Marines on the move in Afghanistan

[JEDIYoda]

Originally posted by: Lemon law
To rebut JOS point by point. My comments in parenthesized.

"1. read above and stop pretending that you know ANYTHING about this."
(JOS, you may know how to break things and kill people,
but that does not always translate into victory. And given the fact that Nato has been blundering around in Afghanistan for seven years now and making no real progress, I suggests you may be too close to the trees to see the forest of problems with the present approach. )

"2. Take a fucking look at a map, there are no Pakistanian troops anywhere near where these marines are going."
( And no one said that Pakistani troops were operating in Afghanistan. But the fact that those Taliban and other insurgents on the Pakistani side of the border are otherwise dealing with Pakistani troops, simply means its far harder for them to rush into more fighters or to resupply their brethren on the Afghan side of the border. And vice versa. Its military 101. The Taliban will be forced to give up areas they have controlled for some years now in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. But don't be fooled, they will look to regain it later. That is guerrilla war 101. And with Nato some 500,000 troops short of enough troops to control territory 24/7/365, its advantage insurgents. )

"The military problems have to be resolved before there is ANY kind of use for doing anything politically, as long as there is one Taliban still breathing the job isn't done."
( Many in any military will claim the same thing. It was said in Iraq during the so called surge, which mainly succeeded, not because of increased troops, but because of mainly political accommodations made with various Sunni groups that had the net effect of reducing the violence on all sides. Sadly, the Taliban are an ideological and non compromising bunch, but the Taliban are hardly all that Nato is facing in Afghanistan, there is an admixture of Al-Quida, imported foreign fighters, and most recently a large number of old line mujaheddin types that have little use for Taliban ideology, but make common cause because they have little use for Nato domination either. The point being JOS, Nato is not going to kill its way out of the problems. Worse yet, many people inside of the Afghan government have a vested interest in continuing anarchy, because they make a huge fortune in the drug and corruption business meanwhile. )

"People seem to forget that this isn't just a US/UK/NATO mission though, there are other nations involved in the ISAF troops and they should not be forgotten."
( I never said Nato was anything but a multinational force. But its mainly the extra troops US troops that Obama added that are the muscle behind this recent offensive, that puts boots on the ground and that is driving insurgents out of the areas that they controlled. Obama asked the Brits for more troops also but the Brits declined. As for the excessive use of air power, its a too blunt sledge hammer, and often backfires when it kills civilians instead of insurgents. And if Nato, which is already skating on thin ice with the 31 million Afghans, totally loses much more of the support of the Afghan people, any Nato occupation is doomed. But on the bright side, if these recent Nato and Pakistani military offensives against insurgents drives them to the negotiating table, the kind of political accommodations needed to solve many problems and reduce the overall violence, might help end this protracted anarchy in a positive way. )

The funny things is JohnOfSheffield is correct all around!! 100% correct!~!

 

[JEDIYoda]

Originally posted by: ZeGermans
ooorah who wants to take bets on how many women they rape, families they blow up, and livelyhoods they destroy? I'm going with 10, maybe 20k. How about you guys? God bless america!

We need an ignore button so we don`t have to put yp with this dudes nonesense.....

Seems people like winnar111 and others have nothing on you...

 

[maluckey]

And then irish Scott has the unmitigated gall to blame the Afghan people for not rallying around Nato that has established a miserable and morally bankrupt record of not doing a damn thing for the Afghan people in the past 25 years.

Why again should anyone be responsible to prop-up a bankrupt neighbor, who's bankrupt through their own actions? Countries meddle in U.S. politics and business all the time. Do they then have a fiscal and military responsiblity to protect the U.S. and it's interests?

And what? Pray tell, have the Taliban given the people that is so much better than what NATO offers? The only thing that might qualify as "help", is that they MIGHT not rape and kill you IF you bow to their demands. Of course after you obey, you are allowed to live in the 14th century, generally unmolested. WOW! What a deal!

I'm single sided on this one issue because I've been to these places and dealt with them on a one to one...... I see no reason to have any faith whatsoever in the region. All your sunshine and lollipop attitudes won't last two seconds in the reality of their world.

