All the taliban has to do to win is lift the tent up, gather the monkey bars and travel about 5000 miles somewhere else so the US war apparatus has to spend billions upon billions dismantling itself and going after them and by the time they are ready for war, all the taliban has to do is dismantle once again those same monkey bars, their tents and go somewhere else until the US bankrupts itself. All an al quaeda fighter needs to fight is an ak 47, a couple of hand grenades, maybe an rpg and a will to give his life, an american soldier, needs new boots, an M 16, kevlar helmet, 200 pounds of equipment, new socks every week, a gym, a tent, a bathroom, a laptop, a subway, a pizza hut, access to emails so he won't get depressed about his wife sleeping with his friends at home, facebook, fresh decontaminated water, beer, a million round of ammunition, 20 planes above his head dropping bombs, a helicopter to run away when needed, a sleeping bag for the winter, constant support from home, a helicopter to transport him to the airport, etc.etc.etc. oh and a taliban/ al quaeda soldier fights for free, while a US soldier does not show up unless there is a salary, life insurance, a hospital discount, and a GI bill waiting for him. The best part of all is that the taliban fighter basically fights alone with some help from pakistan and iran and some other nuts meanwhile the US soldier is supported by all the industrialized western european nations along with their best technology and money. Ten years later, the result is still a tie, well not really since some of your european allies have already deserted you (the dutch amongst others).
And if you even have a job do you get a salary? insurance? health benefits? (ps job places will actually pay to educate you so you will in turn work for them) Oh the big question...do you leave your family (or cat) for 18,15,12months at a time with the chance that you will not be coming back? No? then shut the ___ up! For all the people on here bashing soldiers and what they are doing, SHUT UP! My husband is a soldier that has done 3 tours and I do not even claim to understand what he has gone through. So, for you all that have no clue do not judge. amadeo123 this is how I know you are a moron....alcohol is a no go unless your are a Marine and then its 2x a year (superbowl and USMC bday),Internet and phones not FREE you have to pay for those unless you get lucky and snag of of the 3-4 in the MWR tent,socks are personal expense(supplied once a year),boots are personal expense(supplied once a year),having a soldier down in the middle of a fight because he is sick, not a good idea so heck yeah give them a sleeping bag, hey i bet if you got in a car wreck the first person you would call is your mommy....what if a bullet flew by your head or you just witnessed your friend being blown-up or watched him die in your arms while trying to save him? Have you eaten deployment food? Of course not, trust me a pizza or sandwich now and then would be a saving grace. I don't care what you think about the wives bc yes some cheat but a lot of us stand by our soldiers and encourage them because we want them home WITH US! Oh and lastly all the equipment they get they have to turn back in,whether its before they come home or before they get out of the military completely, and what they cant account for they pay for!
sing_with_retards-I am a wife of a soldier not a mother of one. So, take your Canadian a** back over the border, EH?!?!? And if you like the ground in Afghanistan so much feel free to go pitch your own tent there.
sing_with_rapture3: Although a lot of times I can respect (but not agree)with others comments, I can not do either in this situation. I typed in the heat of anger and for that I apologize. However, unless you know from personal experience what these men and women do and go through it is not anyones place to judge. They do their job just like everyone else and although you dont agree with it,respect the fact they do this for everyone in this country. You have no clue what they go through or what they see so be understanding when they come home and dont fit a mold that the US citizens have invisioned for them. Also, take into consideration that members of the military,that decide to get out, make up approximately half of the cops that keep your streets safe,jailors that protect you from the people you dont want in society and so on.
Could it be that the reason for the financial crisis be, to make a military career so attractive for young men, and young women, that there will never be a need for the selective service draft again? When their is no work in the private sector then the military is the only choice.
army wife I"m not criticizing your soldier or bashing him. I'm calling the thing for what it is: your husband is fighting for free? ....no, he is getting a salary, if there was no salary would he fight? the answer is simply no. Is the taliban soldier fighting for money?. no!, he is fighting fanatically for a religion and an insane ideology that doesn't care about life outside of islam, if they die, 1000 virgins await him (obviously I don't believe in this because I'm not insane enough to be religious)..... if your guy dies, Fred Phelps and his tea baggers will be waiting to praise him at his funeral with insults and call him gay and all those great patriotic things... your husband worries about you and your cat?...... yes he does, probably every day, he worries about the lives of his comrades as well and cares about preserving his own life. Is the taliban soldier worried about his family and his cat?.....no!, he probably ate the cat already and his family died in a US air bombing that your husband called on him, he has nothing to lose and about his wounded buddy, well, they wrapped him already in bombs and used him as suicide bait to take out as many of your US soldiers as possible.... unlike your husband, they care about the mission, not about the people..
