Posted on 08/22/2017 11:30:07 AM PDT by TBP
Last night President Trump gave a speech on the way forward in Afghanistan. He stuck to the text of his speech and I think did a creditable job as evidenced by various Breitbart writers spewing blood out of their whatevers.
The Washington Post has already criticized the strategy as being short of specifics. This says more about the utter stupidity and raw partisanship of the reporter. Strategy, by definition, is a general outline of principles. The Casablanca Conference that laid out the strategy for the war in Europe was a series of agreements of actions to be taken with no dates affixed to them. And, as a general rule one does not announce all details of a strategy publicly because the enemy often reads our newspapers…when not dictating content.
Trump did not have an easy task. The Afghan war has dragged out for 16 years. In 2019, we will deploy young infantrymen to Afghanistan who were not even born when the Twin Towers came down. The reasons for this are numerous. First and foremost, Afghanistan is not a nation-state, it has no competitive economic advantages, it is backward, barbarous, and corrupt. It has no history of effective central government or of civil society. It is f***ed. Not only was Afghanistan a basket case, neither the Bush nor the Obama administration could decide what it wanted to do. Were we there to kill terrorists and leave? Or were we trying to leave behind a functioning society?
(Excerpt) Read more at redstate.com ...
I still don't know how we're defining victory or what we're willing -- or NOT willing -- to do to achieve it. Is this the best way to serve our national interest?
The last three presidents have all been pretty much teh same on this, despite being three very different people and presidents. This one promised to get us out, yet he is now sending more troops -- but probably not enough to make a difference.
So what was the point?
Lololol...red state for it..mccain...graham..
Every person on this site that is praising this surge needs to commit to sending a care package to Afghanistan. One site they can use to get a name is anysoldier.com
***The Afghan war has dragged out for 16 years. ***
I believe it was George W Bush who said we may have to be there a lifetime because of the radicalism growing from that place.
Listen to Trump’s speech yesterday.
We should send them whether we agree with more senseless meat grinder or not
Get. Out. Now.
At least we are not officially ‘nation building’ any longer. I suppose we could view this as highly realistic and incredibly expensive training. Both in treasure and blood.
Then use Anysoldier.com and support someone you want to send to the meat grinder
Anything from the dirtbags eg erick erickson, wolf et al at Red State (Never Trump Scum)is worthless, even if it makes sense.
We had SF riding horses with tribal leaders and with US airsupport routed the Taliban/AQ. Then the wonks at the state department started calling the military shots and quagmire ensued. Keep the state department out of it, close with and destroy the enemy.
“***The Afghan war has dragged out for 16 years. ***”
The 8 Obama years were many steps backwards. Remember ISIS was just a JV team.
The issue is who we put in charge. We probably need to set up strongmen with personality cults and stop working with these sleazy Karzai type corrupt machine politicians. As unpalatable was that may be, it might be the only way to pull out without beardies taking over. We need to be looking for a way out and evaluating strategies based on “what gets us out of here for real and for good?”
That may mean sacrificing other objectives that some hold dear. It may mean letting other countries increase their influence there or having US leverage over third parties weakened.
The alternative is to let this fester and do another 2006 on us when people get sick and finally react:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_elections,_2006
Wait. I don’t want to send them to the meat grinder.
More dead Americans...for what exactly?? Not a damn thing. More shattered family’s for what exactly...not a damn thing..shamefull
How much does it cost to get your own dictator to be loyal to you? He needs enough money to satisfy himself and those loyal to him. Whatever that cost is, I’m sure it’s a fraction of the current cost.
We can have a few thousand troops there like we do in SK just in case and a few airbases to support the local strongman’s army to chase aq. We have the country pacified and are not nation building. We just have to stop the fantasy of thinking we can have a democracy over there. And we’d have to turn our heads as the dictator does what has to be done to keep order.
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