DescentBB

So just like that worthless war in Vietnam, after dragging on, the politicians decided to enter into talks with the NVA with the results we utterly lost the war and wasted 50,000 troops in the process. So fast forward to now and it seems we are entering into peace talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Sadly I can see a repeat of Vietnam where the Taliban will ultimately take over and return the country to pre-9/11 dismalness. I recommend not investing in barbershops over there:

http://www.france24.com/en/20130618-usa ... stan-obama

So you think we could have won the Vietnam War if we'd just thrown more money and soldiers at it? Not very damn likely. We were the invaders and they knew the land, we didn't. They were determined to win, we weren't. It was a losing proposition the moment we put our "advisers" into the country. Our country eventually became tired of the long slog and the needless deaths of our young soldiers, most who were quickly drafted against their will to die for their country, but weren't yet old enough to even vote against the politicians that put them into war in the first place. There is a limit to everything eventually and it all comes down to diminishing returns and beating one's head against a wall. Bush blew the one chance we had to really win in Afghanistan, but he got sidetracked with his little Iraq sideshow, split our resources and tried to win by being lean and mean, standing back, and farming the rest out to the locals. Too late woody. We lost the initiative and the gains we had. We have to nuke both Afghanistan AND Pakistan to clean out the Taliban now.

tunnelcat wrote:So you think we could have won the Vietnam War if we'd just thrown more money and soldiers at it? Not very damn likely. We were the invaders and they knew the land, we didn't. They were determined to win, we weren't. It was a losing proposition the moment we put our "advisers" into the country. Our country eventually became tired of the long slog and the needless deaths of our young soldiers, most who were quickly drafted against their will to die for their country, but weren't yet old enough to even vote against the politicians that put them into war in the first place. There is a limit to everything eventually and it all comes down to diminishing returns and beating one's head against a wall. Bush blew the one chance we had to really win in Afghanistan, but he got sidetracked with his little Iraq sideshow, split our resources and tried to win by being lean and mean, standing back, and farming the rest out to the locals. Too late woody. We lost the initiative and the gains we had. We have to nuke both Afghanistan AND Pakistan to clean out the Taliban now.

Al Queda has always been in Pakistan. It was born in Peshawar.
It is wrong to suggest that Afghanastan ever was the sole, or even primary, location of the enemy that caused us to go there. The Taliban were simply the fundamentalist ruling faction that gave some members of al Queda sanctuary. Bin Ladin infiltrated Pakistani secret service and Taliban councils so he might be tipped off if either faction were to try to turn him over to the CIA.

You are just trying to simplify and spin the reality into a scenario the makes all our involvement there a case of a Bush failure and insulate Obama from any responsibility for his 5 years of ownership of the situation.
Why do you insist on rewriting reality to support the democrat rhetoric? Has that tactic ever produced a quality outcome for you and your fellow Americans other than politicians?
Then why do it?

Will Robinson wrote:Al Queda has always been in Pakistan. It was born in Peshawar.

really? When the early principals were Saudis and Egyptians? Not sure you have that right.

It is wrong to suggest that Afghanastan ever was the sole, or even primary, location of the enemy that caused us to go there. The Taliban were simply the fundamentalist ruling faction that gave some members of al Queda sanctuary. Bin Ladin infiltrated Pakistani secret service and Taliban councils so he might be tipped off if either faction were to try to turn him over to the CIA.

sorry, but incorrect for sure on that one. The Pakistani secret service created the Taliban, and the Afghan Taliban were basically bought off for allowing Bin Laden to hide out in their auspicious geography.

You are just trying to simplify and spin the reality into a scenario the makes all our involvement there a case of a Bush failure and insulate Obama from any responsibility for his 5 years of ownership of the situation.

I don't see where you can read that from the post. Plus, the reality is that one of the core foreign policy items that Obama won on in 2008 was that he would wind down Afghanistan and exit Iraq on time. He is merely doing what he was elected to do.

Why do you insist on rewriting reality to support the democrat rhetoric? Has that tactic ever produced a quality outcome for you and your fellow Americans other than politicians?

do you own a mirror? If so, go stand in front of it and read that last bit to yourself.......yeesh!

Then why do it?

indeed.