Does your husband soldier and you keep track of how long the deployments are and count the days in anguish every day you are not together?.....off course you do, (read your post) you miss him and worry about him and think about him every day, and so does he......................does the taliban soldier worry about his wife and count how many deployments he has to do and take breaks from war like you and your husband do when they send him home back to disneyland?.... no! he doesn't care about his deployments, he is fighting for his land, his country and his religion and there are no breaks or vacations for him, the fight ends when the war ends and if the war lasts 100 years than one hundred years they will keep on fighting, there is no disneyland to go back to for your enemies...like it is for your husband, who has options the taliban dude will never have. Does a US soldier want to commit to 100 years of war in afghanistan and forfeit his own future for this mission...probably not, eventually they will all get tired and go back. This happened all throughout history with all armies, you are no exception. The russians could have also kept on fighting another 30 years too, heck, they killed 2 million afghans and they didn't care about winning their hearts and mind, they didn't go around building villages, feeding the needy and giving candy like you hubby does.... did that win the war for them?. no absolutely not.No matter what route you take the end result will be the same. Look, I just hope for his sake and yours that he doesn't come back maimed, mess up in the head, suicidal, or in a coffin. Years from now afhganistan will still be a desert, a poor country with no future and probably full of depleted uranium and people dying of cancer from all the bombs dropped there, there will be thousands of men, women and children who are innocent of what Bin Laden did dying, Bin Laden already lived his life and will probably go back to Yemen, where he is from and live the rest of his days as if nothing. If the US kills him, you will basically turn him into a martyr and will make the movement stronger,.... take wild guess what happened to christianity after they killed jesus? did the ideology dissapear?..... hell no. It grew stronger. This war is an absolute mistake.
amadeo123-Actually, if you would have asked him in the beginning of the war if he would fight even if he got no salary....he would have said yes. Now that he has a family....probably not bc he has more responsibilities that he has to help take care of. The taliban soldier will not worry about his family and cat but for reasons you already answered...he ate his cat and his family is dead(probably stoned his daughter and killed his wife bc she didnt want to wear her vail anymore). Its not "Does a US soldier want to commit to a 100 years" it is a question of Will the US citizens and government commit to a 100 years of war. They are merely soldiers that go when they are told to and leave when they are told to. You also bring up another valid point, you dont really hear about all the schools,health centers,rebuiling of villages,helping train their army/police force so we can get out and etc. The areas that are not a hostile (or as hostile) area the soldiers are trying to help them rebuild and give them something they would have never had without help. What some people fail to notice is that a lot of people want our help over there and are glad we are there. It definitely is not like "disneyland" when they come home. The readjustment period is hard. When kids are involved they can be resentful that daddy/mommy left,spouses have become very self sufficent and have to learn how to work within a present partnership again,understanding that the smallest sound can send these guys back to a combat state. Lets not even mention the night terrors that occur or the nights you put your arm around them and they flash back....on you (more in the beginning of the war when everything was 10x worse). Or better yet the counseling that is sometimes needed for the kids bc they are to young to understand(or god forebid they lose their parent). They never leave the war fully and as soon as they get back they get 2 weeks to spend with family (after 2 weeks of reintergration)and then they start training again to leave. I appreciate you well-wishes for my husband and I and our family but the fact of the matter is no one comes back the same way and I would ship anything to make it feel more like home for him so he wouldnt be completely disconnected when he came home. This is not an easy life and all the "benefits" we get mean nothing to us if it was "traded" for their lives.
Hell, we got to use does toys we paid for some how some where.Hey,we keep at it maybe some of those big boys like Iran will jump in and play.We get lucky we may one day get to use all that stuff on China,then we wouldn't have to pay all that money back we borrow.
Before President Obama was elected, many people were screaming that we should be in Afghanistan fighting the real enemy. Well, these people got their wish and things are just as bad as they were in Iraq. We either see this thing through or hightail out of there like dogs with our tails between our legs. One poster suggested that we treat Afghanistan like we did Japan. Beating the enemy into the ground may be the only way to win.
there is a difference between fighting a regime that supported and aided those that attacked us in 9-11 and going to war over weapons of mass destruction that never existed. Not to mention that the lie the GOP managed to pull through cost the lives of over 5000 US soldiers and counting and we will still lose.
Well duh.... Thats what war is. You kill as many of your enemy as you can until they are all either dead, or they give up. What are we now going to politically correct warfare?
