I recommend this topic in the Warfare / Military -> Terrorism forum Afghanistan NATO Taliban Pakistan Jihad Madrasah Arabs Drones Raids - AfPak strategy The answers to how we accomplish the hard task of defending the people I will answer in that topic. Pointing out silly mistakes, I will do in this topic. Our purpose in the Afghanistan war is to defend ourselves against our enemies who are waging war on us. We were attacked on 9/11 and in many terrorist attacks since by Al-Qaeda a terrorist group so we declared a war on those terrorists. All the states which host and sponsor Al-Qaeda to attack us are our real enemies in this war; all such states, even those states which hide the fact that they secretly sponsor terrorism against us. The former Taliban state of Afghanistan everyone understands to have been our enemy and that's why we removed it with regime-change. Some readers won't know that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia also secretly sponsor Al-Qaeda and the Taliban because our political leaders such as President Obama have not explained who all our enemies are. So our purpose in war in Afghanistan serves our war aims in 2 ways 1) it helps us keep the Taliban from running Afghanistan and allowing Al-Qaeda to be based there 2) Afghanistan shares a border with Pakistan and therefore us having military bases in Afghanistan is very useful to wage war against our enemies in Pakistan where Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are based and are sponsored by the Pakistani military. Yes it would be very helpful if President Obama and other political leaders could explain our wider purposes for war in Afghanistan. Many Afghans do want us there, to help get the Taliban and Pakistan off their backs. Al-Qaeda also want us there at least until their Taliban associates have killed enough of our soldiers to force our retreat. We've not achieved as much progress as we should have done because of the very poor political and military leadership. We can point to many Taliban enemy killed, many Afghans given military training, Afghan airbases which allow us to support a drone campaign into Pakistan. More could have been achieved if a better strategy such as that I have described in my Afghanistan NATO Taliban Pakistan Jihad Madrasah Arabs Drones Raids - AfPak strategy topic here but our political and military leaders have not been reading, not being following my strategic advice. No. We have too many poor politicians and poor generals.
We've not even shaken our finger at the bullies in this war, we've given aid to the bullies of Pakistan and traded with the bullies of Saudi Arabia. No, the populations of Iraq and Afghanistan have had a very hard time with much loss of life mostly at the hands of terrorists sponsored from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. It is the rulers of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia who have not suffered any heavy psychological effect. On the contrary, they have done very well out of these wars. Pakistan has got aid and a timid US which dares not offend its "ally" Pakistan in case Lord Pakistan .. oh closes the supply roads to Afghanistan, gives one of its nuclear weapons to one of its terrorists or says "boo!" to Uncle Sam or some such. Psychologically Pakistan feels confident and in the driving seat because their military have beaten one super power - the Soviet Union - and is well on its way to beating another super-power - the USA. Pakistan is secretly at war with us. Pakistan denies it. We are in denial. For years, the President and Congress have been spending American taxpayers money to aid Pakistan. All this time Pakistan has funded terrorists and built nuclear weapons and perhaps this is why the American taxpayer money spent on Pakistan did not feature in President Obama's State of the Union speech. Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan where he and the terrorist group he founded, Al-Qaeda, which attacked the US on 9/11, was hosted and sponsored by the Pakistani military. The same Pakistani military given $10 billion in military aid (and $ billions more in civil aid) by the US since 2001 is actually SUPPORTING, RECRUITING, TRAINING, SUPPLYING AND DIRECTING THE TALIBAN against our forces. The Taliban and other terrorist groups based in Pakistani territory are secret agents, proxies, irregular forces of the Pakistani military. The Taliban don't wear Pakistani military uniform of course, because that would give the game away, even to the fools who run NATO, the Pentagon, the MOD etc. The evidence for Pakistan's secret terrorist war against the West can be viewed in the BBC's "SECRET PAKISTAN" videos. Part 1. Double Cross [video=youtube;qSinK-dVrig]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSinK-dVrig[/video] Part 2. Backlash [video=youtube;G5-lSSC9dSE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5-lSSC9dSE[/video] Saudi Arabia too is on top of the world with President Obama making another visit to grovel before the king soon I believe.
