GayPatriot

The Internet home for American gay conservatives.

Taliban planning to take over Afghanistan when U.S. Leaves?

by

Wonder if this report will change the president’s mind about withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan:

A NATO report leaked to British news outlets found that Taliban leaders are confident they will regain power in Afghanistan after the U.S. withdraws, and said the insurgency has not been seriously eroded by the military efforts of America and its allies.

That report illustrates the hazards of negotiating with the Taliban while preparing to pull out of the country, according to military analysts and Afghan officials.

This is the type of story which should attract more news coverage than the verbal gaffe of a Republican politician.  Or a reality star’s impending endorsement.

Comments

  1. Obama has actually empowered a radical Islamic member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, to “negotiate” with the Taliban in helping US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

    That is to say, the US has turned over the surrender withdrawal terms to the enemy.

    When the “diplomacy by other means” has broken down to this level of Chinese firedrill, it only follows that we would beg the Taliban to let us leave without beating us up too badly on the way out of the door.

    In the recent past, the Brits, the Germans and the French have all had serious Taiban actions against their troops causing multiple deaths. There is no stomach left for this war and everyone is ready to throw in the towel.

    Obambi will try to sell the line that we reached a “diplomatic settlement” and hope that the Taliban will allow him to get away with the lie through the elections season.

    Obama has diddled around for three years in Afghanistan and done nothing about cleaning up the charges he laid on G.W. in 2008. It was his war to lose and he has decided to declare victory and hope he doesn’t have a Dunkirk on his hands.

    Watch for NATO minus the US to sneak out overnight. Then watch for the US to leave massive stockpiles of weapons and ammunition for the Karzai government to turn over to the Taliban or whatever band of primitives rises to the top of the festering heap of fundamentalist dictatorship.

    It is not so much Obama’s fault that he couldn’t wrap this thing up in a nice package with a bow. But, at least he could have paid attention for three years and chosen a far better set of advisors and friends. He has certainly taught NATO a valuable lesson about supporting the United States.

  4. Wonder if this report will change the president’s mind about withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan

    Why should it? I mean, really, what do you expect to happen? Do you think that if we stayed another six months, a year, two years, five years, the exact same thing will not happen?

    We are not there to defeat the Taliban. Sure, you can say that is the mission, but that is only words. An examination of our action, taken en-toto after we kicked the Taliban out says flat out “no”. In order to do that, we would have had to declare war on any country known to be harboring then in large numbers – and that would be Pakistan. Everyone knew they were there during the remainder of the Bush years. That’s why we supported the ouster of Musharrif. We thought that once a Democracy took hold in that country, the powers that be would kick the Taliban out of the country….

    Ha Ha!

    Naive Idiots!

    The general population dislikes us more than they do the Taliban! We now know that the government knew where Bin Laden was all this time. The problem is that, in order to prevent the Taliban from re-emerging in Afghanistan, we would have had to also go to war with Pakistan.

    If you’re going to go to war in a foreign land with the goal of destroying the enemy, and you don’t take all the steps to do so, including going to war with countries that harbor your enemy and wiping the place clean, then you will end up with the enemy destroying you, one way or the other. The Romans understood that when they completely destroyed Carthage. Yet, for all their might, they could not defeat the Gothic / Barbarian tribes to the north.

    It was the lesson we didn’t learn from Vietnam. Even if we did stay longer, even if General Giap would have surrendered after the eventual failure of Tet, does anyone here believe the Communists would have packed it in and gone home???? No! They were home! They would have kept on fighting, and when we left two years later (or what-ever) they still would have overrun the south.

    Gotta go get breakfast now.

  6. In the recent past, the Brits, the Germans and the French have all had serious Taiban actions against their troops causing multiple deaths. There is no stomach left for this war and everyone is ready to throw in the towel.

    Why???? Because, after ten years, everyone recognizes that no one has (or ever had) the will to do the very nasty things to win it. We would have had to have committed far far more resources, and basically stray very close to a genocidal war to possible get close to what we could classify as a “win” in this thing.

  9. Sonic,

    I take your point. The “conventional wisdom” has always been that Afghanistan can not be conquered unless you are Alexander and you leave your troops to colonize and interbreed with the natives. But even that concept fails when you realize that somewhere along the line, they stopped speaking Greek in Afghanistan.

    The primary job of the military is to kill people and break things; crush the opposition and …….. leave ….. ?

    We are still in Germany, Japan, Bosnia, Korea, and pot holes all over the world.

    Nation building, occupation, peace keeping, and other social platforms are not part of the military mission. They are the default position of diplomacy after the war.

    We wrote the constitutions of Germany and Japan and stayed around to put them into force and then backed down from full scale occupation to being honored “guests” of the largely demilitarized countries.

