Posted on 10/12/2009 6:10:20 AM PDT by ml/nj
We hear about Afghanistan almost every day now. But it recently occurred to me that I didn't recall reading about it much when George Bush was President. So I decided to check Google News to see how many New York Times articles mentioned "Afghanistan" during Bush's last year in office.
Take a guess, and then continue reading below.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.google.com ...
But wait!
Eliminate articles that mention "Obama" and you get down to eight. (8 !!) The link cited with this post shows this result and includes a brief article summary and handy graph showing the distribution of articles over the year. Also if one reads the summaries and eliminates the ones that do not relate to military activity (e.g. the one about kite flying), you come down to five (5 !!) articles total about military activity in Afghanistan not related to Obama's campaign during Bush's last year.
So my question would be: Are the troubles that are apparently occuring now in Afghanistan directly or indirectly related to actions and decisions taken by the Obama Administration?
ML/NJ
As there was improvement in Iraq during Bush’s last year it faded from State media. It wasn’t news anymore as it could not be used to discredit Bush.
There were sure a lot fewer battle deaths until recently.
1) Iraq has gotten a lot quieter. Once upon a time, all the Islamic fighters went to Iraq and tried to cause trouble. That effort (largely) failed. So now, where will all the Islamic fighters go? Answer: Afghanistan.
2) Obama has changed the rules of engagement in Afghanistan and my understanding is that it is harder for us to fight the terrorists the way they ought to be fought. This has emboldened them, and weakened us -- bad combination.
To be fair, one of the reason is that Iraq counterinsurgency was a success with more security, and Al Qaida claimed that it will shift to Afghanistan. It is part of the change of center of gravity from Iraq to Afghanistan. Yes, and that does not mean Obama is free from his responsibilities of the increasing violence in Afghanistan.
The new ROE and strategy of "Counter Terrorism" imposed by the 0 regime are idiotic, however the big change was the switch in focus by the terrorists from backing a losing effort in Iraq to trying again in Afghanistan
The there is the biggest problem.
The Kharzid regime last spring went back to the old tactics of warlord-ism. They have granted way too much autonomy to local thug chiefs. Thus they are back where they were in 1991 when the Taliban 1st appeared.
Faced with a choice of watching their daughters raped by the local thugs while being extorted out of what little they have or having to put up with the strict Islamic rule of the Taliban, the locals are picking the Taliban.
bet Obama can undo all the past 8 years of work by our military in record time.....
There were 1539 U.S. Servicemen wounded since February of 2009. The total through all the years excluding 2001 through January 2009 is 2659. 242 have died this year so far compared to 155 in 2008.
http://icasualties.org/OEF/ByYear.aspx
One scenario I would believe is that a lot of the professional terrorists have now started to concentrate on Afghanistan since they’ve lost Iraq and they haven’t adjusted by SENDING IN MORE TROOPS.
You are exactly right, The ROE have changed.
NOW our military can only return fire if they see the weapon. For instance if fire comes from a hut, dwelling or compound they can’ call in support since they don’t know if there are civilians there.
The new ROE have directly resulted in American dead.
Mcchrystal felt before he got there the USA was focused on “ protecting American forces”
Damn right and we need to return to that or get the hell out .
Interesting. I remember hearing on NPR quite a few months ago that a major problem in Afghanistan was that everything really functioned at a local level. There were local courts and anyone who wanted justice just naturally expected to go to the local head guy and plead his case. This was part of the Afghan culture, and NPR was encouraging the US to make use of this and to prop up this sort of local infrastructure to win hearts and minds.
Are you saying that this was exactly the wrong approach? Given that NPR was championing it, I would expect that it was detrimental to our efforts.
And this just happened to happen as soon as Obama took over?
My recollection is that during the campaign, he said we should be paying more attention to Afghanistan. And mirabile dictu, we are.
ML/NJ
Based on the chaotic situation left after the Sov bailed in 1989 the local equivlent of crime gangs simply took over lots of the local goverments. The Taliban, helped by the Pakis, were a reaction to the lawless thugish nature of the the local warlords. Sure they were wack jobs but they imposed orders and law. Kharzid decided, in I think March, that trying to build a Govt was too much work. He went back to this notion of localism. And the thugs took right back up where they left off. Now the people have turned on the NATO troops because they are seen as supporters of the local thugdom. I think what McCrystal is saying is "look we got to stop swatting flys and start dealing with the underlying causes of the problems here or we are going to lose." That is why he is advocating Counter Insurgency instead of the 0 regimes fixation on a strictly Counter Terrorist strategy.
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