Posted on 06/28/2013 11:18:11 PM PDT by Zhang Fei
When the American-led NATO coalition officially transferred security responsibility for all of Afghanistan to government forces in a ceremony on Tuesday, it was in part a formality. Already this year, Afghan forces have been in the lead in fighting the Taliban in more than three-quarters of the country — and they have been killed and wounded at a record pace, accordingly.
But after Tuesday, these are supposed to be the rules everywhere: while American units may sometimes be close by, Afghan forces must operate without American air support, medical evacuation helicopters or partnered combat units. If they get in trouble, NATO will not be riding to the rescue, except in the most dire cases.
This summer is shaping up as a lesson in tough love from American military mentors to demonstrate whether the Afghan forces really can become self-sufficient by the withdrawal deadline for Western forces in 2014.
Just how tough that has been is perhaps nowhere more evident than in Room 648 of the Afghan National Army’s Military Hospital in Kabul. The room is shared by two soldiers wounded in the same battle against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan on May 22 and 23. One of them lost three limbs, the other lost two.
Their company, with the 205th Afghan Army Corps, was based in the Panjwai district of Kandahar Province. In May, they were sent to a village near Zangabad, the site of a popular anti-Taliban uprising in March that American and Afghan officials had hailed as turning a corner in an area long dominated by the militants. Just two months later, though, the insurgents were back.
According to the wounded soldiers’ accounts, later confirmed by their company commander, they found the area heavily mined and booby-trapped.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Why haven’t we been able to “get” Mullah Omar?
We have to find him first. Bin Laden was a stroke of luck. He stuck out a little too much, what with his unusual height (6' 4"), his mini-fort, and multiple consorts.
Chinese civil war 1948. Both sides were Chinese, why the Communist Chinese willing to fight and KMT Chinese willing to run? Vietnam war, North and South Vietnam are the same people. Why North is willing to fight and die and South runs once Americans are gone? Now in Afghanistan, the two sides fighting are Afghan, why is the Taliban willing to fight and the US backed side is willing to run? That is something we need to think about every time we stick our noses into other people’s affairs beyond the two God given oceans that protect us.
His Muslim Religion is a severe boundary to protecting the US.
Very good point.
Does anyone not know what’s going to happen next in Afghanistan?
Yup, just like with Vietnamization the place will collapse soon as we are gone.
Why expend blood and treasure for such people!?
Maybe the same thing that happened in Vietnam? The US pulled out, and S. Vietnam was conquered. Lots of refugees, and lots of dead people.
It's going to be handed back to the Taliban... one way or the other.
They’ll slide back into the comfort of the 11th century. Or whatever primitive time they’re comfortable with.
The Soviets supplied the Communists with all the money and war materials they needed while we cut the Nationalist Chinese and the Republic of Vietnam off. It's not that complicated. The Communist Chinese and Vietnamese spent decades paying off their war debt to the Soviets. A wrinkle in the China story is that the Nationalist Chinese (1) had the cream of their troops killed off during the Sino-Japanese War (by taking 90% of the casualites), (2) were never really a unified army and (3) were on the verge of finishing off the Communists when the Japanese invaded (perhaps figuring that the Nationalists would be too busy fighting the Communists to react), thereby undoing all the progress made, and giving the Communists time to rebuild while Joe Stilwell* destroyed the Nationalist Chinese Army by flinging it in ill-considered attacks against the Japanese.
* May he burn in hell - this is one guy who deserved to die in agonizing pain.
The Northern Alliance held out against the Taliban from 1996 until 2001, when Uncle Sam came to the rescue. The Tajiks, Uzbeks and the Hazara will probably return to their respective ethnic redoubts, if it comes to that. There's a lot of predictable liberal hand wringing over how every civil war is Vietnam, with the side we back losing, but I suspect we've weakened the Taliban to the extent that the Afghan government has the ability to slowly grind it down over decades, the way such wars are usually decided. For instance, the Colombian government spent 50 years fighting the FARC, to the point that the FARC is still around, but a shadow of its former self. The West backed all of Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos) against Communist insurgencies trained, supplied and financed by China and the Soviet Union, and only three of the countries fell to the communists.
It would have been wise then to have created a governable Afghanistan by separating it into a Daristan and a Pashtunistan.
People will bring up 9/11. Fine, but that was also planned in Germany and Florida.
The natural disposition of Afghanistan is Communist, ie former Northern Alliance vs. Islamists. Good. Let them kill each other. This will wake up the Chinese. They already have some pretty large financial interest in Afghanistan. The real concern is Pakistan. Though that is overstated as well.
“Maybe the same thing that happened in Vietnam? The US pulled out, and S. Vietnam was conquered. Lots of refugees, and lots of dead people.”
“It’s going to be handed back to the Taliban... one way or the other.”
“They’ll slide back into the comfort of the 11th century. Or whatever primitive time they’re comfortable with.”
I don’t doubt it.
Since you mentioned “Nam” there’s more similarities the only difference is not having helicopters picking up last evacuees off the roof of our embassy as the enemy closes in.That may come later.
Afghanistan vs Iraq. It isn’t war-mongering when the Left does it.
Follow the money, war is a racket! I’m ashamed to have actually believed the stupid ‘War on Terror” was anything but a lie! Responsibility must be doled out! Someone besides the taxpayers and troops should pay!
Afghanistan will be interesting to observe from afar. That’s for sure. Note to many Afghans: Put your heads between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye.
South Vietnam fell after a treacherous democrat congress cut off funding; meanwhile, north vietnam was receiving military support from both the soviet union and china. North Vietnam supposedly used more armor in its final assault of South Vietnam than Germany used against France in WWII.
You can have all the will in the world to fight, but if you don't have weapons, and your enemy does, it will probably be a short fight.
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