Posted on 08/26/2009 8:10:35 AM PDT by Fractal Trader
The nation’s top military officer, in a deeply pessimistic assessment of the war in Afghanistan, said yesterday that due to years of neglect the United States is basically “starting over’’ in its battle against the radical Taliban movement and its Al Qaeda allies.
‘This is the eighth year, but there is a newness here. There is a starting again, or starting over. Iraq has been the focus, it hasn’t been Afghanistan.’
‘We all believe there is going to be a need to accelerate the training of the Afghanistan security forces, army, and police, and that is going to take additional trainers.’
‘The Taliban is much closer to Al Qaeda than it used to be. They are much more affiliated with each other than they were a few years ago. Call it a federation.’
‘I am one that believes that we need to negotiate . . . from a position of strength. We are not in a position of strength.’
Acknowledging that public support for the war is waning, Navy Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the US operation needs “12 to 18 months to turn this thing around.’’
“It is doable, but it is going to take some time,’’ he said, urging Americans to be patient.
With the intense focus until recently on fighting the war in Iraq - where the United States plans to keep nearly twice as many troops as in Afghanistan until at least early next year - he said that the Tali ban are far more potent than they were during the US invasion after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Mullen is the same douche who tried to stifle Petraeus. Afghanistan deserves what it gets. we should just poison the poppy crop, bomb the hell out of it and leave them to the tender mercies of the Taliban, dropping a Hellfire on them often enough to keep them nervous. Afghanistan and Pakistan need their borders reorganized tribally anyway, since everyone seems to be stuck in the ninth century.
Maybe because- we chose the time and the place of the main front (Iraq) to our advantage?
Fighting tolleybons in a stone age country with no infrastructure aint exactly the battlefield most generals would choose, except general obama of course
We need a real President.
Plus the zero has made the mistake of moving the battle from the favorable battleground of Iraq (which Bush smartly choose) to the unfavorable battleground of Afghanistan (which has been the graveyard of armies of centuries).
Afghanistan will be Zero's Vietnam.
Fighting tolleybons in a stone age country with no infrastructure aint exactly the battlefield most generals would choose, except general obama of course
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So we haven’t been fighting in Afghanistan for nearly 8 years now? I must be missing your point.
I have a big problem when we try to build a reasonable society out of “Tribes”. Get out and bring our kids home.
I am a retired Army officer who is probably as conservative as anyone. I have a son who is an SF “A” Detachment Commander and two other military sons. Having said that, I find myself in agreement with very strange company in opposition to increasing our military commitment to Afghanistan. I don’t believe we have the available resources to secure the country. I don’t believe the Afghans have any kind of commitment to democracy as we know it. I don’t believe America has the political will to sustain what is necessary to prevail there. I think we should commit to securing Kabul and the corrupt (albeit friendly to us) Central Government and the major population center of Kandahar and our Air Base there at the expense of abandoning the rural tribal regions. From there, use Air Power and Drone Aircraft to keep the bad guys on their toes and continue to nudge Pakistan to secure their own borders. Unless we adopt this strategy now, we will be pulling our troops out in a year or 18 months from now with our tails between our legs. In the final analyis, the Taliban know we will leave sooner or later and they can wait us out. I say sooner is better than later. I never thought I would be taling like this, but this has a lot of parallels to the last two years of Vietnam.
I tend to agree with your assesment but I disagree that we should pull out. I always viewed the Afgahanistan war as a very good real world training tool for our Special Forces operators, but I am not a military man so I may be completely incorrect.
If we pull out, terrorist attacks will occur around the world sooner rather then later. If we keep fighting them there, it hopefully keep us from fighting them here.
Psst! hey Genius- We will always be "starting over again" every few years in these places, because some "brilliant" top military officers stood by scratching their arses while Islamists wrote: "The laws of the Koran are superior to any laws contained in this constitution" - which you then stopped scratching your butts and signed.
This pretty much made everything we are trying to do there pointless. So get our guys out of there, no point getting them killed for nothing.
this has a lot of parallels to the last two years of Vietnam.
which 2 years? 71-72 or mid73-mid75?
Not really. We've been concentrating our efforts in Iraq. The Canadians were doing most of the fighting in Afghanistan while we supplied logistics and air support, as well as more covert work into "Pokkeystan" as Ogumby calls it.
I’m no Mullen fan. Why Bush made an admiral Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the midst of fighting a land war is way beyond my ability to comprehend.
And the reason Afghanistan has not been “pacified” by now is that Bush and Rumsfeld (and the guy that followed Rumsfeld) doubled the mistake that we made in Vietnam. They tried to fight two “minimalist” wars at once. Furthermore, they followed that up, just as in Vietnam, lacking the will to do what was necessary to bring the entire Afghanistan/Iraq campaign to a conclusive and speedy end. And, finally, Bush failed to give the American public a role in fighting the war. Again, repeating a mistake we made in Vietnam.
So much for the concept of studying history as a means to avoid making the same mistakes over and over.
Maybe because- most of the al Qaeda guys didn’t stay in Afghanistan after Tora Bora, but went to Iraq and Pokkeyston
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Correct and haven’t we killed more al Quaeda in Iraq than we ever have in Afghanaistan.
Afghanistan, “Graveyard of Empires.” Obama wanted to be president so he owns this war now. What does he plan to do with it?
In the last two years (70-72) of the US troop presence in Vietnam, the Vietcong were beaten, and all the fighting was done against NVA regulars, who were essentially beaten at the time of the withdrawal. This is far worse than Vietnam. If we pull out now, it would be a lot like pulling out right before the Tet Offensive. The Afghan Taliban alone could probably overthrow the Afghan government. Add in the Pakistani Taliban (Afghanistan's version of the NVA), and it would be a walkover, almost an exact repeat of what happened in the run-up to the original Taliban victory in the mid-90's. We know what happened after that. (I personally would like to flatten large parts of the country, Soviet-style, but if George Bush didn't do it, I can't see any other potential president who would).
We have plenty of good training grounds for out SF Troops. My son trains almost 24/7. Even if we started prevailing in Afghanistan, the terrorists would just move to Yemen, Somalia or the Horn of Africa. Afghanistan is not a beginning or end to this war and to commit large forces there will accomplish nothing.
Let’s take the operation back from NATO and finish the job.
I was referring to the American political will to stick it out during the final years in Vietnam up to the fall of Saigon.
No empire ever collapsed because it got involved in Afghanistan. Most conquerors left because there is nothing of value there worth fighting for - only 12% of the land is arable and mineral wealth is non-existent. The British got in, defeated the Afghans and left. The Russians got in, killed a million Afghans at the cost of perhaps 30,000 men and left. But they left because it's a wasteland not worth fighting for, not because they couldn't have pacified the country.
The one good possible side effect of a Taliban victory in Afghanistan might be that the Taliban (along with al Qaeda) will start backing Uighur separatists across the border with China, upon which China will overrun Afghanistan to whack the Taliban and use traditional Chinese methods for Muslim pacification, namely kill the religious leaders and ban the possession of Muslim religious books on pain of long gulag terms or execution.
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