Waiting on the Afghanistan decision...

[Direckshun]

To go home, or to double down.

That is the question.

Obama will come out with his decision after listening to what sounds like every person with weight on the subject under the sun.

No doubt it will be slammed here by some. It will be praised by others here.

Well defend your intellectual honesty by stating what you want the President to do NOW, so we can't all be kneejerk morons when the decision comes out and immediately stake out a side.

I'll start with my opinion, but please get yourself on the record in this thread, and do your best to lay out something sensible, and try to avoid "win/lose" terminology -- or, if you must use "win/lose" terms, define what exactly is winning and losing.

Thanks in advance.

[Direckshun]

Shit, I meant to post a poll. Damn.

Oh well.

I'll go on record first. I'm a double-down guy. My opinion is that I believe we need to increase the force-size in Helmand, and the overall size of our forces in Afghanistan.

We have to start pulling some financial support from Pakistan until we see them fight extremism in the mountains instead of ceding the region in Waziristan. And I favor lighting the opium fields on fire, and if nothing else grows there, sprinkle the land with salt.

We have to continue dealing with the more productive elements of the Taliban, and find a way to build up security forces in Afghanistan that could stand up to all but the strongest of extremist bands.

All the while playing DOWN the Karzai administration as much as possible. **** that guy.

[Taco John]

The apparent political equivalent to a fantasy football draft.

I vote for get out and issue letters of Marque. It's such an elegant solution, I can't believe anybody would want to waste a single life on an expensive war when letters of Marque would do the trick.

[TFG]

How about we accept Iranian President Rafsanjani's offer, ally with the Iranian ally The Northern Alliance, and off The Taliban and AQ once and for good??


Oh, yeah, I forgot. We didn't do that. We sent a puny 7k to Afghan, barely enough to take and hold Kabul and Khandahar. We didn't have enough to hunt down OBL at Tora Bora. Later, we found out OBL was "not a priority" and it still shows. Meanwhile, W flipped off Iran and put them on the Axis of Evil, destroying our relationship with The Northern Alliance, and now Taliban is back in almost total control while OBL is still out there. Rafsanjani lost to Ahmadinejad because of that in 2005, ruining any hope of a local coalition against AQ/Taliban. Fine job by "conservative" W...

[Saul Good]

Shit, I meant to post a poll. Damn.

Oh well.

I'll go on record first. I'm a double-down guy. My opinion is that I believe we need to increase the force-size in Helmand, and the overall size of our forces in Afghanistan.

We have to start pulling some financial support from Pakistan until we see them fight extremism in the mountains instead of ceding the region in Waziristan. And I favor lighting the opium fields on fire, and if nothing else grows there, sprinkle the land with salt.

We have to continue dealing with the more productive elements of the Taliban, and find a way to build up security forces in Afghanistan that could stand up to all but the strongest of extremist bands.

All the while playing DOWN the Karzai administration as much as possible. **** that guy.

Once we've successfully destroyed the only thing in Afghanistan that allows them to have any money at all, should we pat ourselves on the back with our right hand or our left hand?

[Direckshun]

What should our next step be in Afghanistan, Saul?

[KCWolfman]

Biden in his doddering age asked Gen McChrystal if we can scale back the operations somehow.

McChrystal is asking for MORE TROOPS, dumb old man - pay attention.

Luckily McChrystal didn't give in and stated we could not scale back and win in any fashion.

[KCWolfman]

Shit, I meant to post a poll. Damn.

Oh well.

I'll go on record first. I'm a double-down guy. My opinion is that I believe we need to increase the force-size in Helmand, and the overall size of our forces in Afghanistan.

We have to start pulling some financial support from Pakistan until we see them fight extremism in the mountains instead of ceding the region in Waziristan. And I favor lighting the opium fields on fire, and if nothing else grows there, sprinkle the land with salt.

We have to continue dealing with the more productive elements of the Taliban, and find a way to build up security forces in Afghanistan that could stand up to all but the strongest of extremist bands.

