Topkick
Verified Military
I'm not taking any road. My question was more about achieving an objective. I don't think we should send/leave troops in without an endstate. So, I'll just have to disagree with you on that.
The Afghanistan and Pakistan Thread
- Thread starter AWP
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That's what I thought this comment looked like.
The objective is, "geographic domination of a problem area and crippling/severely damaging a non-state actor to prevent them from being able to promote or enact terrorist acts on the US and it's allies."
I think framing the objective or endstate differently offers a different perspective. "Support and defend the constitution of the United States, against all enemies, foreign and domestic" is a clear mission statement with no "endstate", right? No clear "mission accomplished" there. But we can expend effort towards that mission with resolve for as long as we need to. Just my opinion.
I agree with everything you just said, but I wanted to highlight this because of its importance. The return China will receive will pay dividends over what it may cost, and when you consider slave labor, it doesn't cost a whole hell of a lot. They're in it for the long game, and we keep showing the world we can't even finish a game of Monopoly.
I went to an NCOPD awhile back and the discussion was about "hostility" in the workplace and how to handle it. And I'm talking about reports of people just saying profane words like 'shit' during the course of conversation or a briefing. Others responded they would shoot off an email/talk to the individual to let them know to be more courteous. I felt it was my duty during this NCOPD to remind everyone in the room, even the E9 that was leading it, that the military exists to kill people and to cause chaos and destruction wherever we go, and we're worried about people being offended when someone cusses? Sorry. It was the last NCOPD I was invited to while in Djibouti. If people are tired of deploying, then the military isn't the place for them. People serve the military, the military doesn't serve them. Yes, you can get some pretty sweet tools given to you that may pay off in ones career, but that's not what it's about. If you can't handle the war machine, someone will be willing to step up and take your place.
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U.S. to Withdraw About 7,000 Troops From Afghanistan, Officials Say
There's talk about pulling 7000 troops out from Afghanistan. Nothing like a huge morale boost for the bad guys when they see their ideology is stronger than their enemies willingness to fight it.
There's talk about pulling 7000 troops out from Afghanistan. Nothing like a huge morale boost for the bad guys when they see their ideology is stronger than their enemies willingness to fight it.
Topkick
Verified Military
Take it how you wish. I don't think it's "dramatic" to ask what the objectives are and I also don't think it's dramatic to analyze risk vs reward, which was my intent with that comment. Could be my comment wasn't clearly written, though.
ThunderHorse
Verified Military
Eh? We've been in peace talks for months.
September: Afghan Taliban prepare for new peace talks with U.S.: sources | Reuters
October: U.S. Officials Meet With Taliban Again as Trump Pushes Afghan Peace Process
This Month: U.S. Envoy, Taliban Discuss Peace, While Afghan Government Is Sidelined
The Afghan Government had been trying to get peace talks going at the beginning of year:
February: Ghani Makes Taliban An Offer To Join Peace Process | TOLOnews
And Mid-Year, July: Taliban reject Afghan government's offer of peace talks
This is more or less a continuation of policy that also started during the Obama administration. It is what it is. Definitely not the model I would have chosen of course.
Yeah, fuck Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Time to take our ball and go home. WW3 is upon us and we need to quit fucking around with booger eaters and get back to maneuver warfare. I'm sure SOF is going to be forward deployed all over the world, well, because that is their job. But we really need to get our heavy divisions trained up and ready, because, like it or not, we are in our second cold war, and the way the world is acting, it won't be very long before SHTF.
Sucks Mattis is resigning, he is a solid warrior and probably the best secdef we have seen, if not the best ever. But it ain't the end of the world, we all love him, but secdef changes ain't nothing new.
Trump, well he is taking an asskickin the past two weeks, some deserved and some not. I did see they gave him 5 billion for his wall, I guess that's a win, if you are one of the people who want a wall.
Anyway, no big deal, all of you quit getting your panties all twisted, life goes on. Well until our next economic recession, which is probably right around the corner...just saying.
Sucks Mattis is resigning, he is a solid warrior and probably the best secdef we have seen, if not the best ever. But it ain't the end of the world, we all love him, but secdef changes ain't nothing new.
Trump, well he is taking an asskickin the past two weeks, some deserved and some not. I did see they gave him 5 billion for his wall, I guess that's a win, if you are one of the people who want a wall.
Anyway, no big deal, all of you quit getting your panties all twisted, life goes on. Well until our next economic recession, which is probably right around the corner...just saying.
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WORD...
Going back a couple of pages, Chinese involvement in Afghanistan has gone on for years. Not only have they supplied, via our friends in Pakistan, the weapons used to kill and maim coalition troops, they also own the rights to some massive mineral deposits and as an added bonus are building Afghanistan's infrastructure.
We haven't fought one war for 17 years, we've 17 year-long wars. Each rotation is a new disjointed beginning. Can't make those OER's shine without changes and new metrics!!!!!!!
