Posted on 06/13/2017 5:10:15 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
Blackwater founder and former Navy SEAL Erik Prince is recommending, as the Trump administration debates its Afghanistan War approach, that the U.S. military go back to its light footprint approach in Afghanistan.
Prince told the “Breitbart News Sunday” radio program that the approach – which would see CIA, special operators, and contractors working with Afghan forces to target terrorists – would be more effective and save the U.S. billions of dollars annually.
“I say go back to the model that worked, for a couple hundred years in the region, by the East India company, which used professional Western soldiers who were contracted and lived with trained with and when necessary fought with their local counterparts,” he said.
Prince said the most effective time the U.S. had in Afghanistan against terrorism was the first 12 months after the September 2001 attack, where CIA, special operators, and contractors worked with local Afghan forces with air support.
“That really put the Taliban and al Qaeda on the back heels,” he said. “The more we’ve gone into a conventional approach in Afghanistan, the more we are losing.”
Prince, who has advised the Trump campaign, argued that the light footprint approach was more effective.
“[It] literally puts them side by side, living in the same base. Believe me – if you’re a trainer, and your life depends on the success of the unit, you are going to make sure the men are paid, fed, equipped,” he said.
Prince also argued that the light footprint approach would also be “much cheaper, more sustainable” – about 10 percent of the current costs.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
How does that deal with the dismaying tendency of Afghan soldiers to shoot our soldier?
no hope for that hellhole
Right up to the point when one of the sick bastards puts a gun to your head and pulls the trigger.
Good question. I suspect that tactic does not date back to the East India Company.
Only if the gulf states with the money pay their salaries.
The vast majority of the Afghan population is rural and uneducated. The US and its western oriented urban Afghan allies can kill 95% of the jihadists there and fundamentally nothing will change. New violent ,barbaric jihadists will emerge from that population as sure as poppy flowers grow in the Afghan spring. Afghan culture after twenty years of warfare is unchanged. It is futile for the US to remain involved. Leave and let the Afghans work out their own consensus.
There are some countries that seem destined to be green glass-lined holes in the ground.
There is no Afghanistan; there is only a collection of tribes.
So pick one tribe — the roughest of the bunch — and hire them. Give them all the benefits. They support your interests (because their leaders are getting billions for their Swiss bank accounts, and their followers are getting
all the good things money can buy).
They will be loyal as long as the paychecks keep coming.
But never believe that they are on your side; they are on their side, only.
I seem to recall what worked in 2001-2002 was a balanced approach of a small number of ground based operatives, sometimes on horseback, calling in B-52 strikes. Shock and awe. Then it somehow evolved into the worst of both worlds, large numbers of American regular forces and Obama’s suicidal paddy cake rules of engagement. Just because some people are still in the stone age doesn’t mean you can’t move them even further back into a state of pink antediluvian slime.
One of the things that I have seen in Afghanistan that no one talks about is the fact that they are a land locked country. Their trade is mainly through one area, the Hindu Kush Mountains from Pakistan. There is another trade route that is opening (it may be open now) that will come through Iran.
Historically, the way cultures have grown and flourished is through trade. Through it, you exchange goods, services and more importantly ideas. None of that has happened to a large portion of Afghanistan so they have remained backwards and set in their ways for hundreds of years. They have the same problems in the Pashtun areas that existed when it butted up against Kiplings Indian northwest frontier. Ultimately education in the Pashtun area will be key to reform in Afghanistan.
I was thinking along that line also. Pull all troops out, drop one nuke where the most people can see the result and tell them to clean up their mess or they will get another one. Animals have to learn the hard way sometimes.
:: go back to the model that worked, for a couple hundred years in the region, by the East India company, which used professional Western soldiers who were contracted and lived with trained with and when necessary fought with their local counterparts ::
Wasn’t that once known as “The French Foreign-Legion”?
Prince is just trying to drum up business for his mercs.
I prefer the leave and blow up approach...
Mr. Prince appears to be angling to become Viceroy. Viceroy Prince; has a nice ironic ring to it.
It allows our troops to pursue the enemy and destroy him.
Currently, our troops are so loaded down with armor and equipment that we can’t catch the enemy when they run away.
Personally, I support a more genocidal approach. Wipe the villages, towns and NGOs supporting the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Cut them off from food and shelter and wait for winter...
:: Prince is just trying to drum up business for his mercs ::
Maybe he should dress in purple lamee and play guitar?
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