Posted on 11/12/2009 9:53:34 AM PST by XHogPilot
Barack Obama is to reject all of the options outlined for increasing troop numbers in Afghanistan in favour of revised plans which include a clear exit strategy, it has been claimed. The report came from a senior administration official close to the high-level deliberations Mr Obama is holding with his war cabinet over the refocusing of the Afghan war effort. The President is said to have raised questions at a meeting on Wednesday that could alter both the size of any possible troop increase and the length of time they are in the country before they can hand over to responsibility to the Afghan government. According to US reports, it is not the first time he has asked for the four options thought to have been presented to him to be rewritten and he is putting up considerable resistance to the strategy put forward by the Gen Stanley McChrystal, the US Nato commander in Afghanistan, to increase troop numbers by 40,000 for a counterinsurgency drive. Other options on the table include sending between 10,000 and 15,000 troops who will focus on training Afghan forces. The latest development came as it emerged that the US Ambassador in Kabul, Gen Karl Eikenberry, has told Mr Obama that a surge of troops was "not a good idea" unless the Afghan government suceeded in reining in the corruption which spurred the Taliban insurgency. Gen Eikenberry, a former military commander in Afghanistan, reportedly cited the erratic behaviour of Hamid Karzai, who was sworn in as President of Afghanistan after his rival Abdullah Abdullah pulled out of a second round of elections because of ballot-rigging concerns.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
It seems Obama's new objective is to get out of Afganistan with minimum political damage. He has no interest in protecting the US.
Leadership/Management 101: 1. State an objective. 2. Construct a workable plan to achieve the objective. 3. Allot funding, personnel, and logistics to commence the plan. 4. Measure results to provide continuous feedback to adjust the plan. 5. Repeat.
He’s trying to win back his base.
It is so obvious that Hussein cares nothing about “winning”, or protecting the US and it’s citizens. Tell me again how this prick got elected?
You forgot #6. When in doubt (when you don’t have the slighest idea what to do), delay, delay, delay. (And get our kids killed.)
At this point, with the ROEs that our guys have to work with, the half-assed passing recognition of support from the Democrats, the multiple tours, and the politically correct betrayal of our higher military about our enemy(ala Ft. Hood), I’d say it is time to end this - end it now. Let Obama declare HIS defeat and let our soldiers come home. They are worth far too much to waste them on bullshit like this. Let the large northern cities and West Coast metropolis’ deal with the aftermath.
It is not when we leave; it is how we leave; my preference... victorious! Any other way is not a strategy… it is defeat.
LIBERALS DON’T NEED AN “EXIT STRATEGY”, THEY ABANDON EVERYTHING...............
Obama flip flops.
He called THIS the “right” war.
You LIE.
Obama’s only strategy is to cut and run. He is uncomfortable fighting his fellow Muslims.
So why did the douchbag escalate in the first place? Dja think maybe it was just a head fake to get his agenda through? That kind of dicking around with military personnell is really reprehensible and irresponsible.
Lies and propaganda. Come on! All the "cool" kids are doing it. What are you, a racist? Free money! If we need to force people to buy insurance in this new Obamacare plan, why didn't we just start with legislation to require insurance (from your employer or private coverage) before changing the system for those who LIKE their insurance?
Lie, lie and lie. That’s all this guy does.
Obama: “Bush’s fault!”
Like,
"How can we paint a humiliating military defeat as an endorsement for more Democrats, more fascism & socialism, more misery, and most importantly, more ME in 2012?"
The Killing Fields will be back. The Taliban will kill whole villages that backed us. They will kill every woman/girl who learned how to read.
“Let Obama declare HIS defeat”
He’s not gonna do that. He’s gonna blame it on Afgani corruption. It won’t be his fault!
“a surge of troops was “not a good idea” unless the Afghan government suceeded in reining in the corruption”
Maybe so. Regardless, it’s time to bring them home. We can’t waste them like this any more.
I sympathize, but I believe the best tactic is to call Obama out on the ROE.
Afghanistan is completely winnable, but Obama’s ROE prevent victory and will eventually force defeat. He is getting our soldiers killed. The solution is not to declare defeat but to get the ROE changed. (Or of course for the Chiefs of Staff to ask for Obama’s Birth Certificate).
Don’t give up on the war. If we choose not to win Afghanistan, it’s going to hurt us very badly. No-one will trust American/Western promises for a generation, just like after Vietnam. The Pakistan/Afghanistan axis of evil will grow stronger and more malignant, and our allies (such as they are) in those two countries will get squashed.
It is not when we leave; it is how we leave; my preference... victorious! Any other way is not a strategy… it is defeat.
” It is not when we leave; it is how we leave; my preference... victorious!”
Define “victory”.
My solution is to pull them out and make that country a mass of glass slag.
Translated:
The WH cannot convince ANY of our European or Pacific allies to contribute ANY more forces, to the contrary, most of these allies are starting to withdraw forces or are scheduled to do so very soon. I can’t name a single foreign leader that Bambi has a close working relationship with, not one. Bush and Blair were tight, Reagan and Thatcher were tight, but now, forget it. I think most foreign leaders, both friends and enemies, privately believe Bambi’s a joke.
