Posted on 11/03/2011 7:13:18 AM PDT by pabianice
Reportedly considering removing combat troops and replacing with "advisors." Just in time for Nov, 2012?
All troops out of Iraq soon.
Fine. Iran can deal with them.
We scorched that earth for almost 10 years after Gulf War I and it didn't solve the problem that was Saddam.
You don't understand what I mean by "scorched earth". I mean literally send them back into the stone age. The UN would scream bloody murder, but I'd just invite them to move their HQ to the Middle East.
Where we are now is back to Paper Tiger status.
That's because we refuse to play by their rules. As long we play by the current rules, we'll be a "paper tiger".
Good. It’s about time we got out of that quagmire and stopped wasting our heroes on a fool’s errand.
good point except the worst of it HAS been on obamas watch
First, trapped by his chicken hawk campaign boasts to fight the “real” war in Afghanistan, he decided to escalate and pressed Petraeus back into the field to try to do what Bush surge accomplished in Iraq (wrong- Afghan is totally different battle in different conditions with different society)
then his lawyers foisted disgraceful ROE on our military
how many lives lost since barry became the cinc and how many many for PC???
Not really sure what our goal is/was in Afghanistan.
I thought it was to capture or kill Bin Laden and as many Al Quaida as possible.
Looks like THAT has been accomplished.
Bring em home.
The Air Force has already begun the RIF actions. He seems to believe that they will all be grateful that there are no more deployments. They might be unemployed, but they should be grateful. <\s>
The group that will really be grateful about this are the muslim terrorists. They can regain the country as a staging area for new attacks. It has always been a mistake to view Afghanistan as being in any way a conventional war/conflict. It is and always has been an unconventional battlefield. The Russians learned this painful lesson and we had it right for a while, before the uptick in the number of troops deployed as opposed to keeping it primarily special operators.
FUBO & FAD
No, I understand exactly what you meant but like I said initially, do you really think that would happen? Because I don't. You are talking about stacks upon stacks of smoking bodies - do you really think ANY president other than President justlurking would order that? I sure don't. The last time we did that, Japan and Germany had already killed thousands upon thousands so Americans were primed and ready to end it with "scorched earth" (not that they were given a choice). These days are not those days...yet. We are a Paper Tiger not only because we possibly make scorched earth threats that probably will never really happen but becuase we lack the committment to accomplish long term goals anymore and no can plan or count on America any longer than the next Presidential election. Very sad but I agree with you about at least trying to change the rules but America just ain't there right now.
It’ll be a helluva lot more expensive to maintain the no-fly without bases in Iraq proper. Bases that we already have.
The time to prevent that outcome was 2001-2003.
That time is long gone.
That is true although they have been somewhat subdued and hindered up to this point in time. Nobody with any common sense should believe that we have broken them or their operations; we have only slowed them down a little.
Good point - they will be tossed out on the street.
Between the ‘Stan and Iraq, how many troops is that? Iraq - 39K, the ‘Stan - under 100K - 90K?
Might bump up the unemployment level to 9.4% Hard to impact a number as large as the number of unemployed right now...
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