You negotiate SOFAs with sovereign host governments. You don't need a SOFA if you occupy and run the country. Understand?
I think we should stop right here and part ways, because after multiple attempts, I cannot even get close to being on the same page with you. These concepts are you have are foreign to me and you are misrepresenting what I am saying.
I gather that those concepts are foreign to you. They aren't to me. I have spent 8 years as a naval officer and 28 years as a foreign service officer. I have lived in 11 different countries and traveled to 70 more. I understand how SOFA agreements work and how diplomacy is conducted. We are definitely on different pages and probably in a different book.
All I have figured out is that Iraq was not a occupation, nor was the surge in Afghanistan Nor was any war according to you. Except Japan and Germany.
A country is no longer occupied when it has a sovereign, independent government. We went thru an occupation phase in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Why is that such a difficult concept to grasp? We went thru the same thing with Germany and Japan.
I suppose you dont think that Israel is not at least temporarily occupying Gaza to ferret out the tunnels and launchers.
They have invaded parts of Gaza, but I don't expect them to stay very long. They are not talking about removing the current governing coalition and replacing it. Israel is staging a military operation.
You dont get me, because you dont want to get what I am saying. Afghanistan is a deployment because one guy, the president resides in Kabul with all the money and wealth he can steal. So you protect his goat stinking hide in Kabul while he and his family steal you blind and undermine the task. So thats a deployment...not a occupation because you let one guy roam about Kabul who calls himself president.
Karzai was elected. The Afghans just had another election and the results are still coming in. The new government will sign a SOFA with the US.
The discussion I am trying to have with you is to change all this crap back to what it was before it was screwed with by politicians. Make it honest and forthright so everyone understands it. A deployment should be a stay in a country that invited you where you are there as a deterrent and not fighting their civil war for them.
We went into Afghanistan because the 9/11 attack was planned there. The Taliban provided a sanctuary for AQ. We went in to eliminate that sanctuary and remove the government that supported them. We went into Iraq for these reasons contained in the 2002 Joint Resolution of Congress. We removed a dictator who invaded two countries (Iran and Kuwait) and used WMD against his own people and the Iranians. This allowed Iraq to draft its own Constitution and stage free elections.
If you have to do that, then kick the government out and occupy them until such a time as they can do their own business without old hatreds and 1500 year old arguments. If that takes 50 years, then you stay 50 years with no friggin sofa unless you are ready to leave and they want you there as a deterrent at their request.
There is no political will to make such a commitment nor do we have the resources to do it.
“You negotiate SOFAs with sovereign host governments. You don’t need a SOFA if you occupy and run the country. Understand?”
Then again, We invaded Iraq, we destroyed their government, we put a ex ambassador in total control. But that was not a occupation.....nooooooooo...
Regardless of the mistakes made, the US allow the same UN that has screwed up more countries in it’s relatively short history then communism, totalitarianism, and Nazi-ism combined to design a parliament. But they just dumped it on them and held elections, at least 5 years too soon.
So no sofa was needed because Iraq was now a government approved sovereign nation.
How’s that working for ya?
FULL CIRCLE....Right back to my original argument that you took so much offense over.
I said that we did it totally wrong. We should have occupied them, I said, for at least 30 years.
and NO SOFA.
So there we are....right back where we started.
If that is the determination by the brass. Then the answer is simple. DON'T