This sounds a whole lot like what our government said about the Diem government. I dare say that the Karzai government is no more corrupt than the state of New Jersey or Chicago. Just an excuse for breaking promises.
I would define Victory in Afghanistan as “a country which acts as a continual bloody flytrap for the most violent 1% of Muslims from the entire world, while the heart of the country becomes Westernised.”
We can do that standing on our heads: - if our soldiers are allowed to shoot back at the people shooting at them.
Zelaya!
Oh, and Raila Odinga.
Define “victory”. Okay. It is when leaving doesn’t require a strategy.
Very well said, but I’m not sure Mama Obama can explain your third paragraph to her arrested adolescent husband.
That's pretty good.
Polls!
“He’s not gonna do that. He’s gonna blame it on Afgani corruption. It won’t be his fault!”
Yep, the White House and the media have been pumping this Afghan corruption storyline for weeks.
In the past century, the best examples of enemies reconstructing to form stable societies are WW II Japan and Germany (West). What they have in common is that, at the end of hostilities, there was no doubt who was defeated. Anything short of that seems to miss the point of a war.
I would define Victory in Afghanistan as “a country which acts as a continual bloody flytrap for the most violent 1% of Muslims from the entire world, while the heart of the country becomes Westernised.”
We can do that standing on our heads: - if our soldiers are allowed to shoot back at the people shooting at them.
Agree for all of the reasons you said and because we are also helping pacify Russia’s southern flank.
Our people are way too precious for that.
We could not stabilize that part of the world if we spent another 8 years or 800 years, so long as Islam poisons their minds. The only solution is so extreme that I won’t even bother to mention it.
Stealing defeat from the jaws of victory.
Tell me again how this prick got elected?
White Guilt, that idiot McCain, and financial sabotage carried out by George Soros (in no particular order)
The heart of the country CAN be westernized, in the sense of “women being taught to read and wearing normal clothes”.
We’re not talking about turning it into Rome. We’re talking about stopping Afghanistan from becoming a country-sized Mogadishu.
Kabul and environs was doing sort-of-ok - not exactly a Pashtun Paris, but not breeding legions of crazy people either - until the Taliban invaded and put the women into burqas.
And that’s all we need Afghanistan to be. Sort-of-ok. We train and support their military, we help their fledgling democracy and we use Helmand as a place to kill crazies. We infect another Muslim country with the concept of liberty. This is the Bush doctrine (properly understood) and it is a good one.
What we don’t do is declare defeat just because we can’t make Afghanistan into a Utopia. Do not make the perfect the enemy of the good!
We need to stay until the Afghan Army is capable of doing its own policing. Just keep doing what we’re doing. Keep the Talibs at the margins. Keep training Afghan units. Keep teaming up with them in the field until they get it.
Essentially, its the same strategy that worked in Iraq. It will take longer, because there is less to work with. No point in getting in a big hurry.
This part of Asia is bandit country; it will always be bandit country. There will always have to be some kind of militarized police force up in the hills chasing bandits. We “won” when we chased the bandits into the hills. Now we have to do the day to day maintenance work of keeping them there, and building the force that will keep them there when we’ve gone on to the next crisis.
Good post.
Blame all the dumbshits in our respective neighborhoods.
Excellent summary.
Indeed our problem in Afghanistan is NOT that “we’re locked in an unwinnable war”. We’re locked into unwinnable ROE.
Our troops may not shoot back if there is a ghost of a chance of a civilian being killed.
Our troops find it impossible to get arty or air support whenever there’s a ghost of a chance of a civilian being killed.
And the enemy are dressed as civilians, and routinely use real non-combatants as human shields.
I don’t think FReepers will have any trouble spotting the problem here.
I'm sorry, I can't agree.
The surge worked in Iraq.
The Pakis are cleaning up their side of the border.
If Obummer would apply a little Chicago style pressure on our enemies so as to win, instead of on the US population to knuckle under to "Eine volk, eine Fuehrer", it's be over shortly.
Dither, dither, dither....
There is more good sense about Afghanistan in this thread than in anything that is likely to emerge from the National Security Council.
I'll add my two bits.
I agree with agere_contra's view that we shouldn't be looking for another Iraq. In Afghanistan, that's neither feasible nor necessary. "Sorta O.K." is a good way to describe it -- a semi-liberalized center of the country, with a bearable level of corruption, the countryside with a moderate level of banditry -- and a domestic security force capable of limiting both. All in all, that would be a modest -- and meaningful -- step forward for the country.
But there should be another equally strategic objective: ruthlessly exterminate the Taliban. Presently, we're fighting a disparate collection of factions and bandits. Fact is, while they might think they've got a beef against us, we don't really have a beef against them.
It is said that Afghan tribesmen can't be bought; but they can be rented.
Accordingly, I'd favor a plan that recruited (i.e., paid) the bandits to help us root out and ruthlessly exterminate the Taliban -- the guys we were originally after when he entered Afghanistan.
The benefit of such a policy would be that everybody would then be aware of what happens to crazies who dare to attack us. We will come halfway around the world to kill every one of them.
It makes a powerful point.
I would prefer that the military pull back to a safe area, then ask the President what he wants to do. Go to war and fight it the way a war is supposed to be fought....to win.....or bring the troops home? Two choices, nothing more.
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