    Afghanistan was a basket case when we went in and it is arguably far better off today than it has ever been in terms of infrastructure. But we never took the people by the short hairs in order to “win their hearts and minds.”

    It is many years past time to get out of there. We not only failed to have an exit strategy, we never had a clear, defined mission.

    To put the troops in constant peril as the politicians diddle around and then go after the troops, full bore, when they pee on the corpse of someone who most likely died trying to kill them is pathetic.

    The Democrats raised holy heck over the wars and then proceeded to do not a thing about ending them. There is plenty of blame to go around for letting the Pentagon run a war from Congressional hearing rooms.

    Either empower the military to do the job or just don’t use them. You do remember that Obama had to give the sniper permission to shoot the Somali pirates, don’t you?

  10. We are still in Germany, Japan, Bosnia, Korea, and pot holes all over the world.

    Germany, Japan, and Bosnia are all countries that had already adopted a Western type of economic / social model before we had ever stepped foot in the various conflicts. Korea was in the process of doing so, and we are only in half of tat country, the half that accepted our protection.

    We wrote the constitutions of Germany and Japan and stayed around to put them into force and then backed down from full scale occupation to being honored “guests” of the largely demilitarized countries.

    Germany, Japan compared to Afghanistan? – Those are very different creatures, apples and a lemon, and those examples only serve to solidify my point. We were not able to do restore those countries until AFTER we had totally, completely conquered the forces that would have been in opposition. Things in Germany may have been very different had Hitler escaped and the remaining Nazi sympathizers had a neighboring country to camp out in and continue to fight. There were a few Japanese soldiers on isolated island who never knew the war was over, but that was rare (if it actually was the case at all) and there was no chance that there were enough of them to form a resistance.

  11. Oh, and the Alexander inserted government was only in Afghanistan for about 25 years. He conquered the standing army and government, such as it was. But Afghanistan, much like today, was a tribal society and those tribes didn’t have much contact or use for the “State Government” such as it was. And, if I remember correctly, the government put in place dissolved soon after ATG’s death. Thus, Greek language and culture never took root or spread much outside the protected walls of the governing elite.

  13. Sonic,

    Huh?

    Did I really write something enormously confusing? I wrote this above:

    The primary job of the military is to kill people and break things; crush the opposition and …….. leave ….. ?

    (….)

    Nation building, occupation, peace keeping, and other social platforms are not part of the military mission. They are the default position of diplomacy after the war.

    (….)

    Afghanistan was a basket case when we went in and it is arguably far better off today than it has ever been in terms of infrastructure. But we never took the people by the short hairs in order to “win their hearts and minds.”

    It is many years past time to get out of there. We not only failed to have an exit strategy, we never had a clear, defined mission.

    Hopefully, this helps clarify my view.

    To be totally clear: When we send in the troops to kill and break things and get wounded and killed, we had damned sure better have the guts to win and to decisively defeat the enemy and then have a clear understanding of what role, if any, we are going to take after the surrender.

    Frankly, if there is any reason to return to Afghanistan, I support bombing them and bombing them until they begin to get the message. Not the way we tinker-toy played annoyed with Saddam during the Clinton chucklehead years, but bombing them into caves and permanent migraine day and night.

  14. Sorry Helio, I should have phrased my response better. It’s just that I see the standard response about Germany and Japan and want to make sure people understand those countries simply are not compatible to Afghanistan.

  17. The Middle East conundrum can not be disposed of by isolationism.

    Bush changed the direction of Iraq. Libya got out of the nuclear stuff and settled into a full time kleptocracy. Egypt was a reliable dictatorship. Syria was a snide, but relatively compliant dictatorship. Jordan was a clear ally. Turkey wanted to be in the EU more than it wanted to go Islamic caliphate.

    Those were tense days, but there was a certain order and even a trend toward a less militant Middle East.

    Then Obama pulled the plug and went about signaling the radical Muslims and speaking on their own land that the US was not so keen on continuing the recent existing order. What followed was “the Arab Spring” and a kinetic action to hunt Qaddafi down and depose him followed by stirring up the anti-Assad crowd in Syria …….

    Just this past Wednesday, Ruth Bader Ginsburg said this at Cairo University in Cairo, Egypt:

    “This is the most wonderful time in which to live and be among the young people who are helping your country and bringing about change during this exceptional transitional period to a real democratic state,’’ Ginsburg said, according to the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. “Think of the people who lived before you and did not have this opportunity because they lived under a dictatorial regime.’’

    Ginsburg seems to be back on the ground where Obama stood before the “Arab Spring” unleashed the Salafis who have made the Muslim Brotherhood look moderate by comparison.