As I and many others have already noted, they fear the Taliban worse than than the NATO and the Americans. NATO cannot win so long as the Taliban or their ilk still breathe. These people FEAR and respect power. Not theoretical power and economic power. That's for someone who has something to lose. These people have NOTHING. All they have is their lives, and that belongs to Allah! Pain and suffering is REAL and immediate. There's no immediate benefit for following western ideas to people in that situation. The immediate benefit to them for following the Taliban is that their daughter might make it to 10 years old without being raped and killed.

It's time to follow Machiavelli, and do what needs to be done.

edited for better thought flow after my morning coffee

 

[Lemon law]

Maybe maluckey wants to believe his own over simplistic statement of "As I and many others have already noted, they fear the Taliban worse than than the NATO and the Americans. NATO cannot win so long as the Taliban or their ilk still breathe"

But that statement is equivalent to then saying Nato can never win in Afghanistan. The Taliban, as an idea can never be killed, even though those that adhere to Taliban ideas can be killed. But as I said in a previous post, many Afghan groups make common cause with the Taliban even though they do not adhere to Taliban ideas.

And I see a lot of people on this thread do not understand what I am saying when I note that Taliban ideas of throw out the Western devils does resonate in Afghanistan. Yes its understandable that many of us, including me, want to deny it, but there are two things to be said about that. (1) Its not us people in the West that are the deciders of that question, it only the people in Afghanistan who get to decide that question. And its also a moving target, I think its accurate to say that in the immediate 911 aftermath, a large majority felt a US led Afghan government would be preferable to a Taliban led government. The problem is, seven years later, the real resulting Afghan government has fallen far far far short of expectations of its people. As a result, the Taliban message of throw out the Western devils resonates more and more. (2) Unlike many of the posters on this thread, I do not believe in overestimating the value of our assets because its denial of the truth. That does not make me a Taliban fan, it makes me into a realist. Not only was that resultant denial of reality one of the root causes of our failure in Vietnam, there are countless other better lessons on history. Perhaps the best example of that was the bay of pigs debacle, led by people who only talked to themselves, and once they 100% convinced themselves that all they had to do is wade a shore, swagger up to the nearest village, and en masse the Cuban people would all rally around them, making the over throw of Castro a piece of Cake. As we know, they did wade ashore, and discovered that the Cuban people had no interest in rallying around them. So give them a Darwin award for removing that set of delusions from the human gene pool. The problem is that God and Darwinian natural selection has failed to remove all the rest of the delusions us humans are so prone to.

The fact is that I dislike the Taliban every bit as much as most of you, but if we want to beat the Taliban, we have got to have better tactics that we are using. And when the corrupt and dysfunction Afghan government is now one of the Taliban's greatest assets, its the height of Nato stupidity not to make reforming the Afghan government its greatest priority.

 

[Orignal Earl]

Originally posted by: cwjerome


It's a shame this operation A) wasn't done by NATO to begin with and B) wasn't done by the US earlier.

What?
Are you trying to twist this into a US saves the day thing?
lol
ya it's about time the US got involved

 

[Orignal Earl]

Speculation time!

The Afghan people will end up living the way they want too.

 

[maluckey]

The fact is that I dislike the Taliban every bit as much as most of you, but if we want to beat the Taliban, we have got to have better tactics that we are using. And when the corrupt and dysfunction Afghan government is now one of the Taliban's greatest assets, its the height of Nato stupidity not to make reforming the Afghan government its greatest priority.

I'll ignore the rest of your post since you still stick to sunshine and lollipos, but your above statement is something somewhat new, and equally disturbing.

Reformation of corruption is a good thing.....if your basic belief system is in line with that. The Western definition of corruprion is not applicable for the most part to Afghanis. What the west calls corruption, the Afghanis call trade remedy. Afghani freedom from tyranny would look very much to the untrained eye as being a largely corrupt system. It would, in fact work OK for them. It's not IF the government is corrupt by western standards, but to what end? The entanglements are endless, and family feuds can last hundreds of years.

Tribal leaders run the local show, and it is their cultural right to do so. Even though they aren't elected, they hold as much sway as parents do over their children. Sure you can ignore them....but should you?

