Time to Get Out of Afghanistan?

Well, their firing across the ocean is what brought us there in the first place, so I'm not exactly sure what you're on about...

 

I'm not sure what you're talking about; that they fired their AK-47's in the air and hoped the projectiles would travel thousands of miles and hit American property or citizens? As opposed the the US sending troops into their state so that they don't need ICBM's in order to hit American targets.

Solution: Instead of putting US troops into danger in the first place, why not just pull American troops out of harm's way? We know that Afghanistan is dangerous, so the logical choice would be to not recklessly just throw lives into danger for no reason whatsoever.

 

The U.S. have a problem with muslim fundamentalists. If they don't deal with them, another 9/11 will eventually happen. Their approach to dealing with them should be two-pronged:

1. Shape up the international image of the U.S. (shut down Gitmo, help fix the Israel/Palestine peace, stop backing dictators);
2. Track down and destroy all muslim fundamentalist usurpers.

What they thought was that they could do it all at once; tracking down Al Qaida and the Taliban with a friendly face. That doesn't work, specifically not with these guys who have it in their minds that that's how they destroyed the Soviet Union. They're tough and their endurance is legendary. They need to be hunted relentlessly, or they'll plot to bomb your local shopping mall.

At the same time, the U.S. should wave the flag of lofty ideals more indiscriminately; if they hunt religious fundamentalists for the ideals of freedom and the separation of Church and State, they've also got their hands full with their relationships with Saudi-Arabia, Israel, and Egypt. Setting the act straight there should take equal precedence. Then maybe, at some point, flag-burning parties will stop, U.S. or European citizens won't be taken hostages anymore. And then perhaps at some point there won't be any more Mujahedeen veterans with the will to set up a training camp. i]Then [/i], and only then, the U.S. and its allies can leave.

 

So how close are we to achieving those objectives?

People aren't likely to forgive our past behavior for acts we've taken only a few years ago. Closing Gitmo isn't enough to reshape our image; we would have to go beyond that by charging those responsible for the torture and war crimes. Before even considering that we can reshape our image in the eyes of the rest of the world, we have to go back and rectify those mistakes; not just prevent them from happening again. We have to take responsibility for acts already taken.

If I punched you in the face and then stepped back, saying I wouldn't do it again, would the victim likely be willing to forgive such an act?

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Addition:

One issue that I think people should keep in mind is that the Taliban did NOT attack the US on 9/11, nor are they members of the organization that did. They have only gone to the extent of harboring the terrorists who did. And yet here we are now fighting the insurgents of the Taliban instead of the terrorists. Why are there people who think that we are accomplishing our goals when we are only just attacking a completely different enemy from the one we sought to defeat?

I do see another goal in mind today, but it is not to go after Bin Laden. Pakistan is in possession of a nuclear weapon, which is why it is advisable that we keep Afghanistan in check. If we just let the state go to hell, it may open the door for a new government to unleash that kind of weapon against the US. That is the main goal we should keep in mind; not terrorism anymore.

 

Hey Jello, nice to see you around the Senate Floor!

I agree--perhaps the most problematic resource in maintaining the campaign in Afghanistan is will. The American people have absurd notions of what a military victory looks like, and everyone is hoping that they'll be able to catch the proverbial fourth-quarter touchdown and cheer as a square-jawed trooper punches a Nazi in the face in between American Idol and the Superbowl. But the process by which such things are done is a long and dreary affair, usually best accomplished with small numbers of highly-trained and inexorably violent men propping up a faction that suits our long-term goals.

The trouble with international terrorism is that its reach is as great as you allow it to be. The idea that the Armed Forces needs to be protected is backwards: We exist to safeguard the civil populace, not vice versa. An occupation is essentially an extremely long police action. The objectives being to provide stability and stabilization whilst hunting down resistance and eliminating it. This inherently involves an unfair element of risk: Our enemies are not in the slightest bound by our rules of engagement and have no need to invest time and resources in humanitarian missions. But any time we fail--or can be portrayed as failing--at safeguarding the civil populace, it diminishes our dwindling supply of support at home and abroad.

Pvt. Jessica Lynch is not indicative of the Armed Forces. We do not need to be saved from danger; it is our job to confront it.