All the while playing DOWN the Karzai administration as much as possible. **** that guy.

You realize for every crop you burn, you kill an innocent farm family forced to grow the crops for the Taliban, right?

[patteeu]

I'm skeptical about the ability to build Afghanistan into a stable country, but as long as there are credible military leaders like Petraeus and McChrystal who think they can accomplish the mission with more troops, I'm on the side of sending more troops.

But I'm not in favor of doing this at the expense of Iraq. If we must choose between accomplishing our goals in one or the other, I'd choose continuing to develop Iraq and deal with Afghanistan/Pakistan/Taliban/al Qaeda with a counter-terrorism strategy rather than the counterinsurgency strategy that McChrystal is proposing.

[Direckshun]

You realize for every crop you burn, you kill an innocent farm family forced to grow the crops for the Taliban, right?

But you do support increasing troop presense in Afghanistan?

[HonestChieffan]

Hope someone remembers our guys are getting killed while we have this fun intellectual exercise in Washington.

[Direckshun]

Hope someone remembers our guys are getting killed while we have this fun intellectual exercise in Washington.

What should our next move in Afghanistan be, HCF?

You're most likely to criticize whatever decision the President makes. What would you like to see him do?

[HonestChieffan]

Send the troops, listen to people who know what a war is and how to win it and quit trying to change his mind every time the wind blows.

Its really not that hard to understand. The Taliban and BinLaden will attack us at their first opportunity again. You probably dont believe that. Thats ok. I happen to see them as a clear absolute threat and danger to the US and most western allies. So with that in mind, I really do not have a problem with taking it o them and doing as much damage to them as possible in as rapid a time frame as we can and inflict and musch damage to them as possible.

Maybe too black and white for some but thats where I come from on the afganistan issue.

In the meantime while he fiddles around doing whatever it is he is doing our guys and girls are dying. He can send the troops his comander needs now and still change his mind and maybe save the lives of those that are there. He is the commander in chief. I understand that. What I cannot understand is leaving people out there when they need help while they play their political games in Washington.

[patteeu]

What should our next move in Afghanistan be, HCF?

You're most likely to criticize whatever decision the President makes. What would you like to see him do?

He campaigned on having the right answer for Afghanistan, the war he called the good war. He announced, with much fanfare that he was adopting a new strategy born of an exhaustive review last March. Now we find out what some of us already knew; it was all just BS. It's too late for him to avoid criticism, no matter what his decision is.

[wild1]

He campaigned on having the right answer for Afghanistan, the war he called the good war. He announced, with much fanfare that he was adopting a new strategy born of an exhaustive review last March. Now we find out what some of us already knew; it was all just BS. It's too late for him to avoid criticism, no matter what his decision is.

As long as he keeps going on trips to fail at lobbying for the olympics while voting 'present' on Afghanistan for weeks and weeks, he's going to take criticism and rightly so.

[KCWolfman]

But you do support increasing troop presense in Afghanistan?

Yup, that way we can actually close routes after the crop is harvested and kill those carrying the crop - Those that actually deserve to die instead of innocent farmers.

[SHTSPRAYER]

The war on poverty...

The war on drugs...

The war on terrorism...

It's all been one big lie. Afghanistan encompasses the entire fraud.

[TFG]

The war on poverty...

The war on drugs...

The war on terrorism...

It's all been one big lie. Afghanistan encompasses the entire fraud.



And your hero W pushed all of 'em the hardest...

[Taco John]

This thread is a shining example why our forefathers advised us not to tangle alliances and not to go out looking to slay the dragons of the world.

[Taco John]

Yup, that way we can actually close routes after the crop is harvested and kill those carrying the crop - Those that actually deserve to die instead of innocent farmers.


I wonder what the long-term cultural effect is when we take away their opportunity to organize their own "Boston Tea Party" and stand up for their own freedom.

