WELCOME TO THE HOTAL CALIFORNIA...
Posted on 07/08/2021 6:32:22 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
It is easy to remember why the United States invaded Afghanistan. Our country had just been attacked by terrorists based there. The nation was united in a desire to protect itself from further attacks and bring the parties responsible to justice.
It's not so easy to remember whether the justification for the invasion was based on a broader policy, whether there was discussion at the time of what would constitute victory, or whether the invasion was an actual war in the traditional sense. More to the point, it's unclear whether those questions have answers today, even as we exit Afghanistan.
I've read several articles written by people with a ton more knowledge than I have about whether our country should stay in Afghanistan or leave. A lot of the writers had personal experience fighting in Afghanistan. The opinions they offer differ, with some arguing to stay and others arguing to leave. The positions of Trump and Biden seem to be aligned on the side of leave, which is remarkable, given how much else they disagree on.
As an average citizen, I supported the decision to invade. Like most people, the attacks scared the daylights out of me, and I was riled up more than at any other time in my life. I suspect that our leaders were at least in part reacting to the zeitgeist as much as, or possibly more than they were thinking about the end game.
At this point, I don't presume to know the correct answer on the stay or leave question, though I could make a solid argument for either course of action. Stay: The situation in Afghanistan could quickly return to pre-9/11 conditions and again become a haven for terrorists plotting to attack us.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Leave: There's nothing more to do in Afghanistan that would justify expending more blood and treasure than we already have, and we need to rely on Homeland Security and the "Intelligence Community" to defend ourselves from future terrorist attacks. You can add in arguments about the positive or negative impacts on Afghanis from either point of view. On this count, most people would acknowledge that leaving is going to hurt the segment of the Afghani population who want to avoid a return to the tender mercies of the Taliban, including and especially women.
If the locals wanted something other than the Taliban, they’d have used the Americans to get rid of the Taliban. But I suspect that the Taliban isn’t the center of their problems — more likely a term thrown around for Americans to keep us there, or to simplify centuries of tribal fighting. Akin to Haiti — we can bemoan the human tragedy, but we as humans can’t fix it....
He basically told our enemies up front that we weren't going in it to win it or to teach them and everybody else paying attention to never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever attack the United States of America.
Gunboat Diplomacy morphs into Drone Missile Diplomacy.
Occupying countries is not worth the blood and treasure.
“It is easy to remember why the United States invaded Afghanistan.”
Stopped reading right there. We didn’t ‘invade’ and the reason ‘why’ was dubious.
GW gets to wear 100% of the responsibility for the casualties and other costs to this country for that quagmire.
All with little to no benefit to US security. And Zero wears the hat for failing to disengage once Bin Laden was eliminated.
How long did it take us to leave Germany after WWII? Japan? Korea?
Seems the only time we actually left a country after a war was Vietnam.
Before you pull a single trigger or open a bomb bay door, you need to have an ENDGAME.
1. List the reasons to go to war
2. Articulate the war objectives
3. Go over the objectives and what to do when they are met or lost
4. Plan the end of fighting
My combat wounded, former Marine buddy who spent several tours there had some views. There was no emotion in his views, just reason and logic...well backed up by incidents he witnessed. His view was we are wasting out time, treasure and blood. He trained farmers and peasants to resist the Taliban and watched from a distance as they, forewarned, went out to meet the Taliban, lay down their US supplied weapons at the Taliban’s feet and prostrated themselves.
You can not make that culture into a mirror or western culture. And, that is what we are trying to do. It’s like asking a tiger to lie down with the lamb. As long as the tiger is well fed, it might work. But, eventually, the tiger gets hungry. And, in this case, not even that analogy works...try the one where you give LGBT’s the right to marry and the next thing they are doing is suing a baker who doesn’t want to make their cake into penury.
The USA leadership does not have the stomach to achieve total victory in war. You completely destroy the enemy and his ability to wage war. You do not start a war unless you are prepared to be merciless against the enemy.
America can never again win wars without a commitment to total victory. Anything less is just using your best young people as cannon fodder.
Every General from the past 20 years should be held accountable for losing.
They like the military life, they just can’t fight.
+1!
Amen!
Fight to win, win to fight.
Nation building is should NEVER be our province. THAT’S up to the people left there after the bad guys have been defeated.
Afghanistan could have only been saved with a MacArthur constitution.
Early on, the US to reconstruct Iraq to western standards that work, but cold footed individuals insisted on trying to save and refurbish parts of the old system, out of “cultural sensitivity”. All the western ideas worked well for a time, until the old, preserved parts proved how rotten they were and tore everything down.
Basically, we removed *some* of the cancer, but left some, out of “cultural sensitivity”.
And Afghanistan was cancerous from its scalp to its toenails.
So what we should have done was very blunt. Since most of the fighters were coming in endless numbers from Pakistan, we needed to shut the border. Though it was a long border, there were only about a dozen serviceable passes in those mountains.
Second, every adult by Afghanistan standards male, without other registered employment, would be employed in huge, national infrastructure projects, including reclamation, building a network of quality roads, irrigation, and rebuilding entire cities.
Because their national wage was tiny, we could afford this. And all their earnings would be sent to their female family. For their part, the women would be entrusted with running their towns and villages, and given training to earn income with small businesses.
The vast number of orphans would be sent to international boarding schools in Kabul, to become a new generation of political, military and business leaders. Taught with western knowledge by good teachers, not UN dregs and perverts.
Their legal system would be Common Law, not the onerous French Code Civil beloved by internationalists.
Why the hell did we leave all that equipment and ammo for the Taliban?
Last thing we should have done was B 52 strikes on even base and ammo dump we left behind.
RE: Afghanistan could have only been saved with a MacArthur constitution..... Basically, we removed *some* of the cancer, but left some, out of “cultural sensitivity”.
You have to ELIMINATE Islam from the culture for that to work. This is an almost impossible task — even more impossible than eliminating from Japan the ancient idea that the Emperor is Divine ( most Japanese don’t even believe that )
That is where the education of the orphans comes in. Raising them to be secular leaders. It’s a process.
Likewise, putting women in charge of local administration. We realized in WWII that once women were used to men’s jobs, they were not easy to shove back in the kitchen.
It's a history of Afghanistan over the last few millennia and what happened when various tribes and nations invaded that country. Afghanistan is incompatible with peace.
People who write articles that start with flawed premise, then form their arguments. I’m pretty sure the terrorists were not “based” in Afghanistan. They were all from Saudi Arabia. We attacked Afganistan because we had a country united in anger and fear that was ripe for exploitation by globalist neocons. I always admired Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bolton, but my eyes are open now. I was never enthusiastic about either Bush but they were not Dukakis, Gore or Kerry.
RE: I’m pretty sure the terrorists were not “based” in Afghanistan.
So, you’re saying that the Taliban under Mullah Omar was not giving sanctuary to Osama Bin Ladin?
I have nothing but scorn for our leaders, and nothing but sadness for our lives lost there and our troops wounded for life there. Our troops efforts were honorable, our leaders were not honorable.
You cannot go to war to be a policeman. You must only go to war to seek complete defeat and unconditional surrender of the enemy. Less than that and you dishonor the lives spent with no intention of achieving that.
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