Republicans need not to be knee-jerk partisans about this and admit that the big mistake today that Obama is making - putting his trust in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan - was the mistake first made by President Bush. Maybe Republicans could argue that all the intelligence evidence wasn't available in the Bush years that there is now in the Obama years? Maybe Republicans could argue it was worth giving diplomacy a try - to see if Saudi Arabia and Pakistan would mend their sponsoring of terrorism ways? But Republicans to be much more credible on the war on terror do have to identify the real problem of the state sponsorship of terrorism by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and at least make some excuses for why Bush didn't solve those problems at the time. Trying to claim everything was well done under Bush and dreadful under Obama won't wash. Bush & Obama got it wrong and anyone who posts in this topic without identifying the enemy Saudis and Pakistanis is also getting it wrong.
No, the plan was for a democratic successful Iraq but neighbouring countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran decided they would wreck that plan by sponsoring terrorists and sectarian militias to carve out from Iraq as much of it as they could control for their sectarian and anti-democratic purposes. [video=youtube;V79M8svB3Rw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V79M8svB3Rw[/video] No but if Saddam had not had Iraqi oil and greedily wanted all the oil in Arabia, starting with Kuwait, he and his regime would not have posed the danger they did. Saddam was a dangerous man to leave in charge of any country, with oil or without. The Iraqi oil in the hands of a dangerous man like Saddam made Iraq a dangerous country. The oil and gas reserves are also why Saudi Arabia in the hands of the Saudis, and Iran in the hands of the Ayatollahs are both such dangerous countries who can afford to sponsor terrorists and fund expensive armament build-ups, including options to get weapons of mass destruction - Iran making their own and Saudi Arabia buying from Pakistan. Since the oil and gas makes those countries a threat to us then by enforcing sanctions against their oil and gas trade we can clip their wings, make them less of a threat to us. We've seen sanctions applied against Iran and here is my plan for applying sanctions against Saudi Arabia, which again some may paint as proposing a "war for oil" though it's more a war for freedom and security than anything. Saudi Arabia sponsors Al-Qaeda and other terrorist attacks against us. So how do we stop that? How do we beat Saudi Arabia in the war on terror? Saudi Arabia funding terrorism - [video=youtube;T1dcwrucnAk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1dcwrucnAk[/video] The dollar value of Saudi oil exports varies according to the oil price and how much is produced in any year. For example, in 2009 it was only $163 billion but in 2013 it was estimated to be $334 billion. So the plan is to take a share of that. What we can do very effectively and humanely is prevent, limit or tax Saudi Arabia's oil exports. All Saudi Arabia's oil exports leave in oil tankers. Now, we've seen how easy it was for Somali pirates to take unescorted ships. We had to deploy NATO naval power to protect shipping from those Somali pirates. Now, imagine how very easy it would be for NATO to pirate or blockade oil tankers exporting oil from Saudi Arabia or indeed from any of the Middle East ports. It would be like taking candy from a baby. So we could confiscate the oil from Saudi tankers, impose a tax, make them pay, compel them enough to mend their ways, explain on seized Arab satellite TV what the Arabs need to do by way of stopping terrorism and regime change to get their oil flowing in full again. As a military strategy, it's a no-brainer. An easy win. A home run. A slam dunk. We can control a lot of the oil business because a lot of oil moves around in oil tankers and we can use naval power to control the movement of oil tankers. If oil tankers don't take their shipping destination from the orders of our navies then board the oil tankers with marines - that's what marines were originally for - put a naval team on board and ship the oil tanker to where we want it to unload it. Ideally, the flow of oil would be where we want it to go. So we wouldn't be trying to cut off ALL oil flow. We'd be directing the oil tankers to go where we wanted them to go, not to where the Saudi's paying customers wanted them to go. If customers wanted the oil, they'd have to pay us and the Arabs would get paid only what we wanted them to get paid and the money wouldn't go into Saudi royal bank accounts but into the hands of the needy Arab people, including paying the wages and costs of extracting the oil itself of course. No doubt Big Oil can help us with that side of things. Pay the oil company which filled the oil tanker with oil in the first place a minimal value which covers the costs of doing so, but doesn't pay the full market value including profits. We sell the oil at full market value and use the profits for our good causes, not sponsoring terrorism, paying down our war debts, investing in new water and electricity supply works for Iraq, all kinds of good things like that. Now, it's never as simple as that because the Saudis could try to cut off the oil production themselves, but we could argue against that on seized Arab satellite TV and use that as another reason to call for a revolution to overthrow the Saudis. Of course, there will be panic on the oil market as the new system of control is announced and our naval blockades go into place. Sure, the oil price will sky rocket for a time. However in due course it should settle down and we may well end up with lower oil prices when the fuss has died down. Fighting the war on terror like that, makes the Afghan war look retarded, a famous military disaster in comparison. Once we have control of Saudi oil we won't need them to buy much off us so no more need for our political leaders to grovel like slimey salesmen before the Saudi King! In fact, we could bankrupt Saudi Arabia and thereby regime change the Saudis to another Arab regime, one which didn't sponsor terrorism against us! So that's how we can beat Saudi Arabia in the war on terror!
