Comments on: Rethinking Strategy in Afghanistan
U.S. Officials Want More Afghan Forces to Fight Alongside Marines
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- Afghani Children are killed by the Enemy in bomb blasts to euphorize the blood lust. The Marines should not resort to their level. The explosives inspire further violence and lewd sexuality from the Criminals. Technology and tactics develop a good method for their extermination. The Marines must establish a policy with Kabul on operations instead of the barn storm strategy without strong lead.
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- "He's told the Pentagon he needs to create even more local forces than now planned to provide Afghans security.
"We must protect them from violence, whatever its nature,"
The problem is that the local forces will gladly accept the US Dollar as long as they don't have to get their hands dirty in any fighting, but will sell themselves to the first Kharzai drug baron who buys them off once the Americans and British have gone. - Reply to this comment
- The last strategy the Afghanistanis have is mysticism and heroin. I'll be stoned here all week! Don't forget to tip the Taliban, they're working hard for ya.
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- Re-thinking a strategy it is better to develop a new strategy to Strengthen governament. The corruption in governamnet offices are at the peak and it needs to be first eliminated or controlled instead of asking more afghan forces. The warlordisim at provincial level has made it difficult. Therefore, it seemds that first of all the courrption and security at provincial adn district level fule of war lords needs to be finshed(finish the warlaordism ) will help you think of a strategy for development
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- In order to rethink a strategy, you first have to have one to rethink! Can anyone remember the reason why we invaded in the first place?
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- Dear CarlR609
Wow..... you are so smart that you can convince everyone that hermitdave is totally dumb without even needing to explain why! I wish I was as smart as you. - Reply to this comment
- The last "strategy"the Russians had there was best for them ,as was the US after 10 years in Nam.
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- The last strategy the Afghanistanis have is mysticism and heroin. I'll be stoned here all week! Don't forget to tip the Taliban, they're working hard for ya.
- The American re-thinking of Afghan strategy doesn't fit the thinking of the Afghans. It is more like the proverbial American square peg that won't fit the round hole of the Afghan culture, religion, tradition, and history. The problems?
a) Assign more Afghan army units to fight the Taliban. Afghan recruits don't want to kill their countrymen for the U.S. They serve
for an occupying power for the meagre salary it pays because the only
economy now in Afghanistan is the U.S. salaries - nothing else.
b) The U.S. bombing of villages with B-52 and killing hundreds of civilians, or forcing Afghan villagers to become lookouts for the U.S., is a bedlam strategy. If the villagers don't cooperate with the U.S. their villages are bombed; if they do they are executed by the Taliban as American spies! It is a lunatic thinking for U.S. commanders, and it shows their desperation for their inability to subdue ragtag insurgents with all the modern weaponry in their disposal. Well, Afghanistan is not called the "graveyard of the empires" for nothing!
The elections next month are a joke. Hamid Karzai is just a cosmetic
U.S. appointed figurehead who is too busy complaining about U.S. air-strikes than kill innocent civilians rather than straightening out his corrupt bureaucracy. He was told to shut up by the U.S. - if he wanted to be re-elected- and he did. But he has no credibility in
Afghanistan as a leader. He just put the Afghanistan's stamp on U.S. decisions, and if he refuses, the U.S. will replace him immediately.
His salary, and the salaries of his government and his army are paid by the U.S. He, therefore, acts as an agent of the U.S. - not as a leader elected freely by his people, nor as a president who has any say or control on the operation of foreign forces in his country.
Rethinking of U.S. policy in Afghanistan? That's impossible - unless the U.S. decides to forget about and pull out. Everything else will be just a "re-labeling" of the same strategy - something akin to put the same wine in a different bottle. But that will not change the fortunes in the Afghan battlefield.
Baraq Obama accused the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin recently of keeping "One Leg" in the Cold War era, and the "Other Leg" in the present. But Obama is blind to see that he doing worse by still standing on George Bush's policies, and still cannot decide which way to go. I hope the "Re-thinking" doesn't last until 2012!
Nikos Retsos, retired professor - Reply to this comment
- by speakinup22 July 11, 2009 8:08 PM PDT
WOW I bet you believe Osama and Ron Jeremy planned 9/11/01. I bet you believe steel buildings start falling down several stories above where a plane hits in some magic way. I bet you believe large airliners crash leaving less parts than a Piper Cub. By the way Osama has been real dead for many years. All those CIA tapes are fake. For sure the government does not fear YOU. - Reply to this comment
- "Remember leaders love stupid people and fear intelligent people.
Then Osama Bin Laden must love you, hermitdave, because you are as stupid as they come.
You don't have a clue as to why we are there, and never will. You are too dumb to comprehend.
But rant on, ok dude. - Reply to this comment
- "Rethinking Strategy in Afghanistan
U.S. Officials Want More Afghan Forces to Fight Alongside Marines"
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Seems like DeJa Vu but this strategy was attempted by the previous administration in another region.
I'm not having DeJa vu regarding the press's response however. - Reply to this comment
- Don't ya think you should've thought about that before you escalated?
And WHY did you put troops in Afghanistan and give them orders:
Not to shoot...shoulder your gun under attack...
Don't disturb the poppy bulbs...the Afghani's need them to support terroist activity....we don't want to pixx off the poppy farmers they might vote wrong..
