You know its really sad when, here we are in the middle of a war that we are losing, and our president cant even make a decision on how to handle it. I mean is it really so hard? We have outposts in Afghanistan that are poorly maned because we lack the personnel to do that job. So his options are a) send the 40k troops that Gen. McChrystal says he needs or b) quit wasting our troops lives and bring them home. That's it. It doesn't take more than 2 months of debates to make that decision. Its cut and dry: give us what we need or bring us home. If Obama wants us to continue to fight in Afghanistan then he needs to start listening to his military ad visors, not blowing them off and listing to half-ass plans of idiots like his VP Joe Biden. Honestly how anyone can doubt that man's low IQ is beyond me. His purposed this "ingenious" strategy of ignoring the Taliban and focus solely on Al-Qaeda. All that shows is his lack of military knowledge. If the Taliban are actively attacking us, IE shooting their AKs, firing rpgs and launching mortars, then we cant simply "ignore" them. Its kinda of impossible to ignore 400 men storming your position with the intention of killing you. Well I guess you could, up until they execute you for the camera. So no Mr. Biden ignoring is out. Not going to work, I'm sorry I'm not one of your "yes men" senators that have your back. There's enough Yes Men out there, we need some naysayers.
It comes down to: How much am I willing to commit, and if I can't contribute what the commander needs, do I have to change my objective? It happens time and time again with senior military commanders and civilian leaders. The civilians know what they want to accomplish, that's the easy part. But what they all seem to have issues with are when they're told by the military, "Ok this is what you want us to do, well here's the assessets we need to do it." A lot of the times that's where the problem lies. Obama wants to defeat or reconceliate the Taliban back into the general population, but what he doesn't realize is while Afghanistan isn't very large it's mountainous, rough terrain makes it much harder to secure than a flat landscape, like say Iraq, would be covering the same area. So when the General says he needs 40thousand more troops, that's not a guess, not an inflated number, its an exact number that he feels he needs. And if anyone out there is following events like I do they'll realize he's right. Just this past week we had a poorly maned out post (maybe 50 troops tops, some night shift some day so that's means roughly 25 per shift) very nearly get annihilated by more than 300 Taliban who assaulted their position, taking out our heavy machine guns first then very nearly defeating the defenders. In a battle that lasted several hours the troops finally managed to push them off. Its a battle that shouldn't of happened, wouldst of if they had the proper number of personnel to man the post, conduct patrols, and had supporting elements like air power and artillery at their disposal.
One quote from Gen. McChrystal states: It took us longer than I wish it had to recognise this is a serious insurgency. We have under-resourced our operations. In some areas we have not performed, he said. The situation is serious, and I choose that word very, very carefully. When your commander in the region says something to this affect you need to sit up and pay attention, quit paying politics with Congress, and start listening to the men who are risking everything over there. They are the ones who have the most to loose, not some politician.
Whats really sad is MCChrystal is so desperate to help his men out that he seems to accepted that Obama lacks the leadership skills to make the hard decisions necessary, and has turned directly to our allies the Brits, and NATO for help, effectively cutting Obama out. Like he's serving a purpose anyways dragging his heels. Angela Merkels recent election victory has raised hopes that the Germans can be persuaded to bolster their contribution. How useful the soldiers would be is another matter. NATO officials report that the German contingent based in northern Afghanistan have been traumatised by their recent experiences in Kunduz, where they suffered their first battlefield fatality since the Second World War, and doubt they have the mental strength to constitute an effective combat force. Now that's pathetic, first death in over 50 years and all ready traumatized. The French, meanwhile, continue to fall well short of President Nicolas Sarkozys repeated pledges to the Obama administration about making a major contribution. They are more than capable of deploying a division-strength force of up to 10,000 men, but have only managed to provide 3,000. What do you expect honestly? Its the French. Add to this the Obama administrations reluctance to approve Gen McChrystals request for extra forces and it is easy to see how the Taliban might conclude that the West has no real heart for the fight, and will soon be ordering its troops to pack their bags. Gen McChrystal has given warning that the Afghan campaign is not going well. But it is sobering to think that, unless there is a radical change in the attitude of Western leaders, things might well get a lot worse.
