How would you prosecute the war in Afghanistan, the War on Terror or the War in Iraq differently from how they are being handled now? Let’s pretend that we are not allowed to go back in time. If you were advising President Obama, what would you tell him?
Thanks,
Rob
Just plain bribery. Give the tribal leaders SUVs and other superficial glittery junk.
Agreed. We should bribe them, then focus on protecting Pakistan’s nukes.
I’d heavily recommend bringing all the troops home. Then I’d get shot in the back of the head and buried in a shallow grave.
Iraq is divided into 3 roughly equal sized states…Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd. The oil production stuff remains in U.S. control, and revenues therefrom get split 4 ways. 1 share for Uncle Sugar for securing the equipment/port and handling the money.
Afghanistan…hell, I started a thread asking why we’re still there, and we never arrived at a consensus answer. We provide security for 6 more months, and have an election there in four months, winner take all. Whoever wins the election gets to takeover that shithole and do whatever with it. Our boys are coming home in time for March Madness.
What do you do when the Taliban gangsters come and steal all the stuff?
I’d bring the soldiers back from Iraq as soon as possible. Afghanistan we have more justification being in, but I don’t think we can really accomplish much there. Not without staying there for generations at least. I’d probably choose to leave there as well. The War on Terror, I’d discontinue things like warrentless wiretapping ( much less torture ). I’d treat it like the intelligence and police problem it is ( as opposed to a military problem ), but the work of ferreting them out would be done in a civilized fashion that respected human rights. And it wouldn’t be focused on brown Muslims while ignoring white right wing Christians, either; terrorism is terrorism.
There haven’t been many Christian Fundamentalists commiting wholesale terrorist attacks (maybe a few crazies like abortion clinic bombers but no wholesale terrorism). Also what if for instance several hundred militants were holed up, would you treat it like police work and negotiate with them or use a military response and bomb the hell out of them.
I like the cut of McCrystal’s jib, I’m willing to put more boots on the ground if we limit the scope of the missions and lessen our standards for ‘victory’. The American public deserves some yardstick for our progress regardless of whether or not that will ‘embolden the terrorists’.
Our commitment depends on our willingness to prosecute the war, not the morale of the opposition.
As for Iraq, I wanted out yesterday.
I’d nuke em all from orbit, just to be sure…
-XT
That’s like what they said in Aliens, and yet you’ve taken it and used it here in a different context, that’s clever, and so fresh too.
I would work on making a joint strike force that can penetrate into pretty much any part of the world on short notice. Forget about big occupations just tell countries that if they cannot police within their own borders and it threatens our national security we will be back. We don’t need to be in Afghanistan, we need to be able to get to Afghanistan and wreck some shit on short notice at any given time.
Then you can use LoJack to guide the predator drones.
Though in reality, if a tribal leader is so weak that he can be robbed by the Taliban, he’s useless, anyway. The key is to show the tribal leader that his personal self-interest is better served by being friends to Westerners than the Taliban. Frankly, turning Muslims against each other has historically been very useful, if occasionally perilous. Each tribal leader, in addition to a free SUV, can also get a satellite cellphone with the U.S. Air Force on speed-dial. If the Taliban show up, blow them away. Fuck this hearts and minds crap. This is a part of the world that lives on bribery and favours. As long is it remains a tribal place, just buy the leaders and kill their enemies and everyone will be happy-ish.
Also, invest a few hundred million a year to subsidize the heroin growers, then just destroy the shipments immediately after purchase.
Yeah, no one, including me, has EVER used that before in a thread…
It’s about as fresh as this whole topic. We’ve been hashing and rehashing the Iraq war for over half a decade here, and Afghanistan periodically rears it’s ugly head as well. What do I think is our best course? Gods know at this point. How would I prosecute the war differently? I’d shrug my shoulders and say ‘we fucked up’ and pull our troops out of Iraq and let it stand or fall on it’s own. If that means issues with our oil down the road then so be it.
Afghanistan? I’d do the same while telling Europe that it’s up and China that it’s on deck…not our problem to police the world anymore. So long and thanks for all the fish, and all that.
Of course, if I were God King and could set policy then I’d probably drive the country into the ground with my isolationist tendencies within a few years, so perhaps I wouldn’t be the best choice to decide how the wars should be prosecuted…
-XT
That would work against leaders that could control their insurrections and if terrorists were concerned about infrastructure.
Timothy McVeigh comes to mind as a right wing American terrorist.
And part of why you seldom hear of right wing terrorists is because if it’s done or planned by a right wing group the news tends to barely pay attention, and seldom does anyone name it “terrorism”. And of course they’ve just had one of their own in the White House for 8 years; no need for private terrorism when you can have the government do it for you.
Negotiate. Bombs make martyrs.
WTF? George W Bush is not a fundie terrorist no matter what criticism you can apply to him.
What if they refuse to surrender? Also the same argument can be said about Nazis or Confederates or basically any ideology.
Given that the martyrs started and grew without any bombs, and being bombed from the air did in fact slowly help make terrorism very unpalatable in thsoe areas, your point seems to be blind ideological scat.
He’s not a “terrorist” because of the old principle that “terrorist is what the big army calls the little army.” If some little force was in the habit of acting like Bush; bombing people and kidnapping them for torture while making speeches about their own righteousness and how God was on their side, I guarantee we’d call them terrorists. As long as they politically opposed us, that is.
No, because Nazis and Confederates had entire armies, a government, and an infrastructure to support them. Not a few camps, arms caches and an underground organization. Entirely different things. As for refusing to surrender; they’ll get hungry sooner or later.
What “areas” are you talking about? So far our bombings have made terrorism more popular if anything. And we’ve created plenty of terrorists and "insurgents where there were none before.
Oh? The monsters invading Irw have largely given up, if not totally. Afganis were the ones who really suffered from bombing, but they have not turned to terrorism In fact, they are arguably the most aggressively against it. The closest thing you can possibly show for this thesis is in Pakistan, but we began bombing there only after the Taliban fled to terrorize Pakistani peoples with their base of Pashtun murderers.