Things were going comparatively well in Afghanistan, until the socialist in our White House kept his promise: "CHANGE".
Posted on 08/31/2009 8:53:40 PM PDT by neverdem
The United States cannot win the war in Afghanistan in the next three months -- any form of even limited victory will take years of further effort. It can, however, easily lose the war. I did not see any simple paths to victory while serving on the assessment group that advised the new U.S. commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, on strategy, but I did see all too clearly why the war is being lost...
--snip--
The appointments this summer of Karl Eikenberry as ambassador to Afghanistan and McChrystal as commander of U.S. and allied forces have created a team that can reverse this situation. In fact, given the rising unpopularity of the war and Taliban successes, they are our last hope of victory. Yet they can win only if they are allowed to manage both the civil and military sides of the conflict without constant micromanagement from Washington or traveling envoys...
--snip--
Unfortunately, strong elements in the White House, State Department and other agencies seem determined to ignore these realities. They are pressuring the president to direct Eikenberry and McChrystal to come to Washington to present a broad set of strategic concepts rather than specific requests for troops, more civilians, money and an integrated civil-military plan for action. They are pushing to prevent a fully integrated civil-military effort, and to avoid giving Eikenberry and McChrystal all the authority they need to try to force more unity of effort from allied forces and the U.N.-led...
--snip--
This would only trade one set of political problems for a far worse set in the future and leave us with an enduring regional mess and sanctuary for extremism. We have a reasonable chance of victory if we properly outfit and empower our new team in Afghanistan; we face certain defeat if we do not.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Unfortunately, strong elements in the White House, State Department and other agencies seem determined to ignore these realities. They are pressuring the president to direct Eikenberry and McChrystal to come to Washington to present a broad set of strategic concepts rather than specific requests ....They are pushing to prevent a fully integrated civil-military effort, and to avoid giving Eikenberry and McChrystal all the authority they need ...
This is the kind of crap Clark Clifford pulled when he was appointed Snake-in-the-Grass/DoD and began undercutting the Army and the war effort in Vietnam, to (literally) throw the war.
So let's name names. Who is "pushing"? The 'Rats want to criminalize policy differences -- fine. We can play that game. We can make lists of names, too.
The lefty 'Rats, the (Stalinist front) Lawyers Guild and Kunstler Foundation Reds, want to send Bush and Cheney to The Hague to face an international Communist show trial. Their allies are agitating to throw the war in Afghanistan. Fine, we'll let all these leftist 'Rats face a People's court and try them for their lives. Charge: Treason, as defined in Article III.
That's right. They had all the Harvard seminar-level courses on policymaking. They're qualified. You're not, you're only The People.
You are right. The mention of war weariness seems to be only in the press and in the minds of the peace at any price anti war moonbats.
as to a winning strategy, that is another matter. The war was begun to eliminate a stronghold for Al Qaeda. That has been accomplished. The killing now is attributed to Taliban, an integral part of the national population.
It boils down to the other part of the population. Do they want us to rid them of the Taliban and what are they prepared to contribute. Do they want an end to a theothugocracy?
The United States does not need enemies like the NVA, Al Quaeda, and the Taliban. We have the Democrat Party, who are far more capable of inflicting a defeat on the United States than any band of armed foreigners.
I favor moving all of the holdings of the Smithsonian Institution to Topeka, KS, so that when the nuke goes off in Washington, D.C., nothing of value will be lost.
The appointments this summer of Karl Eikenberry as ambassador to Afghanistan and McChrystal as commander of U.S. and allied forces have created a team that can reverse this situation. In fact, given the rising unpopularity of the war and Taliban successes, they are our last hope of victory. Yet they can win only if they are allowed to manage both the civil and military sides of the conflict without constant micromanagement from Washington or traveling envoys...Thanks neverdem.
The lefty 'Rats, the (Stalinist front) Lawyers Guild and Kunstler Foundation Reds, want to send Bush and Cheney to The Hague to face an international Communist show trial. Their allies are agitating to throw the war in Afghanistan. Fine, we'll let all these leftist 'Rats face a People's court and try them for their lives. Charge: Treason, as defined in Article III.
If the rats pull that crap, then I can see dispensing with those formalities. That's crossing the Rubicon.
That link was found accidentally. It's not a good omen....interesting times, indeed...