Then again you can't really blame the Brits for being reluctant. According to the London Times: David Miliband urged President Obama to embrace a renewed hearts and minds strategy in Afghanistan as ministers indicated that they would not send more British troops unless the US adopted such an approach. The Foreign Secretary did not mention America by name but called on every government in the coalition to back troops, aid workers and diplomats in support of a clear plan. We came into this together. We see it through together, he told the Labour conference in Brighton. His words reflect a growing concern in the Government over Mr Obamas apparent reluctance to garner political consent for a troop surge, which commanders say is needed to build up the Afghan Army and defeat the Taliban insurgency. General Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, wants a revamped counter-insurgency more forces on the ground engaging civilians and persuading the Taliban to switch sides as opposed to a counter-terrorism strategy focused on Al-Qaeda reducing troop numbers and attacking militants mostly with drone missile strikes.
But the problem with the "hearts and minds" approach in Afghanistan is its not necessarily going to work as well as it did in Iraq. In Iraq the people we're fairly educated, only had a few major groups at each other's throats (Jaish al-Mahdi (JAM), takfiri, Al-Queda, and Kurds were the major players) and eventually Al-Queda worked against their own goals but allying the other groups together, effectively turning the whole country against themselves.
However Afghanistan is a whole different beast from Iraq. Instead of a few major players they are broke up into incalculable numbers of small clans that have deep rooted hatred and mistrust of each other, often culminating into very dangerous blood feuds dating back 80 years ago. On top of that the Taliban feared educating its people, because history has proven time and time again: an educated oppressed people are much harder to subdue. And its still favoring them now: Some of the people there are so out of touch with the world that they thought we were the SOVIETS when we first make contact with them. Most don't know who we are or care, we aren't one of them, so we need to be killed. And to really complicate matters the bulk of the US backed government is corrupt to its core. Just look at these past elections and you'll see what I mean there.
I'm not a Hawk, who glorifies war in spite of my military background. I do believe some fights need to be fought, and at this point its our responsibility to fix our mistakes in Afghanistan, after all we cant out-st a government then leave the people there to kill each other in a civil war, but if our president isnt willing to commit more troops then he needs to start working on withdrawing our personnel. Its time to put-up or shut-up. He cant stand around "debating" on this forever. While he sits comfortably in the White House, recouping from his recent vacation, there are people over seas dieing for him.
It comes down to: How much am I willing to commit, and if I can't contribute what the commander needs, do I have to change my objective? It happens time and time again with senior military commanders and civilian leaders. The civilians know what they want to accomplish, that's the easy part. But what they all seem to have issues with are when they're told by the military, "Ok this is what you want us to do, well here's the assessets we need to do it." A lot of the times that's where the problem lies. Obama wants to defeat or reconceliate the Taliban back into the general population, but what he doesn't realize is while Afghanistan isn't very large it's mountainous, rough terrain makes it much harder to secure than a flat landscape, like say Iraq, would be covering the same area. So when the General says he needs 40thousand more troops, that's not a guess, not an inflated number, its an exact number that he feels he needs. And if anyone out there is following events like I do they'll realize he's right. Just this past week we had a poorly maned out post (maybe 50 troops tops, some night shift some day so that's means roughly 25 per shift) very nearly get annihilated by more than 300 Taliban who assaulted their position, taking out our heavy machine guns first then very nearly defeating the defenders. In a battle that lasted several hours the troops finally managed to push them off. Its a battle that shouldn't of happened, wouldst of if they had the proper number of personnel to man the post, conduct patrols, and had supporting elements like air power and artillery at their disposal.
One quote from Gen. McChrystal states: It took us longer than I wish it had to recognise this is a serious insurgency. We have under-resourced our operations. In some areas we have not performed, he said. The situation is serious, and I choose that word very, very carefully. When your commander in the region says something to this affect you need to sit up and pay attention, quit paying politics with Congress, and start listening to the men who are risking everything over there. They are the ones who have the most to loose, not some politician.