"People sleep peacably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."
~George Orwell

 

Dude, Brett, didn't you know? We're just IRS clerks thrown into the desert and told to fend for ourselves.

 

There seems to be an underlying current of abject terror at the thought of violence being a part of martial service during a time of war. Perhaps it's because most civilians haven't really been exposed to the war in their daily lives since 2001, or perhaps it's simply because most people fundamentally don't understand what it is that we do. I don't know. But I think it's quite interesting to note that fear of harm coming to us has resulted in at least three faily major revisions in body armor, the standardization of the up-armroed Humvee, the invetnion of the MRAP, and increased proliferation of military and naval robots. But when it comes to fielding more effective types of ammunition to kill the people that are trying to kill us, progress has been virtually nonexistent.

 

This is rumor control, here are the facts

 

???

Who said anything about protecting the Armed Forces? If some freak with an AK started firing madly, I'd be the last person to jump at him if someone wearing dragonskin and toting an M-16 were there to save my little ass.

If this guy were 3000 miles away, then I wouldn't ask that same soldier to go out and risk his life for a pointless cause. I would rather that they serve to PROTECT, not to ASSAULT. I think that's what they would rather do as well.

Well your presence in Afghanistan is ultimately creating much more resistance than it would confront if they simply stayed put. Firefighters are equipped to go directly into a burning building, but it would be stupid of them to just jump in for no reason and no objective. Armed Forces are equipped to serve and protect against hostile enemies, but that doesn't mean they SHOULD do so. If those hostile forces posed no danger because they were thousands of miles away, then they are not protecting anyone. That is called an assault. You cannot say you're defending against someone you attacked in the first place.

Hell we can't do that... none of us are that brave. I am not suggesting that anyone in the Armed Forces are in danger and that we have to come in to save them... I am saying that we should not point them to a dangerous place and tell them that they pose a danger when they actually don't.

 

The basic concept that seems to be presented is that there is a perceived need to withdraw from Afghanistan because it is dangerous for our men and women who are deployed over there. Perhaps I am misunderstanding the idea, but this sounds decidedly like attempting to safegaurd those of us in uniform from violence and danger. I can't speak for everyone in uniform, but I can assure you that being overly cautious often runs counter to mission accomplishment.

Physical distance only creates an illusion of security. International terrorists will attack us no matter where we are. Bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa and elsewhere, a direct suicide attack against a U.S. Navy destroyer, two attacks against the World Trade Center... They will attempt to kill us regardless of our location. It becomes incumbent upon us, as the basic mission of the Marine rifle squad established, "to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver and to repel the enemy's assault by fire and close combat."

We located, closed with, and destroyed. Now, we're repelling their counter-attack. "Because it is dangerous," or, "because it is not easy," are definitively not reasons to give up.

I think you're forgetting that Al qaeda repeatedly commited acts of war against the United States. If 9/11 is too obvious, let us not forget that they attacked the World Trade Center prior to that, bombed several U.S. embassies, and attacked a U.S. Navy warship. We were attacked--repeatedly.

I don't see how that applies here: Afghanistan may not have had a fleet of stealth bombers, but the Taliban government provided safe haven and succor to avowed enemies of the United States who attacked us rather blatantly.

This just smacks of arguing not to send the SWAT team into a drug house because the folks making the coke aren't shooting directly at you.

 

I'm not sure this is really a good conclusion. Musharaff was hated by many Pakistanis, had a lot of enemies, and it was probably just a matter of time before someone whacked him. What would've happened then? Islamo-fascist rage would've swept the nation and your garden-variety Musharaff-hating moderates would've been powerless to stop them from gaining the reigns of government and 70-90 nuclear warheads (Wikipedia). Transition back to a democracy was probably a better option.

Which brings me to my second point....Pakistan was at least a nominal democracy for much of its history. There's no way that having a dictator in power would have been any good in the long run. Also being a dictator, Musharaff could be easily painted as an American puppet. Having a democratic government in place simply confers more legitimacy as it prosecutes the war on terror.

 

I think there's an assumption that non-democratic governments are somehow inferior or morally deficient compared to liberalized, representative states. I think this is a strange assumption. Even Jefferson argued that it mattered more who was in government than the specific type of government said people were in. A benevolent autocrat is certainly preferable to a corrupt parliment.

