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Posted on 02/06/2012 3:50:16 PM PST by ColdOne
A US Army officer has accused the American military of painting a misleading picture of progress in the war in Afghanistan while glossing over the Kabul government's many failings.
Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis deliberately broke ranks with the official portrayal of the war after spending a year in the country, issuing a grim assessment and accusing his superiors of covering up the harsh realities that plague the mission.
"What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by US military leaders about conditions on the ground," Davis wrote in an article published in Armed Forces Journal, a private newspaper not affiliated with the Pentagon.
"Instead, I witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level," he wrote under the headline, "Truth, Lies And Afghanistan: How military leaders have let us down."
Local Afghan government officials are failing to serve the Afghan population and their security forces are reluctant to fight insurgents or are colluding with the Taliban, he wrote.
"How many more men must die in support of a mission that is not succeeding and behind an array of more than seven years of optimistic statements by US senior leaders in Afghanistan?" he said in his article.
Davis has also reportedly shared his pessimistic view with some members of Congress and written a classified version of his article for the Defense Department, a highly unusual move that he expects will anger his commanders and short-circuit his professional career.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Very sad, but, not at all surprising. Why did we ever even pretend to take up nation building there? We should of destroyed the Taliban leadership ruthlessly 11 years ago and gotten out--Afghanistan is, and always has been...a basket case.
If we can’t take the ISI, poppies and Islam out of Afghanistan, it’ll never be over.
My son got back in December. Although a fairly low-ranking enlisted, his comments about his experiences echo the article.
It wouldn’t be so bad, except the folks at the top talk rosy pictures, while the guys on the bottom are seeing something very different. I was there in 2007, and I concluded then that we weren’t really serious about winning, so why not leave?
How much more so after Obama...
well others are saying my thoughts - it is hard to move a country forward 500 years, in 10 or 12. One top of that who wants to fight for $10 a month when the poppyu guys will give you 20 to do nothing?
Well, we know two ways how not to nation-build now.
No doubt we will discover more ways in the future.
The wasted lives, the wasted taxpayers money, the lies.
And the Lt.Col. will be drawn and quartered.
I hope every soldier who was maimed, injured, and damaged decides to take up politics at the local, state, and national level so that we never ever take up this sort of nation-building nonsense again.
LLS
Why are we paying these admirals and generals who can’t win a war in 11 years? The greatest nation on earth with the greatest military equipment on earth with the greatest Soldiers on earth shackled to leaders who couldn’t fight their way out of a wet paper bag. Maybe they could challenge the taliban to a foot race.
After 9/11, Bush decided to send our troops into Afghanistan as Ben Laden was based there. Rumsfeld was hot on small, skilled forces and deployed our special forces, but should have also sent enough regular forces as special forces were not enough from keeping Ben Laden and a lot of Taliban from slipping out the back door at Tora Bora.
Our next mistake was putting all our hopes on Hamid Karzai as Afghan president forming a stable government. He was and is a corrupt, double dealing rat, most Afghans hate him and us for backing him. We only had enough troops there to win in Bush’s last year in office. Obama has been pulling out our troops bit by bit since then. Obama telegraphed our surrender a week ago when Pannetta said we would be all gone by 2013, a year early. We need to learn a hard lessen. No foreign adventures unless our national survival is linked to the deployment and once there, unleash hell.
Wouldn’t it be great if our military revolted against the political hacks and the brass sell outs who use our troops as dispensable peons in conflicts designed only to burn billions of dollars so they can justify confiscating more from the citizens?
“Very sad, but, not at all surprising.”
You’re right, it shouldn’t be surprising; we were told the truth about Afghanistan every single day George W. Bush was president. Somehow the truth, and Cindy Sheehan (remember her?), disappeared when we elected an affirmnative-action token to re-direct our attention from the collapse of our standard of living and our culture.
Poor guy’s going to get railroaded, badly. Shame.
But, having been involved in Vietnam and what is now called Irregular War since the mid 1970s I am NOT. There was a very popular comedy routine called “What the Captain means to say..” that reflected the differences between the line warrior and the REMFs that “ran” the war.
The problem with Afghanistan, and with Irregular War (IW) in general, is the nature of the beast is so different from conventional war that practitioners can not easily cross from one to the other. I wrote many critical reviews (non-concure with this document as written) of proposed doctrine and position papers repeating this. To become proficient in one form or the other takes an entire military career - 25 years.
Unfortunately, traditional forms of warfare are the only things taught in military schools. Why? Because you can teach a series of procedures that, when followed, provide a good chance of victory regardless of where you are fighting. In IW each country (theater) of operations is unique. You have to extensively study the nation and its history to understand what is causing the IW and how to fight it. What works in county “X” is frequently a total failure in an adjoining nation, Nation “x”. A factor that conventional warriors find unfathomable.
Having watched the Soviet Union eventually pull out of Afghanistan, it is safe to say that the size and geography make winning a “war” there impossible if most of the population is the enemy and outright extermination is not a viable option (while we referred to the Soviet venture as an “invasion”, they were in fact invited by the government at the time - a government which survived after their pull-out for a few years). The parallels to the Vietnam War were appropriate at the time they were drawn, but they were shouted down by emotional people handled by manipulative people.
If we aren’t willing to completely crush a country and run things for a generation or so to get the population retrained the way Mark Clark did in Germany and MacArthur did in Japan, then it’s punitive actions only and get the heck out. No so-called “nation building” on the cheap.
The limited wars over the last 50 years (and you could make an argument for 60) have not been good for our country, and especially these two in Iraq and Afghanistan. We should have left immediately after the punitive expedition phase, and before the meals on wheels for Islamic savages phase. Said “Do it again and we’ll screw you up worse, we’re outta here” and decamped.
This is tragic though it doesn’t take rocket science to run through the propaganda this damned pile of czars is spewing as the truth. It’ll be a bloody day when Obama declares victory. Gads what a cluster f***
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