Re: President Obama To Announce Details of Afghanistan Strategy On Wednesday
The flaw in this analogy is that when you make the payments, you are getting closer to an actual goal (i.e. paying off the debt). Whereas we don't have ANY clear objectives in Afghanistan,
this is incorrect. the endstate in Afghanistan is simple to state and merely complicated to accomplish - an Afghan state chosen by it's people capable of defending itself against Islamist attacks from the Taliban and like/allied elements, such as the Haqqani Network.
and the situation on the ground is terrible.
this is also incorrect. the situation on the ground is entirely dependent on locality - in the areas' where we have applied a proven counterinsurgency strategy (commonly called "the Surge", after the manpower it requires), the turnarounds have been dramatic in some areas, and amazing in others.
Furthermore, we have no way of knowing whether we're on our "last payment," if we have 100 to go, or if it will never be accomplished
on the contrary, trend analysis, local measurements of state improvement, and step/tests for military and police professionalization all provide strong metrics that indicate nearness to the goal.
And Dick Cheney exhausted my tolerance for "The insurgency is in its last throes" type of arguments, when the situation on the ground suggests nothing of the kind.
:shrug: again, it depends on where you are. It also depends
when you are - this foolish withdraw plan that has us pulling troops out in the middle of the fighting season literally
forces the enemy to accept victory.
as for the facts on the ground, however, they do not indicate
at large an insurgency in its' death throes - though in some places that is an accurate depiction. However, when we are speaking of the areas into which the Taliban ran free and into which we surged, we can speak of a general tipping point that has been passed wherein the insurgency is
losing. Losing freedom of movement, losing his ability to conduct effective M&I campaigns, etc.
the only thing he's
not losing is he's not losing the populace's active advantage to the Americans. Because we have a commander in chief stupid enough to put out a withdrawal date. Which means that every Afghan Peasant knows that if he sides with the Americans, in two years, they will abandon him and he will be murdered along with his family by an enemy that the American President was too weak to defeat. In order to win active support of the populace (which is the final Big Piece in a counterinsurgency campaign), you have to convince them that you are the winning side. We have the
ability to do that, and we did that in Iraq. But apparently we don't
want to do that in Afghanistan, because that might piss off our liberal
base, and so instead we will take a course that guarantees that the Afghan civilian populace will largely try to sit this one out. They don't wish to side with the Taliban; not just because they are wildly unpopular, but because wherever Americans are, we are winning - and they don't want to side with Americans, because the Americans have already announced that they intend to lose.
Doubling down on a mistake rarely pays off.
invading Afghanistan will only prove to have been a mistake if we decide to lose.
It's been ten years. What ever our original goals in Afghanistan were, they've either been accomplished or proven to be impossible to accomplish
this is incorrect. A proper Counterinsurgency Doctrine has only been in effect in Afghanistan for a little over a year - and it has had exceedingly positive results.
And we don't "owe" anything to dead people - they don't care
quite the contrary, we owe them quite a bit. that they cannot personally receive does not make our debt any less.
Nor do we owe it to our posterity
we do here as well. the American decision to lose in Vietnam immeasurably harmed this nation - and we were more able to accept the blow then. currently such an effect would be magnified. the decision on our part to withdraw will be a decision to leave an entire populace to the tender mercies of hyper-violent, xenophobic, murderous Islamist Fundamentalists. We will be choosing to abandon the innocent to the murderer and rapist. We will be choosing to let pscyhos pour acid on little girls faces for the crime of wishing to know how to read, or listen to music. We owe it to posterity not to be the kind of people who would do that.
as Afghanistan will completely fall off the international news radar screen the day we withdraw.
:lol: well, if its not on CNN who cares, right? ****it!
As for owing it to the Afghans...I suppose this is a variant on Colin Powell's "You broke it, you buy it" argument
:shrug: we did. we invaded that nation, and set her people at war against the Taliban. If we abandon her to the Taliban now, their revenge upon that populace will be blood-curdling - and not a little bit of that blood
will be on our hands.
And if we are concerned for their wellbeing, let's help them through methods that are more cost-effective and less controversial, like assisting them with basic health care and finally eradicating polio.
awesome idea. and how do you plan to pull this off when the doctors you send are kidnapped and have their throats slit by a pscyhotic paranoid Islamist government? Hey, while we're at it, guns hurt people - let's train our soldiers to attack the Taliban with
hugs.
Healthcare, sanitation, better farming methodology, education; all these are important - and all of them are part of our long term strategy. But Security Comes First Or The Rest Will Come Not At All.
A superior policy would entail a goal with some strategic justification
already in place, even if our administration seems unwilling to actually wholeheartedly
pursue it.
and progress toward accomplishing that goal
already being achieved.
I see no goal whatsoever, and little progress toward much of anything that could even be considered a goal.
well it's not our fault if you're not paying attention.
let's shoot.