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Do you support Obama in continuing the Afghanistan war?

Do you support Obama's continuation of the war in Afghanistan?


  • Total voters
    38
If the U.S. doesn't police the world who will.... then U.N? :lamo
 
There's a reason the Russians went bankrupt trying to "tame" Afghanistan. We're on the same well-worn path. ....

No...we are not. The Russians had something in common with every invader going back to Alexander. They were all there to conquer and absorb. America is not there to conquer. America had made some initial mistakes that the others made. But we recognize that a Pashtun government that respects the soveriegnty of the local tribes within is not only the past, but the future. Unlike the Russians, we are working to create a police force and a military force and we are injecting the seeds for success. Along the way, our programs include replacing the poppy fields with agriculture. We have also began a program that will give the government generate revenue fromits huge natural gas deposits recently discovered. None of this suggests the "same well-worn path."

.....It's a bitter taste in my mouth, since I had such high hopes of freeing them from the Taliban's oppression. But we made too many mistakes early on, and the opportunity was squandered. It's over.


No....it is not. The programs that the Marine Corps has been tasked with over the last year has produced huge strides towards making this government stronger. Our achievements have been far more drastic than what had been seen before. The ANSF and the ANAF are responding and becoming more aggressive intheir responses to stampout their corruptions. After another couple years of the current trend, it will be "over."

And for all you "get them back" crusaders, remember that this was the half witted slogan of the left in regards to Iraq too. Had we just "gotten them out" earlier on, Iraq would not be on the road to recovery today serving as an example for the rest. And all those troops that they "got out" wouldsimply be headed back to deal with a bigger problem. You want the troops to be out of danger? Get the hell out of their way and let them do the job you wanted before you realized that it would cost lives and money.
 
As someone in Afghanistan I totally support the War and say we stay in until we finish the job.

I'll be in Leatherneck in April. My team is headed more west there after.
 
I'll be in Leatherneck in April. My team is headed more west there after.

Ohhrah MSgt. I still be here then at the MWD compound.
 
According to Obama's National Security Council, our current purpose in Afghanistan is to degrade the Taliban rather than defeat them (which is problematic, too costly, and too time consuming). However, I think it is a fool's game as long as sanctuary exists in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Provinces. In addition, we are also in the unenviable position of protecting the extremely corrupt Karzai government.
 
According to Obama's National Security Council, our current purpose in Afghanistan is to degrade the Taliban rather than defeat them (which is problematic, too costly, and too time consuming). However, I think it is a fool's game as long as sanctuary exists in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Provinces. In addition, we are also in the unenviable position of protecting the extremely corrupt Karzai government.

Karzai is temporary. What we are seeing and working on today is mere foundation. The majority of all Afghainstan has no problem with the Pasthun (Pathans) being the government as long as it respects tribal soveriegnty to certain capacities. The ongoing efforts of training and advising ANSF/ANAF is about ensuring that the Pathan government can deliver greater security and support to the tribes than the Pakistan based Tali-Ban. The Tali-Ban's history of abuse and disrespect towards some of these tribes have gone a long way in supporting the effort. Granted, coalition forces have proven to be more useless than useful because of their tendency to hunker down and wait the mission out, but this is why Patreaus has been replacing coalition and U.S. Army trainer teams with Marines. Getting out of Afghanistan means you have to push forward. This is something that coalition forces did not do while we were focusing more on getting Iraq to the other side.
 
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Taliban is on the defensive. They are losing there man power and resources. Example 80% of there IEDS are now found before they can be used. Like MSgt said the ANA/ANP are starting to take the lead and take the fight to the Taliban. We Marines are doing are job we training up the Locals will killing the Taliban.
 
