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America’s Dumbest War, Ever

jonny5

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Letter, from a soldier to his father, as published at America

Dad,

I am fed up. I cannot believe the lack of attention the recent changes in this war is receiving by the media or the country. I think I saw one thing on CNN about the following subject, but I had to dig extensively to find it. The purpose of this letter is to let you know of the garbage that our soldiers are going through right now. With this knowledge, I hope that you take action by writing your congressmen.

First, because of the recent green on blue incidents or "insider threats" as the new buzz phrase dictates, all coalition forces in Afghanistan have completely stopped partnering with the ANA, AUP, and ALP in order to prevent the death of anymore CF casualties by ANSF or Taliban disguised as them. This is also greatly spurred by President Karzi's indifferent attitude and lack of action to take measures to prevent further insider attacks.

Second, because of this massive change in policy (and complete change in mission) all U.S. forces are forbidden to actively patrol their AO and are to remain on their respective COPs/FOBs. There are only a few exceptions to this rule and they all pertain to "hardening" highway 1 in our AO. We have received orders that clearly state that all CF will no longer be allowed to drop air to ground munitions within the country of Afghanistan. This preempts Karzi's announcement that will be made shortly that states the above mentioned order, making it a tactical directive that he is ordering.

To the first point: Our mission in Afghanistan is to partner with the ANSF on all levels. Now the policy makers are telling us that we are not allowed to do that and further more we are to take immediate measures to secure ourselves from the ANSF that are co-located with us. So the question now becomes, what is our mission? Furthermore, the implication is that we have absolutely no reason to still be in this country if we are not partnering with the ANSF. So why are we here?

To the second point: I don't think that the American citizens would be happy if they knew that their soldiers were being prohibited from defending themselves in any way because of politically driven orders, but that is precisely what is happening in this war right now even as I write this letter. The soldiers of the U.S. never engage the enemy unless we know that we have will always have the tactical advantage in defending ourselves, that advantage is the use of close air support and air weapons team. To take those weapons away from us is to level the playing field for the enemy and thus exposing our soldiers to more danger. In the school house they teach us that the minimum ratio that we are to engage the enemy with, is a 3:1 ratio. In other words, we have the highest probability of winning because we don’t fight fair. The sound tactical principles behind this teaching have saved lives. The very presence of aircraft over our foot patrols has also saved lives and now our chain of command is being told by our political leadership that this is now not allowed. If we are not partnering with the ANSF and we are not actively patrolling to prevent our enemies from massing their attacks on our COP and we can’t drop a bomb on the enemy that we have positively identified, than what the hell are we doing here?

Give us a mission or send us home. I honestly have no preference on what the politicians decide, as long as they just make a decision. Of course this will be a terrible inconvenience on the current elections so I am sure we will be forgotten, which really does not seem to be too different for how things have been going for the last eleven years.

Do not buy into what the some media outlets have already said about this. Casually saying that this is a frequent occurrence is false, and is an attempt to downplay the major ramifications for these decisions. We have never been so restricted in defending ourselves as we have now. This is not just a stand down. The other implication of this decision is that we will perhaps never regain our relationship with the ANA after we have executed these measures to protect ourselves from them. Essentially, we have left them to die as we watch from our high-tech cameras and UAVs. They will not forget this and I fear the relationship will never be the same.

I love you very much Dad and I don’t want you to worry about me any more than you already are, but I also know that this has to be brought up, someone has to say something about this. It is wrong to keep this hidden away while American soldiers are under constant threat of death and dying. I don’t care if you send this letter directly, this needs to be known.

Your son,

[In Afghanistan]

I think its sad that the media, the President, congress, americans, have forgotten Afghanistan. Recession, fiscal cliffs, unemployment, debt, kate middletons breasts, are far less important than american citizens who are fighting and dying in a war without a point, and whose commander makes jokes on comedy shows, while congress flips pancakes to win votes.

Until we get responsible people in office, the best thing to do is immediate withdrawl. 343 Coalition soldiers have died in Afghanistan this year. No one seems to care but their families and friends.
 
The War on Drugs is the dumbest war, by far.
 
Letter, from a soldier to his father, as published at America



I think its sad that the media, the President, congress, americans, have forgotten Afghanistan. Recession, fiscal cliffs, unemployment, debt, kate middletons breasts, are far less important than american citizens who are fighting and dying in a war without a point, and whose commander makes jokes on comedy shows, while congress flips pancakes to win votes.

Until we get responsible people in office, the best thing to do is immediate withdrawl. 343 Coalition soldiers have died in Afghanistan this year. No one seems to care but their families and friends.


Seems like the "Mighty Wurlitzer" is crankin' along just fine. Nothing to see here, move along.
 
Likes from Justabubba and Mr. Invisible? It's gonna be a strange day.
 
Letter, from a soldier to his father, as published at America



I think its sad that the media, the President, congress, americans, have forgotten Afghanistan. Recession, fiscal cliffs, unemployment, debt, kate middletons breasts, are far less important than american citizens who are fighting and dying in a war without a point, and whose commander makes jokes on comedy shows, while congress flips pancakes to win votes.

