Posted on 10/18/2006 8:34:39 PM PDT by neverdem
The big domestic news story in Norway today was just that.
The socialist government coalition turned down NATO's request for combat troops to be sent to the south in Afghanistan. The conservatives accused the government of cowardice and of letting down our allies, but the government stated they were just following in Prodi and Zappateros's lead.
Some lead.
My reply to the title: WHO SAID ..??
Another aspect of the Taliban's current agenda that is identical to the mujahideen's political tack in the 1980s is its definitive position that it will not participate in, or even negotiate with, President Karzai's government. In words familiar to those knowledgeable about the absolute intransigence of the Soviet-era mujahideen leaders, Taliban spokesman Mutamen recently explained that there would be no peace talks with Kabul because: "There is no independent government in Afghanistan now. The foreigners have established the current government. The occupying forces should first leave Afghanistan. We can then think of future peace talks...Our resistance, which has now spread throughout the country, is not for the sake of power or government. This is a very silly thought. We want to regain independence so our people can live under the system which they desire which is, of course, and Islamic government"
----
It's clear. In order to win the war on terror we have to defeat the desire for "Islamic Government" - the Jihadist ideology, the sharia ideology itself has to be rooted out. And it is deep-seated. ... this will be a very long and hard-fought war, and we will have to start now to rethink how we are fighting it.
Thanks Tommy for the perspective.
It's true the casualty rates are much lower.
And the Taliban is not as popular as this report suggests.
It is also true that our footprint is pretty small in Afghanistan, deliberately so. The Afghan army is what is needed to be bolstered.
What we need running these countries is an alliance of strong military leaders along with democratic leaders (Karzai).
The poster who says Karzai is weak is very wrong. He only looks weak because he is not a nutcase dictator, but he is strong and brave enough to survive assassination attempts and still stare down warlords.
Last thought: It is crystal clear that bugging out of Iraq would lead to losing Afhganistan as well. 'domino theory?' Sure, but the Taliban would have a 'script' to play out to victory, and based on this media report they are playing it already.
"On the other hand, he is apparently a leftist, one of those rogue CIA man who thinks he knows better than anyone else"
Yes, he's a big fat know-it-all... just like Richard Clarke was, the intrepid genius who knew all but still couldnt stop a single terrorist attack...
Anyway, it is funny how the FR know-it-all types gravitate to these guys.
Some good advice but take with grain o salt.
The only thing that can defeat us is defeatism itself.
"Muslim remains an intractably violent and evil religion, IMHO."
That is one thing that strikes me from this article, the intractable love of violence and hatred for the outside ... we have poured foreign aid in, we have begged for reconciliation, hosted elections, built schools and hospitals, and the jihadists would prefer muslim misery to westernized joy.
Taliban increase activity in Afghanistan.
The following material is taken from emails sent by my son stationed in Afghanistan. He was there from January to Sept. 2006. He was not very optimistic about our chances of ending this situation well. I have not talked with him since his return about his take on the recent agressive British and Canadian activities. Note the dates on his emails.
7/31/06 - Afghanistan is a nation in a very loose sense. Varying forms of civilization exist in the series of valleys that score this country. In between these valleys are steep mountains. From valley to valley the preception of things can be quite different and even in the same valley, villages may have very different views on the coalition forces and the official Afghan govt.
The southern part of the country is where the Taliban had their strongholds. Famous battles like 'Anaconda' (where Bin Laden held up before escaping to Pakistan) took place there. In many cases the Taliban has started to more back in there. They are even bringing their families back.
The south has been phasing into ISAF (International Security and Assistance Force) control. ISAF is a NATO creation. It is run and manned by the NATO member military forces. In typical European fashion they are playing it safe. [I have not asked him yet if he considers the recent British and Canadian activity safe.] ...They are going to use what is called the 'ink spot' approach to insurgency. Essentially, you create pockets of civilization under your control. This is also the same strategy used by the French in Algeria (it failed by the way). [If my memory serves this sounds like the strategic hamlets system that we used in Vietnam, also a failure, gleeaikin.] The net effect is to create the self delusion that all is well while giving up the countryside to the insurgency. The insurgents too will create little bases of operation - most likely in the next valley over! They will recruit, train and stage operations against coalition forces from their own safe zones that they control. It looks more like a game of 'go' than a game of chess. The West thinks in terms of chess and the Eastern mind thinks in terms of 'go.' Go may be the only game that you can win by doing nothing.
