-- George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"
Posted on 06/22/2014 6:21:25 AM PDT by ilovesarah2012
As the White House ponders its next moves in Iraq, it also faces the question of how to best prevent the precarious security order it has established in Afghanistan from unraveling once U.S. troops withdraw at the end of 2016.
That question was put to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey when the pair appeared before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday to discuss the Defense Department’s budget.
“First, Afghanistan is not Iraq, internally, historically, ethnically, religiously,” Hagel responded. “Second, there is strong support in Afghanistan today for America’s continued [presence] as well as our NATO ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] there.”
Dempsey agreed, saying it was “unlikely” Afghanistan’s security status would devolve to create the kind of vulnerabilities that allowed the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) to take root in Iraq. Some 10,000 U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan through this year, and all will be fully gone by the end of 2016.
(Excerpt) Read more at america.aljazeera.com ...
“There are, however, concrete differences between the U.S.-sponsored Iraqi army and police forces, and the Afghan National Army. The Iraqi security forces are predominantly Shia. Despite multiple appeals from both the U.S. military and the U.S. government to bring more Sunnis into their ranks, the Iraqi government has instead been weeding them out. In Afghanistan, the ethnic makeup of the army is more balanced: Pashtuns make up 43 percent, Tajiks 32 percent, Hazara 12 percent and Uzbeks come in at 10 percent, with the rest made up of smaller ethnic groups.
But many of the soldiers are still illiterate despite years of training and billions of U.S. dollars, and the desertion rate remains high. They’ve struggled to face Afghan Taliban fighters in combat, and their loyalties have been scrutinized after periodic attacks on Western military personnel embedded with them. Taliban units have been able to launch spectacular attacks on targets within heavily fortified Kabul and the endemic corruption within the Afghan government and its security forces has prompted concerns about authority vacuums once the U.S. leaves.
Critics of the withdrawal plan in Washington say a lower number of U.S. troops will limit U.S. ability to operate against Al-Qaeda affiliates operating in Afghanistan and gather intelligence — something Washington is currently struggling with in Iraq as it scrambles to understand and identify ISIL members and their allies, and line up possible targets for attack.”
These are just war games to practice for the takeover of America.
It will
We could be in Afghanistan for a thousand years and the savages will still end up in control.
Only if we maintained the status quo. If we got a lot more aggressive, we'd likely pacify a significant chunk of that place. That would have to extend into Pakistan, too, of course.
I don’t think those people can be civilized.
Pacification means killing every last living person there and replacing the population with humans. I have no interest in wasting more lives or money there.
Of course it can. In fact, you can bank on it.
Afghanistan...where big nations go to die.
Iraq has 32.58 million people with PETROLEUM and natural gas.
Afghanistan has 29.82 million people and the heroin poppy,
TOUGH call. Both of their products are essential to the West.
So true, but what do you expect of people whose main crop/industry is the heroin poppy?
One of our local girls went to Afghanistan with the National Guard as some sort of liaison. She was all idealistic about going on her great adventure to help the poor oppressed people of Afghanistan.
Now that she’s back she has no love for the place or its people. She says that if we want to tame Afghanistan we would have to kill everything on two legs over about 6 years old.
Not can, not if. When.
-- George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"
I’m sure our government knows that as well. They don’t care. I have never understood what the war with Afghanistan is really about. We should have learned something from the Russians.
Our government uses this pathetic excuse about protecting America to wage perpetual war yet we’re being overrun by children across our border and God knows who else.
When Obama tried to renegotiate Bush's Status of Forces Agreement, the Iraqi Govt insisted that they wanted legal authority over the residual US Military force that would remain in Iraq, so Obama pulled all US Military out of Iraq.
The same thing could happen in Afghanistan. If Afghanistan insists on having legal authority over the residual US Military force in Afghanistan, Obama will pull all of them out.
That is a long standing US policy that applies to all US military around the world.
Obama has already lost Afghanistan to the Taliban!!! The slaughter of innocent Afghan women will commence on the day the USA troops leave Afghanistan, My heart and soul ache and pain,,,,kmowing what Obama has wrought!!!
We lost Afghanistan when we put Afghanistan on the back burner so as to invade Iraq.
The original plans was to be in and out of Iraq in 3-6 months, but that didn't work out. It was not until after Iraq that we could turn back to Afghanistan. The first re-deployment was set up by Bush but actually happened in the spring of 2009, under Obama. The second deployment was 65,000 troops that Obama sent beginning in 2010.
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