[patteeu]

Here's a take from an expert whose opinion I value, Ralph Peters. He opposes the McChrystal plan and endorses the counterterrorism mission that Joe Biden has been pushing.

Obama's real Afghanistan options (http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/obama_real_afghanistan_options_DwRq7G4pBIS1akiPj3CqMJ)

PRESIDENT Obama faces three options in Afghanistan. Hints from the White House suggest that he's going to choose the worst: a non-decision decision.

Leaving Afghanistan entirely is not one of the options. We need boots on the ground. Even Obama understands that.

The question is: How many boots? Here are the three broad choices on the table:

The McChrsytal Plan: Surge 40,000 more US troops from a weary Army to renew the failing effort to apply our counter-productive counterinsurgency theory -- which attempts to cure cancer with herbal tea.

The Biden Strategy: Focus ruthlessly on the destruction of al Qaeda and its auxiliaries across the border in Pakistan or wherever they may appear in Afghanistan. This is the counter-terror practice that's worked for 3,000 years.

The "Vote Present" Strategy: Send a token increase of 10,000 or so troops, make cosmetic changes to the mission, try to please everyone partially -- and kick the can down the road.

The evidence on the ground, the lessons of history, and our real security needs strongly favor the Biden approach, but giving Gen. Stan McChrystal the full surge he wants would be far better than "more of the same, with new slogans."

This president has to make a decision. A real decision. But it looks like he's going to wiggle, squirm and dodge, then go in front of the teleprompter to vote "present" again.

Worsening the muddle, the troop-level debate is being disgracefully politicized on all sides.

Obama's seeking the least politically damaging choice, rather than the most effective military approach. He's less concerned with winning than with avoiding blame.

Shameful, shameful, shameful.

Meanwhile, too many conservatives are doing to Obama what they rightly decried when the left did it to Bush: Dems used Iraq as a club to beat Bush; now Republicans want to wield Afghanistan against Obama. Hey, this is about our national security and the lives of those in uniform -- not scoring cheap political points.

Shameful, shameful, shameful.

Of course, there are also genuine disagreements. One spat that goes largely ignored is within the military.

Pundits assume that those in uniform automatically support Gen. McChrystal's request for more troops. It ain't so, folks. Of the numerous uniformed contacts who've reached out to me -- soldiers and Marines of all ranks -- only two backed the McChrsytal plan. One of those was a close subordinate of the general's, calling from Kabul.

There's a deeper, long-term problem hidden here. Our military nurtures brilliant tacticians and operators, but no longer produces strategists. It hasn't given us a serious global thinker in 50 years. We're great at solving battlefield problems, but poor at grasping the greater context of war.

McChrystal's a mighty tactician and a fierce operator. But, elevated to strategic command, he couldn't think beyond the Army's minimum-violence/maximum-aid counterinsurgency doctrine -- which just doesn't work. His solution to failure? Try harder. Send more troops. He's a hero out of his depth.

McChrystal is performing superbly in the lethal counter-terror mission at the heart of the "AfPak" crisis (the term "AfPak" acknowledges the relative non-existence of the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan). He's terrorizing al Qaeda in Pakistan's wild northwest.

But he's floundering in Afghanistan itself, where he's trapped himself in other men's bad ideas. We promoted a superb field officer above his competence level when we tried to turn this warrior into a strategist.

On the plus side, both the administration and Congress seem to have figured out two key things at last. First, Pakistan's the big game. Second, aid can't continue to come as blank checks. If the Paks want the bucks and the bullets, they have to perform.

The Pakistanis are balking at our conditions. (Hey, it's our money, dudes.) They liked the old slush-fund approach. But it's time that Islamabad -- which still supports its own favored terrorists -- faces up to the fact that, while Islamist extremism is a bitter annoyance to us, it's a mortal danger to Pakistan.

The Pakistanis seemed to get it earlier this year, when a Taliban franchise appeared within commuting distance of the capital. They're finally fighting. Because it's their fight.

But they still won't go after "their" Taliban or the terrorists who target India. Our relationship's an affair of convenience, and we'd better not mistake it for a marriage.

For our part, we've shattered al Qaeda and have a chance to destroy it. But we need to recall the reason we went to Afghanistan in the first place -- to slay our enemies. That's the only thing that works, and the only thing that matters.

If Obama tries to split the difference in Afghanistan, he'll have made the worst possible choice. And he won't be able to blame Bush anymore.

I disagree with Peters on one thing here. It's already too late for Obama to blame Bush no matter what choice he makes. Obama bears responsibility for how this war turns out. That's not political, that's just the way things are. I hope that he makes the right decision and he gets to live with a shiny achievement as part of his legacy.

[KCWolfman]

Well, the latest I have heard is split the difference. In a feeble attempt to keep both sides happy, he will piss off both instead when he decides to send only half the troops requested

[sportsshrink]

Well, the latest I have heard is split the difference. In a feeble attempt to keep both sides happy, he will piss off both instead when he decides to send only half the troops requested

A half ass effort will be just as disasterous.

[RINGLEADER]

How about we accept Iranian President Rafsanjani's offer, ally with the Iranian ally The Northern Alliance, and off The Taliban and AQ once and for good??

Oh, yeah, I forgot. We didn't do that. We sent a puny 7k to Afghan, barely enough to take and hold Kabul and Khandahar. We didn't have enough to hunt down OBL at Tora Bora. Later, we found out OBL was "not a priority" and it still shows. Meanwhile, W flipped off Iran and put them on the Axis of Evil, destroying our relationship with The Northern Alliance, and now Taliban is back in almost total control while OBL is still out there. Rafsanjani lost to Ahmadinejad because of that in 2005, ruining any hope of a local coalition against AQ/Taliban. Fine job by "conservative" W...


That's not exactly what happened...

[RINGLEADER]

A half ass effort will be just as disasterous.

A half ass political effort would be just about the worse possible outcome.

The fact that the Dems in all branches are now holding meetings to make decisions on the war means it's their war to run -- regardless of how much unity Harry Reid claims they have (even Pelosi didn't believe that one).

I think going in and holding Afghan territory is a suspect strategy but most of the generals seem to think that the actionable intelligence that's at the heard of what Biden seems to favor just wouldn't be there without books on the ground. The current thinking that the Taliban could participate in a political solution is insane IMO...people seem to forget what the Taliban was doing in the days before and months after 9/11...

[sportsshrink]

We have an idealogue in the WH which means politics rules over reality and always has with the left. Obama sits on his hands putting off the enevitable of having to make a decision because right now he has the MSM in his back pocket. But he is now starting to get much flak from his base who seem him as doing nothing so far(SNL skit-damn guarantee you the WH took that skit serious because that was a shot across the bow).

With the left elitists of Europe(Nobel committee) awarding him the Nobel Peace prize, which I see as a pure political play to keep Obama from sending the troops; Obama is more afraid of not only losing his base but far more importantly having the MSM start to turn on him and begin to start exposing his eneptness if he sends the 40K. Going half-way with just a few thousand won't work either and Obama knows it because the radical left will not tolerate any more troops sent over whatsoever the number.

If Obama pulls out altogether which fits his idealogue worldview he knows he is a one-termer and puts not only our country at further risk for attacks but basically abandons the Iraqi and Afghany people too soon only to be slaughtered later not to mention severely wounding the morale of our military. America looks weak with no resolve and the Taliban claim victory.

Obama plays politics while our troops die. But not surprising since the left has "always had 'spurning disdain' for the military. This is what idealogues do. Politics rule at all times!!

[sportsshrink]

A half ass political effort would be just about the worse possible outcome.

The current thinking that the Taliban could participate in a political solution is insane IMO...people seem to forget what the Taliban was doing in the days before and months after 9/11...


THIS:clap::clap::clap::clap::clap::clap::clap::clap:

[Friendo]

pack the fuck up & release the drones. we can't afford what we have now, much less an escalation, not to mention the obligatory nation building. but we know that won't happen.

[patteeu]

pack the **** up & release the drones. we can't afford what we have now, much less an escalation, not to mention the obligatory nation building. but we know that won't happen.

What do you mean we can't afford what we have now? Barack Obama spent more in his first 4 weeks ($787 billion on porkulus alone (http://factcheck.org/2009/02/stimulus-bill/)) than we've spent during the entire course of the Afghan war ($189 billion (http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf)). And the democrats continue to propose additional massive increases in domestic spending as we speak (e.g. health care reform).

[RedNeckRaider]

What do you mean we can't afford what we have now? Barack Obama spent more in his first 4 weeks ($787 billion on porkulus alone (http://factcheck.org/2009/02/stimulus-bill/)) than we've spent during the entire course of the Afghan war ($189 billion (http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf)). And the democrats continue to propose additional massive increases in domestic spending as we speak (e.g. health care reform).

He is now spending our troops lives, I can only hope he spends them much more wisely than he has our money. He could not wait to jump into this war and as many predicted our troops are now out gunned and out manned. They are getting picked off and are left twisting in the wind. He needs to shit or get off the pot.

[patteeu]

He is now spending our troops lives, I can only hope he spends them much more wisely than he has our money. He could not wait to jump into this war and as many predicted our troops are now out gunned and out manned. They are getting picked off and are left twisting in the wind. He needs to shit or get off the pot.

Yes, I absolutely agree.

[Saul Good]

He's already made the wrong decision by waiting this long. It's like a football coach who's afraid to call a play on the biggest play of the game. He just keeps waiting and mulling over the decision. Problem is, he keeps waiting, and his team gets penalized over and over until there may no longer be a right decision any more.

[Friendo]

What do you mean we can't afford what we have now? Barack Obama spent more in his first 4 weeks ($787 billion on porkulus alone (http://factcheck.org/2009/02/stimulus-bill/)) than we've spent during the entire course of the Afghan war ($189 billion (http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf)). And the democrats continue to propose additional massive increases in domestic spending as we speak (e.g. health care reform).

if you're going to use projections into 2019, then include the (ever-changing) projections of the cost of war in Iraq & Afghan (1.8 TRILLION).

[patteeu]

if you're going to use projections into 2019, then include the (ever-changing) projections of the cost of war in Iraq & Afghan (1.8 TRILLION).

Don't try to twist Iraq into this discussion. The projections for Afghanistan through 2019 are lower than what Obama has already spent and he's arguing that we need to spend much, much more on domestic boondoggles. "Costs too much" isn't a legitimate argument for an Obama supporter to make here.

[Friendo]

Don't try to twist Iraq into this discussion. The projections for Afghanistan through 2019 are lower than what Obama has already spent and he's arguing that we need to spend much, much more on domestic boondoggles. "Costs too much" isn't a legitimate argument for an Obama supporter to make here.

whatever--I know where you stand in the WOT. Afghanistan will make Iraq look like the blue plate $pecial.

[HonestChieffan]

Maybe some folks here are not interested in our troops but for those who are and are willing to do even a little, here is a great place to start.

http://soldiersangels.org/

While leadership lets people hang and poorly supported we can at least try to help the attitudes of the soldiers there.

[WilliamTheIrish]

Gee HCF, glad you could find that organization.... after 8 years.

[WilliamTheIrish]

My decision would be to pack it in. If you can't win it in eight years, then you have no business continuing.
This whole charade isn't about winning. It's just a long, open ended, low intensity conflict that will result in endless casualties both civilian and military because instead of having a clear goal, McCIdiot wants to use those 40k extra troops to protect the population of Afghanistan while trying to build infrastructure that AQ will blow up shortly after the last nail is hammered.