in crown of geo-political interests as far as I can see it.
Perhaps we should throw in the towel on war altogether. After all, we kill our own troops by tip-toeing around collateral damage while the enemy kills civilians as a matter of design.
At this point, I would not oppose just packing up and leaving word that we will wait for them to regather and then just bomb them into what preceded the stone age. Fighting the Taliban mentality with the Marquis of Queensbury rules is like trying to fend off the Mongolian horde by making the sign of the cross.
Our soldiers are tough, dedicated and smart. But they might as well be carrying sheets of lead armor when all the politically correct rules of refined and civilized warfare are put in place.
Afghanistan is Viet Nam. Washington does not have the courage or temperment to do the job. We did what we needed to do there. We didn’t catch al Qaeda and wipe them out. But if we did catch them we would undoubtedly be babbling over how to give them full Miranda rights and making a total mockery of common sense.
I would like to know what a pacified Afghanistan looks like. We can skirmish there forever. If we are not going to leave until Afghanistan is humming along like …… Iran? Iraq? Saudi Arabia? Egypt? Pakistan? Bangladesh? Lebanon? …… …… …….
“Afghanistan is Viet Nam.”
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That’s because LBJ is president again.
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Hey, what in the Hell did Johnson ever do to deserve being compared to Obama? That’s just too low a blow to remain silent… compare Obama to JimmineyCricketCarter, sure… but not LBJ or JFK or WJC or HST.
A few years before 911, Afghanistan and Iran almost went to war. Much like Iraq, if we don’t leave some type of political structure behind in Afghanistan, the territory could become part of Iran.
If a diplomatic resolution didn’t work the first time, if conflict was only delayed and took a different form, is the situation politically diffuse-able? If we pull out and leave only a wasteland, are we setting the stage for the next conflict?
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan%E2%80%93Iran_relations#Relations
Following the emergence of the Taliban and their harsh treatment of Afghanistan’s Shi’a minority, Iran stepped up assistance to the Northern Alliance. Relations with the Taliban deteriorated further in 1998 after Taliban forces seized the Iranian consulate in Mazari Sharif and executed Iranian diplomats.
Following this incident, Iran almost went to war with the Taliban regions of Afghanistan but intervention by the United Nations Security Council and the United States prevented an imminent Iranian invasion.
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Also relevant to the study of the tension in the region, is Baluchistan.
Baluchistan is the ‘former’ nation who’s territory was divided among; Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India. During the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam Hussein established ties with Baluch rebels in an effort to destabilize Iran even further. At one point, Saddam even began to irritate the Pakistanis by supporting the same rebel forces who also wanted their territory back from that country. Iraq was caught distributing weapons to the Baluch rebels in Pakistan from the Iraqi embassy itself.
The most famous Baluch rebel now resides at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. His name is Khalid Sheik Muhammad.
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And look at all the gays who signed up to help! They’re busting down recruiter’s doors!
gastorgrab,
My mind is nearly made up, so don’t try to confuse me with facts or logic.
Seriously, I do not think we know what the mission is and I do not think we know what success would look like. This is in no small part due to the current Commander in Chief voting present and referring to previous comments he never made.
The ancient Greek maxim is that “the boys throw stones at the frogs in sport, but the frogs die in earnest.” I do not think that Obama has any more concern for our troops or concept of the military mission than John F’n Kerry or Jane Fonda. I am sure he is annoyed by having to deal with dead and maimed soldiers. But I do not believe that Obama sees Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, China, etc. as anything other than a distraction. Furthermore, I do not think his golf course activity is therapy for dealing with a mind consumed with problems of terrorism, restoring the economy, getting the engine of productivity started again.
Every American life disrupted, maimed or destroyed under this guy’s ego trip is wasted. Either we get serious and do the job without having our hands tied behind our backs or we hustle on out of there.
Oh, i don’t believe he wants to win either. While this war provided a good opportunity for him to get elected, i don’t think he really cares about the outcome.
I’m just pointing out that the situation is much more complex that standard ‘Talking Points’ allow for.
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Something we agree completely on.
This? Not so much. I don’t know what you mean by ‘courage’ and ‘temperament,’ but I’m going to assume it’s more indiscriminate rules of engagement and even less concern for civilian casualties? For two decade-spanning wars that have killed hundreds of thousands and wounded/displaced many millions more, we have absolutely nothing to show for it, and your lesson learned is that we should have been harsher?
