How to lose a war: run it from Washington.

In a flashback to Viet Nam, we get a foreshadowing of the Obama strategy in Afghanistan. Apparently disappointed by his handpicked General, Stanley McChrystal’s request for 40,000 more troops, General-in-Chief Obama has decide to run the Afghan war from Washington. To do that, according to the Washington Post, he has asked for a detailed report on that country, province by province. In a short while, McChrystal will be relegated to a powerless background position, just close enough to the action to act as a sacrificial lamb when the whole thing goes bust. ...

That’s how we lost Viet Nam. Remember Lyndon Johnson and his staff poring over maps of bombing targets?

From the beginning, there were many problems with the organization of Rolling Thunder, making success almost impossible. The targets were selected during Tuesday lunches at the White House in Washington. Attending the meetings were President Johnson and his civilian advisers and beginning in 1967, military representatives. These advisers chose the targets, tactics, timing, number of aircraft, and ordnance. Personnel in Vietnam could request targets, but by the time the request worked its way through Washington, the quick-moving Viet Cong would have left the area. This micromanagement from across the world by civilian personnel angered many. Curtis LeMay likened it to a hospital administrator performing brain surgery.

It’s a re-run and it’s being done by people who may be too young to remember Viet Nam and its disastrous management. Plus, they have an infinite amount of faith in the fact that they are the smartest people …. ever …. in the history of the world. Google “Obama smart” and you get 99,200,000 hits.

Some of their followers - like Sting - go much farther than that. He believes that Obama is "sent from God."

I suspect that the truth of the matter is that General McCrystal is running the war, with Obama and crew wanting to stay far away from it, and not wanting to fully support it, because it is a loser.

Because NATO is hopelessly outnumbered (about 100,000 to 30m Afghans and 111m Pakistanis), even if McCrystal had 10 times the number of personnel, it wouldn’t matter.

He cannot win in a war of attrition. He cannot change “hearts & minds” because he cannot hold territory. He cannot build up sufficient numbers of Afghan military, most of whom are illiterate and hard to train. He cannot close the border with Pakistan. He cannot put a serious dent in the drug trade.

Wages are so low that even if there are not enough fanatics, the enemy can hire endless numbers of gunmen, bomb emplacers and thugs who will risk their lives for a tiny minimum wage. They can continue to crank out madrassa trained lunatics indefinitely.

So this being said, General McCrystal’s option is to do what the British did, and he is now doing. To pull the NATO forces back into the cities, and to keep the Khyber pass open to Pakistan, and to pay bribes to the major warlords to stay out of the cities.

This technique worked for a long time when the British did it. And because NATO can effectively work defense far better than they did, it can still use drones and air forces to both survey and attack the bad guys at a distance if they try to mass to attack a city.

A trickier problem is the vast amount of opium production. NATO cannot ignore it, because it destabilizes the entire region, and provides the enemy huge amounts of money to continue operations. And since the land cannot be occupied, it is likely that NATO will resort to using, if not herbicides, then other chemical or biological weapons against the opium poppies.

Likely this means engineering plant diseases that will ruin the crops. Which will also mean vigorous protests by the UN and other such scoundrels, with unsubstantiated claims that such “biological weapons” also hurt people and animals, not just poppies.

But if McCrystal can achieve his end of limiting NATO casualties, the end result will be acceptable. It will buy a decade of treading water until NATO can slowly bug out.

“his handpicked General, Stanley McChrystal’s”

McChrystal has grown strangely silent of late hasn’t he?

USMC Veteran (26 years) John Bernard’s letter to his Congressman (written just a few short weeks before his son Marine Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard was KIA by the Taliban and the graphic picture was published by the slimey characters at the AP against the families pleas to not publish it).

Congressman Mike Michaud 7/09/2009 08:01 1724 Longworth HOBWashington, DC 20515-1902

Dear Sir;

I am writing to you today as an American citizen, 26 year veteran of the United States Marine Corps, committed Christian, Husband, Father of two and a businessman. I am also writing to you as the Father of a Marine who is, as all of his brothers in arms are, in harms way. That by itself is not a cause for concern for me because as a Warrior I understand two things:(1) it is the very nature of the calling to which we have been called that we will be thrust into dangerous, even life threatening situations to fight the enemies of our country and (2) that there could not possibly be a safer place to be than in the company of fellow Marines. In any case, that is the nature of the business and those who serve in this capacity have long since dealt with the realities of life in uniform.

There are, however, certain expectations, an unspoken trust within the ranks of those of us who serve and have served in this capacity. One of those is that we have a belief that as Americans, our leadership will not frivolously spend our blood on unworthy pursuit. To those of us who serve, let me be very clear to those of you who hold our lives in your hands; this means that the reason we may die can ultimately be defined as protecting homeland, family and fellow American lives (spelled US citizens). We also assume we will not be used as pawns in some personal vendetta or worse some career building scheme; that we will not be asked to spill our blood in a foreign land to defend the indefensible. We expect we will be able to do that for which we were trained; export violence with ferocity and drive our enemies to their knees with the ultimate goal of ending the conflict by forcing them to do our will. Such are the dreams and aspirations of the Warrior. Men like this seek to serve side by side with like-minded men prepared to meet their destiny on the field of battle; living a life of honor while testing personal courage in the forge of combat. Our nations Warriors have no other expectations, no visions of grandeur, no careers to bolster, no kingdoms to lord over, no sovereignty to subvert. These men just seek to serve their country.

