Posted on 07/12/2019 8:03:50 AM PDT by robowombat
Nominee for Top US General: Afghan Withdrawal Would Be 'Strategic Mistake'
July 11, 2019
President Donald Trump's nominee for the top military officer of the United States says leaving Afghanistan prematurely would be a "strategic mistake," as the U.S. and the Taliban are negotiating a potential peace settlement to end nearly two decades of war.
"I think it is slow, it's painful, it's hard. I spent a lot of my life in Afghanistan, but I also think it's necessary," Army Gen. Mark Milley, the current Army Chief of Staff and nominee for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told lawmakers at a Senate Armed Services Committee nomination hearing Thursday.
Milley said he saw "progress" in the peace negotiations meant to bring the war to an end.
A deal between the U.S. and the Taliban has been expected to be centered on a U.S. promise to withdraw foreign troops in exchange for a Taliban pledge not to let Afghanistan be used as a base for terrorism.
Milley on Iran
When questioned on Iran, Milley said Tehran's "intensity of malign activity" has increased since the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, (JCPOA) that was signed in 2015.
Milley also pointed out that Iran has "always been a malign actor," and that Iranian-backed terrorist organizations have killed U.S. troops in Iraq.
His comments come as Britain said Thursday three Iranian vessels unsuccessfully tried to impede the passage of a British commercial vessel through the Strait of Hormuz but were turned away after "verbal warnings" from a British navy ship accompanying the vessel.
"We are concerned by this action and continue to urge the Iranian authorities to de-escalate the situation in the region," the British government said.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard has denied the allegations.
Iran and Iranian-backed forces have been blamed for several recent incidents in the region, including attacks on several tankers, attacks on a Saudi airport, an attack on a Saudi oil pipeline and a rocket attack in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad's Green Zone.
President Trump said Wednesday he would soon "substantially" increase economic sanctions against Iran, as the U.S. accused Tehran of "nuclear extortion" by breaching the 2015 international pact aimed at curtailing its nuclear weapons development.
Iran has acknowledged it is now enriching uranium beyond the limits of the accord Trump withdrew from last year and keeping a bigger stockpile than it was allowed.
Despite the war in Afghanistan and the increased tensions with Iran, Milley said his biggest concern was "modernization and recapitalization of the nation's nuclear triad."
The nuclear triad is the U.S. military's ability to respond to threats with nuclear weapons by air, sea and land via bombers, submarines and intercontinental ballistic missiles.
"There are many reasons why there hasn't been a great-power war since 1945. Clearly one of them is nuclear deterrence," Milley said, adding that the international order is "currently under the most stress since the end of the Cold War."
Taliban or Al Queda?
The reason we won WWII is the enemy made more mistakes than we did.
In other words, no real connection and certainly nowhere near enough to justify 18 years of war.
I just remember his death. There was also an incident of nerve agent on goats.
You are welcome to your opinion.
I do not find it convincing.
Al Queda had a safe base of operations in Afghanistan. We took it away.
Should we be doing something different?
Almost certainly.
We have been occupying Germany for much longer, Japan as well.
Reality is difficult.
There are no magic solutions.
I need not convince you at all. It is you that need to do the convincing, as you stand on the side of a continuing war that has been absolutely ruinous for the American people.
I fully agree that the Afghan war is a bootless adventure in which a relatively small number of Americans get screwed over trying to fight a war with a claque of lawyers and ‘human rights’ specialists trying to micromanage the proceedings as though it were a moot court at Harvard Law. The people who are invested in keeping the ball rolling either have professional or financial interests in it. I can assure you that Gen Milley will be a millionaire several times over a decade after he retires from the Army. He will be an excellent mouthpiece/shill for K Street or some defense contractor such as the Carlyle Group. I truly despise this whole culture of greedy backscratching and semi-legal boodle more than you can know having grown up around it and once respecting highly the people at the top of the Executive Branch and the armed services.
However I do not get the ‘continuing war that has been absolutely ruinous for the American people’ part. I doubt if a majority of Americans know the war is still on over there. So it has not been ruinous to a huge majority of Americans. Unless one is in the military, has a loved one deployed or worse, has had a family member killed. or seriously injured or badly affected psychologically or neurologically Afghanistan means little or nothing to the man in the street. That is one of the reasons we have an ‘all volunteer force’ or using a term the military dislikes a career professional ,military. Our armed forces are increasingly like those of Victorian England, led by a professional class of officers and recruited from deep red flyover country and , too often, from the brightest men from places with little economic opportunity. Since no one inside the beltway thinks of the rank and file as being really human rather as an invisible service force that executes their brilliant concepts, sort of akin to the people who repair their motor vehicles, clean their offices, or serve them their over priced meals in some expense account supported restaurant.
In the words of an officer more candid than Milley, ‘Sorry, when you take Uncle Sams shekel that means you go where you are sent and do what you are told. Get killed or screwed up, it's on you, to bad so sad, move along nothing here to see.’
> However I do not get the ‘continuing war that has been absolutely ruinous for the American people’ part.
$2 trillion plus pissed down the toilet in Afghanistan alone, to say nothing of the human toll and intangible losses. Even being super conservative about it, losses in the trillions have to qualify as ruinous.
What if i told you 9/11 was a CIA inside job?
I would say it does not make sense.
But people who want to believe convoluted conspiracy theories can always find an excuse for every difficulty with the theory.
It is very difficult to disprove a conspiracy theory.
You have to resort to Occam's razor, and if you do not have common assumptions about the nature of reality, that does not work.
There are people who claim it was the CIA, the Mossad, the U.S. government generically, the person who owned the building, etc, etc.
Those that claim the CIA always have a convoluted reason why the CIA would want to do it.
It is all complicated by the fact there have been and are actual conspiracies, such as the conspiracy to frame President Trump.
I find the most interesting are the Arab Muslims who are masters of claiming a conspiracy of the Jews for everything.
One moment they will tell you it was the Jews that did it; the next they claim it was the greatest Islamic raid in the last 100 years, a great prideful boast of Islam.
They believe both realities at the same time. They don't seem to have any problem with believing two or more contradictory things at the same time.
There are many people who believe every war is pre-planned, with the results known years in advance. Those people have completely different assumptions about the nature of reality than I do.
Yo dude(Mark twain) . I put in a nickel and you gave me $10.00 change.!
“here have been no more 911 type attacks masterminded from Afghanistan “
That’s a lie of a statement since A’stan didn’t mastermind 911 in the first place.
Are you saying Al Queda, with Osama Bin Laden as its head, and various lieutenants and proxies in the organization, did not mastermind the 911 attacks?
Or are you saying Al Queda did not have a sanctuary in Afghanistan that was used as a base for the organization?
When someone calls me a liar, I like to understand the basis for the charge.
Yes, you got it wrong
Equating AQ and Usama Bin Ladin to Afghanistan illustrates you lack a grasp for the situatuation
So, you are saying Al Queda did not have a safe base in Afghanistan?
I never said AQ and OBL were the same as Afghanistan.
Osama Bin Laden was a resident of Pakistan and the actors of 911 were predominately Saudi citizens, and none were from Afghanistan. Afghanistan was no more a part of 911 than a man from mars.
To this day al Qaeda is also alive and well in Afghanistan, so no US presence has stopped that. Anyone who has served in Afghanistan knows very well that al Qaeda has not been diminished by US forces in any way.
911 was a fluke of an attack, and to claim the trillion bucks spent somehow stopped further 911 attacks is like the little boy ringing the bell to keep away the elephants.
That is what you implied
The equation was blatant
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