 

That assumption exists because we haven't had a bona fide 'benevolent dictator' with supreme powers anywhere in the western world, or most other places for that matter, for centuries.

Not to mention that there's an inherent degree of risk with this sort of government-what happens if you have a nice dictator and whomever it is that replaces him or her is a total brute? There's no recourse besides armed revolution, which can take years and frequently results in civilian bloodshed.


Certainly, certain ancient governmental systems had a level of recall built into them for their supreme leaders-Sparta's government, and the Mandate Of Heaven, for two. But systems like that are rare and are definitely the exception, not the rule.


Democracy has more inherent recall of a bad leader than authoritarianism or totalitarianism ever will.

 

Perhaps I'm too much a classicist for my own liking, but I find it difficult to reconcile the notion that autocracy is inherently 'bad' with men like Augustus and Marcus Aurelius.

 

Or...men like Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, and the Kims?


Autocracy doesn't tend to work over long periods of time in the modern era. It worked to an extent in ancient times besides the means of control were very limited-it took weeks or months for information to travel, which meant control in and of itself took a long time to implement. The Persian Empire is a good example of this-it's Greek satrapies were largely left to their own devices so long as they paid their taxes on time and didn't rebel.

In the modern era, information flow is instantaneous. There's really no limit to how much you can know about what people are doing, and also no practical limit to how swiftly you can respond. Technology (not that I'm a Luddite ) has given modern-day dictators the means to be as brutal as their twisted little hearts desire.

 

Musharaff wasn't the worst dictator out there by far, but from what I know what he did was trample the constitution and steamrolled over the system checks and balances. That's not something to take lightly. It's one thing to install a benevolent dictator in a country that's traditionally been a dictatorship, it's quite another to install this benevolent dictator after the people have gone through the hard work of building a democracy.

 

Yes, they are in danger. More danger than if they were in the US. It is expensive to keep our brave men and women in uniform in the field. If you don't seem to care about their lives, then I'll peal to the pocketbook. I don't want the US to invest in expensive wars that run up the cost of healthcare for the wounded, the loss of fighters, helicopters, repair and replacement costs on tanks and trucks. Fuel and food for all that. Rounds, vests, bombs, missiles... the list goes on.

I would rather see an F-18 lost protecting the US than bombing foreign forces that you cannot say for certain will be used against the US. If you put US troops in their backyards or fighters in their sky, then they WILL be needlessly put in danger.

Oh really? How many people were killed or injured in all those attacks in the last two decades within the US? I'll say that more men and women in uniform were lost in only seven years in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan than the victims of all those attacks.

Now as for the wounded... I consider a wound to be as severe a consideration as a death. I would consider a person who lost a leg to be just as much a victim as if they were killed.

Physical distance is NOT an illusion of security. Why did the US react so intensely when Soviet ICBM's were on Cuba?

It is not a shield that you can assume will protect you, but it does make it more difficult for enemies to attack the US. It also makes it that much easier for enemies to attack US citizens who are placed within the boarders of their own state. Don't tell me that it's safer to be an American living in the Middle East than in the US.

Well those are definitely not reasons to stick a fork in the toaster. If something's dangerous, maybe you should first figure out whether you can avoid it rather than invest in countermeasures that might not be needed.

Do you know why New Orleans was flooded after Hurricane Katrina? Is the solution for reconstruction to just continue building up the levies again like before? The logical solution would be to not rebuild the city, as the terrain will just continue to sink and become even more difficult to maintain the further into the future you get.

The solution for protecting US casualties is to send our troops out to confront every potential threat... sound reasonable? After that, why not send them out to kill all the wild animals that MIGHT one day pose a threat to an American? Mosqitoes have a huge list of victims... kill them before they kill you! Seriously any one of those insects could kill you, so go out and kill them first.

 

I think then this begs the question of what on Earth you would define as "protecting the U.S."? If actively engaging our enemies overseas--which is what we're doing--doesn't fall under that category, I don't know what does. Al qaeda attacked us. Repeatedly. We pushed back. Japan did the same thing in 1941, and we have never again had to fear attacks from a single former Axis member. At what point did defeatism so infest American society?