April 7, 1965 - President Johnson - "We are in Viet-Nam because there are great stakes in the balance. Let no one think for a moment that retreat from Viet-Nam would bring an end to conflict. The battle would be renewed in one country and then another. The central lesson of our time is that the appetite of aggression is never satisfied. To withdraw from one battlefield means only to prepare for the next. We must say in southeast Asia in the words of the Bible: "Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further."..... Fifty-Eight thousand Americans came home from the Viet-Nam War in caskets. .... October 11, 2010: U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates visited Vietnam on October 11-12 at the invitation of Vietnamese Defense Minister Phung Quang Thanh to attend the first ASEAN Defense Ministerial Meeting Plus. On October 11, Gates gave a speech to an audience of 500 at Vietnam National University, in which he stressed that the growing U.S. -Vietnamese partnership is not only important for the two countries but for the region as a whole."..... Now, once again... tell us how vital it is to kill the Afghani fighters and occupy their land.
BIN LADEN MUST BE LAUGHING. HE IS BANKRUPTING THE U.S.(AT LEAST FURTHER DAMAGING IT) THAT WAS HIS STATED GOAL. THE U.S. IS SPENDING BILLIONS ON THIS FAILED ADVENTURE. BOTH PARTIES ARE TO BLAME ON THIS ONE.
We are the aggressor.... We are the occupier.... We are the jack-booted thug... We wage war with billion dollar aircraft, million dollar armored vehicles and hundred-thousand dollar missiles. The enemy is a poorly paid, ill-equipped volunteer.... The enmy has no navy... The enemy has no air force... The enemy has no armored vehicles... The enemy has no medivac or field hospitals. The enemy is fighting to defend their home soil, while we are killing him in order to occupy his land. As Ronald Reagan said of the Afghan fighters... "These men are the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers." In the end, they will win.
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your husband is fighting for free? ....no, he is getting a salary, if there was no salary would he fight? the answer is simply no. Is the taliban soldier fighting for money?. no!, he is fighting fanatically for a religion and an insane ideology that doesn't care about life outside of islam, if they die, 1000 virgins await him (obviously I don't believe in this because I'm not insane enough to be religious)..... if your guy dies, Fred Phelps and his tea baggers will be waiting to praise him at his funeral with insults and call him gay and all those great patriotic things...
your husband worries about you and your cat?...... yes he does, probably every day, he worries about the lives of his comrades as well and cares about preserving his own life.
Is the taliban soldier worried about his family and his cat?.....no!, he probably ate the cat already and his family died in a US air bombing that your husband called on him, he has nothing to lose and about his wounded buddy, well, they wrapped him already in bombs and used him as suicide bait to take out as many of your US soldiers as possible.... unlike your husband, they care about the mission, not about the people..
Does your husband soldier and you keep track of how long the deployments are and count the days in anguish every day you are not together?.....off course you do, (read your post) you miss him and worry about him and think about him every day, and so does he......................does the taliban soldier worry about his wife and count how many deployments he has to do and take breaks from war like you and your husband do when they send him home back to disneyland?.... no! he doesn't care about his deployments, he is fighting for his land, his country and his religion and there are no breaks or vacations for him, the fight ends when the war ends and if the war lasts 100 years than one hundred years they will keep on fighting, there is no disneyland to go back to for your enemies...like it is for your husband, who has options the taliban dude will never have. Does a US soldier want to commit to 100 years of war in afghanistan and forfeit his own future for this mission...probably not, eventually they will all get tired and go back. This happened all throughout history with all armies, you are no exception. The russians could have also kept on fighting another 30 years too, heck, they killed 2 million afghans and they didn't care about winning their hearts and mind, they didn't go around building villages, feeding the needy and giving candy like you hubby does.... did that win the war for them?. no absolutely not.No matter what route you take the end result will be the same. Look, I just hope for his sake and yours that he doesn't come back maimed, mess up in the head, suicidal, or in a coffin. Years from now afhganistan will still be a desert, a poor country with no future and probably full of depleted uranium and people dying of cancer from all the bombs dropped there, there will be thousands of men, women and children who are innocent of what Bin Laden did dying, Bin Laden already lived his life and will probably go back to Yemen, where he is from and live the rest of his days as if nothing. If the US kills him, you will basically turn him into a martyr and will make the movement stronger,.... take wild guess what happened to christianity after they killed jesus? did the ideology dissapear?..... hell no. It grew stronger. This war is an absolute mistake.
I really want a piece of that god forsaken desert.