    Islamists Win 70% of Seats in the Egyptian Parliament (New York Times)

    By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK Published: January 21, 2012

    CAIRO — Egyptian authorities confirmed Saturday that a political coalition dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, the 84-year-old group that virtually invented political Islam, had won about 47 percent of the seats in the first Parliament elected since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. An alliance of ultraconservative Islamists won the next largest share of seats, about 25 percent.

    The military council leading Egypt since Mr. Mubarak lost power last February has said it will keep Parliament in a subordinate role with little real power until the ratification of a constitution and the election of a president, both scheduled for completion by the end of June.

    But the council has assigned Parliament the authority to choose the 100 members of a constitutional assembly, so it may shape Egypt for decades to come, although the military council has sometimes tried to influence that process.

    The election results were expected because of preliminary tallies after each of the three phases of the vote, but the confirmation comes in time for the seating of Parliament on Monday.

    The tally, with the two groups of Islamists together winning about 70 percent of the seats, indicates the deep cultural conservatism of the Egyptian public, which is expressing its will through free and fair elections for the first time in more than six decades.

    But the two groups have described very different visions and appear to be rivals rather than collaborators. The Brotherhood has said it intends to respect personal liberties and will focus on economic and social issues, gradually nudging the culture toward its conservative values. By contrast, the ultraconservatives, known as Salafis, put a higher priority on legislation on Islamic moral issues, like the consumption of alcohol, women’s dress and the contents of popular culture.

    Among the remaining roughly 30 percent of parliamentary seats, the next largest share was won by the Wafd Party, a liberal party recognized under Mr. Mubarak and with roots dating to Egypt’s colonial period.

    It was trailed by a coalition known as the Egyptian Bloc. It included the Free Egyptians, a business-friendly liberal party founded by a Coptic Christian businessman, Naguib Sawiris, and favored by many members of the country’s Coptic Christian minority, about 10 percent of the public. The Egyptian Bloc also included the liberal Social Democratic Party, which leans further to the left on economic issues.

    A coalition of parties founded by the young leaders of the revolt that unseated Mr. Mubarak won only a few percent of the seats, as did a handful of offshoots of the former governing party.

    You will kindly note that the crowd that led to the fall of Mubarak has been totally overwhelmed by reality. And that defunct crowd is who Ginsburg’s remarks addressed.

    The Secretary of Transportation, Ray La Hood, has a son locked up in Cairo unable to leave. He was there stirring up the democracy movement with a group not “officially” connected with the US government. The Egyptian military rulers and the Muslim Brotherhood agree that Egypt must protect itself from outside groups attempting to influence its internal affairs.

    Meanwhile the Salafis in Tunisia are carefully watching the political turns in that unstable country. Assad blames the Salafis for his woes. Jordan has an undeclared war on the sect. Saudi Arabia is caught with the fact that their Wahhabism is just another name for Salafism.

    So, I am not sure about comparing the Middle East and our wars there in the Bush years with what the Middle East has become in the Obama years.

  18. The Middle East conundrum can not be disposed of by isolationism.

    And, as we have seen, it can’t be controlled by an iron fist either.

    Bush changed the direction of Iraq.

    And part of the goal of our action in Iraq was to spread Democracy and show the Arab world they didn’t have to put up with their dictators any more. They go the message.

    Libya got out of the nuclear stuff and settled into a full time kleptocracy.

    That was a good thing, and a direct result of our Afghan / Iraq invasion.

    Egypt was a reliable dictatorship.

    But still a dictatorship, and not all that benevolent to the people under his rule. Is that the kind of President / ruler you would be just fine with here in the US? Would you vote for a guy who would stifle free speech and throw people in prison based on political views? Mubarek was a thug. If you were living in Egypt, I fully suspect you would want him gone too.

    Syria was a snide, but relatively compliant dictatorship.

    You’re kidding, right. Are you talking about the Syria that continues to this day to supply arms to Hamas and other terrorist groups in Lebanon and the West Bank? From the moment of our Iraq invasion, the right was hell bent on going into Syria, as they are an arm of the Iranian Government, were supposedly hiding all of Iraq’s “missing” cache of WMD’s, and were farther along on building its nuclear capabilities than even its master Iran. Are you talking about that Syria, or some mythical one I’m not aware of.

    Turkey wanted to be in the EU more than it wanted to go Islamic caliphate

    That’s Obama’s fault… Oh… Wait… The AKP, the more Islamic learning political party of Turkey gained power in 2007… Let’s see…. Who was President of the United States at that time…

    So, if you’re going to blame anyone of the “wrong turn” in Turkey, it should be Bush, not Obama.

    Then Obama pulled the plug and went about signaling the radical Muslims and speaking on their own land that the US was not so keen on continuing the recent existing order.

    Here is a little surprise for you… The peoples in those countries don’t like us much and don’t give much of a damned what our elected leader has to say.

    Back to your first point.