Europeans have very thin skin. They do not have the same will to fight the Americans do. They are also more pragmatic. We are more ideological. We will fight to the last man for what is 'right.' They will make a simple business decision. ISAF fully takes over the south by the end of this year. Next year's summer offensive will be very hard on them. The year after that - even worse. They will suffer the worst casualties Europe has seen since WWII. I am quite sure the headlines will say as much. The political pressure back home will be too great. In two to three years the Europeans may pull out. They may also simply cease operating in the countryside and hunker down in their walled compounds. They will then ask the US to come back to the south and restore security. We will then have the dangerous job of conducting operations in 'the next valley over.' The American people will then ask, 'After 7 years why are we still finghting and dieing Afghanistan?' The US soldeir will ask 'Why are we still hunting for Taliban in Anaconda?' After all, we chased the Taliban out of Anaconda just a few years ago.
All in all, no one is willing to do anything decisive i this country. This has taken on the air of a multi-national peace keeping effort. Only, no one has informed the Taliban. The Taliban still think they are at war. The Juhad is far from over. In fact, given the current situation in the world. I would say it is just beginning.
When the war started, I thought it would take 7 years of serious fighting to end it. I assumed that we would be engaged in serious fighting. Instead, what we have done is to avoid serious fighting. Instead of a 7 years sprint we have turned this into a 14 year endurance event. There is nothing to be gained by a long sustained military campaign. Americans can deal with just about anything for a short period of time. But after a time we expece results. We need to decide today what we want to do. Shxx or get off the pot. We cannot endure another Vietnam. Either fight this thing in earnest or pack it in and give the country back to the Taliban.
I sent him a report on our forces taking two Afghan towns. He replied:
7/24/06 - What? Five years after 9/11 and the Taliban still controls parts of Afghanistan? How can that be? Maybe it was just those two towns. Yep, our work here is done, we got the last two towns under Taliban control.
You know, we had soundly defeated the Germans and Japanese after 5 years of war with them. Of course, we also were willing to fire bomb and nuke whole cities full of civilians. The Age of Aquarius baby boomers who run things now don't have the stuff it takes to win a war. Ah, what would Patton do?
On the other hand, Vietnam did drag on for 15 years. I think most boomers would rather see a long isolated war with dubious results, than an intense total war with a decisive victory. end
My son does not point out that we lost 500,000 troops in WWII, and 57,000 in Vietnam, and that there was a draft for both wars. Even with Republicans in office, there has not been the political will for that kind of sacrifice. Lord knows what will happen with Dem control.
"The jahadist prefer muslim misery to westernized joy."
If you pray 5 times a day every day from childhood, and your only text book is the Koran, if you can even read, this is some mighty powerful brainwashing to overcome.
yup powerful brainwashing...
"Lord knows what will happen with Dem control."
Defeat ... a Carter-like malaise. The suicide of the west.
Depressing to see his comments about the Euros there.
I think America would tolerate a short 'hot' war, we would have in 2001 and 2003... but we cant seem to 'win the peace'.
It has to do with the muslim mindset. We can free them from external oppressors but not the internal oppression that hates tolerance, freedom and western values.
We cant make them like us and we can make them defenders of civilization if they are barbarians.
That is what is so dispiriting. I believed and still believe that Bush was (and is) right to speak of desire for freedom as a universal aspiration. But those who really value freedom are overwhelmed by the crazies who reject it entirely...
While the allied forces are good at regaining lost territory, and killing the enemy, I think the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq must be prosecuted with much more vigor.
The gloves need to come off.
No more mister nice guy.
If the allies don't elevate the aggressiveness of their forces sufficiently enough to utterly CRUSH these insurgencies, they will eventually tire and withdraw.
The enemy knows this.
And by "enemy", I include the MSM and the Left.
.
The voice of reason speaks. The question is...will people listen?
I don't know about you but I find these doom and gloom articles to be...boring. At one time they may've servered a purpose but by now IMO they're just more bash America nonsense.
You do understand that this is a guerrilla war, a counterinsurgency? And you don't fight a guerrilla war the same way you fighta conventional war. Until you really grasp this you are destined to be...confused.
In that case, "guerilla" wars are unwinnable, and we should never undertake them.
As far as I can tell, we have never wone a "guerilla" war, or a war that was presented as a "guerilla" war.
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Tell that to the Brits. I refer of course to the guerilla war in Malaysia, and not to be forgotten Americas war with the guerilla's in the Philippines in the 1900s.
