Posted on 10/02/2009 3:48:02 AM PDT by angkor
Deep down, national-security conservatives know President Obama will not wage a decisive war against America’s enemies in Afghanistan. They also know that the young men and women we already have there are sitting ducks. Ralph Peters notes that our commanders, obsessed with avoiding civilian casualties, have imposed mind-boggling rules of engagement (ROE) on our forces, compelling them to retreat from contact with the enemy and denying them resort to overwhelming force — including the denial of artillery and air cover when they are under siege. As the Washington Examiner’s Byron York recently reported, even some Afghans are telling our commanders to “stop being so fussy . . . and kill the enemy.”
Yet the national-security Right is urging that we up the ante and put another 40,000 American lives at risk in this hostile theater, under this commander in chief and the same military leadership that dreamed up the ROE. Why? To attempt, under the rubric of “counterinsurgency,” the unlikeliest of social-engineering experiments: bringing big, modern, collectivist, secular government to a segmented, corrupt, tribal Islamic society — a society that has been at war with itself for three dozen years, which is to say, since the first futile effort to impose big, modern, collectivist, secular government ran smack into Afghanistan’s tribal Islamic ways.
Many on the right who urge the troop escalation want no part of the experiment. But they are hallucinating, too. They have convinced themselves that just because they would take the fight to our enemies, Barack Obama also is inclined to do so: the same Barack Obama who has decried American “militarism” since he was a Columbia undergrad, whose top foreign-policy priority has been to make nice with Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, and who would have to overcome every fiber of his blame-America-first being to wage the war that needs to be waged. It is foolish to believe that, and it would be much worse than foolish to put American lives at risk based on that belief.
Obama plainly does not want to deploy more troops. He has boxed himself in, though, by following the Democratic practice of politicizing our national security. Though it is doubtful that Obama would see any military action in pursuit of American interests as righteous, his campaign hyped Afghanistan as the good war, the “war of necessity”— the better to denigrate Iraq as the bad war, the “war of choice.” He compounded the problem in March when, in the course of adding 21,000 troops to the Afghanistan mission, he couldn’t resist sniping at his predecessor, saying President Bush had turned a deaf ear to our commanders, who had been “clear about the resources they need.” So now Obama finds himself presiding over the good war of necessity with a commander — the commander he chose — who is quite clear that he needs 40,000 more troops.
That commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, is a highly decorated veteran with impressive combat-command experience. He is also a progressive big-thinker on geopolitics, having been a military fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Harvard’s Kennedy School. One perceives more of the academic than the warrior in his startling white paper proposal for what is labeled a “counterinsurgency” campaign.
More at link:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NWQ3Y2U2NjNlYTAyMjI3MTAxZjYyOWZhNTU0Mzg3MzQ=&w=MA==
our commanders, obsessed with avoiding civilian casualties, have imposed mind-boggling rules of engagement (ROE) on our forces, compelling them to retreat from contact with the enemy and denying them resort to overwhelming force — including the denial of artillery and air cover when they are under siege
If this is coming from Gen McChrystal or worse, Gen Petraeus, then Houston, we have a problem.
Time to Fish or Cut Bait. Unleash the Dogs of War or get the hell OUT!
( the Taliban and AQ are playing Whack-A-Mole with our brave men)
In addition to all the nation-building exercises McCarthy finds in McChrystal’s report/press release, there’s also a lot of warm and fuzzy but completely untenable sociology.
And that’s why I say we should pull out: Unless we retool and go after Bin-Laden and Alqaeda, and pull the rest, and then pull out, then we SHOULD just pull out all together! Why should our boys die in the middle of an islamic civil war?
Also, we do not get anything from NATION BUILDING, and the traditional conservative position has been to OPPOSE N’TN Bldg and police actions (Untill Bush arived that is)!!
I’ve met this general, in the Vietnam era, where we fought under ROE’s, too. Like the one that held that B52 strikes had to be coordinated (announced) 24 hours in advance with the enemy-riddled ARVN forces.
This guy is Westmoreland and McNamara rolled into one.
Without the balls, apparently.
GTF out. Now.
If that’s the military strategy, and o needs three weeks to mull it, our service members are in deep trouble.
...President Obama will not wage a decisive war against America’s enemies in Afghanistan...
Key word DECISIVE. Would someone tell me of a war that was won without DECISIVE action? Guess that pretty much guarantees that we will lose.
God help us and protect our troops.
A couple of days ago I watched a FNC interview with both Col. Hunt and Col. Peters who both made the same sort of points McCarthy makes. Withdraw regular combat troops (because the stupid PC rules of engagement are getting them killed, and we know Obama doesn’t have the will to win anyhow) - and leave elite forces (like the Seals) in place over there to run covert operations - killing the enemy out of the sight of the radical anti-war moonbats Obama represents.
Thousands of years of tribal warfare and religious persecutions are not going to be changed by us or anyone else. They are savages, incapable of understanding civility. Why are we even trying to convert them to our ways of thinking? Bring the troops home. That is not our country andit has no further significance to us. If the muzzies use it to attack us via training camps, HQ, whatever, then we should keep a watchful eye and destroy them then. To change that country for the better would take untold dollars and decades of education, but even then the outcome is doubtfu. God love them, but they simply are not interested in becoming us.
