Taliban/AlQaeda can be ferreted out
Reporting for duty, sir!
Posted on 08/31/2009 1:25:00 AM PDT by Jonny foreigner
A report by the top US general in Afghanistan is expected to admit the current strategy is not working, the BBC understands.
General Stanley McChrystal will liken the US military to a bull charging at a matador [the Taliban] - slightly weakened with each "cut" it receives.
His review is also expected to say that protecting the Afghan people against the Taliban must be the top priority.
But the report will not carry a direct call for increasing troop numbers.
The leak came as further results from last week's presidential election were expected to be released, at 1230 GMT. President Hamid Karzai is leading so far.
The independent Electoral Complaints Commission says that of more than 2,100 allegations of wrongdoing during voting and vote-counting, 618 have been deemed serious enough to affect the election's outcome, if proven. Crisis of confidence
BBC North America editor Mark Mardell says General McChrystal's bullfighting metaphor is striking because it is not the usual way that US commanders talk about the country's armed forces.
The general's blunt assessment will also say that the Afghan people are undergoing a crisis of confidence because the war against the Taliban has not made their lives better, our correspondent says.
General McChrystal says the aim should be for Afghan forces to take the lead but their army will not be ready to do that for three years and it will take much longer for the police.
And he will warn that villages have to be taken from the Taliban and held, not merely taken.
General McChrystal also wants more engagement with the Taliban fighters and he believes that 60% of the problem would go away if they could be found jobs.
More than 30,000 extra US troops have been sent to Afghanistan since President Barack Obama ordered...
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
So I guess ordering the USAF to stop bombing the Taliban and the Marines to stop shooting at them in the villages is not working out as well as Gates had hoped....?
Maybe if we would only be nicer...
Talk things out...
Just like TINKER AND TANKER IN AFRICA ! ( Tinker is a rabbit, and Tanker is a hippopotamus. ) They are crossing a river and are accosted by crocodiles. "Don't you have anything better to do than scaring innocent travelers?" remonstrates Tinker. "No! We have nothing better to do!" respond the crocodiles. Tinker and Tanker give them beach balls to keep them occupied, and continue on their way.
I was always impressed by the forthrightness of the crocodiles.
drop the ROE’s , kill the enemy until we have won
no quarter
it really looks like regardless what “we” do it will be allways “wrong”. using more caution and to try desperate not to hurt civilians when fighting the Taliban will result in more dead soldiers. to don´t do this will result in more potentional enemys because as misplaced bombing run for example will recruit many more fighters for the enemy. but then again this is Afghanistan so it´s not even shure who exactly the enemy is right now (they change a lot).
The only thing that could work would be to literally gather all the villagers in a single defensible area. They shuffled folks around rather rudely in Iraq, Baghdad in particular, in order to keep Sunni and Shiite out of each other’s faces. Afghanistan is much more spread out.
We could but who’s going to grow the opium?
yeah but speaking from my own experience it´s quite hard to differ between an afghan civilan and a potentional enemy fighter. nor is there any guarantee that a so called “civilian” of today may not attack you tommorow.
Worst comes to worst, it’s easier to police a small city than an endless backwoods.
true but an other problem is that even many of the “civilians” can easy become violent because of the “lowest” incident. there is not so much difference as you may think between a Taliban and a standart “civilian”.
For example they may not like the Taliban but this does not mean that they would be against vendetta, poppy trade, child marriage, or beating their wifes, or treathing them like cattle in general... and if “you” would dare to interfere in something like this most “civilians” would have no problem in try to kill you over this.
So I guess that Captain Kenya with his hope and change is not working or is he just another Robert McNamara, believing containment abroad and Communism at home virtually ensures success; for whom? Crime Lords, Islamofascists and enemies of America. Oh, that’s right he is best buds with all the Marxists and like minded anti-American crowd; a wolf playing sheep, to the fold.
Although I do have a suggestion, eliminate the playing around using ROE; for dead guys don’t fight back.
If they do, they do. Nobody ever claimed you could make an omelette without breaking some eggs.
Taliban/AlQaeda can be ferreted out because they aren’t happy to just sit put in Afghanistan and treat their wives like cattle, they want to spread their dominance to nearby regions.
Taliban/AlQaeda can be ferreted out because they aren’t happy to just sit put in Afghanistan and treat their wives like cattle, they want to spread their dominance to nearby regions.
Our son is currently slotted to go to California from Camp LeJeune after Christmas for desert warfare training prepartory to shipping out to Afghanistan in the spring. His five year hitch is up in May, and he has decided that he doesn’t care to salute CIC Zer0. I hope that he will be out before orders come thru for his outfit to go to Afghanistan. He accepts, as do his wife, his mother, and me that he is in the profession of arms and that people get killed in that profession. He enlisted originally because he believed that the War on Terror needed to be fought and the filth defeated no matter what, and he has served one tour in Iraq. Zer0 is the tool of his hate America base. I think that every single one of our warriors killed or maimed on Zer0’s watch is a waste of a life whose blood is on Zer0’s hands. This war is no longer about victory, its about saving Zer0’s ass, and not one life is worth that.
