Posted on 01/24/2010 9:13:47 PM PST by UAConservative
LONDON — The NATO commander in Afghanistan said his troop surge could lead to a negotiated peace with the Taliban, in an interview published Monday ahead of a major conference this week on the war.
US General Stanley McChrystal also told the Financial Times he hopes his allies will leave Thursday's meeting in London with a "renewed commitment" to the increasingly bloody conflict.
By using the 30,000-strong surge in US troops to secure territory stretching from the Taliban's southern heartlands to Kabul, the general said he aims to weaken the insurgency so much its leaders would accept a political settlement.
"As a soldier, my personal feeling is that there's been enough fighting," said McChrystal.
"I believe that a political solution to all conflicts is the inevitable outcome. And it's the right outcome," he added.
Asked is he would be content to see Taliban leaders in a future government in the country, the general said: "I think any Afghans can play a role if they focus on the future, and not the past."
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
Well, if we don’t want to win, then that is the only good option left.
And we have never really wanted to win.
Most of the "Taliban" soldiers in afghanistan right now are paid by the Taliban to be there, to conduct ops year round. I'm not saying they don't believe in much of the same things as the hardcore Ideologogue Taliban, but they don't believe in them as strongly. If they wern't being paid, or the hardcore guys wern't around then we wouldn't be having as much problem with them, likely they'd go back to their farms and merely gripe about the situation.
You might want to hunt down leftists and democrats, might even find it fun, but you can't make a living at it unless someone is paying you to do it, if no one is willing to support you in this, you're probably not going to do it are you? Its the same situation for them, killing westerners is something some of them might want to do, but taking care of the farm and family is more important if there ain't no money in it.
That sounds very reasonable. How do you eliminate all of the hardcore Ideologogue Taliban when they have safe harbor in Waziristan? Once we’re gone do you think the Afghan army will keep them from coming back?
This is why we need to help them build capacity and extend the rule of their government into the southern provinces. To do that we need to get back into the south, take the war back to our enemies and recapture the initiative, we have the people, the question is do we have the will to pay more blood.
Unfortunately our will depends on confidence in the CiC.
This is why Great Powers should not fight small wars or engage in nation building, our national security isn't really threatened in a meaningful way by these failed states, they're not going to suddenly start landing troops on our shores, taking over our cities, raping and pillaging our women and children. Great Powers use their power to contain and isolate problem states, we influence our friends to operate on our behalf to set these places to rights. Only going in ourselves as an absolutely last measure, and getting out quickly after our objective is accomplished. Small Wars are not good places for Great Powers, one would think we'd have learned our lesson by now.
Since it seems we haven't learned not to get involved in these areas of the world, now we have to extricate ourselves in the way that best accomplishes our goals. That way is to exercise our Power to obliterate the obstacles holding us back and put something in place that will allow us to withdraw honorably and quickly.
I had a feeling from the beginning that any general Zero favored would be deeply flawed.
Diplomacy and aid can be considered when they demonstrate that they get the message which, in part, can be done by showing us the bodies of their "problem" citizens.
What a remarkably deadly attitude. Spite is not will. The enemy includes you, for having that attitude. They run on hatred, spite, envy and jealousy. They hosted those, they feted those who came to kill us. They will do so again, while we have men and women overcome with the pathological philosophy you espouse, that you claim WE have.
Wars can take a very long. Even good wars. Forty years was the estimate given early on in this one — the “War on Terror”, when that was a euphemism for the War on Islamic Jihad. When the dust was still settling on Battery Park, and mean and women hunched over stinking putrid heaps of garbage at Arthur Kills landfill, carefully looking for human remains.
Forty years will be short. It is not to us to end this war, or to win it — but we must fight it, for THEY will not let us go unharmed and in peace. In those mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan, in the ports of the Horn of Africa, and in many other places given over to the teachings of the soul rot of Jihad Islam, THEY will plot, and given a place to thrive, they will get enough power and sustain to attack again and again, ever harassing, ever lowering the world by fearfulness and helplessness into the loser psyche you have just projected.
Were we, like a Mountain, rock-like, in whole accord over our rejection of their plots, fully able, willing and ready to take their refuges and safe places out completely should they kill even one of us — that poisoned teaching of Jihad Islam would find no hold, even among the weak-minded.
Correct-o-mundo!
There is a very good reason why we don't do well in small wars, even if we manage to win every tactical engagement. Given an enemy that will not stop, and is willing to take disproportionate casualties to inflict harm for as long as you are still there, eventually the will of the Great Power will flag, the public back home will lose its taste for continuing violence that really serves no purpose anymore except for our enemies to hold up as proof of our Imperial ambitions (in COIN this is called an Info War Victory for them).
What I am saying is that Nation Building should not be something that we engage in. Let me put it like this.
We had clear cut goals in Afghanistan, topple the Taliban from power, kill/capture Osama Bin Ladin and eliminate the organization known as Al Queda. Of those we had accomplished all 3 within the first few weeks of combat operations (he's dead folks, live with it), however due to the Colin Powell Doctrine, we mistakenly believe we have a duty to "fix" Afghanistan, to bring them Democracy, the light of Freedom.
Rubbish.
Here's a little piece of Truth for you, you won't find it in the news or in a book, its going to be hard to accept, but it is the Truth.
Even if we were able to eliminate every terrorist in Afghanistan and come up with a perfect system to keep the Taliban from coming back into power and bring untold of wealth and prosperity to the Afghan people and de-radicalize every muslim on the face of the world....it would not make the US one bit safer.
So since we're not actually doing any good there 8 years after achieving our aim, why are we still there?
You are a sick in the head person. Truth!
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