Not only that, but we did it twice just to show what good sports we were.
On another note, I read Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid’s Descent into Chaos earlier this year, concerning the Bushie Incursion. He’s not that complimentary about most players, least of all the Pakistani governance of the time.
These kinds of fundie regimes go hand in hand with international jihad. They just can’t be allowed to exist if we can prevent them. It’s too late for Iran, but we’ve already spent blood and treasure making sure it doesn’t happen in Afghanistan again.
I think the U.S. does have special obligation to Iraq (“You break a dish in the china shop, it’s yours.”) Iraq under Baathists was stable: it’s biggest problem in 2002 wasn’t caused by Saddam, it was the poverty and disease inflicted by U.S. sanctions.
Afghanistan, OTOH, was already in bad shape when the U.S. attacked in 2001. For that reason (subject to an important caveat*), I agree with Mr. Mace here:
Unfortunately spending that money so wisely is not an option in today’s America — Trump’s treating the White House as a personal profit-making opportunity attests to that. The trillions spent by DoD have enriched Lockheed, Blackstone, Carlyle Group, Fat Leonard’s friends, etc. Just employing needy Aghans to improve their own needful country would be intolerable.
They join adaher in the great King Pyrrhus school of the winning strategies.
of course this kind of thinking, the Iranians can know and it does not at all give them the strong incentive to work against the stabilization, no not at all.
You have to bomb them to save them for your liberal left cultural goals. It is very nice.
A nice plan bring in the Russians who are to be very well loved by the Afghans and oh yes the Chinese, the oppressors of the Ouighers, that will be very well loved too.
It is a wonderful idea, the americans recycling ideas from their WWII experience to completely incompatible situations.
the magical security and the magical resupply of the airbases… the fuel and the supplies, they are teleported in just like in the video games and the american action movies?
It is very insightful, mixing the completely unrelated Shia structures with the Sunni salafism, it is no wonder the americans have had great success in the Afghanistan over the 16 years, their excellent templates for the analysis and the creation of the policy and approaches are leading them to the same great successes they have had in the other colonial wars.
Sunni and Shia extremism have one thing in common that interests us: international terrorist groups.
They have other similarities too, but that’s the important one as far as US foreign and military policy goes.
[QUOTE=BobLibDem]
So it seems to me that there will always have to be an occupying force, but I don’t think it has to be exclusively the US and its allies. Bring in the Russians, Chinese, and Pakistanis, maybe split it up like postwar Germany. We have to do right by the innocent Afghans. Unfortunately, they’re just pawns for the moment being used by a fool in the Oval Office wanting to distract from both his white supremacy and his ongoing criminal investigation.
[/QUOTE]
Oh man…you seriously are advocating bringing in the Russians (the RUSSIANS??) and the Chinese to help out in Afghanistan?? Not that you are likely to interest the Chinese in such a plan (they have their own Muslim population to oppress after all…they don’t need to go all the way to Afghanistan), but it’s hard to imagine a worse group to pick. And you want to split Afghanistan up like post war Germany? With, what, a Russian zone, a Pakistani zone, and a Chinese zone along with I guess an allied zone? :eek:
Hard to even imagine what you are thinking with this or what you think the outcome could or would be…or how this would be in any way preferable to the current melt down cluster fuck. My own mental image is someone tossing gasoline on a blazing fire then reaching for the hydrogen…
Oh very insightful… no actually not at all.
The Iranians have the state oriented interests and the state oriented backing of their surrogates, not different from you americans (except of course you look at your side as heroes, because America).
The Hezbullah has no real characteristic like al Qaeda.
Yes your great and insightful approach of That’s Enough for us cowboys to Know, Blackhats! has generated so many successes in the 16 years of the warfare, you will be studied by the future generations just like the Epirotes king for the lessons in the strategy.
