Posted on 10/18/2006 8:34:39 PM PDT by neverdem
at some point, a country that cannot raise an army of its own people willing to fight and die to be free - can't be free. yes, NATO could be doing more, we should be bombing on he Pak side ofhe border, etc. But the real question is, what are the Afghans doing?
Yep, we inch closer to the battle of Islam versus the modern world.
Print, cut, and plant by your rose bush. Our troops tell a completely different story. Other than an occasional sniper or roadside bomb, they can`t hurt us. On the other hand, when three Taliban have a meeting, our Air Force crashs the party.
they have an endless supply of fighters in Pakistan (and even some recruits in Afghanistan) to fuel them, so unless we bomb on the Pak side of the border, we can't eliminate them. and time is on their side.
they can't "hurt us" in a military sense, sure. but the battle is over the will to sustain a low level fight.
if its just an "occasional sniper" as you say, then why can't we pull out completely? certainly there enough afghan forces to stop an occassional sniper or roadside bomb.
As they should dofor Taliban funerals.
Scheuer was one of the "brutal Afghan winter" types who predicted a disaster for the Coalition in 2001. He just revises the prediction every now and then, tacking on current news articles, the direr the better.
Scheuer is an anti-Bush hack who's only quality is that he is also anti-Clinton. All his prescriptions are BS. This whole rising Taliban is part of the same defeatist meme that the Socialist media is using to bring suppport down for the War on Terror.
And FReepers are falling for it hook, line, and sinker.
Hard to say. Michael Scheuer has criticized clinton recently for being a liar. On the other hand, he is apparently a leftist, one of those rogue CIA man who thinks he knows better than anyone else and is happy to undermine the government when they fail to do exactly what he recommends.
The problems he raises are real. But I think he exaggerates. No, we can't stay in Afghanistan forever, and we can't fix Islam without some help from the Muslims themselves, or a massive conversion effort that will need to be religious, not political.
Muslim remains an intractably violent and evil religion, IMHO.
the NATO commanders themselves have asked for more forces there.
That's NATO. That's Europe's concern. We have our own forces.
The Afghan National Army consists of almost 40,000 soldiers today, with several thousand more in training.
I was involved in their first major combat operation in January, 2003. They are motivated. There are some really, really good leaders in there, too. (There are some duds, too. They are working to weed them out). Many of the early officers were taken for political reasons, and you often have guys on the same staff who fought against each other some time in the last couple dozen years.
Ultimately, these guys will shoulder the load and we'll go home. They take more of it all the time.
I think Scheuer is mistaken to give as much credence as he does to the statements of Taliban spokesmen. Also, he seems to suggest that the opposition of Hekmatyar and Haqqani is something new. Both of those guys were with the TB and against us from Day One, even though both had fought against the TB.
The idea that Massoud's guys will flip as a unit... unlikely. More likely they will break up into separate factions as Atta, Daoud and Fahim Khan all have their own vision. The other two are nominally loyal to FK at this time, who is nominally loyal to the government.
Afghanistan has not had a functioning, legitimate central government since 1973. All these guys have decades of experience in which you needed to be loyal to family, tribe, and ethnic group above all.
As far as Scheuer's comments about tracking people down... I suspect that, although he was an agency guy, he was a Langley weenie that never walked that ground, and certainly didn't look at it with the eye of a combat infantryman or guerilla campaigner (as I do). It is very, very good terrain for hiding. Which is an understatement that should produce peals of laughter from anyone else who's been there.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
He seemed to rely heavily on some of the jihadi cheerleaders over at Asia Times.
Wasn't the author of this article the guy who wrote "Imperial Hubris"? It sounds to me like the only sources he uses are Taliban ones, and they're probably not exactly the most truthful.
Things are going to get very bloodly next year with the Taliban and al-Qaeda no longer forced to fight two armies at once (NATO and the Pakistani Army). Because, of the Pakistani peace treaty with the Taliban they now can concentrate on Afghanistan and have a free base in Pakistan.
Unless we deal with Wariziristan our NATO allies are going to run because of political pressure at home next year. We may then have to restart major combat operations and heavy bombing, but unless we deal with Pakistan we can't beat them.
WE can`t pull out completely yet because that create a vaccum that the terrorists would gladly fill. They and the fence sitters in Afganistan would call our leaving now as a victory, as they would in Iraq . We can`t do that.
please answer a question: I`ve studied a lot of wars and I can`t remember one with a timetable. If there ever was one, please let me know.
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