Taliban/AlQaeda can be ferreted out
Reporting for duty, sir!
Posted on 08/31/2009 1:25:00 AM PDT by Jonny foreigner
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.
____________________________________________
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?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.