Posted on 07/19/2010 5:49:55 PM PDT by John R. Guardiano
The pundits, chattering classes and Beltway elite are all worried about Afghanistan. They think the war’s a hopeless cause, a “quagmire,” and, most damning of all in their minds, “Vietnam all over again.” But the new commanding general of U.S. Central Command, General James N. Mattis, says these worrywarts are all wrong about Afghanistan.
Of course, the fretting of the chattering class is nothing new. It’s even typical and old-hat. The nattering nabobs of negativism, as the late great William Safire once dubbed them, are always worried that a war or a conflict will become too much for the American people to bear.
They were saying much the same thing, remember, about Afghanistan back in 2001, before the U.S. military successfully toppled the Taliban. It could not be done, they cried, absent a “quagmire.”
And in 2006 and 2007, the effete pundits again manned the barricades to tell us that Iraq was a hopeless and doomed cause. It took two relatively unknown generals named Petraeus and Odierno to prove these “experts” wrong.
Yet, Newt Gingrich seems to agree with these defeatists: The war in Afghanistan “is not going to end well,” Newt told a gathering in Iowa.
You’re dealing with [an] Afghan culture that is fundamentally different than us, in ways we don’t understand. We are in enormous danger because we consistently underestimate how hard this is.
Newt is right: Winning in Afghanistan will be hard and it will take a while — many years and perhaps a decade or more. But before we start wringing our hands and throwing up the white flag of surrender, we’d do well to consider what our military personnel on the ground think. After all, they’re in the best position to know whether Afghanistan is winnable or not.
Read the rest @NewsReal Blog:
http://bit.ly/bqUiCX
(Excerpt) Read more at newsrealblog.com ...
Of course, we CAN win in Afghanistan if we're willing to take the fight to the enemy like we should, but if we don't radically change those crippling ROEs, we need to pull up and get out, because there's no happy medium.
There is no Afghanistan country, only tribes at each other’s throats. The Karzai government is a criminal conspiracy in collusion with the Taliban, Paki ISI, Mullahs, Turk army generals, and the Ruskies. The American military is wasting American lives to prop up a corrupt Karzai Kartel. There is nothing there for the U.S. to “win.” McCrystal knew this and he was not willing to brook one more American dead soldier.
Exactly. What would victory look like if we could achieve it - this side of a nuclear caused paradise anyway.
But this is a much different fight and picking out the enemy is virtually impossible.
What does winning in Afghanistan mean? If we stay another 5 years we can gradually draw territory away from the Taliban, but we need massive infrastructure there to do it. Do we have the money and the political will to look past our own body count?
Exactly. Everyone forgets that the mission was supposed to be getting Bin Laden. Then we got stuck building schools and having our people picked off by IEDs. It makes me angry every time I see the picture of another young person who won’t be coming home to his or her family. How is this not a quagmire? What is a win? Who shows up to surrender?
The same goes for Iraq. Why are we propping up Maliki? He’s a kindred spirit with the leaders of Iran. We have replaced one thug with another.
Both of these conflicts were based on stupid political decisions. They have done nothing to make the US safer.
If we really wanted to combat terrorism, we would have our troops on our borders and kick all the Muslims out of the US.
So you are ok with giving Afghanistan back to the terrorists? Let’s pull out and give it to the Iranians, Syrians and Saudi’s. They can then re-group and be right there on the border with Pakistan, maybe even over throw the Pakistani government, which hangs by a thread. Save them a lot of time since Pakistan already has nukes.
The terrorists never let go of Afghanistan. The Afghan troops are a joke (check out what our soldiers say about them on youtube). Karzai and his brother are crooks, and Karzai is already negotiating the the Taliban.
Having our troops there has made the situation worse for Pakistan, and the longer we stay, the more destabilized it becomes. We should have bombed those mountainous border regions flat and then left. Having our troops sitting in Afghanistan is insane, especially since terrorists just waltz right into our country and we don’t do a thing about it.
How long is enough? How many lives and how how much money should we lose? What is a win? Whom are we fighting and how do we know when they give up? The enemy isn’t even an organized army.
It doesn’t matter if we leave tomorrow or 20 years from now, Afghanistan is a primitive, tribal third world dump. Nothing we have done has changed that.
Anyone that thought that we could turn around Afghanistan in no time is a fool. They are illiterate. My brother leaves in a month to go BACK to Afghanistan to train the Afghan police in fire arms. My husbands cousin has been back and forth training the Afghan army since 2002. Another very good friend of mine was blown up by an IED last year in Helmand Province, and finally one of my best friends son just got back in June. All have said the same thing...Afghanistan is the Stone Age, yes they are illiterate, yes they live like you could never imagine, yet they are heartbroken about their life, the terrorist have them hostage.
When my brother was there in 2002, I will never forget him telling me, that if we do anything, we will be giving the children of this country a fighting chance at a future, especially the girls. It may not be what we have but it will be something.
Both are now private security contractors and much happier with a defined mission. The country's loss. First son 21 years SpecOps, second son highly decorated helo pilot that flies like he was born with the thing on his back - 18 years.
That was a good read. Thanks for the link to your blog.
My brother is a private security contractor as well. He too went to Afghanistan at the beginning, just days after Johnny Spann was killed and John Walker Lindh was just captured. He just left Iraq last week and is going to Afghanistan at the end of Aug.
My son calls it Asscrackistan, he goes in April.
Thank them for their service. There is a good chance some of our relatives know each other!!!
The contractor community is very small, especially with certain skill sets ;)
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