Which might be the *real* reason we're there.
Incidentally, in keeping with the title of the thread:
Cheers!
Posted on 12/05/2010 4:31:38 AM PST by Suvroc10
Democrat Jim Moran says US military cannot win the war in Afghanistan. Remember when G.W. Bush was president, and it seemed like every other Democrat would declare that the US can’t win the war…whether that was in Iraq or Afghanistan? Well, now that Barack Obama is president, the Democrats are still as anti-war and anti-military as ever, the only difference being that the mainstream media doesn’t report on their statements of comfort and aid to the enemy nearly as much as when Bush was president. On Friday’s "Hardball," Moran, who’s a congressman from Virginia, declared that Afghanistan was not a "winnable war," and he even went so far as to claim that military leaders agreed with him!
(Excerpt) Read more at examiner.com ...
I agree with all of them except for this one:
2) Shoot back when shot at
You don’t win by reacting. You win by acting. A person in a war zone that is not wearing the uniform of us or our allies is an enemy. You shoot enemies.
What I do agree with him on ... I do not believe we will EVER will a "politically correct" war. You either go to war to kill people ... all people, women, children, combatants, infrastructure ... making it look like Berlin at the end of WWII ... or you stop "fooling around" getting our soldiers killed on the ground for a bunch of people who could care less and get the hell out of there. They "form up" and try to hit us, we toast them, from the air out of harm's way ... period!
If you cannot stand the thought of killing ALL people, then you have to question your motives for going to war in the first place ... is it political, economic, etc? You go kill people because they are trying to kill you, there is NO OTHER REASON for war. Otherwise stay home and pray for peace or go talk, talk, talk at the UN to make yourself "feel better!"
If they hit us, we carpet bomb the place ... we make them AFRAID of us so they "check" their bad behavior.
The key word is "afraid" ... and with this wimpy government, nobody is afraid of us ... and consequently more and more skirmishes and acts of terror will crop up ... because there is no "downside" ... you kill 240 people in a terrorist act and you go to jail ... that's not a defeat, that's a victory! If you are a foreign terrorist and cause a terrorist act in the USA that kills Americans, your "home town" in your country of origin simply disappears. That would only have to happen once or twice and people would start rethinking terrorism. A little peer pressure might even change the curriculum in the madrassas which gets us to the problem's root cause.
If the politicians would keep out of it..My thoughts are unethical but pull all the troops out and vaporize the whole area.
You know we can win the military conflict, but to win the hearts and minds of those whose Islamofacist facades are regathered daily due to their surrounding is unwin_able..Sure any sane person would want freedom and peace, but this group of folks has been living the tortured Mohammmmm BS for so long its become normal to them...so unless we replace the population with modern free thinking folks, I’d say we have lost in the end...not the war, but the country..
The ‘rat lunatic must be taking a page out of Harry POS Reid’s playbook.
Not with their hands tied by stupid ROE. Not with a president that doesn’t WANT to win. Not with a president who whats the USA to LOOK BAD.
“Democrat Jim Moran says US military cannot win the war in Afghanistan.”
Partially correct. The US Military can certainly defeat any foe and win any war if that war is fought as a war and not as a social experiment, a police action, and under extreme rules of engagement restrictions.
In war you seek out the enemy “all of the enemy” and kill as many of him as fast as possible for as long as it takes to force a surrender or to kill them al off.
What are we doing? Searching 5 year olds at Air Ports instead of the muslims with who are are at war..
Is this asshat still beating up 9 year old Boys?
..not a “winnable war”, and he even went so far as to claim some military leaders agreed with him.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
LETS ADD TO THAT LAST SENTENCE.
...agreed with him, saying that as long as the idiotic ROE remain in place and the Pols keep tying our hands we will be there forever.
“Much the same as WE declared when these fiasco’s started some 9 years ago”.
>> We win if we keep it out of the clutches of Iran and of Al Quaeda until Iran itself is pacified <<
Among those I’ve seen on FR and elsewhere, yours is perhaps the best brief explanation of what we must do. Kudos!
Just let me emphasize what you and others on this thread have suggested, namely, that Afghanistan really isn’t a “nation” or a “country.” The place basically is little more than a series of lines on westerners’ maps — a “buffer zone” that dates back to the “Great Game” between Russia and Great Britain in the 19th century.
Within the area enclosed by the Brits’ and Russkies’ artificial lines, there live a hodgepodge of tribes and linguistic groups with no natural resources to speak of, with almost no potential for modern industry or high-yield agriculture, and with no real sense of national cohesion.
Therefore, any hopes of “nation building” and “victory” are pie-in-the-sky illusions. But the USA certainly shouldn’t withdraw. Rather, we should prepare to maintain a small but effective military presence indefinitely, both to deny Al Qaeda a sanctuary and to keep the Iranians from expanding eastward.
The Moron that keeps giving,victory is hard when CIC is defined as Clown in Chief.
As much as I detest Moran, he is just saying what a lot of people are thinking, and they are correct.
1) NATO forces are about 175,000 + 100,000 fairly useless Afghan army. Afghanistan has 30,000,000 people, and is next door to 177,000,000 Pakistanis. Afghanistan is about the same size as Texas.
2) Though at any time there are only about 30,000 active Taliban forces, they have continual and perpetual reinforcement from the madrassas, radical religious schools, in Pakistan. This means that practically speaking, no matter how many NATO forces die or are incapacitated, there will still be 30,000 Taliban.
3) NATO can neither hold ground, nor can they change “hearts and minds”, because as soon as they leave an area, the Taliban return to reassert their control, beating and killing anyone who cooperated.
4) The Taliban still have major money pipelines providing them the resources to fight, as well as the occasional radical foreign expert who provides them with technical guidance so they can maintain more than a primitive level of hostilities. This is strongly augmented by the Iranians, and many in the Pakistani government and ISI, their intelligence agency who are sympathetic to them.
Now, this being said, we cannot “win”. But importantly, this does not mean that it is not important to be there, nor that we can “lose”, either.
Right now the US is spending about $100m to build a very advanced installation out of the fray, in more peaceful northern Afghanistan, a city called Mazar-i-Sharif.
It is of enormous value, because it is near the borders of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and the small arm of Afghanistan that reached to the border with China. All of which are of great importance to American intelligence operations.
Which might be the *real* reason we're there.
Incidentally, in keeping with the title of the thread:
Cheers!
With ROE the way they are and the strength of the ropes binding our troops hands behind their back, he could be right.
Let's get out and let them have their own country - whatever it turns out to be.
Yeah, I lived there once myself but never voted there. (Quantico)
Link mistyped in my last post.
Link mistyped in my last post.
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