Posted on 03/12/2009 5:49:54 AM PDT by Sergeant Tim
On the basis of my field experience in 2005–08 in Iraq, Southeast Asia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, I assess the current generation of Taliban fighters, within the broader Taliban confederation (which loosely combines old Taliban cadres with Pashtun nationalists, tribal fighters, and religious extremists), as the most tactically competent enemy we currently face in any theater. This judgment draws on four factors: organizational structure, motivation, combat skills, and equipment. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
Ping!
You can’t defeat an enemy when you are trying to be friends with him.
Kilcullen is very good.
Can We Defeat the Taliban? We must understand why our foes in Afghanistan are so formidable
Ah,no.. We must understand that to defeat an enemy you need to kill him,or enough of him to make the rest feel defeat. Can anyone tell me any historcial event that this was not the case?
Careful with the “hate speech” or it’ll be off to the gulags with you.
That's a thoroughly useless statement.
If one wishes to use "warfare against non-Moslems" as a standard for defining the enemy, you can just as easily say, "That enemy is Christianity."
After all, the vast majority of Westerners killed in warfare over the past 500+ years, have been killed by fellow Christians.
Why not try a more useful definition -- one that doesn't carry with it the whiff of wholesale religious persecution?
The Taliban's fight is based on their religious beliefs. They use violence or the threat of it to proselytize their brand of Islam. Theirs is not a fight over territory but the belief that Afghanistan, and the rest of the world for that matter, should follow their interpretation of the Koran
The Christian v Christian wars you elude to were generally not fought to foist a religion on their enemies. They were fights for power, resources and/or territory. The Taliban are modern day Crusaders bent upon forcing their religion on the world.
I agree semantics are important if you are to win hearts and minds, but so is truth. Like it or not, we are indeed fighting a war against radical Islam and no amount of politically correct language will change that fact.
Our military, during WWII, defeated two of the most powerful armed forces in the world. They did this when our military was rated 16th in the world. We can’t handle a bunch of desert rats in dresses and diapers on their heads? Get JAG and politicians out of the picture and let our military go to work. They are the best in the world now and we won’t leave them alone.
No, he doesn't. It's a useless statement, unless he is suggesting that we should be at war with all adherents of Islam.
The Christian v Christian wars you elude to were generally not fought to foist a religion on their enemies.
Aside from the wars during the Reformation period, you mean?
They were fights for power, resources and/or territory. The Taliban are modern day Crusaders bent upon forcing their religion on the world.
Well, that's very nice .... but if the Taliban are fighting due to their religious beliefs, don't you think we ought to fight the Taliban rather than, say, the Iraqi Muslims on whom we have spent over a trillion dollars in order to set then on a path to civilized behavior?
To blame "Islam" is just plain stupid -- and if taken seriously to the point of acting "against Islam", it is worse than stupid.
I think the difficult terrain has a lot to do with the Afghanistan WOT.
“To blame “Islam” is just plain stupid — and if taken seriously to the point of acting “against Islam”, it is worse than stupid.”
Subjugating the world to Islamic rule, by force if necessary, has been the aim of faithful Muslims for the past 1,400 years, since Mohammad. It is written in their damned book. They have made significant progress toward that goal — over a billion people are Muslim. It isn’t “stupid” to recognize historical facts and do everything necessary to defend one’s self. Deny the threat if you wish, but when push comes to shove, I would fight them to the death.
during WWII, defeated two of the most powerful armed forces in the world. .................... In WW II we over whelmed them with industrial production. Today we have to fight the enemy on the ground, they have no industry capability that requires day and night bombing, they have no transportation networks, no Air Force, No Tank Divisions, no massive troop concentrations, just rocky mountain ground and lots of holes to hide in. There are thousands of goat trails they can walk on and carry little equipment with them. They do not come at you in Division strength, its all small unit operations that pop up at their convenience. They don’t have to lug equipment around, they just bury it in various locations and use it when it is needed. What we accomplished in WW II can’t be compared to Afghanistan, if anything, its more like what the Germans faced in occupied Russia with the partisans. Their methods didn’t work out that well there, and as you know we can’t use their methods of dealing with insurgents in Afghanistan.
