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War against Taliban 'will be lost by autumn' unless strategy changes

danarhea

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Article is here.

Colonel John Nagl, who is a consultant on the war in Afghanistan, has announced that, unless our strategy is seriously altered, the Taliban will end up winning the war. He says that NOW is the time to get serious with Afghanistan.

I completely agree. I am still angry that we abandoned this war to pursue the war in Iraq. Consider the following:

1) Afghanistan is the nation where bin Laden trained the 911 attackers.

2) Afghanistan is the nation that harbored bin Laden, and funded the same camps used to attack the United States.

3) The Taliban is the same group that turned a nation into a staging area for attacks on the United States, and US interests elsewhere in the world.

We should have taken them out immediately. Instead, we abandoned what we needed to do, in order to pursue war elsewhere. We need to finish the job we started, and we need to finish it in a decisive manner, and completely eliminate any threat to the United States.

Once we have taken out the Taliban, then we can leave. We should not attempt to force Afghanistan into accepting our style of Democracy. Let them have whatever kind of government they want, even an Islamic Republic, if that's what suits them. But we should let them know that, should another 911 come from there, we will turn the whole nation into a new resort and fishing spot in Asia:

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You mean we haven't lost in Afghanistan already?

I say let them install whatever damn sharia they want, i don't really care. It's not going to be the first Islamic country and it won't be the last.
I vote we use money to bribe people
 
Oh great, another Bush bashing thread. :roll:
 
Bin Laden's plan was to bring economic collapse to America.


So on that front, we lost.

I'd say he did a great job of making the Buffalo herd fall down into the ravine.
 
Oh great, another Bush bashing thread. :roll:

Mrs. Clinton, for the record, you were the first to mention Bush. There was no partisan slandering in this.
No body even hinted at Bush being responsible for the Iraq war. Nobody made any sort of claim. So, now please, focus on the topic at hand and not your wish to turn every thread into a partisan ruffling.
 
Oh great, another Bush bashing thread. :roll:

And if Obama doesn't step up to the plate, this will be another Obama bashing thread as well.

Meanwhile, I will ask you nicely to stop trolling my thread.
 
Oh great, another Bush bashing thread. :roll:

I love how people are so blindly partisan that they can't take critque of our past actions or try to objectively view of the goals and methodology of realizing those goals. "another Bush bashing thread". First, Bush was never brought up. Second, grow up. We may at times have to look at what we're doing and try to evaluate if what we are doing is producing the results we wanted. And if they are not producing the results we wanted, we have to be adult enough to figure out what we need to change to produce those results. Afghanistan is a hot bed of terrorist activity. We never really finished the job in there before we got sidetracked. It is there where we can make the largest gains against the Taliban, and if the War on Terror is really a war on terror, then it is there we need to focus.
 
You mean we haven't lost in Afghanistan already?

I say let them install whatever damn sharia they want, i don't really care. It's not going to be the first Islamic country and it won't be the last.
I vote we use money to bribe people

We already do. That is what "clear, hold, build" is all about.
 
A good start would be buying the poppy crop from the afgan farmers.We cant hope to get them on our side whilst burning the most profitable part of their economy.
 
And if Obama doesn't step up to the plate, this will be another Obama bashing thread as well.

Meanwhile, I will ask you nicely to stop trolling my thread.
Then why not eliminate your predictability? Can't you let Bush go?
 
Then why not eliminate your predictability? Can't you let Bush go?

So Dan HAS to be bashing somebody with his thread? If you have nothing to say on the topic matter then say nothing at all. It would make this thread much less clustered.
 
So Dan HAS to be bashing somebody with his thread? If you have nothing to say on the topic matter then say nothing at all. It would make this thread much less clustered.

Please don't feed the troll. Just ignore him, and let's get this discussion back on track.
 
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Please don't feed the troll. Just ignore him, and lets get this discussion back on track.
Yes Dan, let's do. Bush is irrelevant and so is the past at this point. I support a change in strategy when it's needed. Hopefully we're listening to the boots on the ground.
 
Moderator's Warning:
This thread is about Afghanistan. Stay on-target plz.
 