Karzai is temporary. What we are seeing and working on today is mere foundation. The majority of all Afghainstan has no problem with the Pasthun (Pathans) being the government as long as it respects tribal soveriegnty to certain capacities. The ongoing efforts of training and advising ANSF/ANAF is about ensuring that the Pathan government can deliver greater security and support to the tribes than the Pakistan based Tali-Ban. The Tali-Ban's history of abuse and disrespect towards some of these tribes have gone a long way in supporting the effort. Granted, coalition forces have proven to be more useless than useful because of their tendency to hunker down and wait the mission out, but this is why Patreaus has been replacing coalition and U.S. Army trainer teams with Marines. Getting out of Afghanistan means you have to push forward. This is something that coalition forces did not do while we were focusing more on getting Iraq to the other side.

Taliban is on the defensive. They are losing there man power and resources. Example 80% of there IEDS are now found before they can be used. Like MSgt said the ANA/ANP are starting to take the lead and take the fight to the Taliban. We Marines are doing are job we training up the Locals will killing the Taliban.

FABULOUS!!! A+++++!

Being ex-Army, are there any successful BCTs/Army missions in spreading the 4-block war principles to provincial tribes? I thought the Army got pretty capable at counterinsurgency under Petreaus in Iraq.
 
FABULOUS!!! A+++++!

Being ex-Army, are there any successful BCTs/Army missions in spreading the 4-block war principles to provincial tribes? I thought the Army got pretty capable at counterinsurgency under Petreaus in Iraq.

Wouldn't know there in different AOs.
 
Other
We should never have gone into Afghanistan nor Iraq; but , unfortunately, the conservative war hawks won out...
Now that the can of worms is open, what next ?
It has taken thousands of years for Afghanistan to be what it is, and we want to change it in ten years ???
The Russians could do nothing, probably made things worse with their ****-a-mainy ideas....
I think we have done some good over there, to finish up, it may take another hundred years.....And for a very good thing, but who is going to pay us for speeding up civilization in one little part of the world ?
Also, I feel that Islam must at least reform, better yet, die as a religion over there ..
Impossible, of course...
Thus, we must leave....horrible idea.....
Afghanistan is not a true nation anyway, not any more so than North America was during the 1500s...
So, we could officially complete and legitimize a fragmentation of "Afghanistan" and have one section advanced enough to embrace human rights.
The animals can fight over the rest.
 
From a pragmatic point of view, a stable, pro-west democracy would be very beneficial in a resource rich country such as Afghanistan, and could help stabilize the region, and my personal point of view is that the Afghan people deserve a stable democracy. They just need to be left alone, we must learn to respect others and not to meddle...
What they need is a pro-Afghanistan government, which is nearly impossible. Afghanistan is far from being ready for this. They may be where Germany or Italy were in previous centuries.
And a pro-west government is a lousy idea, why should they be "pro-west" ? They should be "pro-themselves".
 
No it's not worth it. It doesn't seem the people there are even interested in a free society, therefor they won't be free. All attempts to enforce such ideals will continue the police state there which doesn't even accomplish the goal of liberation. It's a bottomless pit we can keep throwing cash and lives into. There are reportedly some untapped resources there besides opium... Probably enough for most of us to keep sacrificing so only a few can exploit those resources unfortunately...

How many centuries will pass before we learn that our ideals , no matter how good we may think they are, cannot be forced on others ?
We must learn to respect others. .
As far as o bin laden goes , we should have realized how futile this idea was... Had we studied the Islamics rather than acting so emotionally.
He should spend the rest of his life in a pig sty, but NOT be executed..I have nothing against pigs, maybe wild boars would be better ??
 
<snip>

If that isn't wasn't enough to overcome, Afghanistan is a tribal society. Tribal. Each tribe has its own set of laws, its own council of elders, and they don't give a fat flying fig what some yahoo they've never seen or heard or read about (since few areas have tv, radio or inhabitants able to read) in Kabul. They conduct their tribes as they have always done, except now they've got a bunch of armed foreigners trying to get their loyalty with a pretty please during the day while armed Taliban sweep in by night to chop the hands and/or heads off of anyone who'd been seen talking to NATO soldiers. Add to that the Wikileaks debaucle that had every Afghani who'd ever helped the US in a wild-eyed panic, and nobody is telling our soldiers anything about anything. Complete shut-down, complete stale-mate.