I appreciate that you want the United States to abandon its plainly futile efforts in Afghanistan, but I’d hate for you to feel like we just need to be a little more brutal next time.
Okay, so what’s this about? How has Obama indicated this to you? And more importantly, would you say the same thing of the previous president?
Levi,
War is meant to break things and kill people until they surrender. Anything less than that is an armed social experiment. The enemy in Afghanistan and Iraq is not uniformed or “playing” by the rules of the Geneva accords and uses civilians for shields and is often just guerilla civilians who play victim and assassin in quick succession. That means that we have to approach them like Hiroshima so that their war lords and regional leaders get the message and herd the bad guys into the line of fire. Then we shoot them just the way we shot Nazi soldiers in uniform and broiled Japanese hiding in caves with flame throwers. (Ooops! That is now against the Geneva accords. OK, we set off a percussion grenade and make their ears and eyes bleed.)
You see, Levi, war is really, really nasty. But it teaches people like Germans and Japanese to play nice and get along.
Remind me again about your plan for settling the problems in Dafur? And your plan for cleaning up the drug cartel in Mexico would be…..
I fail to see how anyone with a functioning human brain can draw parallels between our current wars in the Middle East and our involvement with World War II. You do realize we’re the aggressors in this situation, don’t you? And what, do you expect the terrorists to marshal their regiments and meet us on an open field for an old school battle? Is someone going to surrender to us on a battleship?
Right after talking about how unfortunate it is that the terrorists use civilians as shields, you cheerily suggest we take a Hiroshima approach – which we all remember was just such a great preserver of civilian life!
Oh, the Bush wars. They’ve completely discredited conservatism for a generation. Good thing for you guys that the typical American voter is completely self-absorbed and doesn’t care about the nightmare you’ve created over there.
Not sure about Darfur, but the drug cartels in Mexico would be extinct within a decade if we decriminalized drugs in this country.
Levi,
You don’t get to choose your wars, but you do get to choose your military. In Viet Nam, Afghanistan and very quickly in Iraq our military was facing a faceless enemy. So, are we supposed to throw in the towel and leave because “they all look alike” and we can’t get instructions out of the Geneva Accords?
Sure, we could have stayed out of WWI and WWII and Viet Nam and Korea and Kuwait and Iraq and Afghanistan. You represent a long line of barnyard fowl who would rather be red than dead. Fine, the pacifists have a long history of Puritanical superiority on the subject of war. The rest of society just moves on around them.
When radical Islam brings European style riots to the streets of America, you can speak up again about bending the Constitution to accept Sharia. I fully expect your piety on the topic. After all, it is better to veiled and failed than nailed.
Hiroshima, dear boy, focused the minds of a people who were ready and being readied to sacrifice themselves for their emperor. Nagasaki convinced the emperor to cut the god crap and throw in the towel. Not nearly as many innocent civilians died in those two demonstrations of war inferno as would have died when the firebombing from LeMay commenced and bamboo Japan went up in flames.
You don’t like war. It is you that wants the two sides to line up and have at it on a field away from collateral civilian damage. That is why you can talk big about Darfur and injustices involved, but you can not imagine how to go in, choose sides and force a change. It is way too messy for your brain.
You should read what Sherman did. He was right then and he is right now. War is Hell. The object is to bring the enemy to his knees. You can do it Mongolian Horde style or you can use more precision, but in the end you leave dead bodies behind. Maybe they will be on a battlefield, but in house to house combat, they are likely to include civilians and little children who got caught in the crossfire. There will also be soldiers killed by friendly fire. You would know this if you cared a whit about the serious business of soldiering.
I started this by my comment that I do not believe Obama is a bit more ready to be serious about being Commander in Chief than you would be. But once the war is under way, you either fight to win or you yank those guys and gals out ASAP. Letting them stick around and get killed while you golf and jet about is a sin of the worst kind. The circle of Hell for that kind of dereliction and disgrace has not been described.
They both involved massive troops and people getting killed. The weaponry in the current wars is much more sophisticated. The soldiers get killed just as dead. You can figure that out with a functioning brain.
Huh? There was no 9/11, no UN, no Congress, just George W. Bush spinning the globe and passing over Bermuda and Denmark and randomly picking Iraq and Afghanistan to play war. Right? Now that is really “simple.”
