Afghanistan.. clear objective and exit strategy?
 

So now that we have had the worst losses in a month since the war started could someone please explain the Obama mission and exit strategy? Please.
If you say to get Bin Ladin then tell me what Obama will do with him once we get him.

I won't even mention how well things have changed for the better for our men and women in Iraq.

This situation scares me. To me it is NO WIN.

Think you might be right on that but all I hear are the crickets chirping.

that country has been at war longer than the crusades

The "Obama mission and exit strategy"? He's pretty much continued the Bush policy on Afghanistan, with slightly more strategic focus than Iraq.

Strategy seems to have been flawed from the start, but people want to jump on Obama now that he's in charge. Too bad none of those neocons bothered to pick up a history book.

My opinion is that we should leave and park an aircraft carrier offshore who's responsibility is to punish anyone who gets out of line.

-spence

Naw, just a bunch of UAV's ready to rock

However, the issue is to know who is the one's to be punished

oh yeah
 

they have caves and tunnels that UAV's cannot even touch

so until those are discovered it's a continuing shell game
hiding in civilian homes pretending to be non taliban.

what pissed me off was hearing about them cutting off the fingers of those they caught voting.... :hs:

how's that for democracy?

Why on earth is Obama following the flawed Bush plan? Surely, Obama has read a history book?

That unfortunately is the way the non-democratic world works, you vote we do bad things to you. Never going to stop that everywhere.

->
 

while i don't subscribe to the idea of internment camps like we did with the Japanese in the United States.....

it would seem like we need to separate the chaff from the wheat..... (better)
so we know who to kill.... but that is a difficult situation @ best
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2Quote CNN : "To the Taliban, winning is, in fact, not losing," he said. "They feel that over time, they will ultimately outlast the international community's attempt to stabilize Afghanistan. It's really a game of will to them."
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so based on that idea.... it's a game of breaking their will.
Others have tried and FAILED over many years so unless we use completely different tactics it's not a very effective strategy.

an interesting point the article also made was how the taliban are watering the ground around their mortar positions so as to not create a dust cloud and give themselves away. :doh:

that technology the aliens used in the movie:" predator" that triangulated the trajectory of a missile in reverse is closer to what we need to be doing it would seem. Unfortunately we are not that advanced technologically yet but we are close.

I'm not sure why we are not bombing the crap out of those mountains .... which gives them too much of an advantage...

so it's a war of foot soldiers Vs IED's . :confused:

Not always easy to undo what's been done.

-spence

Maybe we could ship over a couple hundred thousand blankets that are infected with small pox. It worked once... Why not agian. ;)
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Obama's not as interested in reading History as he is in making History.

Well, Nebe that was done long before there were so called ethics in fighting a war and would not fly .

how ever something that could make them hallucinate
is ok by me.

Spence

It is not the Bush plan any more. It is the OBAMA PLAN.

Obama has escalated the war by sending in more troops. It was his responsibility to pull the troops instead he sent more. And his words was that Afghanistan is where the war should be fought.

The Russians couldn't win and we are just losing a mothers child.

Pull the Troops out.

We do not win wars. The American people and the politicians will not let us win. We learned that in Vietnam.

BULLSH1T ...... :fury:

It was President Obama's plan to widen United States involvement in Afghanistan and send in 4000 more troops, It was his plan to shift the focus from Iraq to Afghanastan. Both fronts are now a mess. His administration is a mess. You can't run a war on campaign promises and retoric. Lifes are being lost and I would like to know why. The war was why the Dems won, now tell me what they are doing.

But Obama made it all sound so easy when he was campaigning.:confused: Are you telling me he can't deliver on everything he promised?

Oh, and Spence, could you throw "neocon" into any more of your responses? Let me guess. It was the word of the day on your Doublespeak calendar last week and you're trying to use it as much as possible.

We win when we committ 100% which we didn't do in 'Nam and don't appear to be doing in Afghanistan. Once we are out of Iraq completely it will be interesting to see if the gov't folds. That will seal the deal with "occupying" these countries as a waste of $$$ and lives

I thought Obama was going to have a beer with he "good" Taliban and straighten this all out right after he had tea with Amadinajad?....so easy to pontificate when you have no accountability, just soaring rhetoric for the entranced... now the shoes is on the other foot for Obama, it's his RESPONSIBILITY and he's tripping all over his untied laces....what a fraud...just keeps blaming someone else as he continues to display utter incompetence...maybe he'll GROW into the job...we can all HOPE...