We should be at the point in technology where we can have tiny robotic snipers parachute in periodically, hide, and wait very patiently for an opportunity to present itself, then pick off an enemy at close range. Let some devices be captured to serve as listening and homing devices. We don’t need humans on the ground as much anymore. A typical soldier costs the taxpayer north of $1,000/per day, highly trained elites much more, not to mention the political costs.
Amen.
Now: either those who say Islam is incompatible with western liberty are right, or the Founders are right, because the Founders (who certainly knew Muslims, though very few) argued that liberty is the "natural" condition of all men given by their Creator (even if He isn't the one they happen to worship: it still doesn't change the fundamentals of the equation). So for those who continue to say that western democracy can never work with Islamic societies, they must be prepared to conclude that the Founders' most basic premise---that "all" men are endowed by their Creator with certain natural rights---is wrong.
True, his plan should be applied at home before taken abroad.
I’m of the school that our military should only be used to crush threatening or attacking enemies without restriction and that burdensome “nation building” thing.
>>> My reaction to reading it is this: with Obama as President, it’s not worth it to put our troops on the line in Afghanistan. <<<
Agreed.
McChrystal’s leaked press release is a long paean to sociology and nation-building, but it also serves the alternate purpose (intended?) of forcing Obozo to fish or cut bait.
Pakistan = Cambodia/Laos
How North Vietnam Won The War
Bui Tin Interviewed by Stephen Young
The Wall Street Journal, 3 August 1995
http://www.viet-myths.net/buitin.htm
Bui Tin, who served on the general staff of North Vietnam’s army, received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. He later became editor of the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of Vietnam.
Q: How could the Americans have won the war?
A: Cut the Ho Chi Minh trail inside Laos. If Johnson had granted [Gen. William] Westmoreland’s requests to enter Laos and block the Ho Chi Minh trail, Hanoi could not have won the war.
Q: What else?
A: We had the impression that American commanders had their hands tied by political factors. Your generals could never deploy a maximum force for greatest military effect.
“The Soviets went in with overwhelming force and no qualms about killing civilians. They eventually lost. “
NO ONE is talking about a soviet approach. They would kill a thousand innocent villagers in retaliation for an attack. That is entirely different from responding WHILE under direct attack!
>>> This dreamy-eyed social experiment is doomed, and we will just be sacrificing troops for NOTHING. <<<<
Indeed. One wonders what McChrystal was thinking with this 60 page Unclassified “leaked” press release.
It borders on being an outrageous but pathetic joke.
And Michael Yon has also recently been on the “100 years war” (aka “100 years of nation building”) bandwagon.
Rather than coddling the Afghans, we should be salting their opium fields (which finance the terrorists) and killing the Taliban/aQ both at and across the Pakistan border.
>>> And that’s why I say we should pull out: Unless we retool and go after Bin-Laden and Alqaeda, and pull the rest, and then pull out, then we SHOULD just pull out all together! Why should our boys die in the middle of an islamic civil war? <<<<
No disagreement here.
Our enemy sits across the border in Pakistan, running the Muslim terrorists and the opium/morphine/heroin refining and wholesaling trade and laughing at this clusterfoot.
Who in the United States gives one whit of any kind whatsoever about “improving” the lives of Afghan peasants? I sure don’t.
And most definitely we should not be using our warriors as extensions of the Peace Corps.
This is nuts.
I have greast respect for Andy McCarthy and had come to a similar conclusion before reading his piece- but his reasoning just clarifies the situation all the more.
Given the CiC we have, the limitations he’s put on the soldiers and marines ON THE GROUND with these insane ROE’s, it may not be a bad idea to scale waaaaay back. The Taliban nd AlQ know the new ROE’s favor them- so now we’re looking at an AlQ/Taliban win..no matter with more troops or less.
This president does not have a clear goal- he’s getting strongly conflicting advice and in the end- he doesn’t seem to really believe we’re in a war anyway. Given all that- why should we stay?
So many conservatives first reaction is- more troops, do what McChrystal wants- but we’re forgetting- at the same time- the CIC has tied the hands of the fighting man on the ground. What good will more troops do if they’re not allowed to right the enemy? IF- the president says- take the gloves off- then by all means- send more troops. Does any reasonable citizen think he will give that order?
>>> and leave elite forces (like the Seals) in place over there to run covert operations - killing the enemy out of the sight of the radical anti-war moonbats Obama represents. <<<<
Honestly from his background running JSOC for 5 years, I thought that’s what McChrystal would be doing but in a bigger way even than before.
The 60-page nation-building press release is a real surprise to me based on that background.
>>> They are savages, incapable of understanding civility. Why are we even trying to convert them to our ways of thinking? <<<<
Agreed.
Savages, peasants, dope farmers.
What are we conceivably going to accomplish?
Nothing. Ever.
Nation-building is something in which the USA should never be involved.
>>>> they must be prepared to conclude that the Founders’ most basic premise-—that “all” men are endowed by their Creator with certain natural rights-—is wrong. <<<<
Completely fatuous reasoning.
All are *born* with natural rights.
That Muslims choose to discard those natural rights for the imprisonment of Islam, is their choice, not their endowment.
Fatuous yourself: that they “choose” to “discard” them? You mean, all those voters in Iraq and Afghanistan? Don’t see them “choosing to discard them.” Try again.
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