Will Robinson wrote:Al Queda has always been in Pakistan. It was born in Peshawar.
It is wrong to suggest that Afghanastan ever was the sole, or even primary, location of the enemy that caused us to go there. The Taliban were simply the fundamentalist ruling faction that gave some members of al Queda sanctuary. Bin Ladin infiltrated Pakistani secret service and Taliban councils so he might be tipped off if either faction were to try to turn him over to the CIA.

You are just trying to simplify and spin the reality into a scenario the makes all our involvement there a case of a Bush failure and insulate Obama from any responsibility for his 5 years of ownership of the situation.
Why do you insist on rewriting reality to support the democrat rhetoric? Has that tactic ever produced a quality outcome for you and your fellow Americans other than politicians?
Then why do it?

I'm not absolving Obama from any of this mess. He stayed in Afghanistan far longer than he should have and let the numbers of our dead and maimed climb even higher, for nothing but the creation of a corrupt Afghanistan government and trained police force that is supposed to be "friendly", that tend shoot our troops in the back at any turn. Some ally they are. So he's failed on that count too, although he did promise to get us out, which is a promise he appears to be trying to keep, albeit far longer than it should have taken.

However, Bush's failure at Tora Bora was the nail in our offensive coffin, not that we really had any chance of winning over there anyway. The Russians learned that the hard way. No one has conquered Afghanistan that's tried. Besides, the main reason we went to Afghanistan was to get Bin Laden, not conquer the Taliban. Bush and his cronies failed, then took his eyes off the ball and never bothered to put an effort into it. He wanted Saddam, he didn't care about Bin Laden. Once we were in there, the Al Qaeda boogeyman kept us there, just like the commie boogeyman did in Vietnam. History is history and it tends to repeat itself. Same old, same old. I'm not rewriting it, unlike our former president is trying to do with his "interactive library".

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/the-battle-tora-bora

Yes, Pakistan is home of Al Qaeda. How do you propose we root them out of a country that doesn't want us in there? Drone strikes aren't garnering any friendly reactions in that country either, because we seem to kill a lot of innocent civilians. Nice. Kinda sounds like Vietnam all over again.

callmeslick wrote:

Will Robinson wrote:Al Queda has always been in Pakistan. It was born in Peshawar.

really? When the early principals were Saudis and Egyptians? Not sure you have that right.

The early principles were based out of Peshawar, yes they were primarily Saudis. They staged fund raising there, they received and sent out young middle eastern boys who would go tag along with mujahideen to take here try at fighting Soviets. Where american kids would hit Miami beach for spring break, some Arabs were playing at being hard ass muslims fighting the Soviets. Many of them were poseurs and adrenalin junkies, like people drawn to Pamplona for a running with the bulls. The afghanis thought little of them because they couldn't see soft Arabs making it in their mountains but the Arabs brought the most money to give the mujahideen second only to the CIA. Bin Ladin was one of the poseurs who only fought in one dangerous encounter and many where they took pot shots from a distance andthen back to Peshawar to drink and brag...
Yes, drink alcohol. The Arab contingent set up dual apartments one for debauchery and one set up quite sparse for when the rich Arab donors would come to visit to see that their money was being put to good use killing infidels.

al Queda was conceived by bin Ladin, who had worked his way up the ladder from poseur to devotee, when he stood on a Pakistani mountain side at the end of Soviet and US involvement in the war for Afghanistan and tried to convince his leader/mentor that they should take the fight home to Saudi Arabia and other middle eastern states to rid their homelands of the moderate Muslims in charge there. Like the Saudi Royal family.
His mentor told them to 'go home, the war is over, go enjoy you victory and be good happy Muslims'.
Bin Ladin is suspected to be the one who killed that man and his son later that night as they left to go home. He did so to be able to keep the fight alive.

I know a thing or two about this stuff slick.

Go read Perfect Soldiers by Terry McDermott it is a great introduction to the whole thing and you will understand much that you likely dont right now. its a lot of insight to be had for such a quick read.

*sigh*

It wasn't a "war". If it had been, we would have used War time tactics and we probably would have won. Or at least escaped with our dignity. As it was, the conflict was a "policing Action" and thus certain rules of engagement applied. ...like taking ground and retreating...again and again and again..

