Posted on 09/25/2009 12:51:16 PM PDT by neverdem
Always there is the illusion of the easy path. Always there is the illusion, which gripped Donald Rumsfeld and now grips many Democrats, that you can fight a counterinsurgency war with a light footprint, with cruise missiles, with special forces operations and unmanned drones. Always there is the illusion, deep in the bones of the Pentagon’s Old Guard, that you can fight a force like the Taliban by keeping your troops mostly in bases, and then sending them out in well-armored convoys to kill bad guys.
There is simply no historical record to support these illusions. The historical evidence suggests that these middling strategies just create a situation in which you have enough forces to assume responsibility for a conflict, but not enough to prevail.
The record suggests what Gen. Stanley McChrystal clearly understands — that only the full counterinsurgency doctrine offers a chance of success. This is a doctrine, as General McChrystal wrote in his remarkable report, that puts population protection at the center of the Afghanistan mission, that acknowledges that insurgencies can only be defeated when local communities and military forces work together.
To put it concretely, this is a doctrine in which small groups of American men and women are outside the wire in dangerous places in remote valleys, providing security, gathering intelligence, helping to establish courts and building schools and roads.
These are the realistic choices for America’s Afghanistan policy — all out or all in, surrender the place to the Taliban or do armed nation-building. And we might as well acknowledge that it’s not an easy call. The costs and rewards are tightly balanced. But in the end, President Obama was right: “You don’t muddle through the central front on terror. ... You don’t muddle through stamping out the Taliban.”
Since 1979, we have been...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
When Americans lay dead in our streets because the One doesn’t fight the WOT America will regret the election of 2009.
‘When Americans lay dead in our streets because the One doesn’t fight the WOT America will regret the election of 2009.’
Humor. Americans lay dead in the streets because of the open borders and nobody cares.
“Humor. Americans lay dead in the streets because of the open borders and nobody cares.”
American’s are murdered everyday at Planned Parenthood and no one does anything.
“Where Justice Ends Tyranny Begins”
Make no mistake, we are already living under tyranny.
Obama has no published National Security Strategy.
The US Military leaders are adrift. There is no goal.
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