Posted on 10/17/2015 10:30:45 AM PDT by Mariner
onald Trump is right: America’s leaders are stupid. They’re nothing but a bunch of losers. Well, at least when it comes to Afghanistan and Pakistan. That’s the only conclusion to be reached following two big developments this week.
The first was President Barack Obama’s announcement that the United States will decelerate its military drawdown from Afghanistan. Instead of preserving only a small force of about 1,000 troops, the new plan will station 9,800 in the country until 2016 and 5,500 into 2017. Their mission will be limited to training Afghan forces and supporting counterterrorism operations. This will help promote, in Obama’s words, an “Afghan-led reconciliation process” leading to a “lasting political settlement” that will make Kabul “a stable and committed ally.”
If that sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is. The new policy is at best a band-aid and — given the likely cost in blood and treasure — not a pain-free one. David Galula, the French military scholar who is the ideological godfather of the U.S. counterinsurgency, understood years ago that support from a neighboring country could easily sustain an insurgency. The U.S. mission in Afghanistan cannot succeed as long as the Pakistan Army continues to tolerate and sponsor the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani network, and other terrorist groups. The U.S. intelligence community has been saying precisely that for years.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
IOW, wasting time, blood and treasure.
There are only three groups in that region who are worth supporting: India, the Kurds, and Israel. All the rest are either hostile, or will become hostile after the next coup or revolution.
Yes, but it will give Obama the opportunity to blame the next president for the inevitable fall of Kabul.
We have nothing to gain in Afghanistan
Unless you preach the gospel there and people there have a complete change heart ( they convert to Christianity )nothing will change .
We are never going to do that because the left will never allow it , look how hard they are working to turn us just like the Afghani people.
Their culture is that of a war culture and sodomy .
You become like the “god” you worship .
No amount of American treasure and lives is ever going to change this .
Afghanistan is nothing but a meat grinder .
It’s not going to change .
We went there to get Osama , mission accomplished he is dead . We need to get our people out .
Pull the troops out then nuke it from orbit.
Obama loves Pockeeston.
The trade deficits we have with China should be the trade deficit we have with India. If they can man call centers, they can serve our cheap plastic Walmart goods addiction.
I guess Galula wrote the first Rules of Engagement?
Since General Petraeus, General Allen, and Ambassador Crocker had the apparent success with the "surge" in Iraq, Obama would put those same 3 men in charge of the Afghanistan counterinsurgency in 2010.
I don't think that's the case.
You misunderstand. Historically, with just a few exceptions, counterinsurgency doesn't work.
We went into Afghanistan based on the Taliban not turning over bin Laden and a desire to retaliate against someone for 9-11. I am of the thought that had we been more patient, the Taliban would have turned bin Laden over eventually. Pakistan ISI would have seen to it.
Whose?
Worked for us in the Philippines twice (juramentados in 1901, then the Communist Huks) and the British in Malaya after World War II.
Counterinsurgency fails when it's stabbed in the back by Democrats.
It didn't work in viet nam or Afghanistan for either the ruskies or the US. It didn't work for the Brits in the Helmand valley.
As for the democrats, I would say that the liberal interventionist democrats supported counterinsurgency, including Obama initially. It was Joe Biden who turned Obama against it. And Obama did relent, which is why he turned it over to Petreaus, Allen, and Crocker.
Uncle Ho wanted an Indochinese empire. He wanted to go to Singapore. He never got there, and Singapore and Bangkok are free cities today because our guys killed a million Viet cadre in the field by all arms. When the NVA came out of hiding and busted their move in 1972, we massacred them. B-52s caught their tank columns on the move and slaughtered them, and their infantry died with the armored troops.
The army that "conquered" Saigon in 1975 was a skeleton that walked into the city courtesy of the Democrat caucus of the United States Senate and all those illustrious, selfrighteous names we remember so well, who stabbed the South Vietnamese in the back and left them to face the NVA alone and without blood plasma, bandages, bullets, or field rations.
I would think you'd remember what happened back then. It was the only time Gerald Ford used profanity to refer to the Democrat caucus.
They threw the war. That isn't a "failure of counterinsurgency". Instead, our guys managed at least to deprive the Hanoi Politburo of the army they needed to get to Singapore. And at the strategic level, that was a very significant thing. We made Vietnam the last domino, and we discountenanced the "insurgent", "native" nature of "wars of national liberation". We counterfeited their ideological b.s. and delivered millions of other people from their kind of tyranny.
That’s your opinion.
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