I would like to know that too. The silence is deafening.

I thought the original mission was to destroy
the terrorist's training camps and get Bin Laden, who according to reports, is
somewhere in Pakistan now.

Now is the time to use special ops and the new weapons of war, not introduce more troops.

Obama's campaign talk sounded oh so promising.

NPR had a good discussion of this today.

Check it out

The focus never should have been on Iraq, a country with moderate stability, no WMDs (remember, that's why we went there) and with no more Al Qaeda presence than the US - all before Bush decided to take a personal vendetta against a man that supposedly "tried to kill my daddy" as Bush so eloquently put it. The country was a mess before Obama became president. Let's also not forget that US military involvement is now significantly reduced with the Iraqi "military" running most operations in that countries cities and towns.

The focus should be Afghanastan. The country used as the base for Bin Ladin and his terrorist training camps. There's a reason they're called "Al Qaeda in Iraq" - because they weren't there before Bush decided to oust Saddam.

I know the Spin Train has been running full steam since Obama took office (in some cases rightfully so), but let's not become deluded to who (Bush) was the one that started this entire mess.

The USSR was 100% committed and look where it got them.

Afghanistan is a very tribal and nationalistic country where war is seen as just a habit.

As for the Obama strategy, it's not that complicated. Raise troop levels to provide added security in the hopes of shifting responsibility onto Afghan and Pakistani troops. I believe the expectation is that there will be a NATO presence in the region for a decade or more to come.

Remember that a big reason for the recent increase in violence was the national election.

-spence

You didn't get the updated talking points did you?

-spence

:uhuh:

I'd offer up a counter argument, but I don't really see one to counter.

Could you please try to actually make a point?

-spence

I fished all night, haven't gotten to the RADICAL RIGHT WING TALKING POINTS website yet this morning :rotf2:

For someone who so obstinately insists that we shouldn't conjecture what motives lay behind the health care bill but only speak about what's actually in its exact language, you certainly take a conjectural leap by postulating that Bush invaded Iraq as a personal vendetta. Other than his remark that Saddam tried to kill his father, there is NO EVIDENCE of a vendetta. And the WMDs were just one of the stated reasons for the invasion, and they certainly did exist prior to the invasion, and there is CONJECTURE that they were transferred to Syria and possibly Libia, and Iraq was the easier target on war on terror, and it is now a model for possible "populist power" (as Spence likes to say) in the Middle East, and Bush was not "the one who started this entire mess." I suppose you could could go back a long, long way before Bush, but a convenient stop might be Jimmy Carter's intervention on behalf of the Mujahadin against the Soviets.

Yes i agree. A little history here.

Saddam attacked Kuwait and we were drawn into the Gulf War.
Why Bush #1 didn't take Iraq at that time i don't know unless there
was not enough anti Saddam sentiment within Irag to take over the government.

That aside i believe we should have taken Iraq at that time as it would have avoided a lot of problems with that crazy back on his heels. Just my opinion.

Then there was the first attack on the WTC by Islamic radicals and also attacks in England if i remember right.

Enter Bin Laden with the bombing of the USS Cole along with some other
terrorist actions in the world.

Then Bin Laden with the 9/11 attack on the WTC.

Bush #2 went into Afghanistan to get Bin Laden and destroy the Al Qaeda
training camps. When Bin Laden was pushed out and the camps destroyed
i believe we should have gotten out of there.

Saddam had more then ample time to re-allow the UN inspectors to
come in for inspection for WMD. He refused and was given an ultimatum
backed by our allies and most of the Congress.
He didn't comply and we went in.
When we found nothing we should have left imho.

So i would say yes, Saddam, radical Islamics and Bin Laden started it.

[QUOTE=spence;709431]The USSR was 100% committed and look where it got them.

I believe what stcroixman meant by 100% commitment was, not only a government policy, but the full backing of the people. The USSR NEVER had that. It was a militarily enforced federation of irredentist minded citizens, most of whom didn't see Afghanistan as an important matter. We failed in Vietnam because our populace was persuaded that it was not worth American life. The war against the Iraqi "insurgents" was made difficult because they saw the left's portrayal of the war as another Vietnam and so hoped that continued resistance would, similarly, break the American populist will to fight.

