Posted on 07/14/2008 11:14:05 AM PDT by swarthyguy
....says Washington Post. There are a large number of "depending on" qualifiers and so this is by no means a done deal. In any case, the military has no plan to send additional troops to Afghanistan till next years. If this happens, three brigades slated for Iraq in 2009 will retrain for Afghanistan.
So why are we not happy? Haven't we been yelling and screaming for more troops for Afghanistan? We are not happy for two good reasons.
First, the US has an absolute shortage of combat brigades. That three may go to Afghanistan and not Iraq changes nothing: the Army/Marines are still way overcommitted, even with the five surge brigades having returned. We see a complete, asinine, blockhead refusal on the part of Americans to understand the 1:1:1 rule for overseas deployments: one brigade on expeditionary duty means one brigade rotating and one brigade resting/training. If the American people and government and military persist in this psychotic refusal to face reality, all we can say is "Good luck to you, bro. You're half way to losing the GWOT."
Second, we've often noted there is a huge difference between one brigade deployed immediately a crisis develops and three deployed too late. This is why things went wrong in Vietnam and why they went wrong in 2003/subsequently.
The three brigades people are talking about for 2009 were needed in 2006. Right now you need at least twice as many, and by 2009 you will need thrice as many.
It is a cardinal rule of warfare to win you do not let the enemy adapt. If you send one brigade when three are needed, he adapts. The enemy in Afghanistan had adapted. And there is very bad news coming down the pike. The enemy has always had Pakistan as safe haven for R and R, money, and fresh recruits because official Pakistan doctrine calls for Afghanistan under Pakistani control, not under the West's control. But now that President Musharraf is gone, no one is making a pretence of fighting the Afghan-Pakistan-international militants operating in Afghanistan. If you color Afghanistan green to symbolize Islamic insurgency, instead of pushing back that green, the green has pushed east and is in the process of eating up Pakistan's NWFP.
If the Americans think they can merrily go into Pakistan and make direct strikes against the militants, then we see no alternative to hospitalization in a high-security loony-bin. You will simply add 150-million more fanatics wanting to kill you as opposed to the 20-million Pakistani citizens who now want to do that.
We are by no means arguing along the lines of "escalating the war is no solution because it will create more problems than it resolves and we must try other means". By this criteria was is never the answer, whereas the reality of recorded human history is that often war is the only answer.
It is total bilge to say "if we worked to change the living conditions of poor Muslims we wouldn't need to fight them." Has it not occurred to the west by now that the Islamists and what they represent has very little to do with money? It is more a matter of faith.
According to the money theory, Germany should not have gone to war in 1914 or 1939. The Germans were very well off by the standards of the day. They fought for their faith. America should not have acted in a way guaranteed to ensure that Germany in 1917 and Germany/Japan in 1941 would attack America if money was what Americans wanted. Americans fought because of faith. The Japanese began their colonial expansion because of economics, but is anyone going to argue the unbelievable fanaticism with which they fought had anything to do with money? No, because it had to do with faith.
Was America a poor country went it went to Korea and Indochina? It was by far the richest country in the world. It fought those two wars because of faith. Did America go to Iraq in 1991 because of money? Hardly. Saddam was an almost-ally, America was still hugely prosperous. America fought because of faith.
So please, please, try and give the Islamists a little more credit. Rich or poor, certain Islamic sects are engaged in this crusade because of their faith. The seat of the infection is Saudi Arabia, which had/has one of the highest per capita incomes since the 1970s. Bin Laden and his followers did not/do not come from impoverished backgrounds.
Similarly, to suggest the Pakistani frontier tribes are fighting because they lack roads and so on is completely to mislead ourselves. They are fighting because of their faith. The west needs to stop already this pathetic argument that more development will reduce the incentive the Pakistani tribes have to fight. Indeed, if you give them development, they will happily take your money and your development, and they will then attack you twice as ferociously because now they will more resources.
War Is The ONLY Way In Which The New Crusaders Can Be Defeated But here is a sad little fact about war. You either fight it as a matter of life/death, or you're going to get whupped by the adversary who does believe it's a matter of life/death.
