Posted on 08/21/2017 11:18:28 PM PDT by Oshkalaboomboom
In outlining his vision for applying “principled realism” to the war in Afghanistan, President Trump Monday night insisted there will be no precipitous American withdrawal. Though he didn’t specify the number, Trump will be sending additional troops — likely up to 4,000 — to Afghanistan. That would boost our commitment to just above 12,000 men and women in uniform.
And they’ll be expected to accomplish what 140,000 US and allied troops couldn’t achieve at the peak of our engagement, when the Taliban was considerably weaker.
We all must hope that, by a miracle, the new strategy of enhanced training for the Afghan military (and a slap on Pakistan’s wrist) somehow defeats the Taliban. But miracles are in short supply in Kabul. One suspects that this new initiative springs less from rigorous analysis than from the emotional attachment felt by senior officers who’ve seen their troops bleed and can’t bear the prospect of a meaningless sacrifice, of simply walking away.
We have a magnificent, well-led military, but rare is the general who understands the economic principle of “sunk costs,” that you can’t redeem a bad investment by investing even more. When money is gone, it’s gone. The same applies to lives.
A fundamental problem in Afghanistan is that Americans have been dying for a woefully corrupt succession of governments in Kabul for which young Afghans have been unwilling to die. Our new strategy includes a tougher line on corruption, but the damage has been done. What seemed expedient to ignore turned fatal.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Perhaps - if they have a huge ROE change.
Ralph can’t walk it back fast enough. Not for me anyway... SHUT UP, RALPH!
Cannot stand traitor Ralph Peters and his Minnie Mouse voice.
The presidency that we fought for and won is over - Bannon
Don’t worry people here will catch you on eventually.
There will be issues with the airframe handling the recoil of a three round burst.
Agree, especially when the Pres. mentioned rules of engagement. I would have liked for him to elaborate more on that topic. Brennen was probably grinding his teeth.
“Perhaps - if they have a huge ROE change.”
That too was in the speech, but we will not only not tell them what we are going to do, other than win, but also we are not going to set the rules for only ourselves as well.
They have always been hamstrung by the ROE’s designed to keep them nibbling at the edges dictated by micromanagement from DC so their benefactors in the Industrial Military Complex could stay at the trough and keeping their pockets filled.
All one needs to do is to look at how the campaign changed for Mosul and how it is going now in Syria. Does anyone not notice that there is relatively no news coming from those engagements? Could it be that because the news is good and we all know that is something that nobody in the Deep State wants to be projected?
I predict that in short order, just the change in ROE for the guys there will unleash a flurry of hell on the forces against us, including those in the central government playing both sides of the fence. The one place that will be most affected will be Islamabad and Waziristan. For those in the latter, they will not know until it is over that the ROE has changed. No more safe haven.
Fixed.
I used to like Ralph, but every once in awhile he reveals his true nature and it is UGLY.
This guy cannot be trusted.
He did the same thing Bush did. “Things look different from the oval office”
This means there are things that we simply don’t know about going on.
When it comes to foreign policy, ever since the invention of the CIA there are no lines in the sand. It’s all just a game of trust. We trust that those we elect have our best interests in mind, in strategy and action.
I hope they send in the Tech with these soldiers. And I hope they send in Marines and simply eliminate the enemy.
Or you kill enough of them.
Peters endorsed Hillary. ‘Nuff said.
I hope you realize that it was the Taliban who had stopped the cultivation of poppies in Afghanistan before the US invaded.
Ralph Peters is a special kind of treasonous turd who should be ignored
“It looks to me like “perpetual war for perpetual peace”.
Yeah, appears so. If we use history as our guide it will be that way for sure. We just need to reference Alexander the Great, Persians, Brits, Soviets, now the U.S. Afganstans just out wait everyone. On a broader scale, Islam in general, we need look no further than our own Barbary Wars for guidance. We started out trying appeasement, paying ransom and tribute, to have peace with Muslims with no results, it was only when we finally built a navy (and Marines) and took the fight to them were we able to defeat them - for awhile. Note for awhile. Thru history Islam, going back to the Crusades has only been defeated “for awhile” and that will be the case perhaps forever. So, we need to accept that we will have to hit them hard and brutally continuously as that’s what Muslimscrespect, brute power...
Bush killed many of the Tallyban during the opening months of the War.
After that, soldiers were deployed as sitting ducks.
All the past strategies did not work. Time for change.
Free the military to kill the evil losers.
The military chased and killed the Indians on the plains and in the mountains. We should have the knowledge to defeat these guys. General Custer messed up, and others succeeded
True, the Mongols marched through Islamic territory and knocked the snot out of every mooselimb they saw.
They took back home some of the surviving women as brides.
A few generations later, same problem, Radical Islamic Terror
It hasn’t gotten much press but that MOAB dropped on the ISIS tunnel complex in Afghanistan back in April took out 500 troops that Pakistan had “secretly” assisting ISIS.
That’s something Trump didn’t mention openly last night in his cryptic warning to Pakistan. But if Pakistan thought we hit their troops by accident and still considered them an “ally” they now know that they are on the target list. Rumor is dropping that MOAB was greenlighted by McMaster.
“Since Ralph’s been wrong on pretty much everything else Trump has done odds are in his favor he’ll be wrong again.”
I agree. Ralph Peter’s is an idiot.
“they will go all out for the poppy’s”
The US has been in there to protect the poppy and keep the drug trade going. DEA/CIA, money laundering banks, prison companies depend on the drug trade.
Peters said: “Our new strategy includes a tougher line on corruption.”
Now that’s a laugh.
“And the only Americans who’ll benefit will be contractors, who love impossible missions that never end.”
Obviously true.
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