Posted on 05/12/2009 10:07:49 PM PDT by garyhope
It seems harsh to suggest the Pentagon top brass don't know what they're doing. But those who care to read the transcript of the press conference at which the sacking of the top American general in Afghanistan was announced may find that conclusion hard to resist. "In some ways we're learning as we go here," said Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs. It was not a reassuring admission.
The public defenestration of General David McKiernan, a distinguished career officer who took command in Kabul less than one year ago, was brutal in that cold, callous way peculiar to American officialdom. More to the point, it remains largely unexplained. "We can and must do better ... We have a new policy set by our president, a new strategy, a new mission ... I believe new military leadership is also needed," said Robert Gates, the defence secretary.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Similar to the kind of warnings Shinseki was giving Bush prior to the Iraq invasion, and look what happened to him.
Very little to learn here.
#1: Align cross-hairs on enemy.
#2: Pull trigger.
#3: Check to see if enemy is C, Moving, B, Breathing, C, Has pulse.
If A, B, or C are true, repeat steps 1 and 2.
Very little to learn here.
#1: Align cross-hairs on enemy.
#2: Pull trigger.
#3: Check to see if enemy is A, Moving, B, Breathing, C, Has pulse.
If A, B, or C are true, repeat steps 1 and 2.
Shinseki WAS wrong about Iraq. The invasion and conquering didn’t require 500K, nor did beating Afghanistan. If he had his way, we would still be in the troop build-up phase.
The mistakes in Iraq were in handling things post-victory. Things like refusing to work with the Iraqi Army, etc. But if we waited for Shinseki to be ready, we would still be waiting.
In the process of using opposition to the Iraq war for political gain during the campaign, calling it the “wrong war” (and thus Afghanistan the “right war”), the reckless and bumbling political novice 0bama managed to make the war in Afghanistan his own. He is now tethered to it, and dependent on its success.
But in truth, Afghanistan is everything 0bama and his Democrats spent years trying to falsely portray Iraq as being.
There is no long-term military solution there. The war in Afghanistan is ‘unwinnable.’ This isn’t to say we are losing the war or are in any danger of it, but simply that there is no possible exit strategy based on permanent victory there.
Afghanistan is the Wild Wild West. It is ungovernable. No one wants to live there except for outlaws. There are no natural resources except for poppies. It is landlocked with no major sources of water. It is inhospitable. This is the reason why outlaws and terrorists make it their home when no other country will take them.
That is why outlaws will always rule Afghanistan. A country where legitimate people will not live cannot have a legitimate government made up of legitimate individuals. The US will never be able to extract itself by setting up a legitimate, functional, non-corrupt government there. The only solution involving a military presence is one where we are there indefinitely, with US soldiers playing the role of cops. That’s not an exit strategy.
Instead, we need to leave Afghanistan, and destroy what little infrastructure it has, torch all the poppy fields, and level the camps there.
We can do this from 10,000 feet. And we will need to do it once every decade or so, to prevent the likes of Al Qaeda and the Taliban from reconstituting and rebuilding too much.
But 0bama won’t do any of this, and thus he will fail spectacularly in Afghanistan. The contrast between Bush’s success in Iraq and 0bama’s failure in Afghanistan will not be missed by history, and neither will the irony of 0bama’s usage of the two in his campaign.
Luckily for us, unlike with Iraq, it’s really not too important whether Afghanistan succeeds or fails.
That’s the problem. Barry doesn’t make good moves. If Barry makes a good move, you have to question his motives.I understand your mistrust.I know about the blind squirrel and all, but something about it is still fishy.
But I read a lot of the linked articles AND about the Generals in question before I posted. Without getting into a lot of 'inside baseball stuff', the General 'fired' was the wrong guy, for the wrong place (war).
But here's a *funny* thing. The new General believes in the tactics that RUMMY believed in, and first used in Afghanistan in ousting the Taliban. THAT will drive some moonbats even nuttier.
Gates is a sack of dog dung. Pig. I hope he gets his one of these days very very soon. The stinking sell out.
Shinseki warned it would take several hundred thousand to take Iraq and to handle the lengthy post-war occupation, and all he was doing was quoting from the Central Command Op Plan that had been created the year before Shinseki became chairman. As it turns out he and the Op Plan were a whole lot closer to the mark than those who said the job could be done with fewer than 50,000 and the troops would be home in no time.
I agree with you although it almost goes without saying that that is what that half man and his puppeteers will say. I live in Michigan and have listened to our very own Zer0 clone, clueless Jenny Grandmole blame John Engler and George Bush for all our problems. Its what weaklings do.
It's probably true that civilians are being killed by airstrikes, although probably not in anywhere near the numbers being cited.
In a guerilla war, however, the exact truth matters far less than does the perceived truth. If the bad guys can convince the general population around them that the Americans don't care about their lives, the local population is more likely to support them.