If I may
Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Paperback)
by John A. Nagl, Peter J. Schoomaker
http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Eat-Soup-Knife-Counterinsurgency/dp/0226567702
Book Description
Invariably, armies are accused of preparing to fight the previous war. In Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, Lieutenant Colonel John A. Nagl—a veteran of both Operation Desert Storm and the current conflict in Iraq—considers the now-crucial question of how armies adapt to changing circumstances during the course of conflicts for which they are initially unprepared. Through the use of archival sources and interviews with participants in both engagements, Nagl compares the development of counterinsurgency doctrine and practice in the Malayan Emergency from 1948 to 1960 with what developed in the Vietnam War from 1950 to 1975. In examining these two events, Nagl—the subject of a recent New York Times Magazine cover story by Peter Maass—argues that organizational culture is key to the ability to learn from unanticipated conditions, a variable which explains why the British army successfully conducted counterinsurgency in Malaya but why the American army failed to do so in Vietnam, treating the war instead as a conventional conflict. Nagl concludes that the British army, because of its role as a colonial police force and the organizational characteristics created by its history and national culture, was better able to quickly learn and apply the lessons of counterinsurgency during the course of the Malayan Emergency. With a new preface reflecting on the author's combat experience in Iraq, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife is a timely examination of the lessons of previous counterinsurgency campaigns that will be hailed by both military leaders and interested civilians.
___________________________________
The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power (Paperback)
by Max Boot
http://www.amazon.com/Savage-Wars-Peace-American-Power/dp/046500721X/sr=1-2/qid=1161267280/ref=sr_1_2/104-1207478-3799909?ie=UTF8&s=books
From Publishers Weekly
As editorial features editor of the Wall Street Journal, Boot (Out of Order: Arrogance, Corruption, and Incompetence on the Bench) has a reputation as a fire-breathing polemicist and unabashed imperialist. This book addresses America's "small wars" in chronological order, dividing the action from 1801 to the present into three sections ("Commercial Power," "Great Power" and "Superpower") to argue that "small war missions are militarily doable" and are now in fact a necessity. Beginning with a description of going to work on September 11 as the World Trade Center tragedy displaced the WSJ newsroom, Boot quickly gets down to some historical detail: from the U.S. expedition against the Barbary pirates to violent squabbles in Panama, Samoa, the Philippines, China, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Mexico, Beirut, Grenada, Somalia and Bosnia. Examples of wars "that were fought less than `wholeheartedly,' " of wars "without exit strategies" and wars "in which U.S. soldiers act as `social workers' " are decried. Each of the 15 short chapters might have been the focus of a separate in-depth book, so Boot's take is once over very lightly indeed. While America's and the world's small wars certainly seem more and more related, Boot's historical descriptions are too thin to provide a solid foundation for relating one war to another.
If I remember correctly, we didn't wring our hands over the sensitivities of the combattants in the Philippines, and we didn't have the overwhelming preponderance of the news media motivated against the expedition.
You cannot win ANY war, "guerilla" or otherwise, by being Mr. Nice Guy.
You must strike fear into the enemy, because fear, over time, breeds respect.
"Let them hate us, as long as they fear us."
The United States will never be loved by more than a few people here and there in foreign nations. That's a given. The foreign press all over the world hates us. I have been to a few countries and have seen this. I saw it all over the European and South American television news.
The United States is not even loved by a substantial minority, perhaps even a majority, of the people living here!
Perhaps a more clear characterization is to say Americanism is hated, even though it was Americanism that gave the world the vast preponderance of all the technological, medical, and financial benefits they all enjoy.
Sometimes I feel we should just withdraw from them all and let them kill eachother and rot.
As for the Islamo-nazis, they should be put on notice that any attack carried out on US soil will be met with the evaporation of Mecca by a nuclear-tipped ICBM.
For Kim, he should be put on notice that his next declaration of war upon us will be taken seriously, whereupon we will evaporate PyongYingYang with a nuclear-tipped ICBM.
I'm fed up with trying to "understand" and trying to "be nice" and trying to fight a "guerilla" war on the terms of the pansies at the UN.
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If I remember correctly, we didn't wring our hands over the sensitivities of the combattants in the Philippines, and we didn't have the overwhelming preponderance of the news media motivated against the expedition.
Care to bet?
I'm not a betting man, but I think I remember the story about Gen. Pershing having a number of Mohammetans executed and buried with pig renderings, and sending one or two survivors back to tell the other Mohamheads.
Doesn't sound very "sensityve" to me.
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but I think I remember the story about Gen. Pershing having a number of Mohammetans executed and buried with pig renderings,
Claim: General John J. Pershing effectively discouraged Muslim terrorists in the Philippines by killing them and burying their bodies with pigs.
Status: Undetermined.