Afghanistan was winnable, once upon a time, but that ship has sailed. My definition of winning isn't a lack of ISIL-K or Taliban as much as it is a stable Afghan gov't and self-sustaining military. AFG doesn't need democracy, that's an absolutely stupid notion, but it needs Walmart. Car dealerships, Geek Squads and Apple Genius Bars for the dirt farmers to bring their PC's and overpriced Apple stuff. A highway, a real highway and not the Ring Road. Clean water, holy shit what clean water could do for the country. Electricity. It needs all of this with AFG dollars, not international aid. We talk about "welfare queens" in the US, but AFG is one of the largest in the world.
None of that will happen though, not through the US and Eirope. China will fill the void just enough to profit, but not enough to make the changes required.
17 bloody years, a generation of Afghans, we've had time to change their perception of the US for the better. Instead, we've aliented them, even angered them. We followed the Vietnam model to a T militarily, diplomatically, economically, and socially.
We blew our load in AFG. We need to own the "L" on the scoreboard. Time to come home, rearm, and get ready for other fights. We failed, it is time we admit that.
Or, we start doing things better and spend another 15 years in the country doing it right. That will never happen, don't pull out 7,000, pull everyone. SELECT * FROM Afghanistan
We haven't fought one war for 17 years, we've 17 year-long wars. Each rotation is a new disjointed beginning. Can't make those OER's shine without changes and new metrics!!!!!!!
Afghanistan was winnable, once upon a time, but that ship has sailed. My definition of winning isn't a lack of ISIL-K or Taliban as much as it is a stable Afghan gov't and self-sustaining military. AFG doesn't need democracy, that's an absolutely stupid notion, but it needs Walmart. Car dealerships, Geek Squads and Apple Genius Bars for the dirt farmers to bring their PC's and overpriced Apple stuff. A highway, a real highway and not the Ring Road. Clean water, holy shit what clean water could do for the country. Electricity. It needs all of this with AFG dollars, not international aid. We talk about "welfare queens" in the US, but AFG is one of the largest in the world.
None of that will happen though, not through the US and Eirope. China will fill the void just enough to profit, but not enough to make the changes required.
17 bloody years, a generation of Afghans, we've had time to change their perception of the US for the better. Instead, we've aliented them, even angered them. We followed the Vietnam model to a T militarily, diplomatically, economically, and socially.
We blew our load in AFG. We need to own the "L" on the scoreboard. Time to come home, rearm, and get ready for other fights. We failed, it is time we admit that.
Or, we start doing things better and spend another 15 years in the country doing it right. That will never happen, don't pull out 7,000, pull everyone. SELECT * FROM Afghanistan
A good time to end the Afghanistan mission would have been after Osama was killed. That could have been mission accomplished.
Edit: another thought I had regarding the "but what if Russia takes over control in Syria" -- doesn't it seem quite cunning to hang that albatross around Russia's neck?
Edit: another thought I had regarding the "but what if Russia takes over control in Syria" -- doesn't it seem quite cunning to hang that albatross around Russia's neck?
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Russia was in Syria before we tried to over through the government, and only allowed Iran in when they needed cannon fodder.
Yeah Russia has had long relationship with Syira. I have zero problems letting them deal with that mess. I am more concerned with Europe and that powder keg going off.
Let SOF and the drone pilots deal with the Middle East...
Let SOF and the drone pilots deal with the Middle East...
ThunderHorse
Verified Military
Here's the thing, we discussed this at length in the ISIS thread. We attempted regime change through rebel groups (FSA et al), we screwed the pooch with that dumb decision. I stated at the time as IS was gaining more ground and every time we armed and trained a group they either got killed or joined up with IS that we should have just thrown our weight to Assad with conditions. The reality of Syria before IS gained a massive amount of territory is that Christians lived in peace with their Muslim neighbors. Women attended University.
Yes, the Assad regime and his father's regime have been brutal democratically elected dictators. His father's regime also partially linked to the Beirut bombing. Yet, if we'd helped him stamp out IS...which was a threat to us wouldn't that make him less hard-lined and would shift his alignment? This is all real-politik and requires us to be practical. Did we for one second think that the Russians wouldn't deploy forward thousands of troops the moment we started supporting rebels in this conflict. Syria was their ally in the Mediterranean, they have a freakin' Naval Base there. We've been on the side of the Arab Spring that has only further radicalized the world.
The Russians and the Chinese are our adversaries in this multi-polar world...but we've already left Afghanistan comparatively. Roughly 21k coalition troops, 14k of which are USFOR. Trump is just continuing the policies of Obama in this regard. To actually hold Afghanistan requires much more than 14k Troops on our part.
As @AWP stated about Afghanistan, it's time we own the "L."
