WELCOME TO THE HOTAL CALIFORNIA...
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.
“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.
Every General from the past 20 years should be held accountable for losing.
They like the military life, they just can’t fight.
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.
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.
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.
Ever wonder why Obama didn’t get us out of Afghanistan even though in his 2008 campaign he said he would.
Anyone remember Nancy walking out of the White House over the poor Kurds and that there would be genocide of the Kurds if we left the region?
Hmmm.
Someone please give me evidence of good decisions Democrats have made on foreign policy. Carter and Iran leadership? Carter and failed mission into Iran? Carter and U.S. embassy people held hostage? Carter and Camp David accords? Clinton and attacking aspirin factory to “wag the dog” over Monica affair? Clinton and Somalia? Clinton and Israel-Palestinian peace accords? Clinton and USS Cole in Yemen? Obama? Can anyone name one foreign policy initiative? He called off attacking Osama three times, and on the day of mission, SEALS were enroute when he got wind of it, and it was too late to scrap the mission. Obama and Ukraine (all of it not just firing of prosecutor)? Obama and North Korea? Obama and South China Sea? Obama and ISIL (forbade the term ISIS, used before and after his administration)? Obama and Lybia (Khadafi removal and Benghazi) Obama with useless SECSTATE Hillary? Hillary and Obama actually created ISIS. Obama and the “Arab Spring?”
Go rock star and totally trash the place as you leave.
It’s their 3d-world craphole. We can’t (and shouldn’t) care about more than they do.