Well firstly, an enemy government or state which is sponsoring terrorism against us, we have an interest in toppling it and no interest in keeping it stable. The problem has been that our governments have been too selective, too limited in the enemies they have toppled - just the Taliban state of Afghanistan and the Saddam Hussein state of Iraq. Just the 2 regimes changed. Not toppled have been Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Egypt. Now it is worth nothing that the military dictators in Pakistan and Egypt - Musharraf and Mubarak - were encouraged or pressured to step down. However the military regimes from which they came - the Pakistani military, the Egyptian military, have not been far removed from power. Those countries are not yet run by the people, they still have the military calling the shots behind the scenes. This image explains how the military regime of Egypt has double-crossed the US by sponsoring terrorists then demanded money to arrest those same terrorists - a kind of terrorist blackmail to extort aid money. We need a new strategy which defeats the Taliban (and Al Qaeda) by applying the Bush Doctrine versus those states which sponsor those terrorists - Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Applying the Bush Doctrine versus Afghanistan alone makes as little strategic sense as it would have if we'd applied Cold War doctrine to say Cuba alone but not against the Soviet Union and its Eastern European client communists states! It is a military fundamental that you don't win a war by funding your enemy but rather you win a war by bankrupting your enemy, cutting off the resources the enemy needs to sustain its army. The correct, non-foolish war strategy, knowing what we know about Pakistan now, to fight this war is that our governments and military should change their policies in dealings with Pakistan - from a non-ingenious, self-defeating policy of diplomacy and aid, combined with a limited drone campaign against Al-Qaeda and now fewer Taliban targets - to a much more confrontational policy of ultimatums, sanctions and war against the Pakistani military and especially the Pakistani generals and former generals who dictate military policy to use the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence ("the ISI", a state within a state) to sponsor terrorism behind the window dressing of an elected but relatively powerless government of Pakistan. It may be Christian in some ways to turn the other cheek to the ISI as it kills our soldiers, but it isn't waging war in a common sense fashion. It's more akin to appeasement than war-fighting. It's like when a neighbour sets his savage dog to kill your child you only blame the dog and not the neighbour and you pay him money to keep him happy and to buy a new dog because the one he had got put down because it killed your child. That would be weak, stupid, lame and pathetic and no way to care for your children! The US and NATO allies have the most powerful military alliance in world history and we are being made fools of on the battlefield by Pakistan - a military power which our taxpayers are paying money to! This is really an absurd way to fight our war, with a blind eye as to who the enemy is. We must end the farcical tragedy of our very stupid political and military leadership of this war! We should apply massive pressure to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, up to and including war if necessary. Something fairly dramatic is needed to show the state sponsors of terrorism that their plan for a secret war against us with no chance of any blow-back has utterly failed and they are looking down the barrel of a real war with us or indeed are hearing the opening shots of that war in a way that is rather too close for comfort! The most dangerous thing you are not being told is the truth about Pakistan - never even mentioned by President Obama in his state of the union speech. The recent US National Intelligence Estimate, from what I have read reported about it, has been cooked to down-play the danger that Pakistan poses to us and to our mission in Afghanistan. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are the elephants in the room that our political leaders which to divert our attention from. I made a satirical point recently when I compared President Obama's recent state of the union speech to an old TV game show, on both sides of the Pond, "Blockbusters" in which the contestants had to guess the name of something beginning with a letter they picked from a board. So the contestants would pick a letter, in this case "P" then the quiz master, here President Obama, gives us the clue as to what "P" it is he is describing. I think the reason for keeping so quiet about Pakistan is that the President doesn't have a good policy with regard to Pakistan. If he talks about Pakistan at all, it will just highlight what a mess his Pakistan policy is in. Well I suppose the president might have something up his sleeve like when they were planning to kill Osama Bin Laden but it is hard to imagine what that can be. No secret plan is going to solve the Pakistan problem - it needs to be a public confrontation as per the way Iran has been confronted over its nuclear weapons plans.