There's a reason the Russians went bankrupt trying to "tame" Afghanistan. We're on the same well-worn path. We cannot change by force a society that has not evolved to the point of being able to change itself. I mean, that's so obvious. We are trying to make them into little mini-USA yeah-democracy clones, when they are a proud, tribal society that wants to live as their fathers lived, and their fathers before them.

<snip>

Nice summary. The point about the disparate tribal cultures is the most salient reason we need to get out of this war now. We are pursuing a fantasy goal of building a lasting brick wall when there is no mortar to hold those bricks together. Afghanistan is what it is and we are not going to transform a thousand years of evolved society.

I disagree with your statement about the Taliban being erasable. We probably could have hit them harder and driven them farther into the recesses. But at some point we would leave and they would resurface/regroup. They had/have an amount of support among many in the country.


Afghanistan is an unwinnable money-pit. Both in terms of blood and treasure...


.
 
America is broke. America is borrowing money from China to participate in an Afghan Civil War. Does that make sense?

Obama has said that Al Qaeda is America's only Muslim enemy. But the US Govt. admits there are fewer than 100 AQ members in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda is no longer a vertically integrated organization. It is now a franchise operation with branches throughout the world, including the USA.

Obama's Director of Counterterrorism testified under oath before a congressional committee that the Saudi Osama bin Laden is no longer the main threat to America. He said that American born and raised Anwar al Awlaki who is based in Yemen is now the main threat.

American soldiers will never receive the time and resources they need to achieve success in their counterinsurrgency strategy because the American people won't give them the ten or so years that such a strategy requires to reach fruition.

It is profoundly immoral to send soldiers into combat under these circumstances. I have seen this before. It was called Vietnam.
 
Cpgrad, Msgt...thank you both for the excellent work over there.
 
America is broke. America is borrowing money from China to participate in an Afghan Civil War. Does that make sense?

"The scandal has severe political and security implications. Investigators and Afghan businessmen believe that much of the money has gone into the pockets of a small group of privileged and politically connected Afghans, preventing earlier scrutiny of the bank’s dealings.

The spotlight on how political and economic interests in Afghanistan are intertwined threatens to further undermine President Hamid Karzai’s government. The bank is also the prime conduit for paying Afghan security forces, leaving the American military, which pays the majority of the salaries, looking for new banks to process the $1.5 billion payroll.

As Afghan regulators struggle to find out where the money went, many officials and international monitors concede that the missing millions may never be recovered, raising questions of how the losses could be replaced to keep the bank from failing. "

News Headlines



The banking structure in Afghanistan is collapsing. We pour money in and it just disappears. Karzai is subtly corrupt. And his brother is blatantly/publicly corrupt.

The situation is not promising....


.
 
The Pashtun madrassas in North and South Waziristan produce Taliban recruits faster than US forces can kill them. And the Taliban is not Al Qaeda. Obama has repeatedly said America is only at war with Al Qaeda. So why is America fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan? This is a civil war.
 
FABULOUS!!! A+++++!

Being ex-Army, are there any successful BCTs/Army missions in spreading the 4-block war principles to provincial tribes? I thought the Army got pretty capable at counterinsurgency under Petreaus in Iraq.

It's a general phenomena (phenomenon? I always screw that up). I'm sure there are plenty of Army units that have done just fine. One of the "Lessons Learned" for Iraq was that Army units tended to place themselves into defensive postures rather than get out into the people's world (In other words, the "Green Zone" went beyond the Green Zone). Their patrols were kept at a minimum and this meant that their convoys were usually conducted without former security mechanisms. This had been happening in Afghanistan as well with the added incompetence of the coalition forces. It became a habit to preserve life by hunkering down rather than pressing forward to complete the mission. In the mean time, nobody was doing anything, but hanging out in "Green Zones."