“We must understand that to defeat an enemy you need to kill him,or enough of him to make the rest feel defeat. Can anyone tell me any historcial event that this was not the case?”
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You are absolutely correct and obviously a student of history.
However, the condescending intellectual class on both the right and left do not like simplicity, particularly when it involves ...gasp...violence and a direct approach.
“Intellectuals” justify their existence via obfuscation, nuance, misdirection and needless complexity.
Did we not see the same thing in Iwo Jima or other islands. Massive bombing, in the mountains, would seem to break the will to fight with these people.
He may not have been precise in his language but we are indeed fighting a form of Islam. Arturus and I are not the only ones to believe that this is a war against radical Islam. Col. Ralph Peters has a column on this very subject in today NY Post. It is entitled "Listen to the Gitmo Five". Give it a read and let me know what you think.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/03122009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/listen_to_the_gitmo_five_159152.htm
Well, that's very nice .... but if the Taliban are fighting due to their religious beliefs, don't you think we ought to fight the Taliban rather than, say, the Iraqi Muslims on whom we have spent over a trillion dollars in order to set then on a path to civilized behavior?
Ah, and now we really get to the meat of your anger. I can only take from your statement that you were not in favor of the Iraq War which is your right. Good men of good will can disagree but I think you are comparing apples to oranges
In truth, we have been fighting the Taliban as well as those who would support their march back to the 12th Century. Saddam Husein, while not directly linked to the Taliban, did support their suicide bombers and used Iraqi capital to support the training camps.
Our involvement in the Iraq war may have been tangential but the reasoning different. We were perfectly justified in our movement against them. Disregarding weapons of mass destruction, the Iraqi's started their own demise by invading Kuwait. When pushed out by force they signed armistice agreements to do certain things on which they reneged. If you fail to remember they were even shooting at our planes on a daily basis. Are you telling me we should have continued to tolerate that? And as far as your claim that we invaded Iraq to "set them on a path to civilized behavior", Yes so?
I am sure you do you believe rape rooms, torture chambers and violence against decent should be things the world should tolerate. I would hope you believe the Iraqis are better off being able to determine their own future rather than living in fear of one man and his pathological family. For my part, I believe spending a trillion dollars to set millions of people free regardless of how or what they worship is money well spent. I will guarantee one thing, that trillion was better spent than Obama's trillion dollar stimulus package will be.
What do you suggest — genocide, perhaps?
Don't try to soften his words. He didn't say "a form of Islam," and he didn't say "radical Islam;" he just said "Islam." And that idiotic position is probably his real one -- it's certainly the position of legions of FR keyboard kommandos, including on this very thread.
Ah, and now we really get to the meat of your anger.
I'm not "angry," and you completely misinterpreted and misunderstood my comment. I was (and am) in favor of the Iraq war, for several reasons, including the ones you noted.
More to the point, I see the larger strategic point of that particular war (of which Obama seems blissfully unaware); namely, that it gives us a very handy centralized base of operations in the region.
My point was simply this: if we are supposed to be at war with "Islam," we must include Iraq among our enemies as well -- for the simple reason that Iraqis are almost all Islamic.
To put Arturus' suggestion in those concrete terms is to demonstrate its intrinsic silliness.
None of this is to deny that radical Islamists are a serious thread -- of course they are. But that's no justification for declaring war on an entire religion. History teaches some rather horrific lessons of the consequences of doing so.
Exactly. Muslims will tell you that they want Islam to rule the world, but our leaders still insist on calling Islam the religion of peace. Apparently we, as a society, have become so dumb that we can't recognize the enemy even when that enemy tells us to our faces that they want us either dead or enslaved. It's a wonder some of us are smart enough to get out of bed in the morning and dress ourselves.
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