Wile Coyote
Those things are already mostly in place. I’m not suggesting we’re going to run the entire campaign from Bagram, or that there’s even going to be a bombing campaign of Iran, but it’s silly to pretend that our huge-ass airbase in Bagram would have no use and provide no value in the case of war with Iran. It’s not some austere FARP.
Already in place… very amusing.
You have the supplies for the actual campaign
To run the preparations of the war with the Iran, there is the need for the movement in, and the host agreement or see the crisis and the Afghan security forces turn.
This will leak immediately to the Iranians from the afghan sources and there will be the immediate action to attack and to undermine. and the long-term degradation of the security and the political support of the continued existence.
Or you can think of the situation like the American action movie and forget about the consequences because that is after the end of the film and you got the Black hat wearers with nice cinegraphic explosions in the first run because it’s the way things happen in the American action movie.
Yeah, the idea that world is just there for us to carve up into factions is just mind-blowing. I can hardly think of a worst course of action in Afghanistan, or almost anywhere else for that matter. And people laugh at Trump’s ideas!!
Would’ve been nice had you cited those in the first place, instead of dated articles. And I’m about as likely to read pacifist sites as Jake LaMotta. They have one drumbeat, I know what it is, and I don’t care.
Once again, as usual, so what? What exactly are you trying to justify here? Your non-Hillary vote? Castigating a mouldering equine may be a fun pursuit, but it’s ultimately fruitless.
Between the tone of your posts in this thread and your obsession with American cinema, I’m sensing that there’s probably not a lot of room for productive conversation with you here, so I’m done for now. Good luck.
Trump has no ideas. (But guaranteed, he’ll claim any credit that could possibly accrue, or even impossibly.) The generals at least managed to talk him into letting them take it out of his hands.
I have a news flash for you: it’s not your business who runs Iran, and it never was. It’s not your place to choose what sort of government can be “allowed” to “exist” in other countries, whether those countries are in Europe, South America, the former Soviet space, or the Middle East. The comment you made above is a perfect example of everything that’s wrong with American foreign policy historically.
For what it’s worth, Iran seems to take a much less expansionist approach to its ruling ideology than the western powers do, so I don’t even know what “international jihad” means in this context. Iran isn’t trying to convert Americans or Europeans to Shia Islam, and her only major Shia-related foreign policy objectives seem to be to further the interests of the Shia in countries where they’re already a majority or a very large minority.
US intervention in Afghanistan was a mistake and the sooner we wash our hands of the place, the better.
I’m a Hillary voter myself but foreign policy ideas were questionable, and that’s probably putting it gently. In reality, the problem that would have faced any of the 20+ candidates is how American foreign policy handles pursuing its naked economic and political ambitions in a fast-changing world in which it increasingly has to share power with others, including with some it may consider rivals and competitors. You can’t escalate and deescalate at the same time. Something has to give. The McMasters and Mattis’ of the world are working Trump, convincing him that they can find some sort of “peace with honor” (or peace with whatever) solution. This is why I’ve taken a wait-and-see attitude toward Trump’s foreign policy. There’s at least the opportunity for him to do some good. Now do I predict that he will turn out to be a good foreign policy president? No, and he could be a mega-disaster. But at least the opportunity exists in some areas.
It is extremely dangerous to begin conflating different “terrorist” organizations. That’s exactly why we ended up in Iraq, and that is a incessant waterfall of shit. As bad as that was, Iran would be a horrific blunder that might even outdo the pile of turd we laid in Mesopotamia.
Well, in eight years he’ll be able to go there and see it for himself.
Honestly Ramira I have no idea what you are railing against.
Besides Bagram there is are bases in Azerbaijan, in Iraq, in Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan and Turkey.
Yes Iran is surrounded.
It’s possible Ramira is “railing” against the idea that the main purpose of our on-going military involvement in Afghanistan is to provide another platform to bomb Iran. What’s the reason to bomb Iran again? To take over that country and build air bases for the next time we need to bomb Iraq again? :smack: