Gen. David McKiernan told a Pentagon news conference that he welcomed the White House’s decision to send more combat troops, but cautioned that fighting will be difficult in the months ahead.
‘‘Even with these additional forces, I have to tell you that 2009 is going to be tough year,’’ he said.
Cut me a break. Over seven years later, 2009 is going to be a tough year? What the f*** have we been doing there?
Hell, we haven’t been attacked by Afghanistan since then, so all must be good.
I know since most of you read your favorite media source you feel that you are experts on certain subjects. But I can tell you until you have been here, you have no idea what it is like to fight in this country.
I know since most of you read your favorite media source you feel that you are experts on certain subjects. But I can tell you until you have been here, you have no idea what it is like to fight in this country.
I don’t need to know what it is like. I need to know that we entered Afghanistan with a plan to achieve our goals, and the resolve to actually execute the plan. I don’t doubt the latter, but I seriously doubt the former ever existed. Our military can do anything asked of it, as has been demonstrated for the last century. That means that either the military was asked to do the wrong stuff, or the military wasn’t the right weapon (pun intended), or both.
To me, this has the makings of having Afghanistan becoming one of the great failures of the Bush Administration. I think we can thank Rumsfeld for that, but the buck shouldn’t stop there.
There is most definitely a plan here, but the terrain, enemy, and ROE make this a very slow and difficult fight. No military has ever come in here and won very easily, just look at what happened to the Russians. One of the major problems was that the focus was always on Iraq and Afghanistan took a back seat when it came to funding, troops, and just about any other kind of support.
While we did the right thing to go into Afghanistan because of 9/11, history tells us that no country can occupy Afghanistan for the long term, just ask the former Soviet Union.
The long term problems in Afghanistan cannot be solved by the military. These problems include almost non-existent infrastructure for roads, schools, electricity etc. They also have a 40% unemployment rate and those that do work only make about $1000 a year. One of the few ways Afghans and the Taliban do make any money is to cultivate opium, which is more productive now than it was on 9/11.
The country is a mess and it’s going to take more than the military to try to solve their problems.
Fitzie pretty much hit it right on the head. That is the struggle we are facing everyday. The people here just want stability, they honestly could care less if its from us or the Taliban. The opium trade here is unbelievable, we did a mission with the DEA and some other 3 letter organizations last week…it was eye opening to say the least. It is just a very challenging fight from trying to find the enemy who know every rock on their mountain and all look like the same, to trying to resupply an outpost in the most dangerous spot in the world on top of a mountain at 8000 feet.
There are a lot of things that have gone wrong in Afghanistan. First, we didn’t have a decent plan after the defeat of the Taliban for creating a strong central government, and instead turned most of the country over to the warlords. Second, we switched our focus from Afghanistan to Iraq, and that pulled a lot of resources to that fight from Afghanistan. Third, while many NATO allies have sent troops to serve in Afghanistan, many have put “caveats” on the use of their troops so that they are unlikely to see any actual combat, thus limiting their usefulness greatly. Britain and Canada are a couple that don’t have any caveats that I’m aware of, and have been shouldering a pretty big burden in terms of fighting and casualties. Fourth, and this is the biggie, the Taliban and Al Qaeda have a sanctuary in the tribal areas of Pakistan, allowing them a place to refit and replace their losses, and to plan their next attacks. Our ability to disrupt their operations in Pakistan is severely limited, and even small-scale Predator missile strikes raises the ire of the Pakistani populace. That, coupled with the Pakistani military’s inability to operate in the tribal area, makes much of southern Afghanistan tough to secure. I am unaware of any successful counter-insurgency when the insurgents had access to a sanctuary from which to conduct operations. Citadeltri’s points are also right on…the terrain, the populace, the lack of a strong central government, the ROE, and much more will make Afghanistan a very tough slog for the next 5-10 years. That is the timeframe we must be working to…this is not gonna happen overnight.
Fourth, and this is the biggie, the Taliban and Al Qaeda have a sanctuary in the tribal areas of Pakistan, allowing them a place to refit and replace their losses, and to plan their next attacks. Our ability to disrupt their operations in Pakistan is severely limited, and even small-scale Predator missile strikes raises the ire of the Pakistani populace.
And, with Pakistan recently accomodating the Taliban within Pakistan, it is going to be more problematic.
Citadeltri’s points are also right on…the terrain, the populace, the lack of a strong central government, the ROE, and much more will make Afghanistan a very tough slog for the next 5-10 years.
