ISIS insurgents in Afghanistan prove resilient against US Special Forces

From ABC News


The small, elite unit of Green Berets is working alongside Afghan commandos to try to root out the insurgents from Nangarhar Province near the border with Pakistan.

The conflict in Afghanistan is America’s longest war and despite successes, the insurgents have proven remarkably resilient, not least because of the sanctuary and support they receive from neighboring countries.


Gen. John Nicholson, the commander of U.S. and other foreign forces in Afghanistan, says troops are fighting ISIS in Afghanistan so America does not have to face further terrorist attacks at home.

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Nicholson admits that an insurgency that receives support from a neighboring country -- not to mention sanctuary -- is almost impossible to defeat.

COMMENT:-

Well I bet if we spend several more trillions of dollars on this, we'll fix it.

I was in Nangahar province as an infantryman from 07-08. It was a bloody, chaotic mess then and it still is today. We should not continue to piss away tax payer money trying to polish a turd.

ISIS insurgents in Afghanistan prove resilient against US Special Forces

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I dare say the "in A-stan" part has more to do with their resilience than does who's fighting whom and what resources either side has available. A-stan just isn't the sort of place that favors large military forces that don't go "all in" to win, and certainly not ours. Look at the map. A-stan, unlike Germany, Japan, France, Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and myriad other places up to which we could sail ships, isn't a nation into which we can easily and quickly get huge quantities of troops. The only options are to partner with Pakistan or China, using either country as a staging ground.

Well, it doesn't take genius to know China's not about to have that going on in their country --- hundreds of thousands of Americans amassing in Xinjiang, a section of China that already has more dissidence happening (political and social/ethic) than the government would like, is not going to be good in any way for the PRC's centralized system. And Pakistan has already shown that it's a bunch of unreliable curs with whom one will only get fleas if one gets into bed with them. Moreover, even now, our troops don't often fly into A-stan on commercially run aircraft, though on occasion, we have flights from Ganci into A-stan military jets that overfly Pakistan or other countries.

The short is that A-stan just isn't a place that lends itself to limited warfare if either combatant, but particularly the invading one, expects a decisive win.

Russia learned that in the, what '80s. Clearly three U.S. POTUSes have been unwilling to learn vicariously from the Russians.....Figures, the one thing Russians were good for and we've disregarded it.

• Why It’s So Difficult to Win a War in Afghanistan
• The Taliban are not some invading army. They are Afghan citizens, distinguished from their countrymen chiefly by their extreme religious conservatism, misogyny, and punitive approach to governance. (Sounds to me like the right-wing militia and religious groups we have in the U.S.)

It's not that we (or Russia) cannot win a war there. It's that we haven't ever been of a mind to commit the resources needed to do so. And "we" isn't the government; it's the polity. Americans are keen on "police actions," but not wars.

The former initiative type is hard enough to obtain the citizenry's approbation for; the latter even harder, particularly when there's no blatantly obvious sovereign opponent that can be vilified as could the Germans or Japanese during WWI and WWII. Everybody knows ISIS can be dangerous, but nobody is concerned that ISIS is going to overtake the Western World or invade the U.S.; consequently, it's a "hard sell" to garner the imprimatur to go into A-stan (or anywhere else) obliterate/bring to heel ISIS and its leaders and be done with it once and for all.

There is also the matter that if we aren't somewhere fighting a pseudo-war -- something that's not a war, but it's more than policing as we do in the Indian Ocean -- there's little basis for our spending increasingly huge sums on the military. Other than that nitwit in the DPRK, there's no nation on the planet that's even remotely interested in waging a war with the U.S.

Ikari said:

Well I bet if we spend several more trillions of dollars on this, we'll fix it.

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One wonders whether or not it wouldn't have been "better" (read as "more cost/effective") simply to BUY the whole country and allow the (now rich, but former) Afghans (who no longer had any homes or farms or businesses) to immigrate to the United States of America (or some possession thereof)?

Heck, once you adjust for population density, you could move the whole population to Puerto Rico (after moving all of the American citizens out) and change the name of Puerto Rico to Neuvo Afghanistan before granting it its independence. Any defects in Neuvo Afghanistan's infrastructure could be easily rectified because the Neuvo Afghans would have all of the money that they received for selling Afghanistan.

Not only would that end the war in Afghanistan, but it would also mean that the former Afghans were no longer living in such a harsh and unforgiving climate, and it would also mean that the whole issue of whether or not the US government had to do anything about fixing the Puerto Rican infrastructure was settled, AND it would end the whole "Statehood/Status quo/Independence" debate.

Who knew that sorting out Afghanistan would be so simple?