Until we get responsible people in office, the best thing to do is immediate withdrawl. 343 Coalition soldiers have died in Afghanistan this year. No one seems to care but their families and friends.

Obama wants a repeat of Vietnam.
 
Obama wants a repeat of Vietnam.

Yes thats what "Obama wants" :doh (Hackery at its best here)


But no this war was dumb a very long time ago. The last war that we got involved in that "wasnt dumb" would have to be WW2.
 
Obama wants a repeat of Vietnam.

Mycroft Afganistan is not Obamas war Bush first sent troops over there. Yes he is keeping them there and that is not smart, but so did Nixon in nam.
 
I agree that all wars are probably stupid but this one is really up there. We went over there with a club the size of Texas to look for an ant hill. We did not know the culture, language or the terrain. the soviets went to and look what happened to them.
 
I am hating the Liberal talk hosts for this very reason.

With the exception of Norman Goldman, the liberal hosts are totally censoring themselves with regard to Af-Pak/Libya/Syria. Its a disgrace when they spend hours on Bachman, Herman Cain or indocrinating to score cheap political points on:

abortion, greenhouse gases, the tea party, race, religion, polling, gun control, the election horse race, the long gone Bush Admin. etc., and being partisan/govmnt lackeys like on MSNBC, the hired guns for the Democrat Party, going way out of their way to provide cover for this failure of leadership, the tabloid TV provides propaganda for Washington DC politicians, complete with government produced news segments on public television and elsewhere.

At Norman Goldman.com you can read "the 14 Points of Fascism," but one he missed was that one sign of fascism or a dictatorship is that the government controls all the mass communications channels.





_________________________________________

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/politics/13covert.html?_r=0
 
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Mycroft Afganistan is not Obamas war Bush first sent troops over there. Yes he is keeping them there and that is not smart, but so did Nixon in nam.

Regardless...this is Obama's Vietnam. Just like in Vietnam, Obama is not going to allow our guys to fight this war.
 
I find that when someone says "why isn't the liberal media reporting on X!??" it is almost invariably one of two things:

1) X is complete horse**** and only conspiracy nuts are talking about it.
2) Literally every media organization is, in fact, talking about X.
 
America's dumbest war ever is the war on obesity. Look at old pictures and see how many Type II diabetes candidates you see in them v. how many supermodels you see in them.
 
The War on Drugs is the dumbest war, by far.

followed by the war on poverty

trillions wasted-millions turned into wards of the state in both wars
 
America's dumbest war ever is the right wing war on FDR and the New Deal.
 
followed by the war on poverty

That's been a failure domestically and internationally. We never got a sniff of the MDGoals. We poured money on dictators thinking that at least something good would happen but it often caused more bad than good despite any intentions. Even food aid has been corrupted and recurves risk and problems created domestically.

Development neo-exodus; own 'poverty' (lack of human rights) so we can fix it.
 
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Obama wants a repeat of Vietnam.

The two have zero in common. We should have razed Afghanistan to the ground the first time. Obama is now doiing the right thing by making hits on the bosses: it's the most effective way to go.
 
The two have zero in common. We should have razed Afghanistan to the ground the first time. Obama is now doiing the right thing by making hits on the bosses: it's the most effective way to go.

You appear to not have read the letter in the OP.

Obama has buried our military's head in the sand and hung their asses out to dry. Quite similar to what happened in Vietnam.
 
Reply to sawyerlogging

We forced the Japanese to attack us in the Pacific when we embargoed their lifeblood of OIL.
Hitler needed attention before he attacked. Our isolationist policy worked against us in that instance.
Wars will always be dumb, but as long as there is large, obscene profit in armaments, we will have wars.
 
The topic is real wars, not political wars, and specifically the Afghan war. Please stick to it.
 
I find that when someone says "why isn't the liberal media reporting on X!??" it is almost invariably one of two things:

1) X is complete horse**** and only conspiracy nuts are talking about it.
2) Literally every media organization is, in fact, talking about X.

So then whats the excuse on this story? No one is talking about the Afghan war except when theres a bombing. It took a terrorists attack killing 4 americans in Libya to even get near the topic. And its already been forgotten again. Democrats dont like intervention. So, other than the obvious, why arent they at least harping on getting out. Where is Code Pink? Where is the anti war movement?
 
The War on Drugs is the dumbest war, by far.

War on Christmas... by far the dumbest made up war ever.

Closely followed by the Invasion of Grenada and then the War on Drugs.
 
So then whats the excuse on this story? No one is talking about the Afghan war except when theres a bombing. It took a terrorists attack killing 4 americans in Libya to even get near the topic. And its already been forgotten again. Democrats dont like intervention. So, other than the obvious, why arent they at least harping on getting out. Where is Code Pink? Where is the anti war movement?

For me, the war in Afghanistan never made any sense after OBL was bagged. No Nation has ever defeated Afghanistan and I don't think we will. I think the best way we can help the poor citizens of Afghanistan is to get out. Drop some rice and beans on them instead of bombs and actually investigate where the opium goes. Do the words oxycontin and hydocodone strike any responsive chords?
 
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