So your response to Al qaeda's increasingly-destructive anti-Western attacks would've essentially been a shrug? Are you kidding? Just let them keep ramping up attacks until they can smash airliners into skyscrapers and murder thousands? We could save a ton of uniformed men and women's lives by pulling law enforcement out of the inner cities, too. That doesn't make it a good idea.

You're comparing the Cuban Missile Crisis to Al qaeda attacks against the West? Okay, look at it this way: Cuban Missile Crisis = no direct attack against NATO. 9/11 = thousands of dead Americans. If the Russians had launched, we would've responded. Well, guess what? Al qaeda launched, and did so repeatedly for over a decade.

Maybe you should actually look up the statistics before you make claims like that. A couple of years back, an American citizen was more likely to be a victim of a homicide in Washington D.C. than die through enemy action in Iraq. I don't have statistics for Afghanistan on-hand, but I'd be astonished if you had a leg to stand on. Even in the defeatist headlines that abound anymore, a trickle of killed a day hardly keeps pace with the number of murders in the 'States.

Apples and organges. Rebuilding New Orleans won't hinder foreign terrorists from

 

I'm sorry but I fail to see the comparison. I was under the impression that Japan was its own state. The Taliban and Al qaeda are not.

And please don't mimic W by using the terms 'defeatism', 'surrender', and 'preemptive assault = defense' to describe everything. If you think the world is going to go to explode because Al qaeda exists... let me tell you something: it's not. Al qaeda uses fear to achieve their political ends and Americans are doing exactly what they want if they have become so paranoid over the loss of so few.

No disrespect for the dead, but 3000 people is very small. In all these years, there has never been another attack that even rivals that of 9/11, so if Al qaeda wants to destroy America... they're not doing a good job. At least in regards to numbers, but psychologically, they have already won if everyone in the US is afraid that they might be next.

Since when is doing exactly what your enemy wants considered victory?

That's EXACTLY what you do! Terrorists use fear to achieve their political goals and the solution isn't to declare war on everyone who ever aided al qaeda, but to prevent another 9/11 from happening again and most importantly not to show them fear.

Not going to war in Afghanistan: the sign of a coward
Going to war over 9/11: the sign of an idiot

Right... repeatedly committed one violent act after another and ended it with an amazing blow of... 3500 people!

You seem to have your figures WAY out of proportion, because you seem to believe that such minor acts of violence could compare to even a one megaton nuclear warhead? If you think that Al qeada posed a serious threat to our national security, then pull your head out of the clouds and get a grip on reality.

Yeah out of the 300,000,000 US citizens, you would think that it compares to the ~200,000 Americans who served tours of duty in Iraq. Get your comparisons right! 300 million is 1500 times the number of soldiers serving in Iraq.

The example was to emphasize the stupidity of attacking a problem as it happens instead of finding the root that caused it and preventing it. Going into Afghanistan under

 

So bloody what? Effectively, what is the difference between an organization that has geographical boundaries and one that does not? Your people are still dead whether your enemy has a capitol city or not. Terrorism is organized crime, and I don't see anybody railing about the terrible undue dangers associated with being a cop in a tough beat.

Absurd. There are clear economic and political goals that motivate Al qaeda. One of those goals is not 'make people scared.' If breaking our will to fight results in making us do what they want--withdraw from the Near East (to include Afghanistan), for example--then you're doing exactly what "they want". If Al qaeda doesn't want us mowing down their organization in droves or destroying their ability to generate profit from opium, I think those are pretty clear indicators of exactly what we ought to be doing to hinder their objectives. Lo and behold...

See above. It's maybe a spiffy morale boost to their people the idea that Americans are afraid of them. But seriously, for the most part, we aren't. Many don't seem to even remember 9/11 anymore, and in this very example, there's evidently more concern for our troops on occupation duty in an on-again-off-again warzone than there is for another major attack against the civil population. But their principle objective isn't the inciting of fear--that's one of the methods by which they accomplish their objectives. If there was a poster with a checklist of Al qaeda's raison d'etre, things such as 'drive the Americans out of the Persian Gulf' or 'destroy Israel' would be their objectives. Your counter to this would be, 'well shucks, let's just leave the area and hope that's good enough.' Because the same idea worked so very well in the 1930s.