Of course that begs the question about the initial planning and our shifting to Iraq which is the point of this thread. It was a major blunder by the Bush administration, something our “success” in Iraq has clouded. We all know what happened to the Soviets and we knew the terrain and the independent nature of the people but did not properly account for those.
I was always in support of Afghanistan and still am. I am also thankful that someone has finally levelled with the people that it is a long battle but it leaves a bitter taste when I see ours (and British/Canadian) troops fighting in a place largely off the publics radar screen for so long.
The Bush administration spent so much time, energy and money chasing insurgents in Iraq and then loudly strutting the relative peace while our soldiers were getting bogged down in the real war on terror.
I was pleased to know Gates was staying on Defence and with all the hatred and negativity towards Obama, have never heard anyone applaud him for that move, which in my mind, was the single best decision made to date.
“Of course that begs the question about the initial planning and our shifting to Iraq which is the point of this thread. It was a major blunder by the Bush administration, something our “success” in Iraq has clouded. We all know what happened to the Soviets and we knew the terrain and the independent nature of the people but did not properly account for those.”
I think I accounted for that with this bit, at least, that’s what I meant: **First, we didn’t have a decent plan after the defeat of the Taliban for creating a strong central government, and instead turned most of the country over to the warlords. Second, we switched our focus from Afghanistan to Iraq, and that pulled a lot of resources to that fight from Afghanistan. **So no real disagreement with your above statement.
I know most won’t agree with me on this, but I think that Iraq was a fight that was going to have to happen at some point, for a lot of reasons, which I’m not going to go into here. But there is no doubt that it sure didn’t have to occur in 2003…we should have focused on Afghanistan and had real stability there before even thinking about anything else.
I know most won’t agree with me on this, but I think that Iraq was a fight that was going to have to happen at some point, for a lot of reasons, which I’m not going to go into here. But there is no doubt that it sure didn’t have to occur in 2003…we should have focused on Afghanistan and had real stability there before even thinking about anything else.
I agree. Something needed to be done with Iraq and Hussein at some point, but 2003 was not the right time.
I wonder if we didn’t get sidetracked in Iraq whether Matthew, my daughter and thousands more troops wouldn’t need to go into Afghanistan now, almost 8 years after 9/11.
I know most won’t agree with me on this, but I think that Iraq was a fight that was going to have to happen at some point, for a lot of reasons, which I’m not going to go into here. But there is no doubt that it sure didn’t have to occur in 2003…we should have focused on Afghanistan and had real stability there before even thinking about anything else.
I agree. Something needed to be done with Iraq and Hussein at some point
Why?
Because he was a brutal dictator, but more importantly we need the oil
Smiley aside, neither of those is close to a decent reason. There are dictators more brutal, and Iraq sells its oil (at least when we let them) on the open market where it mixes with the rest of the oil out there.
Seriously, why did we need to invade sooner or later? What compelling US interest was being impacted?
Ken, these are my reasons why I think it was inevitable…
The sanctions regime against Iraq, although bolstered somewhat by 9-11, was on the verge of collapse just prior to that, and I think would have eventually gone away.
The sanctions really only hurt Iraq’s people, and had by 9-11 become one of the main reasons for Arab/Muslim distrust/disklike/hatred for America. Indeed, Iraqi citizens dying because of the sanctions was one of the reasons Osama Bin Laden gave for attacking the US on 9-11.
The UN Oil For Food program was a complete scam that allowed Saddam to get around the sanctions and used the money to purchase palaces for himself and conventional weapons.
The Duelfer report highlights that while Saddam’s WMD programs had been in hiatus since 1997, they were also well-positioned, and intended, to restart them as soon as sanctions were lifted.
The stationing of large numbers of US troops in the Islamic Holy Land (Saudi Arabia) was also another reason for hatred of America, and is actually what drove OBL against the Saudi government and the US. However, as long as we were conducting Operation SOUTHERN WATCH, we would have large numbers of American airmen on Saudi soil, and OSW would likely have continued as long as Saddam was in power.
I don’t think that we could have accepted Saddam’s regime staying in power without the sanctions in place to help keep him and his WMD desires in check, and I don’t think that sanctions could have been maintained for an indefinite period of time (nor should they have, given what they were doing to the Iraqi people), and even if we had been able to maintain them, Saddam would have continued to find ways to skirt them whilst allowing his people to suffer. To top it all off, Saddam was a brutal and unpredictable dictator who was responsible for the death of many of his own people. With that in mind, I think that at some point we were going to have to deal with Saddam once and for all.