To win in Afghanistan, we have to help them get rich. If they don’t see any benefit to them for us being there, they wont want us.
Build schools. Buy local goods. Build civilian infrastructure. A thousand Taliban attacks a year can’t crack the resolve of wealthy people who want to protect their stuff. If the Afghans stay poor, we’re gonna lose.
This is one of the reasons why military strategy cannot be executed via press conferences. For the reasons you mentioned, there could be no public knowledge of a withdrawal deadline. This would have to be relayed in high-level (and secretive) talks with the Karzai Administration. If word got out (and IMO it would) the insurgency would only have to lay-low and refuse to engage at any political level until the U.S. pulled out and then wreak havoc.
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6571 There is no victory in Afghanistan. They melt into the countryside and wait for us to leave. They have been fighting for generations and are skilled at that kind of warfare. It is a waste of treasury and lives. Al Queada is not there.
I think whenever they announce troop levels they should include the mercenaries. We have a lot more than the troop levels they announce.
Yeah right, like that’s possible outside of some xbox game.
I’m probably one of the biggest hawks on this board. There isn’t anything to win in Afghanistan. Russia must love seeing us wasting billions daily and the Chinese are probably a close second. Let Russia and China and India worry about all of the freaking “stans” in their neighborhood.
I wish Obama had the balls to say fuckit and get us the hell out of that third world shit hole. Sure he and the Dems would probably take a political hit from the right but it would still be the right thing to do.
I hardly agree with Biden on anything but he and others are right. Lob some cruise missiles on occasion and keep the predators flying. Let the Taliban and Al Queada have just enough to worry about staying alive and less time going after the evil Americans and NATO countries.
Again, there is nothing to win there and there never was. Get out now.
I am probably the biggest pacifist on the board. It is a high bar to climb over to convince me to back a war. These wars are criminal and shameful. Afghanistan is not a threat to America. The soldiers will wonder what the hell they are supposed to be doing. Nobody can even define what victory is. Since that is the case, how can you justify warring there? Al Queada isn’t there. Al Queada does not even want Afghanistan.
There is no way to effectively police the Pakistan border, it’s just far too big. If you’re looking at people crossing the border via a drone, how can you tell who are insurgents/terrorists and who aren’t? Of course you can’t, effective policing is impossible. There’s no way to do the things you want us to do effectively or we’d be doing them. There is no military solution to Afghanistan at all.
Agreed! Unfortunately the country currently lacks the infrastructure to access much of their potential mineral wealth. Fostering civilian, social, legal, political, and physical infrastucture in Afghanistan is the only way the U.S. can leave the country in a stable enough condition for Afghans to have the incentive and means of resisting fundementalist extremism.
The U.S. war hawks of the last Administration have brought us and our allies in NATO to this point and we all have spilled blood for this cause. Should we simply abandon them there now? Is this not also an investment in our own national security? I understand that the strategic goals of the U.S. military in Afghanistan following the Coalition’s removal of the Taliban regime has been vague (at best) and perhaps even naive. The goal of pacifying and democratizing the entire country by an occupying military force is irresponsible. But if the U.S. forces can stabilize a region of the country and allow Afghans to utilize their own natural resources to prosper in it, they will create a template which other regions can use/modify to create their own success. As Mosier pointed out, protecting personal wealth will be the incentive for Afghans to fiercly resist a re-take over by the extremist. Perhaps the U.S. military experts may decide that the entire Eastern region is too large of an objective and just focus on the mineral-rich North-East to North West region. 100K troops with adequate support and a clearly defined objective can get much done. IMO they have had not had either (adequate support, clearly defined objective) in the last 8 years.
So, 30K more troops on a rapid deployment schedule and a Fall 2011 exit.
It could work…but the clock is running…fast.
Building schools and infrastructure sounds good until you realize they have nobody to sustain them. It is a country run by local war lords who sell themselves to the highest bidder.
The government is illegitimate and the people know it. They are divorced from the international politics that is changing their country. The median. age is 17.6.
44 percent of the population is under 14 yrs old.
life expectancy is 45
28 percent literacy rate
12 % of the land is arable
The education system is broken. When we are done they will just fall back to where they were.
I know we want to do something to stop them from supporting Al Quada . That is not hard. Just pay higher bribes.
Unfortunately Afghanistan does not have any known oil or gas reserves. They do have mineral deposits that can be extracted. Yet none of this can be done on a scale to benefit the general Afghan population until there is enough security for business to survive. Concentrating all U.S. troops in the North and North-East region of the country can secure the area enough for businesses to flourish, NGOs to operate safely, concerted literacy programs to take root, stable government systems to be initiated, etc., all the fundamentals for the Afghans to replicate on their own on a larger scale throughout the country. This would also enable a lot of non-combat face-to-face interaction between U.S. soldiers and locals while providing an excellent setting for training large groups of local militia and police forces to maintain the security after U.S. military withdrawal.
Afghanistan just seems too large and sparsely populated to execute any worthwhile attainable objective on a country-wide scale, especially considering the time table that the POTUS laid out in the speech.
In order to bring their infrastructure up to date, you require someone to maintain and run it. Who would you propose do it? We spent billions in Iraq ,but the educated and middle class fled when we came in. I read that what we built is suffering because the Iraqis can not run or maintain it.
The average Afghani is 15 years old. The ravages of generations of war, cull the strong and healthy out of schools and they wind up with a nation of unschooled kids. They are far away from being able to run their own country. They are good fighters though.
The Karzai government runs a few cities and they are under siege. The people have no use for a government that is so corrupt, but they can not even vote it out. We will spend billions of tax payer money bribing soldiers to switch sides. Soldiering is the only job available to those outside the cities. That is almost everybody.
Yemen has been heavily infiltrated by Al Queada and some think the government is about to fall. So a real Al Quada threat may occur on the peninsula. Do you think we should go right in? Do we blow the hell out of Afghanistan, where there are no Al Queada first?
Your young Curtis. Don’t worry our policies will have a war for you when you are ready.
Yemen’s government is fairly stable and has been crushing the terrorists. But honestly I wish there was another Ataturk for the Arab world, if only Mubarak has a young and vigourous successor who would crush violent Islam in the Middle East with the blessing of the US…but would that happen since that would require some human rights violations and than the UN will b****, whine, and moan.
:rolleyes: In other words, you want history to repeat itself. You want some US backed thug to ruthlessly crush the villains of the moment, and ten, twenty years in the future you’ll be surprised when people overthrow your pet thug and kill Americans in revenge. Much of our foreign policy problems have been dealing with the results of ideas like yours.
What about Ataturk? He not only succedeed but is one of the most beloved men in Turkey. Therefore the US must be careful for him not to look like a puppet and an independent man.
Compared to Afghanistan it’s stable. The US will have to deal with this but I think this situation doesn’t require thousands of troops but economic aid, supplying arms to Yemen, and perhaps a few discreet assassinations and commadno operations.
That never works. People aren’t morons; if someone gets aid from the US, and ruthlessly crushes people the US doesn’t like then everyone will know he’s a US puppet. And anyone who isn’t a puppet is going to hate us, because we deserve it.