Again with the nonsense about fear? And I point out that we didn't "declare war on everyone who ever aided Al qaeda" as you purport: We attacked Afghanistan and destroyed the regime that was harboring them. You even state later in your post that not a single major Al qaeda attack has taken place in the United States since we launched the campaign in Afghanistan, yet fail to note any sort of correlation or causal relationship between the two. When you've got MRAPs and Humvees rolling through the neighborhood with NATO infantry doing their damnedest to find you, there are bigger fish to fry than plotting grand strategy.

 

Yuthura, I think the military operation in Afghanistan became a moot point when NATO took command of the original UNSC mission back in 2003 or so.

Realistically, Operation Enduring Freedom (the US's operation) could end, but it would mean that NATO's Security Assistance operation would continue. In fact, for about 2.5-3 years now, overall command of all forces in Afghanistan have fallen to NATO. The US provides about 44% of the total number of troops for the NATO mission(about 26,000.) The UK is second, with 9,000 troops. There is no way the US is going to cease operations in the country as long as NATO has a presence there.

Also, you have to keep in mind that "Operation Enduring Freedom" also has smaller, mission-specific campaigns such as when US Special Forces teamed up with the Philippine National Army and actually pushed out Philippine based Islamist terrorists back in 2002. These smaller missions have been quite successful, but don't garner much media coverage.

 

It's amazing to me how this thread takes on the same arguements from this point that the Iraq thread had for all those years.

But now we know the answers.

Remember, the surge had more to do with victory than a simple increase in troops. The rules of engagement were also rewritten. This is why the situation inproved on the ground even before the first boot of more troops hit the beach.

NATO can't fight this, or any, war. They are too soft. Too worried about "writing a recruitment pamphlet for the enemy." As I understand it, we can't hold an Afghan caught in battle for longer than 90 minutes before having to turn him over to Afghan authorities. If true, we can't fight under those kinds of regulations.

We just need to fight the war. We've done it before. And why has Afghanistan become a "bad" war all of the sudden? I knew this was coming as the media began it's negative coverage of this war immiediately after they could no longer continue to slander the Iraq war with any credibility.

I saw a tee shirt last week that made me laugh...

"Tree. Rope. Journalist.
Some Assembly Required."

Not that I mind freedom of the press, mind you. But that should also come with "honesty of the press." And they can start by admitting their bias.

 

As most people know, the US military is without doubt the most powerful in the world. That being so, why the hell hasn't the US won in Afghan or Iraq? Anyone wonder how such small states could not fall before such an immense juggernaut like the US?

Well let me shed some light on these very peculiar stalemates we have been facing over the last several years...

The US military was originally geared with the expectation of fighting massive armies and fleets of Soviet warships in any WWIII scenario. We would have dominated any enemy force that engaged us on a massive scale. We were prepared for nuclear bombers, enemy submarines, armoured vehicles, and soldiers that any other state could muster.

Then something happened that they did not expect... the Soviet Union dissolved and the US became the only world superpower. No other state in the world had since dared challenge the US military by directly declaring war because they knew they didn't stand a chance by attacking them with massive armies. Yet there are enemies that can render the US military impetent. They do so by engaging US forces on a small scale, where US numbers become a disadvantage. Striking in the presence of civilians and locations where collateral damage must be restricted, the US fights at a disadvantage.

Why doesn't the US just raze Afghanistan to the ground? That would kill all the terrorists there and finally achieve victory. We can do that. It is not outside our power to do so. It is the most effective solution we have, right?

Seriously... if a very small number of people and resources are able to challenge a superpower to a stalemate, then maybe the superpower should reconsider the type of warfare it's going by. Is victory possible without committing genocide? Maybe, but it would inevitably end as a Phyric victory.

Leaving the middle east to keep that from happening isn't surrender. Sacrificing a hundred thousand US soldiers to defeat Al queada isn't victory.

 

We are reconsidering our mode of warfare. The U.S. has learned quite a bit about counter-insurgency since Vietnam. The strategy has already been laid out by various academics, we need to provide for enough security for democracy to take hold, and only then can the Afghan government gain legitimacy, build a domestic infrastructure, and build a security force to take over. It's not like we're bombing terrorists left and right, there's pretty strict rules of engagement and the military does take great care to limit airstrikes to reasonably safe-to-hit targets.