Now that you have ever so basic an understanding of the intrinsic nature of the Warrior; I hope to encourage you to show them at least the dignity of thoughtful and painstaking decision-making when considering when and where to thrust them into the fires of hell. My demand is that you emphatically understand that this decision will have eternal consequences for the men involved and their families. I also expect this decision to be for the simple reason of defense of country and countrymen (again spelled United States Citizens).

If any part of you still understands that you were sent to Washington DC for the sole purpose of defending these shores and to defend the ‘life, liberty and pursuit of happiness’ of the citizens of this nation; and if you still believe you are first a servant of all, then you yet may possess the ability to understand the immorality of what I am about to share with you and the necessity to change this policy NOW.

President Obama has seen fit to replace the sitting ISAF commander with a General McChrystal (see Bio at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_A._McChrystal). Suffice it to say that Gen McChrystal’s understanding of the Warrior ethos is somewhat askew from the mainstream. Also let us cut to the chase and identify him more as a political mouthpiece than a field commander. Add to this the dubious addition of General James L. Jones (see bio at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_L._Jones), who unlike McChrystal has actual combat experience but still shares the same ultimate goals and one world vision as both McChrystal and Obama. What you have here is an unholy trinity injecting their shared philosophy of ‘spare the civilians at all cost’ – even though those civilians are not US citizens and are in fact complicit in their own misfortune. The new ROE presented by McChrystal and under which operation Khanjar was mounted is nothing less than disgraceful, immoral and fatal for our Marines, Sailors and Soldiers on the ground. The Marines and Soldiers that are ‘holding’ territories of dubious worth like Now Zad and Golestan without reinforcement, denial of fire-support and refusal to allow them to hunt and kill the very enemy we are there to confront are nothing more than sitting ducks. Denying them even the ability to fight, which is their only purpose for existing, to defend themselves in a foreign land that sees them first as agents of the devil is detestable to the secular world and immoral to the rest of us. And for those of us with ‘vested interests’ thrust into that foreign land; it angers us. The links I have provided will give you some indication of the insanity of the current situation and the suicidal position this administration has placed these Warriors in. I admonish this administration and all those currently in public office whom we have entrusted with our security, well-being and the very lives and well-being of the best of us, our Warriors to start acting like you actually care or even understand the consequences of ludicrous decisions like this one. I then hold you responsible to actively seek to change this immoral policy to one that allows our Warriors the opportunity to do what they were trained to do; destroy our enemies and protect our citizenry.

http://www.militarytimes.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1578049

http://www.captainsjournal.com/2009/07/07/no-excuse-marines-losing-legs-in-now-zad/

http://www.captainsjournal.com/2009/07/03/afghanistan-the-wtf-war/

http://www.captainsjournal.com/2009/07/05/calling-on-national-security-advisor-james-l-jones-to-resign/

To those who would suggest that COIN (counter insurgency) is complicated I say hog-wash. This has become the mantra of the one-world ideologues. This has become complicated because leadership has lost its way. It is not the responsibility of the leaders (servants) of this country to re-build a country that has not been destroyed by us nor does the leadership of this country have any intrinsic right to spill the blood of this country’s finest for this cause. I’ll lay it out for you; bad guys entered this country, unannounced and unwelcome and killed Americans on American soil. Bad guys continue to harass and threaten to kill Americans here at home and abroad. Bad guys continue to train in foreign lands and continue to plan to carry out these plans against sovereign American citizens. They have no rights or guarantee of protection under the Constitution of the United States because they are not United States citizens. They are not protected by the Geneva Convention because they don’t fight under any Nation’s Flag. We however, have the right – and responsibility, with historical and Biblical precedent to export violence to crush these Bad guys, wherever they may live and in whatever lair they may hide – relentlessly! If the civilian populations in those areas lack the intestinal fortitude to expel them from their midst or they quietly support them or they actively support them; they are not innocent and may well suffer ill consequences for their cowardice and their complicities.

For those of us who have served in uniform and for those of us who have family forced to serve under these immoral conditions the time to quietly observe and pray has ended. There is a new activist emerging; not like the cannabis induced flailing of the sixties and seventies but one with the discipline, training and tenacity of a Warrior. Those of us who have a history in this Warrior culture and a vested interest on the battlefield will be a lot more vocal from this point on. Those in this culture who do not yet know about this immoral ROE change will soon all know as well as the families of those who are imperiled by it. Those who have actively supported this policy of immorality or are not engaged enough to know of it; they will be re-introduced to your constituencies for their failings. Public service is precisely what it portends to be; service. If there are those among your number who have failed to remember that I can promise you we will make that known within our spheres of influence.

This letter is making its way through the halls of every national news agency as well as the local ones in Maine, as you read this. I have contacted your office by phone, e-mail and now letter to give you a chance to get out in front of it. Consider this a wake-up call.

John J. Bernard 1stSgt USMC ret

http://letthemfight.blogspot.com/

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