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/pershing.htm
(snip)
The history of the American administration of the Philippines between the Spanish cession of the islands at the conclusion of the Spanish-American war in 1898 and the attainment of full political independence in 1946 — including American attempts to "pacify" various independence-minded groups through military means — is too long and complicated to explicate here. Suffice it to say that General John J. "Black Jack" Pershing was part of the process as Governor of the troublesome Moro Province between 1909 and 1913. We haven't yet found any references to this alleged incident in Pershing biographies, however, nor does it match the way Pershing is generally recorded as having dealt with the Moros in 1911. When they refused to obey Pershing's order banning firearms by surrendering their weapons, his response was to draft a letter to the Moros expressing sorrow that his soldiers had to resort to killing to enforce the order:
I write you this letter because I am sorry to know that you and your people refuse to do what the government has ordered. You do not give up your arms. Soldiers were sent to Taglibi so that you could come into camp and turn in your guns. When the soldiers went to camp a Taglibi, your Moros fired into camp and tried to kill the soldiers. Then the soldiers had to shoot all Moros who fired upon them. When the soldiers marched through the country, the Moros again shot at them, so the soldiers had to kill several others. I am sorry the soldiers had to kill any Moros. All Moros are the same to me as my children and no father wants to kill his own children . . .
When negotiations stalled and matters came to a head, Pershing was still reluctant to be responsible for any more loss of life than was necessary:
[Vandiver, 1977]
[Pershing] went to his offices on [14 December 1911] only to hear a message from the Sulu district governor: hundreds of hostiles gathered on Jolo's Bud Dajo! The message had dread portent. Mount Dajo, awesomely high and capped with the creater of an extinct volcano, meant sacred things to Moros. It was the refuge against fate, the last bastion of the hopeless, the place where their ancestors stood off great waves of enemies. Once on the mountain, esconced in its big cotta, Moros would die gladly, as Leonard Wood had grimly learned. Retreat to Dajo meant a clear declaration of war.
Sobered and depressed, Jack wrote of an overriding worry: "I am sorry these Moros are such fools, but . . . I shall lose as few men and kill as few Moros as possible." Memories of Wood's massacre of men and families on Dajo rankled in the army and still bothered the chief of staff. Obviously another such slaughter in the winter of 1911 could adversely influence the 1912 elections in the States.
Pershing's strategy was to surround the Moros and wait them out while attempting to induce them to surrender, a strategy that worked effectively: the Bud Dajo campaign ended with only twelve Moro casualties. But in his report Pershing seemed keenly aware that the best approach was not to take any action that would encourage religious fanaticism:
There was never a moment during this investment of Bud Dajo when the Moros, including women, on top of the mountain, would not have fought to the death had they been given the opportunity. They had gone there to make a last stand on this, their sacred mountain, and they were determined to die fighting . . . It was only by the greatest effort that their solid determination to fight it out could be broken. The fact is that they were completely surprised at the prompt and decisive action of the troops in cutting off supplies and preventing escape, and they were chagrined and disappointed in that they were not encouraged to die the death of Mohammedan fanatics.
Other anecdotal accounts attribute Pershing's success to his merely threatening to do as described:
Col. John J Pershing threatened the mullahs with . . . "splattering of pigs-blood on your houses and families and any who attack us and are killed will be buried in pig-skins." Consequently the mullahs made Pershing an Honorary Chieftan with little if any more trouble in his area of command.
Yet another account, from the 1938 book Jungle Patrol, attributes the deed to someone other than Pershing:
It was Colonel Alexander Rodgers of the 6th Cavalry who accomplished by taking advantage of religious prejudice what the bayonets and Krags had been unable to accomplish. Rodgers inaugurated a system of burying all dead juramentados in a common grave with the carcasses of slaughtered pigs. The Mohammedan religion forbids contact with pork; and this relatively simple device resulted in the withdrawal of juramentados to sections not containing a Rodgers. Other officers took up the principle, adding new refinements to make it additionally unattractive to the Moros. In some sections the Moro juramentado was beheaded after death and the head sewn inside the carcass of a pig. And so the rite of running juramentado, at least semi-religious in character, ceased to be in Sulu. The last cases of this religious mania occurred in the early decades of the century. The juramentados were replaced by the amucks. .. who were simply homicidal maniacs with no religious significance attaching to their acts.
We haven't eliminated ruling out the possibility that Pershing at some point chose to deal with a group of "Mohammedan fanatics" in a manner similar to the one described above, but so far all we've turned up are several different accounts and nothing that documents Pershing's involvement.
Nonetheless, the "discouraging Muslim terrorists by burying them with pigs" concept is still invoked today, even if the evidence of its use (or success) remains nebulous:
(snip)
Thank you for your considered response, but my gut feeling is that we will not win the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan with the current methodologies.
Not that we couldn't, but rather because the people haven't got the patience for it.
All indicators are that the American people will elect a government that will pull back and let the terrorists win, if not in the election looming in November, then in 2008.
And I submit that this would be catastrophic for our country, in the long run.
.
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