Taliban enforce laws...brutal and single minded laws. Sometimes it's the ONLY laws they see from an "organized " lawmaker establishment. The NATO allies let the Afghanis take their sweet time to decide what freedom is, then what to do about it, then more time for elections and trial-and-error politics. Meanwhile the Taliban has no problem with their vision, rules or short list on how to enforce them. NATO's lack of 100 percent commitment to "win" is showing.

Law or no law? Safety or no safety? It's the same reason that inner-city kids get into gangs, and in the end the same results for soceity as a whole. The allies need to put the pot on the burner and crank the heat if this recipe is going to ever finish.

 

[Lemon law]

Originally posted by: Orignal Earl
Speculation time!

The Afghan people will end up living the way they want too.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In a word, no, its not as simple as that.

Thus far Nato is not giving up, while the occupation its running is too small and does the wrong things politically. Thus offering the Afghan people a viable alternative they could prefer
if Nato had done things better.

Meanwhile, the Taliban and other insurgent groups are not giving up either, and are aided by
being able to point out that the current Afghan government can offer its people nothing worth having. Corruption is endemic at all levels, the courts function only by bribes, and even Afghans that make common cause with Nato are as likely to be killed by Nato actions.Failing that, Taliban terrorism, Warlord thugs, or getting killed in the cross fire between two hostile groups. And because Nato is spread so incredibly thin, no one can rely on Nato to protect them from anything.

To some extent, the Afghan people somewhat welcomed the Taliban take over five years after the Russians left, not because they either embraced or approved of Taliban ideology,
but because it was far superior to the anarchy of the civil war.

And sadly the net effect of the Nato occupation post 911 has been to put the Afghan people right back into the anarchy of that civil war. And worse yet, because neither Nato or the Taliban are likely to give up, that state of civil war is likely to be the fate of the Afghan people for the foreseeable future.

And for the set of the Afghan people that still would prefer that Nato wins, it gets harder and harder to cling to that preference after seven years of continuous dis improvement.

Sadly Afghanistan is looking more and more like Vietnam, peace in Vietnam came and was only achieved after the USA and its remaining allies gave up. It still took another two years for the corrupt and ineffectual South Vietnamese government to fall, but it had forgotten how to govern.

 

[Orignal Earl]

Originally posted by: Lemon law

Originally posted by: Orignal Earl
Speculation time!

The Afghan people will end up living the way they want too.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In a word, no, its not as simple as that.
.

Yes, it is

 

[Lemon law]

If nothing else, malucky is already seeing his panacea of "The allies need to put the pot on the burner and crank the heat if this recipe is going to ever finish", being put to the test on both sides of the Afghan Pakistani border.

And when I noted that the Taliban are ideological and non compromising bunch, they may well lose overall control of the resistance because they are not the only groups fighting the Nato occupation. And if the taliban and other groups are tempted to the negotiating table, and the Taliban balks, other Afghan and Pakistani resistance groups may say the hell with the Taliban and come to the negotiating table anyway. Such may be the optimistic hopes that are possible, but its also possible that real negotiations do not happen, or that Nato will be too shortsighted to take full advantage.

But for the first time in seven years, Nato is making a real effort. And only time will tell if it makes things better or not.

 

[maluckey]

But for the first time in seven years, Nato is making a real effort. And only time will tell if it makes things better or not.

On this I totally agree. NATO hasn't gone to the max with anything since this mess started. After the intitial invasion, the intensity could have intensified. Full occupation should have been a priority. Rule of law should have been enforced, and a puppet government with term limits installed. These "Officials" would NOT be eligible for re-election for at least one to two terms, and the major positions should have been staggered for re-election so as to provide continuity. The boxed constitution could have been enforced, and the legislature AFTER the first election cycle could modify it to suit Afghani culture.

Instead we fumbled around trying to please everyone, and in the end pleased nobody. The masses want action now, not twenty years in the future. The future won't get them through next week, which is the reality in which they live.

It's fourth and goal in american football, and NATO needs a touchdown, or the home team wins a crucial turnover.