A report by the top US general in Afghanistan is expected to admit the current strategy is not working, the BBC understands.
It didn’t work for the Russians either.
Bush was smart not to get too involved in Afghanistan.
i totally agree on afghanistan. this “mission” is not worth the death of “only” a single soldier anymore. but still brave young men have to die because politicians are unwilling to accept the inevitable. that afghanistan is a lost cause as it has allways been. “we” can stay there and fight forever and it will change nothing because the people there will never change. i hope your son stays save.i wish him good luck and may he soon come back to his loved ones.
greetings
We are losing the Afgan war because:
1. We allow the Poppy farming to continue, providing the insurgents with funds
2. We let the Taliban have safe haven in Pakistan
3. We still mostly look the other way at Pakistan’s complicity.
4. We have adopted ROEs that tie our hands and aide the enemy. Like the 96-hour “catch and release” policy
5. We need enough troops to do the job. We have this peverse mindset where we try to do things with just enough troops to keep from losing, but not enough to win.
You had better be careful. Whenever we cut and run, it makes it that much harder for us to succeed in the future.
This scares me since my relatives will be fighting.
Zero has recommitted to the “hearts and minds” failure of MacNamara only this time substitute Muslims.
You had better be careful. Whenever we cut and run, it makes it that much harder for us to succeed in the future.
The Afghanis need to be protected from Islam.
The Afghanis need to be protected from Islam.
That’s kind of the point of my Post #18. We always seem to tie our own hands with this self defeating nonsense.
The way you win wars is you kill & exhaust the enemy until he has no more will to resist. Somewhere along the line we forgot that in the 20th Century. If we used our overwhelming firepower, we could win the war quickly, but it would not be pretty. Instead, we create these fairy tell policies for the sake of good PR. In short, we care more about being liked & PR than victory. Its the loser who decides when the war is over—not the winner.
......we care more about being liked & PR than victory......
Meanwhile in Pakistan, drones eradicate leaders on a fairly consistent basis.
Yeah, but ultimately these are pinprick strikes. If you have an instance where pinprick strikes brought victory, please share it.
Maybe our visionary leader, BO, needs another vision.
Well i guess this stongly depends on the final “goal” what we are fighting for. If the goal has been to fight Al Quaida then “we” are already done in afghanistan since years. because i guess 99% of the enemy our troops kill right now have nothing to do with Al Quaida. (of course this does not prevent terrorists from returning to Afghanistan “or of course many other places in this world” after we have left). But if the goal is to make Afghanistan a more or less “civilized” society where the “government” could/would prevent terrorists or other extremists to settle i guarantee you that this is impossible in Afghanistan. Because as said the place we call Afghanistan is not even something what you could call a country. it´s made of different tribes (who did nothing else than fight and kill each other “if there had been no forreign army to fight against at the moment” for centuries) who share some common space in this Hell hole we call country. so even if we would flatten this hell hole it would not solve the terrorist problem because after we depopulated the whole area how would we hinder terrorists to settle again? so the result would be that we would have killed millions of people (who are no dirrect danger to our countries “only” because they want to live their “way” of live in this cesspool). and in the long run it would have solved nothing because the real “terrorists” can settle there again anytime they want.
Odds are that this venture will not end well.
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I will be more certain in my prediction....It is guaranteed that this venture will not end well.
Nobody has ever conquered and held the Afghans, not since Ghenghis Khan.
The Brits at the peak of their imperial strength couldn't.
The Russians couldn't, and they deployed five times the number of troops that we have there, plus armored divisions. Plus they had direct land access for re-inforcement and supply. Plus they were fighting a dis-organized, un-trained force that was armed with WW2 vintage weapons (until we gave them stingers). Plus the USSR did not have to deal with any public dissent....and they got their ass handed to them.
We fighting a different enemy now, one that has been at war for twenty years, one that is trained and armed, one that has known nothing but symmetrical warfare.
We do not have the luxury of a land route access. We rely upon the acquiescence of FSSRs to move men and materiel in (at a less than optimum rate). These FSSRs are eternally pressured by Putin & Co. to desist their support of our efforts.
Our ROE are designed to lose.
We lack the manpower to insert in sufficient numbers even if we did decide to win.
Pakistan, for which we have no clear FP direction, is now a dominant factor.
I could go on but the point is.....we will not "win" this. We will just waste good American lives and fortune on our way to global embarrassment at the hands of third world shit kickers.
I know. That’s what (along with the economics of poppy agriculture) makes Afghanistan a real problem for developing a winning strategy. Just kicking the can down the road 2 years at a time is not a good long term strategy.
To be clear. I think it possible to win in Afghanistan with our warriors. I don’t think it is possible to win in Afghanistan with this pos president and his administration.
well as i said before “winning” depends on the goals. if the goal has been to push Al Quaida out of Afghanistan we have allready won (for the moment) years ago. for the rest i don´t see anything else which could be won in afghanistan. don´t get me wrong “we” can hold Kabul for example forever (because as said we have superior firepower and soldiers) but how does this help us to fight the terrorists?
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