Don't even so much as look at person wearing a burqa....much less stop them for questioning....
Before you arrest any of these terrorists...Mirandize them and tell them what rights US citizens have under our Constitution...
Now please, these orders make about as much sense as electing a man who has never run so much as popsicle stand to our White House....
IT'S NONSENSE! - Reply to this comment
- In the minds of many Afghans, Pashtuns in Helmand, there is a contradiction between a major surge of US Marines into Helmand driving out the "Taliban", killing a few, and protecting the local population which in part are the same "Taliban".And we remain a foreign, non-Muslim military occupational force replacing the Soviets for many.
In Helmand we failed to meet local expectations for a major reconstruction effort, promised in Berlin, in both 02 and 04, long before the "Taliban" surge that has lead to the present situation. We reduced opium poppy cultivation in both years in central Helmand, by 85% in the district of Nad-i-Ali in 02 with a reconstruction program working on the largest irrigation system in the country which was mostly built with US funding beginning in 1946...a program in close collaboration with local government. At that time the region was the most pro-American region in the country and one of the most agriculturally productive cash crop regions in the country. The farmers in that area have been asking for specific help to get out of opium cultivation since at least 1997. They consider opium an evil crop but with a reliable market and an informal credit system, things we have been unable to compete with in our 7+ years of occupation and spending millions on mostly irrelevant projects, irrelevant to the farmers. The farmers continue to cultivate their traditional cash crops of wheat, peanuts, cotton, vegetables, melons and corn (along with opium poppy which they did not cultivate before the Soviet invasion) and get virtually no help from us with their marketing...but we had a $150 million project to help rebuild their agricultural markets beginning in about 2003. Again, the problems we face in Helmand are to some great extent of our own making. And we now plan to solve the problem with military force? - Reply to this comment
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- Most everyone else seems to have forgotten these promises that Bush made(and then apparently forgot about)to the people of Afghanistan back in 2002 and 2004. Sadly, you are right when stating the problems that we face today are to some extent of our own making. Can the USA regain their trust....I wonder? What a mess! Are the lives of even more of our military sons and daughters worth it to mop up yet another of Bush's messes?
- I guess no government official would dare re-think the Afghan crusade from the point of just why America ever got involved in the first place. Was it because they were looking for one man, a former CIA operative, and had no possible means of capturing this alleged terror dude except to bomb and slaughter thousands of Afghan citizens. Or was it all part of a plan to secure the oil pipeline and restore the drug trade? Surely a country as powerful as the United States would not endanger its military on a crazy adventure just to find one man. Are there any Americans out there smart enough to at least question the real motive for the Bush crusades? Remember leaders love stupid people and fear intelligent people. Was ONE MAN worth all this death and destruction and financial cost?
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- I guess no government official would dare re-think the Afghan crusade from the point of just why America ever got involved in the first place. Was it because they were looking for one man, a former CIA operative, and had no possible means of capturing this alleged terror dude except to bomb and slaughter thousands of Afghan citizens. Or was it all part of a plan to secure the oil pipeline and restore the drug trade? Surely a country as powerful as the United States would not endanger its military on a crazy adventure just to find one man. Are there any Americans out there smart enough to at least question the real motive for the Bush crusades? Remember leaders love stupid people and fear intelligent people. Was ONE MAN worth all this death and destruction and financial cost?
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- "Remember leaders love stupid people and fear intelligent people.
Then Osama Bin Laden must love you, hermitdave, because you are as stupid as they come.
You don't have a clue as to why we are there, and never will. You are too dumb to comprehend.
But rant on, ok dude.
- Obama sent our Marines to Afghanistan with the following STUPID ORDERS:
Don't shoot back....
They were made to shoulder their guns during an insurgent attack because they were told if ONE Afghani poppy farmer happened to get in the way, it could RUIN the Karzai election...so our soldiers must just stand there and DIE?
Don't disturb the poppy's....
Soldiers are being made to sleep right beside and tread lightly through the fields of poppys that are used for the heroine production which is funding the insurgents in Afganistan...
Don't dare stop and question a person wearing a burqa...
Meanwhile, when they had a group of insurgents pinned down...they were ordered to allow the women and children to leave...30 people wearing burqa's and head coverings left the compound holding children's hands...when the soldiers went in, the compound was empty...
Mirandize any insurgent before you arrest them...
So our soldiers must recite the rights of American citizens in the United States to these terrorist rabid dogs before they can be arrested...
WHAT THE HELL WAS THE NUMB NUT WHO'S NEVER EVEN WORN A BOY SCOUT UNIFORM THINKING WHEN HE PUT TOGETHER A MISSION WITH THE STUPIDEST ORDERS IMAGINABLE IN AFGHANISTAN...
- Afghanistan is Obama's. He had told us prior to getting elected he was going there and hunting the Taliban to the gates of hell. He has made the same mistake as Bush in Iraq, he doesn't have a strategy. As for the oil theory, that is ridiculous. We had that accomplished back in Bush Sr.'s day in Kuwait. Had the motive been oil, we would have turned Kuwait into the US Oil Company. And no one would have been in the way, Iran wanted no part of it and we had already dismantled Iraqs elite fighting force, who were surrendering quicker than the French in WWII.
- "Remember leaders love stupid people and fear intelligent people.
