Posted on 09/27/2009 8:45:30 AM PDT by re_tail20
In Kabul, the entrance to the headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force—the coalition of NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan—is easy to miss. Ever since the Taliban blew up the main gate a month ago, visitors have been required to pass through a small metal door and down winding, dingy passageways topped with barbed wire. Inside the ISAF compound, grimy trailers, used to provide office space, are stacked up around a seedy, once grand building that was long ago a social club for officers of the British Empire. There was a bar, but a couple of weeks ago, Gen. Stanley McChrystal outlawed alcohol on the base, and he has indicated that he wants to turn a small, pretty garden, a tiny oasis of green, into a rifle range.
McChrystal, 55, is a purebred warrior, the son of a two-star general, West Point class of '76, a former commander of the elite Rangers Regiment, and, from 2003 to 2008, the head of hunter-killer black ops in Special Operations. He eats one meal a day, works out obsessively every morning at 5, and is so free of body fat that he looks gaunt. Lately, as commander of the war in Afghanistan, he has become a kind of Zen warrior, preaching that often "the shot you don't fire is more important than the one you do." He is a student of what he calls "counterinsurgency math." If you encounter 10 Taliban members and kill two, he says, you don't have eight remaining enemies. You have more like 20: the friends and relatives of the two you killed.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
Now Afghanistan isn’t “Bush’s fault,” it’s “McChrystal’s fault.” Nice try, Newsweak, but it won’t work.
“Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal believes he can win in Afghanistan”
I was wondering what exactly we will WIN?
If he didn’t believe he could win, he shouldn’t be in charge.
Problem is, HIS boss doesn’t WANT to win.
I realize that, which is why we should pull out rather than have our people dying for something our leaders won’t support, i.e., victory. I did a tour in Vietnam. We shouldn’t repeat the same mistake in Afghanistan.
Opium? Oil pipeline route?
I can you one thing it won't be the hearts and minds of thr Afghanis.
This guy gets more good press than his boss.....anytime I read MSM praises of military leaders I think Wesley Clark
That’s funny. Newsweek called it Bush’s war for the longest time. Now it has passed RIGHT BY Obama to become the property of the general!
sounds a lot like Carville, Emmanuel, etc have issued instructions on their daily early AM phone calls.....put the banana peel down at McChrystals feet and we’ll give the push for him to slip on it in due course....
He can’t win. Because if he does win, then it will be Obama’s War, and credit will be given to Obama. Credit will only be given to McChrystal if he loses.
The question that the press seem to be asking today (passed over the transom from the WH?) is: can McChrystal guarantee success? Well, of course not, war does not lend itself to guarantees. But, Obama can absolutely guarantee failure and that seems to be what he has set in his mind to do.
Some guarantee.
“Gen. Stanley McChrystal outlawed alcohol on the base...”
What! What a jerk! I’d have to desert!
Anyway, we’ll never win until we disrupt the opium/Taliban nexus. We need to have legalized opium growing and a pharmaceutical plant in Kabul to centralize the nation. Growers would make more than they do now, and not have to submit to the dreadful Taliban, so it is an easy sell. This was proposed many years ago by the Senlis Council. They do this in India and Turkey.
Those dying in agony in the third world would certainly appreciate cheaper pain killers.
Good question.
Our objective is a world free of terrorist attacks on innocent people carried out by religious fanatics funded and enabled by rogue nations who hate America. Today, it means freedom from conventional explosive blasts that can bring down a hotel, embassy, train station, or airliner. Bad enough, but in five years time, the weapon will be nuclear and the casualties count will be unknowable.
We need to stamp them out now, while we still can and the target should not just be the radical fanatics, but the nations and organizations that fund them, succor them, and provide them sanctuary.
A defeat in Afghanistan will provide a safe haven for these lunatics and they will launch untold mayhem from their protected base. They will also bring down Pakistan, a nation that has nuclear weapons that are today not under control of the lunatics, but under radical Islamic rule will be. Barack Hussein Obama said that it was a war that we must win. He was right, but he said it to score cheap political points. Now that it really counts, he is changing his mind, again for cheap political points.
Did I mention that Pakistan has nukes?
You clearly stated the obvious - is it our sole role to do so? Maybe pull out, let them all “in” and encircle the cancer to the world that is Islam. then destroy it all in one place.
If you are not serious about fighting this threat, then any course of action will do and any excuse will serve to avoid making a difficult choice.
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