What we have in Afghanistan is a bit different. Yes it's long and drawn out. Have you ever heard the quote: "Afghanistan is where empires go to die..." so. no big surprises here.

Plus we aren't systematically deforesting Afghanistan with DDT.

tunnelcat wrote:...
Yes, Pakistan is home of Al Qaeda. How do you propose we root them out of a country that doesn't want us in there? Drone strikes aren't garnering any friendly reactions in that country either, because we seem to kill a lot of innocent civilians. Nice. Kinda sounds like Vietnam all over again.

I don't propose we try to remove them and never did.
I proposed we get the heck out of Afghanastan as soon as we realized we had no clue where bin Ladin was. He was probably in Pakistan a whole lot earlier than anyone wants to admit. I certainly don't think we have anything to gain from being there for a single American death after we did find bin Ladin in Pakistan.

I only supported staying in Iraq after we found out the WMD's were spent or removed because there was a faction in Bush's cabinet that wanted to build a 'Super Base' in northern Iraq under the public guise that we were protecting the Kurds and by extension keeping Turkey from going to war....
We could have retreated behind the perimeter of that base and left Sadams army intact to pickup where he left off keeping the Shia minority in charge which would have kept the Iraqi military boot on the sunni's necks.

Of course secretly it was going to be a great way to cut off Iranian ground troops and supply chains to Syria and Lebbanon. It would have been a great place to have a powerful force on hand ready to launch operations into any number of trouble zones, etc etc. as well as an overall strategic advantage for decades to come.

Occupation and drawn out operations are not productive towards our goals and attempting to make friends among crazies is foolish.
Managing a hostile threat like they present doesn't require rubbing shoulders with them. You just need to be able to stomp on them quickly if some of them start to get out of the cage or sweep in quickly to take apart systems that they build that make them too dangerous to the world outside.

I'd have named the base Firetower One.

Will Robinson wrote:I don't propose we try to remove them and never did.
I proposed we get the heck out of Afghanastan as soon as we realized we had no clue where bin Ladin was. He was probably in Pakistan a whole lot earlier than anyone wants to admit. I certainly don't think we have anything to gain from being there for a single American death after we did find bin Ladin in Pakistan.

Well, you definitely have to blame Bush for that fiasco. He left it instead for the next guy to deal with. Same with Vietnam. It wasn't winnable, no matter what we threw at it, so each president kept pawning off the mess for the next guy in line. But at least Obama did find and kill Bin Ladin in Pakistan, not that they're happy about us doing an end around run to get at him.

Will Robinson wrote:I only supported staying in Iraq after we found out the WMD's were spent or removed because there was a faction in Bush's cabinet that wanted to build a 'Super Base' in northern Iraq under the public guise that we were protecting the Kurds and by extension keeping Turkey from going to war....
We could have retreated behind the perimeter of that base and left Sadams army intact to pickup where he left off keeping the Shia minority in charge which would have kept the Iraqi military boot on the sunni's necks.

Of course secretly it was going to be a great way to cut off Iranian ground troops and supply chains to Syria and Lebbanon. It would have been a great place to have a powerful force on hand ready to launch operations into any number of trouble zones, etc etc. as well as an overall strategic advantage for decades to come.

Occupation and drawn out operations are not productive towards our goals and attempting to make friends among crazies is foolish.
Managing a hostile threat like they present doesn't require rubbing shoulders with them. You just need to be able to stomp on them quickly if some of them start to get out of the cage or sweep in quickly to take apart systems that they build that make them too dangerous to the world outside.

I'd have named the base Firetower One.

Good for us, not so good for the Iraqis. So we play the bully to protect our interests, but is that a good thing if we want to be an ally and not an invader? Put yourself in the shoes of the Iraqis. How would you feel if a superpower invaded your country, destabilized everything, destroyed the infrastructure, started a faction war that had been kept suppressed by the iron thumb of the previous leader and then left a huge wart of a military base behind from which to strike at you whenever they chose? Wouldn't you feel a little pissed off? It wouldn't work in the long term. Too much bad blood left over from the first Gulf War. For example, if China invaded our country, made a huge mess while doing it and left behind some big military bases to keep us at bay, we'd sure be pissed off enough to keep harassing them as long as we could. I certainly would.