"We have VC in our own strike force, Colonel..."
We never learn...
Posted on 08/22/2017 1:47:28 PM PDT by Lorianne
I spent a year there as commander of a forward surgical team, like a modern day MASH unit. We cared for not only wounded US and NATO troops, but also for Afghan military and police forces, civilians, and even a fair number of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters. I got to spend a lot of time with local politicians, ordinary citizens, military officers, and the enemy. From all of these experiences I can give you my take:
There is nothing there worth even one more American life.
After the horror of September 11, 2001, we had every right to take out the Al Qaeda terror camps that littered Afghanistan. We certainly had every right to topple the evil Taliban regime that supported them. However, right from the start, we made it clear we weren’t going to fight total war, but rather the kind of “winning hearts and minds” campaign that failed so miserably in Vietnam. I’m here to tell you, there is no way to win hearts and minds over there.
I’ll give you an example:
At one point we got a patient, a local boy of about 12 who had been shot by our troops. Why had he been shot? He was planting a roadside bomb. His grandfather was brought to our Forward Operating Base (FOB) to see him while my surgeons and nurses worked on him. It was just a flesh wound and we kept him overnight. We told the grandfather we’d bring him back the next day before we moved the boy to Bagram Air Base to be turned over to Afghan authorities. One of my Soldiers and a translator escorted him off the FOB.
When they returned they gave me a disturbing report. The grandfather had been counting his paces on the way out. He wanted to know the distance from the FOB gate to our facility. Yes. I was angry. We were taking care of the enemy, something they would never do, even nice enough to let the grandfather see his grandson, and by way of thanks he was lining us up for a mortar attack. I had no real concerns it would actually harm us. Anyone who served in Afghanistan knows the safest place to be is where the enemy is aiming. The point is that their mentality is so warped that we can’t ever win hearts and minds over there.
Here’s another:
“We seem to think if we just hold out long enough they will come around to our way of thinking. It’s not going to happen. Most 3rd world nations in general and Afghanistan in particular are never going to be ready to fight for truth, justice, and the American way. The sooner we get that through our heads, the better off we all will be.
We definitely need to keep terrorist bases from forming, but we can do that without large numbers of troops on the ground. Troops on the grounds are targets the enemy can actually get to and kill. Fighters and bombers at 30,000 feet are not, at least in Afghanistan.”
There may be nothing to fight for over there, but a lot to fight for THERE, right here.
If we pull out without having some kind of stable government there, the Taliban will return once again and attack us.
Afghanistan is just one more in an endless series of battles against a lunatic behavior that has been going on since the 600s.
My guess is that even before Islam darkened there doors in that area of the world, these tribal inbreds were slaughtering each other over goats and sheep.
Afghanistan is one big problem.
The American public is so dumb they don’t get that its not just the Taliban that hate us. So does the Afghan population just like the Iraqi population. Nobody loves an occupying force.
"We have VC in our own strike force, Colonel..."
We never learn...
Genghis Khan had the right idea.................
Well, except for the fact that they would hate us even if we were not an occupying force.
Yeh there is that. :-)
The Taliban can’t ‘return’ because it is already there and in control of 2/3 of the country.
There is no central government there, not in the sense that we think of a national government. There is what we propped up ... a weak government that basically controls Kabul and maybe a few other cities. That’s it.
Most of Afghanistan is controlled by local chiefs and ‘headmen’ and always has been. Many of these are ‘taliban’ which just means they are hard line on Islamic law.
Please, please, please everyone read up on Afghanistan. Read the history. Read from people who have been over there. There is a ton of first-hand information being published all over the place fromm people who have actually been there and know what is going on ... plus many historians who have documented the history of the place. These are not secrets that no one can find out about.
“If we pull out without having some kind of stable government there, the Taliban will return once again and attack us.”
I missed the Islamic world building an amphibious invasion fleet. Also, we have B-52s. If they get froggy, bomb them until they plead for it to stop.
Your plan would have us there for 100 years.