That was the dynamic in play in Iraq for several years. It turned around for two reasons. First, the bad guys in Iraq killed so many Iraqis that it could no longer be overlooked. And second, Petraeus' strategy put Americans in direct contact with everyday Iraqis, which directly countered what the propaganda said.
Something similar has to be done in Afghanistan, although the particulars would undoubtedly be different.
One thing's certain, though -- reliance on "death from above," while tactically effective, has significant downsides when one is trying to decouple the population from the guerillas.
hopefully this is unrelated....no story yet....
US: Pentagon Official Charged With Passing Secrets To China
Last update: 5/13/2009 10:56:32 AM
(MORE TO FOLLOW) Dow Jones Newswires
traitor named in the story....
US: Pentagon Official Charged With Passing Secrets To China
DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
WASHINGTON (AFP)—A Pentagon official formerly of the U.S. Air Force has been charged with conspiracy to pass classified information to an agent of China, the U.S. Justice Department said Wednesday.
A criminal complaint said that retired Lieutenant Colonel James Wilbur Fondren, a deputy director of the U.S. Pacific Command’s Washington Liaison Office, “unlawfully and knowingly conspired” to communicate secrets.
“The allegations in this case are troubling - providing classified information to a foreign agent of the People’s Republic of China is a real and serious threat to our national security,” said Dana Boente, acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
“The U.S. government places considerable trust in those given access to classified information, and we are committed to prosecuting those who abuse that trust.”
In the absense of any other info my take is that The Marxist did not want a general in Afghanistan that was not “his man”. He tried to get Gen. Patraeus out, but the man held his ground in the Senate hearings.
McKiernan was the softer target so The Usurper threw him under the bus. Given that McCrystal is now The Messiah’s man, it remains to be seen to whom his ultimate loyalties lie—America and the American soldier or the unqualified communist residing in the WH.
Casey didn’t get fired, he became Chief of Staff. Even if McKiernan needed to be replaced there was no reason given for his forced retirement. If the new guys came from the Pentagon then there were slots open that GEN Mck could have filled. There is way more to this story than is being told.
i didn’t think of that
McChrystal and Petraeus are cut from the same cloth. Force multiplication through intelligence is the special forces way. Combine the intelligence you get from the special forces way, with the firepower we have developed during the 20th century and you have something that is much more effective than the firepower alone reacting to enemy initiatives.
The goal here is to not blow away the enemy AFTER you walk into his ambush, but take out the bad guys while they are moving, assembling, or planning. Kiernan was an armor guy and the mindset has its place. Afghanistan is not the proper place for a man trained to deal with mass armored warfare. Don’t forget — Petraeus endorsed this change.
We should have finished with Iraq years ago and gone into Iran. 500,000 was a much better idea. In fact, we should have knocked out Iran first! With Iran out, the majority of islamic extremism would have been stopped. Well except from the funding by the stinking Saudis.
But when we allowed the Iraqis to come up with a constitution that mandated that “No Law Shall Contradict Islam” well.....whats the point?
The problem is that it’s hard to see what we’re trying to accomplish there now. The renewed focus on Afghanistan has nothing to do with Afghanistan’s negligible strategic significance and much more to do with domestic U.S. politics.
Al-Qaeda no longer has a base in Afghanistan, and the Taliban is unlikely to regain control of the country even without our intervention. Even if they do, it will probably be of little consequence to us. Imposing any sort of stable order in Afghanistan is of little value to us strategically, and is probably impossible anyway.
Politically, however, Afghanistan is very important to Obama. It represents a foreign policy compromise that allowed him to be elected. He needed to oppose the Iraq war in order to win the Democrat nomination, but he could not appear weak against Islamic terrorists in general. That meant decrying our efforts in Iraq as a “distraction” from the “real war” in Afghanistan, and promising a renewed focus on defeating our enemies in the latter.
This is why we have no discernible objective in Afghanistan, and why this change in command will amount to little. Our original objectives were to overthrow the Taliban, deny an operational base to al Qaeda, and to kill or capture al Qaeda’s leadership. We’ve long since accomplished the first two. We’ve had mixed results on the third, and Afghanistan only continues in significance there as a base of operations to hunt al Qaeda down in Pakistan (where most of them are now) or pressure the Pakistanis themselves to do so.
Afghanistan will probably be our next Vietnam in one way: it’s unlikely that we’ll leave with anything that looks like victory. However, remember that our “defeat” in Vietnam was ultimately irrelevant to us strategically. So will our lack of obvious victory in Afghanistan. Fortunately, Afghanistan will come at a far lower cost.
>>The problem is that it’s hard to see what we’re trying to accomplish there now. The renewed focus on Afghanistan has nothing to do with Afghanistan’s negligible strategic significance and much more to do with domestic U.S. politics.<<
Agreed. I have grave concerns about this administration and what they will do there.
My point was limited to this - if he conducts war there, we all do - and if America is at war we should all hope for success.
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