Posted on 02/04/2019 2:50:58 PM PST by Eleutheria5
Debatable, but maybe. A worse policy would be to abandon Afghanistan to the Taliban the US invaded Afghanistan in the first place over. Pretend you’re a Talibani for a moment. What will you do when the Americans leave? Fire guns in the air and celebrate your triumph by killing a few more hundred thousand Hazari, since they didn’t completely do for them back in ‘89. Then look to hit the evil American infidels’ Sears Tower or Empire State Building and have someone shoot up a few malls. America went in, and now it’s not so easy to just leave.
Until there are no more Taliban. America is still in Germany, although the Soviets are long gone. The war criminals were tried and punished, at least nominally in most cases, with death or life in the slammer for the big boys. With the Talibani, also big league war criminals, you make a deal? Why didn’t you make deals with Himmler, then?
You invade Afghanistan, you have to leave it better than when you came. Otherwise, it won’t be over. In 1973, they had a civil, somewhat modern society and a constitutional monarchy. That’s up to them to reestablish, but they can’t if the Taliban’s able to terrorize the populace as before.
“Who will they annihilate next? I don’t care. They kill each other just fine.”
And on 9/11/01, their honored guest UBL killed 3500 (a) Pashtuns (b) Hazari (c) Tajiks, or (d) none of the above; Americans, you dummy!
Let the crocodile eat his neighbors, and he’ll eventually eat you, too.
Until our a Southern border is secured, patrolled by regular Army troops and a wall built then all foreign deployments must end. All of them.
Wishful thinking. “Until you go shopping, George, let go of that bear’s tail. And that wolve’s ears.
Hilary and all the Dems are warmonger now too. You have a lot of supporters on the left.
No Christians left in Afghanistan. So, don't care.
Perhaps Afghanistan's only hope for final peace is to have a group strong enough and ruthless enough to put down the inter-group fighting, and which has a vested interest in our not being given a reason to come back.
Our priority should be, and should've been, keeping them out of the US. We should negotiate that they treat anyone who doesn't fight the government justly. It's their country and their culture and their religion. We don't make it or us better by staying.
Rome finally dealt with Carthage in such a way that they had no further trouble with Carthage.
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The Bush Peace Agreement imposed in Chad was rumored to have only been successful once the leaders from the fractions (3) who refused to even negotiate where killed, and their successors (lieutenants promoted), and they too refused and in turn were killed... only when the third generation of leadership was offered to opportunity to live and make peace did Bush make the announcement. It only took Bush two years to implement this diplomatic and military strategy. There is no doubt in my retired military and foreign service mind that this is how we dealt with the Taliban. Unlike his successors, Trump has the technology, banking and finance means to destroy his enemies and he is doing this with both Russia and their proxy Iran.
In many parts of both Afghanistan and Pakistan, being of the Pashtun/Pathan ethnic group and being Taliban or Taliban sympathizers are often one and the same thing, in the mind of many Pashtun/Pathan.
The Taliban arose as a Pashtun/Pathan movement as well as a fundamentalist Muslim movement, and continue to be a Pashtun/Pathan dominant movement.
The Pashtun/Pathan are the 2nd largest ethnic group of Pakistan (17%) and dominate that area of Pakistan that borders Afghanistan. And they are the single largest ethnic group in Afghanstan - about 42%. That is how and why the Pakistani intelligence services helped create the Taliban, as a means for obtaining Pakistani control over Afghanistan - via the Pashtun/Pathans.
It remains for the history books when if ever the ties between the Taliban and Pakistan were, have been or will be severed.
My grave disappointment about Afghanistan, with our continued presence reaching no clear victory, and with any deal made with the Taliban, is the moral affront it seems to make towards all our own dead and wounded from that conflict.
WWII was the only way for the U.S. to fight any war - 100% all in and all in to win, or not at all. Our commitments in Afghanistan were always just enough diplomatically and never enough militarily.
However, it is not definite that the ethnically fractured Afghan people would have coalesced as true allies with us in a WWII style approach to the Taliban. Why? Ethically it is truly a civil war as much as a war between some religious fundamentalists and all the others.
I pray sorrowfully for all our dead and wounded there. I feel we will not, in the end, provide the respect and honor for their efforts that they deserve.
“In many parts of both Afghanistan and Pakistan, being of the Pashtun/Pathan ethnic group and being Taliban or Taliban sympathizers are often one and the same thing, in the mind of many Pashtun/Pathan.”
Many isn’t all. It used to be a body could cheer loudly at a soccer match or haggle loudly in a market without getting beaten, and in the former, executions were not the regular halftime show. It used to be that buying a beer wasn’t a criminal offense.
“My grave disappointment about Afghanistan, with our continued presence reaching no clear victory, and with any deal made with the Taliban, is the moral affront it seems to make towards all our own dead and wounded from that conflict.”
Damned straight.
Further, there’s the damage towards American prestige and influence. What do you think the Northern Alliance and Karzai’s followers in Afghanistan will be doing? Running for cover and cursing America, is all. Bush 41 screwed over the Shiite and Kurdish allies who were hoping the US would invade in ‘91, but that was at least refusing to make a commitment. Bush 43 didn’t want to over-commit to Afghanistan for similar reasons, and kept US engagement to a minimum. But then along came ODumbo, and like it or not, the US is committed, and that entails a responsibility to the people of Afghanistan to at the very least defeat the Taliban or, failing that, not make a deal with them and leave US-friendly elements with the equipment needed to fight them. This is shameful.
No argument.
Except that there have been behaviors of the Afghan military that our administrations and military leaders have worked tirelessly to keep from being admitted as the scandal it is - the boy sex slaves of a great many Afghan men, even far too many among those whom our forces have had to work with.
It is a cultural epidemic in Afghan society and our forces have been told to look the other way. It is bad enough that they have the riggers of combat to deal with, and then add that to what else their mind knows and has to wrestle with. OUTRAGEOUS.
Some POTUS needed to go televized live to Afghanistan’s parliament and tell them the abusers either get arrested and put away as long as we are there, or we are gone. A society that puts its head in the sand on that is not a society worth helping.
A heroic Marine was sent back to the U.S. for beating the shit out of an Afghan officer who had his teenage male sex slave chained to the officers bed, from which the teen’s screams were heard every nite. Instead of winning a medal, the Marine was sent home and left the service.
Pretty damned bad. I’m not surprised. But leaving by making peace with the Taliban, which is into sex slaves, too, is not a solution. It will come back to haunt, because the Taliban will look on it as a victory, and will want to punish—not just some hapless Hazari or an enclave of Uzbeks or whatever—but America for its insolence.
I’d say leave the Afghan allies with a sh!tload of good armaments, wish them good luck, and then let them fight the Taliban themselves, and provide them with satellite intel to help them.
There’s a reason why the allies demanded unconditional surrender during WW II. Unfortunately, the US gave away the peace by letting Russia have its way in Eastern Europe against England’s dire warnings. Trump is doing something similar here. Even if Kabul, Jalalabad and other major urban centers stay free of the Talaban’s direct tyranny, they are going to royally f@#$ up the countryside, and that’s where food—not opium is meant to be grown. If they switch back to opium to finance terror, the cities will starve, and that’s probably what they have planned.
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