Show me the evidence that I am cheerful about anything involving war. And, yes, Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved millions of Japanese lives. Go to Japan and ask the people. In fact, you don’t have to ask, they will come up to you on their own and thank you for saving them and apologize for their evil torture and brutality. Stand in the park in Hiroshima for a short period and dozens of “peace ambassadors” will ask you to listen to them express their shame for how the country betrayed us. You will find streamers of origami birds refreshed constantly by the school children who are fully aware that the atom bombs were the beginning of peace and saved the country. But you would not “hear” that because your mind is sealed tight like a drum.
That segues nicely into the elections on the horizon and the power of Obamunism and the fundamental transformation of America that people can’t wait to get on with. Conservatism is dead. Long live the enlightenment of Levi and his ship of fools.
Lets pull out of the UN and let them get on with restructuring the world without all our meddling.
Guys,
The problem is, Levi *can’t* tell the difference between brown people, they all look alike and can’t understand democracy. The little socialist is still immune to facts and history.
The_Live….:
Levi sees the world through his tunnel. France could destroy itself fiddling with the socialism adjustment scheme and Levi would blame it on Bush.
But, he is a cute little critter.
Levi,
You don’t get to choose your wars, but you do get to choose your military. In Viet Nam, Afghanistan and very quickly in Iraq our military was facing a faceless enemy. So, are we supposed to throw in the towel and leave because “they all look alike” and we can’t get instructions out of the Geneva Accords?
Sure, we could have stayed out of WWI and WWII and Viet Nam and Korea and Kuwait and Iraq and Afghanistan. You represent a long line of barnyard fowl who would rather be red than dead. Fine, the pacifists have a long history of Puritanical superiority on the subject of war. The rest of society just moves on around them.
When radical Islam brings European style riots to the streets of America, you can speak up again about bending the Constitution to accept Sharia. I fully expect your piety on the topic. After all, it is better to veiled and failed than nailed.
Hiroshima, dear boy, focused the minds of a people who were ready and being readied to sacrifice themselves for their emperor. Nagasaki convinced the emperor to cut the god crap and throw in the towel. Not nearly as many innocent civilians died in those two demonstrations of war inferno as would have died when the firebombing from LeMay commenced and bamboo Japan went up in flames.
You don’t like war. It is you that wants the two sides to line up and have at it on a field away from collateral civilian damage. That is why you can talk big about Darfur and injustices involved, but you can not imagine how to go in, choose sides and force a change. It is way too messy for your brain.
You should read what Sherman did. He was right then and he is right now. War is Hell. The object is to bring the enemy to his knees. You can do it Mongolian Horde style or you can use more precision, but in the end you leave dead bodies behind. Maybe they will be on a battlefield, but in house to house combat, they are likely to include civilians and little children who got caught in the crossfire. There will also be soldiers killed by friendly fire. You would know this if you cared a whit about the serious business of soldiering.
I started this by my comment that I do not believe Obama is a bit more ready to be serious about being Commander in Chief than you would be. But once the war is under way, you either fight to win or you yank those guys and gals out ASAP. Letting them stick around and get killed while you golf and jet about is a sin of the worst kind. The circle of Hell for that kind of dereliction and disgrace has not been described.
All so much useless bullshit. The problem with Iraq and Afghanistan is that we’re trying to force people completely alien to the concept to found a Western-style democracy. I don’t know of any wars in our history where this has been even attempted, and world history gives examples going back hundreds of years of the complete failure of empires to remake the middle east in their own image.
Radical Islam is working its way into the country and soon we’re all going to have start obeying Sharia law, huh? Well, that lets me know how serious you are about politics. There literally couldn’t be anything stupider than thinking we’re on the cusp of some kind of Muslim takeover.
If
Levi,
Well, there you go again.
You just have to change the meaning don’t you? Radical Islam has got the Swedes testing their “diversity” souls. Germany is starting to face reality. France battles it in the street. The Neatherlands is in knots over it. England is losing its stiff upper lip. They are all confronting Eurabia and starting to wake the heck up.
We have a few troublesome enclaves of radical Islam and we are tapping their phones and hiding GPS stuff in their cars and dogging them with the FBI. We are not on the “cusp” of anything, silly boy. But you ACLU types keep trying to address radical Islam like it is some sort of video game you can just shut off when you grow tired of it.
Assuming you are gay, why don’t you back your backside up to some of the Dearborn, Michigan Islam firsters and show them the cartoon you drew of Mohammed? I guarantee you that “Allah Akbar” are the last two words you will hear uttered. Your own last words won’t come out of your slit throat.
Sorry, little boy, to make it so personal, but you really are dangerously naive. What do you think “honor killings” are all about?