The strategic value of Afghanistan and Syria I believe depends on your view of the role of the military. Is it to maintain a worldwide empire and power projection capability, or is it for defense of the homeland?
There is nothing to gain by staying in Afghanistan in any major capacity. FID mission? Sure okay, we take our air assists out of theater and Taliban will swoop in and retake everything. So unless we want to be there for fucking ever, we should probably find a political solution to that mess, because killing them all hasn't really worked out thus far.
I said it years ago, we need to move a hit and run strategy with these shit-holes. Go in fuck them up, and leave them in shambles, let the next group of warlords take control, they do something we don't like, we fuck them up again, and let the warlords try again.
The nation building we've been trying ain't working, and going as far back as Vietnam, the same shit happens every time, we withdraw our forces and the shit explodes. How much more money and blood are we going to sacrifice for a failed strategy that hasn't been successful in the 60+ years they have been trying to get to work.
I'm not saying we should become isolationist or that we shouldn't be engaged in taking out terror networks, keep the likes of ISIS on the run, etc. I'm just saying we don't have to take over a whole country to do that.
As for the "why" we are getting out of Syria, Turkey is about to go after the Kurds in northern Syria. We have been supporting the Kurds and Turkey don't like that, for some damn reason they are being offered up, but it will get silly real quick if some of our people get blown up helping the Kurds as Turkey decides get crazy. Especially them being a card carrying NATO member, especially with the Europe issues going on...
It's going to be interesting to see what happens.
I said it years ago, we need to move a hit and run strategy with these shit-holes. Go in fuck them up, and leave them in shambles, let the next group of warlords take control, they do something we don't like, we fuck them up again, and let the warlords try again.
The nation building we've been trying ain't working, and going as far back as Vietnam, the same shit happens every time, we withdraw our forces and the shit explodes. How much more money and blood are we going to sacrifice for a failed strategy that hasn't been successful in the 60+ years they have been trying to get to work.
I'm not saying we should become isolationist or that we shouldn't be engaged in taking out terror networks, keep the likes of ISIS on the run, etc. I'm just saying we don't have to take over a whole country to do that.
As for the "why" we are getting out of Syria, Turkey is about to go after the Kurds in northern Syria. We have been supporting the Kurds and Turkey don't like that, for some damn reason they are being offered up, but it will get silly real quick if some of our people get blown up helping the Kurds as Turkey decides get crazy. Especially them being a card carrying NATO member, especially with the Europe issues going on...
It's going to be interesting to see what happens.
@Diamondback 2/2
Turkey’s already stated they don’t have any qualms with hitting our guys working with Kurds.
It will be interesting to see what unfolds.
Turkey’s already stated they don’t have any qualms with hitting our guys working with Kurds.
It will be interesting to see what unfolds.
4AM and sober, let's burn up this keyboard.
AFG has held some strategic importance for the last 3000 years and its importance to the US is just a continuation of that tale; new maps, new problems, same Afghanistan. We shouldn't leave, but we have to leave. We should stay, but we can't.
I understand the strategic necessity of staying, but we just can't. The ship has sailed. Go back through my posts over the years and I was maybe one of the last members to admit the war was lost, that we should leave, etc. I went from being one of AFG's biggest cheerleaders to advocating that we put everyone on a plane. Now.
We failed. Keeping people in country won't change the last 17 years and we lack the humility to accept that WE failed. Every nation, not just the US. We failed. We're not turning the country around, we aren't fixing anything, we had 17 years to do the right thing and we did not. We refuse to take a hard look at ourselves and admit that we didn't know what we were doing, our tactics sucked, we didn't have a plan, we changed our minds, etc.
Until we are willing accept our failure and learn from it, we need to go home. We're doing nothing but spending blood and treasure to no discernible end. I firmly believe we should stay, but only if we're willing to learn from 17 years of mistakes. We won't learn, so we need to leave.
AFG has held some strategic importance for the last 3000 years and its importance to the US is just a continuation of that tale; new maps, new problems, same Afghanistan. We shouldn't leave, but we have to leave. We should stay, but we can't.
I understand the strategic necessity of staying, but we just can't. The ship has sailed. Go back through my posts over the years and I was maybe one of the last members to admit the war was lost, that we should leave, etc. I went from being one of AFG's biggest cheerleaders to advocating that we put everyone on a plane. Now.
We failed. Keeping people in country won't change the last 17 years and we lack the humility to accept that WE failed. Every nation, not just the US. We failed. We're not turning the country around, we aren't fixing anything, we had 17 years to do the right thing and we did not. We refuse to take a hard look at ourselves and admit that we didn't know what we were doing, our tactics sucked, we didn't have a plan, we changed our minds, etc.
Until we are willing accept our failure and learn from it, we need to go home. We're doing nothing but spending blood and treasure to no discernible end. I firmly believe we should stay, but only if we're willing to learn from 17 years of mistakes. We won't learn, so we need to leave.
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