Posted on 03/02/2011 5:47:40 PM PST by Eva
His point was that we need to "Dig Less Wells, Dig More Graves."
Can't say I disagree with that.
I think that pretty well sums up what I was thinking. The Marine Corps is not the Peace Corps.
Yeah. It's Obama, isn't it?
Political, social, and economic programs are usually more valuable than conventional military operations in addressing the root causes of conflict and undermining an insurgency.
That's from FM 3-24, published in 2006, which I don't have to tell such a well informed individual such as yourself was our playbook in Iraq during and after the surge, and is our playbook for Afghanistan at present.
Lastly, as you are no doubt familiar with what happened after Nixon's Vietnamization policy, or after the Soviets previously declared victory in Afghanistan and went home, I can only assume you're trying to be funny when you say we should take our cue from either of those failed attempts to disguise defeat.
....but it is Obama who is using Vietnamization in Afghanistan. Bush was winding down Afghanistan when he left office, preparing for some sort of end game. Obama declared that Afghanistan was the “right war” and decided to use the surge that had worked so well in Iraq on Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is Obama’s war. Whatever Bush did in Afghanistan, it started out as a “right war”. Bush was not perfect and he tried to hard to be a “nice guy”. That’s not one of Obama’s faults.
I think the author of that piece was Ralph Peters. He got a lot of grief from much of the defense establishment and the think tank boys for that one.
Atcually the US should be happy to end its Afghan war as well as the Soviets. Before they left they got rid of the worthless Babrak Kamel and coronated the brutal but competent and clever Najibullah. After the ‘limited contingent’ pulled out they continued to provide Najibullah with plenty of weapons support and US$ which he used well. He had a network of local warlords who he bribed or helped with squashing their rivals to get their support. The Northern Alliance our current best buds were part of that arrangement. The ‘pro-Soviet neutral regime’ only started to come unglued after thier patron the USSR did. In fact Najibullah outlasted his patrons by two years I think. We should be so lucky with Hamid & Co.
Where is the constitutional authority to fund even disaster relief?
I understand where you’re coming from, but I can’t view any kind of “Doomed to failure” exit strategy as being acceptable.
Regards.
Unfortunately Karzai is a bozo and aparently something of a nut case. The Soviets wreaked so much damage in the Pushtun areas there isn’t a strong tribal structure to work with as there seems to be in the north. Identifying who might be able to be able to put together a coalition of Pushtans who can be paid to get rid of the foreign fighters seems to have drawn a blank. We can’t stay forever, the whole region’s political structure is starting to shift like tectonic plates moving. Pakistan is becoming very difficult to deal with and the LOC runs accross their territory so they have us held as a sort of hostage. What end state strategy can be developed other than pump money to those who will carry some weight and steadily move ground forces out so the remnant can be rolled up quick if necessary. It’s not going to be 1842 again but we need to keep in mind that due to our supply situation with our Pak friends we could be forced to engage in a humiliating evacuation. Better to plan to get out than be forced out.
I agree with that, but I don't think the pooch has been completely screwed yet.
From my admittedly dilettantish perspective, Pakistan is part of the problem. Always has been, always will be, so long as they wish to dominate their Northern neighbor. We've lost a decade pretending in the face of much evidence to the contrary that our interests coincide, when it seems to me we should have been forcefully (diplomatically, economically) letting them know their interests aren't paramount in Afghanistan (the Afghans' are), and if they want to dominate something in the North, they should start by extending their writ into their tribal areas, which have turned into this war's Cambodia/Laos. Methinks it's not too late to make Pakistan choose a verifiable course of action, and then act appropriately ourselves, whether that be continuing to fight an insurgency which has lost it's cross border bases, or enlarging the field of battle to include those cross border bases, Pakistani sovereignity be damned.
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