"Strategic Hamlets" Didn't Work in Vietnam; Why Do It in Afghanistan?

[XT]

@Dick Dastardly

There’s no logistical reason that we can’t leave Afghanistan. We can leave just like we’re going to in Iraq.

I didn’t say there were logistical reasons which makes it impossible to leave…it would just take time to pull ourselves out. It wasn’t the main focus of my answer to you regardless.

We don’t have enough troops to do anything effective there and the troops we do have are inflaming the situation both there and across the border in Pakistan.

I presume this is why Obama et al are requesting 40k more troops. As for inflaming the situation…well, yeah. It’s a war after all. When you put troops in the field they tend to butt heads and situations get inflamed. We don’t want them there…they want to be there.

There is zero prospect of long-term success by using military force, bribing sections of the Taliban not to kill us, counterinsurgency or any of the tactics currently under consideration, even the people who advocate them implicitly accept that.

By use of military force alone? True, I doubt many serious experts are claiming that military force alone will win the day. But it’s a strawman, since we aren’t just using military force. We have myriad other irons in the fire. If you are saying that there is zero prospect of long-term peace give all of that, then it’s hard for me to take you seriously…you sound like the folks a few years ago saying the same things about Iraq. I would concede that the probability (at this time in Afghanistan) is low…but zero?

There’d actually be a lot less radicalism if we pulled the troops out.

What do you base this assertion on? When the Taliban were fighting for and had achieved control in Afghanistan in the post Soviet years they were MORE radical, and the bloodshed was actually worse, especially as the Taliban were trying to gain control. So, why would us cutting and running calm the situation down to any degree?

It’s pointless trying to deal with Afghanistan when AQ have a safe haven of thousands of square miles in Pakistan.

It’s not pointless. AQ is not the sole reason we are there anymore. The point NOW is to ensure that a highly fanatical and fundamentalist regime who has spread it’s insurgency into other regional countries never gets a firm grasp of power again in Afghanistan. If they DO, then it would be bad for everyone…bad for the Afghani’s, bad for the Pakistani’s, bad for the other countries in the region. Getting back to AQ, it would be bad because AQ would have an open base and a nation states direct and open support. Both factors could be used as a wedge to drive apart Pakistan and spread the infection deeper into that country…and, last time I checked, THEY have a few nuclear weapons. We REALLY don’t want the Taliban gaining a major foothold in Pakistan. Nor do we want to hand them a victory by cutting and running. I can’t begin to explain what that would do politically for the Taliban’s (and AQ’s) stock in the region with ‘Arab Street’.

Let me put it this way though, since you were unconvinced by my earlier post: Why do YOU think Obama and the Dems aren’t pushing to get us the hell out of Afghanistan? If there are ‘no logical’ reasons and ‘zero prospect of long-term success’, why are they talking about troop increases, instead of full out exit strategies? You can’t believe that they LIKE this war that was dumped on them by the Pubs, so there must be some reason they are now pushing it forward, no?

-XT

[Dick_Dastardly]

@xtisme

1. I didn’t say there were logistical reasons which makes it impossible to leave…it would just take time to pull ourselves out. It wasn’t the main focus of my answer to you regardless.

2.I presume this is why Obama et al are requesting 40k more troops. As for inflaming the situation…well, yeah. It’s a war after all. When you put troops in the field they tend to butt heads and situations get inflamed. We don’t want them there…they want to be there.

3. By use of military force alone? True, I doubt many serious experts are claiming that military force alone will win the day. But it’s a strawman, since we aren’t just using military force. We have myriad other irons in the fire. If you are saying that there is zero prospect of long-term peace give all of that, then it’s hard for me to take you seriously…you sound like the folks a few years ago saying the same things about Iraq. I would concede that the probability (at this time in Afghanistan) is low…but zero?

4.What do you base this assertion on? When the Taliban were fighting for and had achieved control in Afghanistan in the post Soviet years they were MORE radical, and the bloodshed was actually worse, especially as the Taliban were trying to gain control. So, why would us cutting and running calm the situation down to any degree?

5.It’s not pointless. AQ is not the sole reason we are there anymore. The point NOW is to ensure that a highly fanatical and fundamentalist regime who has spread it’s insurgency into other regional countries never gets a firm grasp of power again in Afghanistan. If they DO, then it would be bad for everyone…bad for the Afghani’s, bad for the Pakistani’s, bad for the other countries in the region. Getting back to AQ, it would be bad because AQ would have an open base and a nation states direct and open support. Both factors could be used as a wedge to drive apart Pakistan and spread the infection deeper into that country…and, last time I checked, THEY have a few nuclear weapons. We REALLY don’t want the Taliban gaining a major foothold in Pakistan. Nor do we want to hand them a victory by cutting and running. I can’t begin to explain what that would do politically for the Taliban’s (and AQ’s) stock in the region with ‘Arab Street’.

6.Let me put it this way though, since you were unconvinced by my earlier post: Why do YOU think Obama and the Dems aren’t pushing to get us the hell out of Afghanistan? If there are ‘no logical’ reasons and ‘zero prospect of long-term success’, why are they talking about troop increases, instead of full out exit strategies? You can’t believe that they LIKE this war that was dumped on them by the Pubs, so there must be some reason they are now pushing it forward, no?

-XT

1. OK, no reason we can’t pull out here.

2. Obama is going to send more troops so that the GOP can’t make him out to be a liberal weenie in 2012. Whether he’ll keep them there if he gets reelected is another thing. We agree that having the military there inflames the situation, excellent. The troops don’t want to be there, they just want to get home alive.

3. Whether we’re doing other things than using military power is irrelevant. We need military power there to do anything else and as we already agreed the military presence makes the situation worse. There is zero prospect of long-term peace there because Afghanistan will always be kept unstable as its neighbours play out their proxy wars there. Pakistan are never going to let a non-Pashtuni government make alliances with India, India and Iran are never going to allow a pro-Pakistani/Sunni government to dominate. Solve the Kashmir problem and allow the Pushtunis to renegotiate the Durand line into something they like with the Afghan/Pakistani governments and you can think about fixing Afghanistan, but these are two of the world’s most intractable disputes so zero long-term chance is the situation. Peace is only currently possible in Iraq because we agreed to leave, otherwise we’d still be fighting a Sunni insurgency.

4. If a Muslim superpower invaded Texas, militarily occupied the country, installed their system of government and used military force for eight years to keep it in power how do you think people would react in Texas? Would they hold more radical views of Muslims or the Muslim superpower than they did before the invasion.

5. How could it be substantially worse than the current situation? The worries about the Taliban taking over in Pakistan are ridiculous and an illustration of the bs we’re being fed over Afghanistan. The Taliban are a useful guerilla force on their home turf but if they were to jump in their pickuptrucks and drive across the border into Pakistan to face the Pakistani army, the world’s fifth largest, armed with F-16s, US tanks and billions of dollars of US military hardware, I think we know who’d win. Look how well the Taliban did against the Pakistani army recently in Swat. And we cut and ran in Iraq after first putting AQ people on the payroll so they’d stop killing us. We managed to handle that propaganda victory, we could handle another one. You don’t think every time we blow up civilians in Afghanistan and remain occupying the country it isn’t a propaganda victory?

6. There’s no real difference between Obama and Bush on Iraq. If Obama gets reelected he’ll probably withdraw though.