How can the Taliban win? How can anyone win this stupid war? There are no goalposts. What do we have to do to win except declare a victory? It's all in t he eye of the beholder. Let's assume we defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan (as impossible as that may be since they could be in any cave or in any civilian in any city). There is still equivalent organizations in other countries, not to mention children may grow up looking up to the Taliban and resurrect the group.
Let's assume that we never uproot the Taliban, does the Taliban win? We withdraw, not because the Taliban intimidates us or because they've outgunned us. It's our decision to pull out. Do they declare victory?
You can't win a war against terrorism because you have no target. You have no goalposts.
 
How can the Taliban win? How can anyone win this stupid war? There are no goalposts. What do we have to do to win except declare a victory? It's all in t he eye of the beholder. Let's assume we defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan (as impossible as that may be since they could be in any cave or in any civilian in any city). There is still equivalent organizations in other countries, not to mention children may grow up looking up to the Taliban and resurrect the group.
Let's assume that we never uproot the Taliban, does the Taliban win? We withdraw, not because the Taliban intimidates us or because they've outgunned us. It's our decision to pull out. Do they declare victory?
You can't win a war against terrorism because you have no target. You have no goalposts.

I would consider killing bin Laden a win.
 
How can the Taliban win? How can anyone win this stupid war? There are no goalposts. What do we have to do to win except declare a victory? It's all in t he eye of the beholder. Let's assume we defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan (as impossible as that may be since they could be in any cave or in any civilian in any city). There is still equivalent organizations in other countries, not to mention children may grow up looking up to the Taliban and resurrect the group.
Let's assume that we never uproot the Taliban, does the Taliban win? We withdraw, not because the Taliban intimidates us or because they've outgunned us. It's our decision to pull out. Do they declare victory?
You can't win a war against terrorism because you have no target. You have no goalposts.
Good point. I've always stated that fighting terrorism is not a winnable fight.


We could, however, level the entirety of Pakistan and we might get Bin Laden and declare victory.

You cannot kill Terrorism. Terror is a response based on the individual, therefore, there will always will be terrorism.
 
How can the Taliban win? How can anyone win this stupid war? There are no goalposts. What do we have to do to win except declare a victory? It's all in t he eye of the beholder. Let's assume we defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan (as impossible as that may be since they could be in any cave or in any civilian in any city). There is still equivalent organizations in other countries, not to mention children may grow up looking up to the Taliban and resurrect the group.
Let's assume that we never uproot the Taliban, does the Taliban win? We withdraw, not because the Taliban intimidates us or because they've outgunned us. It's our decision to pull out. Do they declare victory?
You can't win a war against terrorism because you have no target. You have no goalposts.
The only way is to absolutely destroy the Taliban to the last man. No one has ever successfully controlled this land. So holding territory is futile, you must destroy the enemy completely, and not only in Afghanistan but Pakistan's northeast as well. Changing hearts is probably necessary too, but probably futile.
 
I would consider killing bin Laden a win.

I would consider a fundamental shift in the perception of America in the Middle East into a better light a win as well. Though that one is kinda a propaganda war and I don't know if we could make headway there. Though that sort of thing would go a long way into reducing the effective propaganda terrorist organizations use for recruitment. Though on our part it would require massive and long term humanitarian efforts.
 
The only way is to absolutely destroy the Taliban to the last man. No one has ever successfully controlled this land. So holding territory is futile, you must destroy the enemy completely, and not only in Afghanistan but Pakistan's northeast as well. Changing hearts is probably necessary too, but probably futile.

Didn't the Soviets try the same thing? And wasn't it referred to as the Soviets Vietnam?
 
That would be nice, but he has become less relevant in recent years. The MSM swoons over the videos, but I think most people don't care much.
 
Didn't the Soviets try the same thing? And wasn't it referred to as the Soviets Vietnam?

It's impossible to do without total genocide, and that's gonna be tough to do in and of itself. So apparently American just admitted that there is no way to win this "war".
 
The only way is to absolutely destroy the Taliban to the last man. No one has ever successfully controlled this land. So holding territory is futile, you must destroy the enemy completely, and not only in Afghanistan but Pakistan's northeast as well. Changing hearts is probably necessary too, but probably futile.

I think your method's ideals are somewhere between Godzilla and Charles Dickens.

You are not going to "change hearts" when you "absolutely destroy" territory.
 
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