Now I’m calling all citizens from all over the world
This is Captain America calling
I bailed you out when you were down on your knees
So will you catch me now I’m falling
MrDibble, I like and respect you, but your efforts to mince words and make a cutesy argument here are actually making you look silly.
I don’t necessarily see that he’s wrong; they’re debating the semantics of ousting. As Bear_Nenno says, it’s true that the Taliban is no recognized as having political control over the Afghan government, but they’re by no means vanquished. If they were truly ousted, why is it that the United States is interested to have sit-down talks with the Taliban. They seem quite powerful for an ousted power.
I just got back from a briefing on Afghanistan, the US isn’t even asking the Taliban to disarm/demobilize as a condition for peace. One of the presenters mentioned that he had participated in the negotiations to get the US out of Vietnam and that this negotiation feels the same: we’re tacitly acknowledging that we’ve lost. The big question is how many displaced ISIS fighters are going to relocate to Afghanistan like al Qaeda did and how soon until they are launching attacks from there like AQ did.
And Canadians. Canada has a distressing number of them. Yeah, it’s only about 150, but that’s too damned many.
BTW, the first time I got pitted it was for a fake rant about Canada. Somebody actually took me seriously! As in reality I would gladly add the Chicago area to the Peoples Republic of Ontario d’Sud, I thought it was funny.
I had to read this several times to figure out what you were on about. I apologize. I misread your user name. I really did think it was Mr. Dribble. That wasn’t intended to be a pun or an insult.
Okay, you’re just trolling. I shouldn’t even bother commenting. South Korea was not taken over by the communist North. That was a victory. The first attack on Iraq was to expel them from Kuwait, a goal that was accomplished in record time. How could you possibly use that as an example of military failure?
Anyone could have made that mistake, Brear.
Although it is strange that post 133 https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21561439&postcount=133 does quote MrDibble as “Mr. Dribble”
I don’t really see how one name is less flattering than the other.
Indeed, those are always great questions. MrDibble had instead simply stated that the United States military was not a superpower, and pointed to Afghanistan as proof.
Yea, that was my mistake as well. I manually typed the quote tag and just pasted the excerpt of his text I wanted to quote rather than using the quote button and deleting what I didn’t want. So that was me mistyping his name.
An even better question to ask, is “If the US really wanted the Taliban ‘ousted’, why has the political leadership refused to designate them as a hostile force?” From the MilitaryTimes, “It’s also noteworthy that the hostile-force designation does not apply to the Taliban insurgent group, which continues to target U.S. and coalition forces. Consequently, American personnel can target Taliban fighters only when insurgents threaten U.S. or Afghan forces, the military official said. Only al Qaida and the Islamic State can be targeted simply because of their affiliation.” This is not the military being unable to destroy an enemy. This is the political will of the United States saying, “Don’t destroy that group.”
Quite so. But it is another thing entirely to criticize the military for not doing something when their government forbids them from doing it, such as engaging the Taliban.
I would have brought up these points earlier, but I actually thought they were classified. I’m glad to have found mention of it in the Military Times article cited above. The military was sent into Afghanistan to remove the Taliban from power, and were specifically forbidden from attacking them further, unless in self-defense. These aren’t military failures. The military is doing exactly what it’s been allowed to do within the constraints imposed upon it.
It’s possibly a very wise decision that was made based on the fact that we’ve killed thousands of “Taliban” civilians in Afghanistan already, and designating Taliban as a hostile force would click the safety off the guns that would kill thousands more.
Perhaps, but there are already restrictions in place to prevent that. This decision actually prevents the US military from attacking a truck full of armed Taliban, even if they’re all waving huge Taliban flags and driving through an open field, miles away from civilians or buildings. The decision may have prevented some civilian deaths just as a secondary effect, but that certainly wasn’t the reasoning behind it.
The reasoning behind the decision is simply because the government of Afghanistan views the Taliban as a political enemy, not a military one. They’ve wanted to reconcile with them since the beginning. Until recently, the Taliban have never wanted to talk it out, they wanted to be in full control. And they planned to regain that control through violence.
Now that the Taliban is much weaker, and the Afghan military and police have grown stronger, the Taliban have finally agreed to talks. It is no coincidence that last year, President Trump loosened targeting restrictions and increased airstrikes in an effort to force them to the table.
A fact not lost on those who most often cite it no matter the context or relevance.
Sure. That’s why you manually edited a quote box to say that too. :rolleyes:
Coward.
I didn’t say they weren’t a superpower. I dispute that they are unchallenged. They are very “challenged”.
I’m not “mincing words”, I believe that an “unchallenged superpower” that can’t* defeat a bunch of hill tribesmen isn’t worthy of the name. And the Taliban is not defeated. Or “ousted” in anything but butt-covering sophistry terms.
- or “won’t because of political will”, as Nenno would have it. As if that made a difference, since “superpower” implies both military and political power together.
Mr. Dribble makes a good point and adds a Parthian shot worthy of The Economist magazine.
I think that derives from the fact that America doesn’t conquer countries, it “liberates” them - in other words, it purportedly invades them for their own good, freeing them from themselves. The problem with this is that it feels compelled to collaborate with local elements to assuage its conscience, but the only elements who will work with America are bottom-feeders who would collaborate with an invading power. We saw that it Vietnam, we saw it in Iraq and we saw it in Afghanistan.