“absence of cultural awareness and understanding of the specific tribal and governance situation”
oops - article is from New York Times, hosted on msNBC
Insufficient troop presence to protect the natives from militant murder and intimidation tactics, goofy ROE rules, imposed by NATO and the 0 regime, which put troops in the field at risk and cost lives while preventing the troops from effectively engaging. Costly ineffective sweep and destroy missions that do not seal the border thus allowing free access to and from terrorist safe haven areas.
In the final analysis, let me explain the difference between mutual respect and “cultural awareness”.
In World War II, there was little or no effort to become “friends” with the Germans. They would have not done so, because we were their enemy. However, the US Air force went to great lengths that when bombing their towns and cities, to *not* bomb historical churches and other things of great cultural and historical value.
The German people remembered this courtesy for decades after the war, even though most had lost loved ones in the war. In the long run, it mattered more that we tried to avoid destroying what was built long before us, and what should survive long after we are all gone.
Conversely, Americans are still hated in the city of Dresden, that our air force flattened.
Compare this to “cultural awareness”, which in the case of Afghanistan is a horrible, evil, rotten culture that should be discarded. Their culture is defective and crippled. It needs to be deleted and replaced with a culture that works, that sustains, that has a beneficial purpose.
Our efforts to preserve their culture, out of “cultural awareness”, is like trying to preserve a malignant cancer.
Instead, we should have learned our lesson in Iraq, that every system we tried to preserve didn’t work, yet every replacement system we gave them functioned as good as expected. We should have preserved *nothing* of the old Iraq government and social culture, because that was what got them into this mess in the first place.
And this is doubly true of Afghanistan. Obama the socialist should use his socialism on them first, not us. A socialism that destroys the culture and homogenizes the people. Even socialism would be a better system than what they have now, which is little more than tribal barbarity under the rule of warlords.
This says a lot. Socialism is awful as a governmental system. For it to positively shine in Afghanistan shows how utterly grotesque their culture truly is.
The Army and National Security staff in the WH makes strategic decisions on a war based on a single small unit action?