Actually, if true, yes. How many troops died while he was ‘making up his mind’? You don’t win by fighting without killing. You make the other guy die for his country. It is all about will. If we don’t have the will to win and make sure the other side knows this, we need to bring our guys home and let the other guys go hang.
Afghans & Pashtun only know war. From birth. They are hardened fighters. They expect us to fight them to the death. Otherwise, we are trifling, Hazara boys.
They won’t do it, of course so it is all academic. Obama is depending on conservative votes and they will comply.
You don’t win by fighting without killing.”
That’s not completely true.You win a war by taking ground away from the enemy until he has nowhere else to go.
I can see why people are confused by this winning strategy, because after WW2 our govt. decided on a new strategy, send a bunch of our guys out to secure an area,lose a lot of our guys, secure the objective and then pull out and let the enemy have it back, so we could come back another day and do it all over again.
I think I read that someone put the tally at 113.
Of course this is not to say that many were killed, not because of his dithering on more troops, but on his and McChrystal's insistance on Rules of Engagement [ROE's] that preserve the enemy and cost American lives.