...Once more unto the breach
I thought that this was going to be a book review of BHO’s autobiography
Ref. the article. As a Vietnam combat veteran who also spent 16 hours on Jan 31, 1968 fighting our enemy in the TET Offensive, I contend that Lorraine is WRONG in her reference to “winning the hearts and minds” campaign in VietNam. And, BTW, I am not saying that the people in this mid east struggle are the same as the South Vietnamese people. One of the reasons North VietNam LOST......yes, lost.... the military battle in VietNam is that the planned and expected UPRISING of the people in South VietNam in support of the NVA and Viet Cong DID NOT HAPPEN. Militarily, as admitted by General Giap, the North LOST. Over 50% of their military was destroyed during TET. There must have been something about “winning the hearts and minds” that worked as opposed to those who are deceptively recording the history of the VietNam War. As for Afghanistan and the Taliban, Al Quaeda, whateverthehell we call them, either we fight them there with a trained and properly equipped military of we fight them here. Either way, THEY are at war with us, even if we try to say we are not at war with them. Give the CLEAR mission to the military, give them what they request / need to get the job done and LET THEM DO WHAT THEY DO BEST!!!!!
We’ll see how it goes. I always thought Afghanistan should have only been a punitive military action.
Now I think the U.S should have a sequestered military airfield/base and play whack-a-mole on the Taliban.
Until we admit that Islam is NOT A “RELIGION,” but rather Islam is a hyper-aggressive, militaristic, expansionist totalitarian political ideology ... We will never win against its expansion.
Islam is, by its very nature, a terrorist mind set. It can never be “reformed;” and any who suggest that it is possible to reform this death cult are either living in serious denial, or else they are themselves subversive operatives acting as a 5th column for Islamic terrorists.
There were several very important lessons we learned, or should have learned, in Iraq.
1) Theirs was a corrupt government, from top to bottom. Every effort we made to keep any existing system was a failure. What worked was importing a new way, known to work, and staffing it with those foreigners who knew how to make it work.
2) We should have used the MacArthur (PBUH) Japan government model, including an imposed written secular constitution. For it to be fully functional when run by locals, their children needed to be given a western style education, with the idea that if they succeeded they would someday run the government.
3) We should have “Big Brothered” every person in the country. This means recording and storing all their biometric data, then giving them an ID card with just their picture on the front, and encrypted matrix code on the back. This would mean refusal to carry the card, destroying the card, etc., would mean they would get a heightened search. If they were not “in their hood”, they would be suspicious.
The card would be used for everything: voting, rations, employment, travel, you name it. And the US would keep the database, not the Iraqi government, until it could be trusted.
As far as Afghanistan goes, because their average wage was almost nothing, for just a billion dollars a year, every adult male not otherwise employed could be employed on national infrastructure projects. Thus any adult male without a job would be a suspect.
And from the start, the entire border area should have been closed with the exception of the limited number of passes with US guards on them.
There is NOTHING in the Middle East worth one American life. We have our own oil. We sure don’t need their sand. Let Middle Easterners all go back to the Middle East, so they can happily rape, shoot, stab, and run over each other with glee.
Not one more American life for that Satanic part of our world!
Regarding new publications, I don’t know what’s a good source and what’s propaganda.
Do you have any recommendations?
Hey, Lt. Sulu - who gave you permission to beam down to Vietnam? Get your butt back up on the Enterprise!
Americans could have made the same argument in 1938 about Germany and Japan too - oh, wait ...
Excuse me. I did not say a word about Vietnam. So you’re lying.
Also, most of the people in Afghanistan are not at war with us unless we are there on their land. They’re not coming over here to fight us. They don’t have the means or interest in doing so ... hell they can barely survive every winter without starving. Most have no cars, the rich ones might have a donkey the super rich a horse ... which they struggle to feed because there is lack of food for animals as well.
They’re not coming over here. They cannot even feed their families. If anything, some of them with the wherewithal will try to make it to Europe where they hope to get food and housing for free.
So who’s at war with who? If the harbor terrorist organizations we can deal with that without occupying the country. We can bomb terrorist training camps. We can work to prevent them from getting weapons, at least the more sophisticated ones. There is a lot we can do.
Local headmen will allow whatever in their area of control in exchange for money. That’s as far as their allegiance goes. Money or food or fuel.
Any that want to come here ... we can keep them out of here very easily ... if we have the will to do so.
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