As someone who watched the World Trade Center fall on live TV, I know very goddamn good and well who dropped them --
AND IT WAS NOT DICK CHENEY!
Don't bother posting crap like that to me again.
"Oil wars" -- BS, I'm a geologist, and I know my own industry. "Oil wars" -- cock and bull story!!! <snort!>
As someone who watched the World Trade Center fall on live TV, I know very goddamn good and well who dropped them
That's why I wrote: "That link was found accidentally. It's not a good omen....interesting times, indeed..."
I didn't need TV to see the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. I could see it from the Bronx.
I wanted to check my recollection for the meaning of "crossing the Rubicon" on Yahoo. The result is the 5th link on the first page. It sort of lept out.
I'm no truther. I didn't mean to offend. I just found it weird that truthers used the same phrase that I used for starting a civil war with Eric Holder's and the left's current antics, i.e. investigating the former administration and possibly prosecuting them.
Obama is determined to make America bow down to the world. He’s said it publicly both here and abroad and made it policy. He’s acting on it now. The whole Afghanistan being “the right war” schtick was campaign rhetoric against being in Iraq to sell to Americans while quelling his leftist base. Obama wants us humiliated in Afghanistan and he’s setting the conditions now to do just that. Eikenberry and McChrystal are his cover. He has nothing to lose politically by creating a defeatist environment that he will ultimately blame on Bush (already doing it) and everything to gain- namely, fresh support from the leftists and some re-capture of independents for withdrawing in time for the 2010 elections. Our troops in theater are now at risk more from Obama than the Taliban.
Oh, sorry. Man, for a while there I was ready to load you up on the old trebuchet and catapult you back to Rense.com, lol ..... I was a little bit torqued, guess I didn't see the alternative meaning in there.
Yes, "crossing the Rubicon" has been a very loaded phrase for ages. As it turned out for Caesar, it was a very slow-motion way of killing himself. No way would those senators have let him live -- if not Cassius's group, then another centered on Sextus Pompeius, or Cicero, or the defeated remains of the Cornelii Lentuli and Claudii Marcelli, would have coalesced to do the necessary, by way of relieving the senatorial class of its bugbear of some 17 years' standing, going back even before the Catilinarian Conspiracy in 63. It was always Caesar and his friends who threatened individual senators, tried to take over the streets of Rome at night (they had bands of ex-gladiators at their beck and call), and tried to tie up the government at every opportunity, just like Alinskyites do now.
Well, as long as we are talking about Caesars .... we might as well quote another one, and a rotten little one at that, about Holder et al. As Gaius Caligula, in I, Claudius, said to his uncles Tiberius and Claudius, "First we'll need a list. A long, long list ....."
And speaking of lists, when it came Gaius's turn to get bumped off, his assassins displayed the opposite mistake to the one the Liberators made when they assassinated Caesar in the lobby of the Theater of Pompey.
The Liberators (the Cassian conspirators) hadn't made a long enough list and failed to decapitate the Caesarian party. They also needed to take out Antony, Octavian, and probably Antony's buddies Caelius and Curtius, in order to get the likely leadership.
Marcus Agrippa, friend of Octavian (I don't know when they founded their relationship, although I ought to, having read Ronald Syme's compendious treatment of the subject, The Roman Revolution), was a great lieutenant but always a lieutenant, and in the case of the deceasement of all the principals named above, he would probably have become a leader of the populares, but as a novus homo or new face in town without powerful friends and patrons (Cicero, the most famous novus homo, had had a similar but somewhat better web of connections to start with) it's doubtful he'd ever have been able to put together a combination like Caesar and Octavian did, that would stably (or at least metastably) overthrow the Republic.
With Antony and Octavian dead and the armies paid off, most likely the Republic would have continued for generations, perhaps centuries, more.
The conspiracy around Cassius Chaerea that assassinated Gaius Caligula went too far, and while they meant to decapitate the imperial family (missing Claudius, who hid), they went too far and alienated the public when they killed Caligula's wife and infant child, and for that (or so he said) Claudius condemned them to death.
Their bigger mistake was the same mistake the Liberators had made, missing Claudius, since he became the peg on which the Praetorian Guard hung their institutional hope of continued easy employment in and around the capital. That was quite a muff, since the Praetorians were under the command of Chaerea himself, their prefect, and their instantaneous defection from their own commander to Claudius was an instance of leaderly "epic fail" on Chaerea's part.
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