Afghanistan is a very tribal and nationalistic country where war is seen as just a habit.

"Nationalistic country" is redundant. All nations are nationalistic. And, if war is resisted change, war is not only a "habit", but a necessity for those entities who wish to maintain their integrity.

As for the Obama strategy, it's not that complicated. Raise troop levels to provide added security in the hopes of shifting responsibility onto Afghan and Pakistani troops. I believe the expectation is that there will be a NATO presence in the region for a decade or more to come.-spence[QUOTE]

Sounds similar to the Bush strategy. As for NATO, without a US, Afghani, and Pakistani defeat of the Taliban, NATO, as already demonstrated, can do nothing.

:bshake:see Spence...I had some points

Bush doesn't appear to have been that close to his father, so I doubt he would have provoked Saddam out of a sense of revenge.

I'd wager the line was a more calculated tactic to invoke emotion among the common folk. All part of the war marketing plan.

I don't believe we've found evidence that Saddam had any threatening WMD for years before the invasion. The Syria link is equally without substance. The story, as has been pretty much confirmed by multiple investigations is that Saddam gave up his WMD after 1998, and yet pretended to still have them with the possible intent of starting up programs after sanctions were lifted.

While I appreciate your use of "populist power" (an obvious attempt to build a bridge) I'm not sure I'd use it in the same context. Bush wasn't really looking for an Iraq of the people (i.e. their interests), but rather a western model we could use to influence the region. Bush wasn't trying to spread democracy because it was the right thing to do, but believed it was in our own long-term interest. Unfortunately he forgot to read up on Iraq and let some really misguided assumptions direct his policy.

-spence

[QUOTE=detbuch;709445]


[COLOR="darkgreen"] All nations are nationalistic.

I would say that is one of our country's problems, we are not nationalistic anymore.
We are a nation split on what we stand for. Where immigrants used to come here, take pride in their citizenship and be grateful for the opportunities,
they left their countries behind and became Americans and believed in our country and what it stood for.

We are becoming more divided everyday. Way to many ideas of who we are and
what we believe to be nationalistic anymore, imho.

I believe his short term interest was to stop the WOMD and secondly, after we had been there, make it worthwhile to provide a base for long term interests in the region with the Iranian threats.

I don't agree. I've read a ton on the subject and aside from a few random and useless artillery shells we really haven't found squat. The conclusion of the Duelfer Report was that Saddam destroyed his WMD in 1991.

This is the same game Cheney played with the Atta meeting in Prague. That because it hasn't been disproved it could have happened. This logic runs quite contrary to our own legal system.

To be quite matter of fact, there's really no evidence that supports the assertion. There was evidence of movement of something to Syria, but that we don't know if WMD were not there isn't evidence that there could have been.

I love how you quote an ex-General - who's trying to sell books to Americans - about a claim for which there's no evidence...oh quite to the contrary...the evidence gathered indicates there were no WMD to smuggle!

You don't "spread" democracy, it has to be grown from within.

-spence

It's worth noting that we were "drawn" into the Gulf war to protect US oil interests in Saudi Arabia, and that Saudi Arabia paid for about 2/3's the cost of the war!

The reason we didn't take out Saddam was simple. The administration understood it would have been a cluster%$%$%$%$. Even #^&#^&#^&#^& Cheney didn't support the assertion. Colin Powell coined his famous "Pottery Barn" anecdote about Iraq - you break it, you own it.

Bush 41 took a lot of heat for egging on the Shiite's in the south to stand up to Saddam, then doing nothing to help while Saddam's gunships went to work.

All having nothing to do with Saddam.

This isn't really how it happened though.

Saddam DID let the inspectors in, and the UN inspectors found nothing. Saddam was absolutely hampering the inspection process at first, and more pressure was put on the regime to cooperate.

Before the UN, Hans Blix testified that even though Saddam was not cooperating, it was not compromising the inspection on WMD.

Blix wanted time to finish the report, which was going to state that Saddam had no WMD (the same conclusion that Duelfer came to a few years later) and this obviously conflicted with Bush's war plans which were already in motion.

-spence