The west is not fighting with the slightest degree of seriousness. So 9 American soldiers get killed at a dusty, lonely outpost in Afghani Kunar, and you'd think the world has come to an end. 4100 American combatants have died in the GWOT and the tears Americans have wept would fill the world ocean. Yet, Americans are hypocrites because they willingly tolerate frightening death rates due to murder, neglect of their children, lack of universal health care, and alcohol, just to mention a few factors. Your editor has yet to see anyone weep for his students at Bladensburg High School who are trapped in a jail with impenetrable bars thanks to the way American society and priorities are structured.
Those 4100 soldiers who have died? Personally, we at Orbat.com salute them because they died for their faith, which happens to be freedom. We all have to die sometimes. So what is better, the death the Baby Boomer generation faces as it grows old and starts to die, amid the greatest volume/quantity of whining, moaning, weeping, complaining from these folks who are, grown bloated and unable to move because of their moral gluttonies and self-indulgence, or the death that our military youngsters willingly face each day?
But personally, we also feel when our entire way of life is under assault, the sacrifice of 4100 lives is not even a comma in a sentence. The American population grows by 3-million people a year, and America has a near $14-trillion economy. And three brigades for Afghanistan, next year - maybe, is the best we can do?
If America is serious about Afghanistan, its going to have now send nine divisions to Eastern Afghanistan. Surely we exaggerate, some will say in horror. No we do not. You want to bring the situation under control, you want to fight the infection at its heart, you need nine divisions.
If you send one division, you are going to lose even more badly than you are already in danger of losing.
War has many cardinal rules, distilled over the millennia through bitter and costly experience. If you aren't serious about fighting, stop and look for an alternative to war. The only alternative to this war is to accommodate the Islamists and Muslims, to give them what they want.
But wait a minute. Didn't we give Hitler what he wanted, Stalin what he wanted, Mao what he wanted, and didn't all they want is more? Appeasement never works.
Our point exactly. And the way the west/America is fighting the GWOT - all shadow and little substance - is even worse than appeasement.
If you are a Boomer, doubtless you are on your knees saying: "Lord, Lord, why me? Why have You brought this misfortune down on MY head? Why do you interrupt my orgy of self-indulgence by forcing me to make hard choices?" and so on.
We have a suspicion that when the asteroid hit Yucatan and the world began to die, the Baby Boomer Dinosaurs were also running around screaming "Why ME?"
And we're willing to wager that the Lord didn't deign to reply. Just as he won't deign to reply to those westerners who howl "Why Us?"
The Greatest Generation did not waste any time weeping: "Why Us?" They dropped their tools, books, pens, lives, picked up guns and went to war like they meant it. Sorry to be cynical, but if westerners cannot figure "Why Us?", then the west is likely going the way of the dinosaurs, and its better evolutionwise that that happens.
Similarly, to suggest the Pakistani frontier tribes are fighting because they lack roads and so on is completely to mislead ourselves. They are fighting because of their faith. The west needs to stop already this pathetic argument that more development will reduce the incentive the Pakistani tribes have to fight. Indeed, if you give them development, they will happily take your money and your development, and they will then attack you twice as ferociously because now they will more resources.
War Is The ONLY Way In Which The New Crusaders Can Be Defeated But here is a sad little fact about war. You either fight it as a matter of life/death, or you're going to get whupped by the adversary who does believe it's a matter of life/death.
A total rejection of Obama's hug'em argument!
Pretty good article, except for the strange allusion to the “New Crusaders”. So wrong on so many levels.
The old crusaders fought to redeem Christian holy places taken at the end of four hundred years of Muslim aggression.
Whatever else they did, they stopped Muslim expansion cold.
Making out that our murderous Jihadist enemies are the “New Crusaders” - as if that were something bad - is not going to catch on.
Tongue in cheek, is my guess.
Jihadis are on a Crusade. We are not. That’s my take.
crap. Maybe this holds true for the idealists in the upper echelons. True, some of the lower level guys do it b/c of extreme beliefs/brain washing. But, many of the “fighters” fight because they get paid. Suicide bombers; they will forever be remembered as martyrs of Islam, but more importantly their families will be taken care of in ways the “fighter” couldn't. Its almost like religion sanctioned suicide so your family can collect life insurance. Think about it, if your country and its infrastructure are in shambles there's no jobs. Planting IEDS and shooting at Americans may not be your first career choice, but it pays.
The Battle of Tours & the Crusades may have stopped the Arab/Berber threat to Europe, but not the Islamic threat. The Turks were knocking on the Gates of Vienna 400 years later.
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