    The Middle East conundrum can not be disposed of by isolationism.

    And it can’t be controlled by a foreign country either. What exactly did you want Obama to do, go in with our military might and prop up the Mubarek regime???? We complained bitterly about Iran providing aid to the Iraqi resistance and interfering with us, and we are not even the legitimate government of that country! You guys will be throwing a tantrum when info comes out that Iran is providing aid to Assad in Syria to try and prop up that regime. We have no right, Constitutionally or otherwise, to keep our boots on the necks of any foreign population just to support a dictator that we happen to like.

    I do find it funny that the same people who got on Obama’s ass for not doing more to help the Iranian people throw off their dictatorship are the same ones who complained that Obama didn’t help to maintain the one in Egypt, when, in fact, short of military invasion, he and the US were powerless to do anything about either one. This region has been ready to pop for the last twenty years. There was a delicate balance holding everything in a status quo. The 9/11 attacks, and our responsive actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, coupled with the free flow of information via the internet, finally popped the bubble.

    Am I “happy” with the direction some of this is going… Not particularly. But this was inevitable, and, ultimately, the peoples of those countries have every right to decide who the are ruled by, and how they are ruled. That is not up to us to decide.

    Must go work now.

  19. Sonic,

    My shorthand is not quite so simplistic as may appear to you. I am not a Carter-lite type fan of diplomatic purity. I am very sanguine about geo-politics. In the chess game of international relations, you line up a few pliant dictatorships (China) to help accomplish your needs. I am not harkening back to creating banana republics or Mossad type “interventions.”

    Mubarak was no enemy of the US and no less brutal than Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, or Yeman. Furthermore, Mubarak was well acquainted with the Egyptian Brotherhood, the sudden end of the Sadat regime, and the realities of being without enormous oil wealth.

    As to Turkey, you can not begin to understand 2007 without including the internal reactions to the Armenians (again) and the Kurdish claims in a growing movement toward an independent Kurdistan.

    Syria has survived with the Baathist crowd that empowered Saddam. But Assad has been clever enough to keep the door open to the CIA and the state department. He got his North Korean nuclear power centrifuges bombed into glass without missing a beat. Sure he funnels money to Hamas and Lebanon is a mess from both his meddling and his looking the other way when the Beqaa Valley denizens start acting out. But, from a chess board view, Assad has been held largely in check. How many Syrian led incursions agains our troops in Iraq do you count? When they got together inside Syria near the Iraq border we bombed them and Syria squealed it was just a wedding ceremony. I am afraid that game of spy vs. spy and dirty international “relations” is not so clear and moral as you would seem to have it.

    Furthermore, the border between Syria and Turkey has been hostile for decades. The pressures within Turkey are far more complicated than just the one election in 2007.

    Ataturk created a secular Turkey which lasted 84 years until Abdullah Gul took the presidency in 2007. This is a highly religious man who is a throwback to the pre-Ataturk days. This was not a “loss” by Bush. It was a huge set back which was precipitated in part by an attempt by Bush to use Turkey as an overland supply route to the war in Iraq. But the larger problem was the uprising in Eastern Turkey by the Kurds who wanted to join with the Kurds of Iraq. This is no simple black-and-white cause and effect bit of history.

    What is clear, is that the Obama state department has ignored the internal strife within Turkey. If you were to have traveled there regularly for the past seven years, you would notice that the army began flying larger and larger and more numerous national flags all over the cities and countryside. That is to inform the people of their presence. The concern within the Turkish military is that it will be cut off from US training, support and materiel by an evermore wavering US government. One thing is still true in Turkey: Gul does not control the military.

    What the Turks feel intensely is that the US has given Gul its permission to pursue the re-Islamification of Turkey.

    There is more to say, but I also have “other things to do.”

  20. The concern within the Turkish military is that it will be cut off from US training, support and materiel by an evermore wavering US government.

    Um…. If that’s the case, they will be more worried of a Republican wins this upcoming election. It was a Republican, after all who called Turkey a terrorist state. It is Republicans who are stating that if they win, they will re-examine the conditions of all countries who receive foreign aid to see if they are worthy. Personally, I don’t have a problem with that, but I suspect, in light of the hawkish mindset of the Conservative party right now, the Turks would rather see Obama re-elected.

  21. The concern within the Turkish military is that it will be cut off from US training, support and materiel by an evermore wavering US government.

    Um…. If that’s the case, they will be more worried of a Republican wins this upcoming election. It was a Republican, after all who called Turkey a terrorist state. It is Republicans who are stating that if they win, they will re-examine the conditions of all countries who receive foreign aid to see if they are worthy. Personally, I don’t have a problem with that, but I suspect, in light of the hawkish mindset of the Conservative party right now, the Turks would rather see Obama re-elected.