Whats really sad is MCChrystal is so desperate to help his men out that he seems to accepted that Obama lacks the leadership skills to make the hard decisions necessary, and has turned directly to our allies the Brits, and NATO for help, effectively cutting Obama out. Like he's serving a purpose anyways dragging his heels. Angela Merkels recent election victory has raised hopes that the Germans can be persuaded to bolster their contribution. How useful the soldiers would be is another matter. NATO officials report that the German contingent based in northern Afghanistan have been traumatised by their recent experiences in Kunduz, where they suffered their first battlefield fatality since the Second World War, and doubt they have the mental strength to constitute an effective combat force. Now that's pathetic, first death in over 50 years and all ready traumatized. The French, meanwhile, continue to fall well short of President Nicolas Sarkozys repeated pledges to the Obama administration about making a major contribution. They are more than capable of deploying a division-strength force of up to 10,000 men, but have only managed to provide 3,000. What do you expect honestly? Its the French. Add to this the Obama administrations reluctance to approve Gen McChrystals request for extra forces and it is easy to see how the Taliban might conclude that the West has no real heart for the fight, and will soon be ordering its troops to pack their bags. Gen McChrystal has given warning that the Afghan campaign is not going well. But it is sobering to think that, unless there is a radical change in the attitude of Western leaders, things might well get a lot worse.
Then again you can't really blame the Brits for being reluctant. According to the London Times: David Miliband urged President Obama to embrace a renewed hearts and minds strategy in Afghanistan as ministers indicated that they would not send more British troops unless the US adopted such an approach. The Foreign Secretary did not mention America by name but called on every government in the coalition to back troops, aid workers and diplomats in support of a clear plan. We came into this together. We see it through together, he told the Labour conference in Brighton. His words reflect a growing concern in the Government over Mr Obamas apparent reluctance to garner political consent for a troop surge, which commanders say is needed to build up the Afghan Army and defeat the Taliban insurgency. General Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, wants a revamped counter-insurgency more forces on the ground engaging civilians and persuading the Taliban to switch sides as opposed to a counter-terrorism strategy focused on Al-Qaeda reducing troop numbers and attacking militants mostly with drone missile strikes.
But the problem with the "hearts and minds" approach in Afghanistan is its not necessarily going to work as well as it did in Iraq. In Iraq the people we're fairly educated, only had a few major groups at each other's throats (Jaish al-Mahdi (JAM), takfiri, Al-Queda, and Kurds were the major players) and eventually Al-Queda worked against their own goals but allying the other groups together, effectively turning the whole country against themselves.
However Afghanistan is a whole different beast from Iraq. Instead of a few major players they are broke up into incalculable numbers of small clans that have deep rooted hatred and mistrust of each other, often culminating into very dangerous blood feuds dating back 80 years ago. On top of that the Taliban feared educating its people, because history has proven time and time again: an educated oppressed people are much harder to subdue. And its still favoring them now: Some of the people there are so out of touch with the world that they thought we were the SOVIETS when we first make contact with them. Most don't know who we are or care, we aren't one of them, so we need to be killed. And to really complicate matters the bulk of the US backed government is corrupt to its core. Just look at these past elections and you'll see what I mean there.
I'm not a Hawk, who glorifies war in spite of my military background. I do believe some fights need to be fought, and at this point its our responsibility to fix our mistakes in Afghanistan, after all we cant out-st a government then leave the people there to kill each other in a civil war, but if our president isnt willing to commit more troops then he needs to start working on withdrawing our personnel. Its time to put-up or shut-up. He cant stand around "debating" on this forever. While he sits comfortably in the White House, recouping from his recent vacation, there are people over seas dieing for him.
Politics aside (cause I really don't understand them all), Hang in there! Write, say & think as you wish and don't shy away from discussing and digging deeper.
Good luck!