Another problem was identified in the training of ANSF/ANAF. An Afghani security unit trained by an Italian crew looked very different from an Afghani security unit trained by a British crew. And if these coalition forces were eager to hunker down, what did this mean for the attitude of their trained Afghanis? Within the Afghani forces there also arose rivalry and a sense of superiority/jealousy as to what coalition force trained them. Late last year, it was discovered that the newly arrived Marine units were getting much better responses from ANSF/ANAF units and that they were more eager to deal with their corruptions. Eventually, imbedded U.S. Army teams began to hear that their counterparts were demanding Marine trainers and advisors. Coalition Generals have visited Camp Lejeune to discover what we are doing different with out teams as compared to the rest. General Patreaus has been replacing these teams with Marines steadily. My team was in danger of deploying this month, but General Mattis refused to rush our training.

The Army has other needed talents and their greatest contribution has been in villages and provincial locations where NGO and social strides are moving forward. They are also good at pointing out corruption within the Afghani government. For example, if my Afghani counterparts are not receiving their pay checks or gasoline, etc. then it is usually a U.S soldier up above that is wringing the neck of the corrupt official screwing it up.
 
Cpgrad, Msgt...thank you both for the excellent work over there.

I am so incredibly proud of our troops. Thank you for your service, from the bottom of my heart.
 
America is broke. America is borrowing money from China to participate in an Afghan Civil War. Does that make sense?

Obama has said that Al Qaeda is America's only Muslim enemy. But the US Govt. admits there are fewer than 100 AQ members in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda is no longer a vertically integrated organization. It is now a franchise operation with branches throughout the world, including the USA.

Obama's Director of Counterterrorism testified under oath before a congressional committee that the Saudi Osama bin Laden is no longer the main threat to America. He said that American born and raised Anwar al Awlaki who is based in Yemen is now the main threat.

American soldiers will never receive the time and resources they need to achieve success in their counterinsurrgency strategy because the American people won't give them the ten or so years that such a strategy requires to reach fruition.

It is profoundly immoral to send soldiers into combat under these circumstances. I have seen this before. It was called Vietnam.

As Usually you are wrong again. We have the resoruces and time over here. I wish you could see what I see out here Albert.
 
In for a penny, in for a pound. Nation-building is a demanding and time-consuming process,

Especially if you try to nation-build in one of the least hospitable places on earth, instead of in a country where there might actually be a chance of success.

Viktyr Korimir said:
and if we didn't have the stomach for it we shouldn't have started on this course.

What course? Afghanistan is just as poor and undeveloped as it was ten years ago. And it probably still will be in another ten years.

I'm all for helping countries develop their economies and build their nations...but let's concentrate our efforts in places where we actually have the ability to help.
 
Especially if you try to nation-build in one of the least hospitable places on earth, instead of in a country where there might actually be a chance of success.

Afghanistan has a chance and is improving exponentially. Stop looking for Vermont and you won't be dissapointed. Remember how quick people wanted to give up on Iraq - another country that was seen as hopless by pundits.


What course? Afghanistan is just as poor and undeveloped as it was ten years ago. And it probably still will be in another ten years.


Because of Iraq, Afghanistan has not had 10 years of focus. They have it now. U.S. Marines are no longer deploying to Iraq. Without "pulling them out now" in ten years, Afghanistan will be strong while the fractured insignificant Tali-Ban is probably seeking to topple the Pakistani government. I've stated this for years....."The War on Terror is generational and region wide."
 
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A positive outcome would be a relatively stable government in place and with enough power to police itself to prevent the return of terrorist groups who threaten the US. How long it will take I have no idea.

Thank you for your thoughts Redress. There are many that agree with you. IMO, since Afghanistan has traditionally operated under tribal rule, I just don't see us having the time or the money to convert them to our way of central government. I think it is an unrealistic goal that we can't afford to pursue due to cost, both in terms of lives and National debt that is already bloated from the two wars over the course of a decade.
 
If the U.S. doesn't police the world who will.... then U.N? :lamo

Don't police usually get paid for their services? Perhaps we should take a hint and stop running up our National credit card to pay our own salary!
 
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