Agreed in large part though I think a good many Scots and Britons would have been exterminated along with the Jews because we are not ones to be told to speak German if we don't want to. So thank you very much indeed to our great friends and allies, the United States! Time for some flag-waving and back-slapping for the Anglo-American special relationship I think. Take it away Condi! [video=youtube;ARHpOVmP8AM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARHpOVmP8AM[/video]
Thanks, Peter, for such an elaborate response. I expected to be finished and done here after Alpha put me in my place! There are several points in your answer I would like to respond to, but right now I am busy. I shall be back later tonight.
That should be "back" into Pakistan because the Taliban are an irregular force of the Pakistani military, set up and at least semi-controlled by the military intelligence service the ISI. It's not a problem that we pushed them back towards their country of origin - that was progress. The problem has been we haven't pushed them far enough back, kept them back as we've drawn down and we haven't taken out the most important headquarters for the Taliban - the University of Jihad, the ideological nerve centre of the Taliban, home of the Father of the Taliban, this guy - [video=youtube;aXMHnu-7ZZk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXMHnu-7ZZk[/video] and we've not bombed the ISI HQ in Islamabad, mentioned in the videos I posted in post 77 http://www.politicalforum.com/showthread.php?t=343816&p=1063636096#post1063636096 Where is Bomber Harris, of Bomber Command, when you need someone to let the ISI reap our whirlwind after sewing their wind of terrorism? No the Taliban is like a weed that has grown from Pakistan into Afghanistan. If the Taliban are in Afghanistan it means they are spreading. We ought to seek to cut the Taliban weed right down to its roots, ideally pull out the roots themselves by eliminating the ISI. Pakistan has a terrorist problem particularly with the so-called "Pakistani Taliban, the TTP". Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan / "Taliban Movement of Pakistan". Now this "Pakistani Taliban" attack targets in Pakistan, government targets included, but this is mostly a threat to the stability of the relatively powerless elected government of Pakistan which the US and allies pressured the Pakistani military dictatorship regime to allow to be established, which they did, but mostly as window dressing while the real power to call the shots, dictate military policy, still lies with the military. The Pakistani military intelligence service, the ISI semi-control this Pakistani Taliban as they do their other terrorist groups and they are happy to use the Taliban against their own weak government, to keep it weak, to cause problems for it, so that they can press for the restoration of military dictatorship. The control of the nuclear weapons remains with the Pakistani military. The only way that the Al-Qaeda would get a nuclear weapon to set off in a USA city as a car nuclear-bomb would be if the Pakistani military wanted to give Al Qaeda a nuclear weapon. Sure the Pakistani military might set up a stunt to make it look like terrorists had "stolen" a nuclear weapon simply to fool the US & West and to try to escape the blame for terrorism which they, the Pakistani military, are organising behind the scenes. An American city nuked by Al Qaeda - will be because the Pakistani military have given them a nuke.
No we crush the Taliban and their masters the Pakistani military dictatorship, defended by the ISI, leaving only a modern loyal Pakistani military. No-one can risk making any kind of political deal with these poisonous snakes and spiders. We must crush them all. No other course of action will leave us safe and secure. No, the problem of Pakistani's military dictatorship and the terrorists like Al Qaeda which they sponsor is our problem. The war on terror is our war. It does us no good whatsoever if the Afghan military come to an arrangement with the Pakistani military which leaves Pakistan and their terrorists free to attack us. You mean General Musharraf the former military dictator of Pakistan? What was Musharraf's will? He sponsored Al Qeada that did 9/11. One of the World Trade Center twin towers collapses - the will of Musharraf. So Musharraf helped establish and maintain the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. He oversaw the funding and support and direction of the Taliban as it fought our soldiers in Afghanistan. He gave shelter to Al Qaeda in Pakistan when they were pushed out of Afghanistan. Pervez Musharraf is enemy number one in the war on terror. That was his will - to defeat us like he helped defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan. Musharraf took us for fools. Well, he took President George W. Bush for a fool anyway. He seems to have you fooled too William Walker. Sure - so long as the Afghan governments are fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda without let or hindrance or double dealing. If not then we alone fight the Taliban and Al Qaeda and their ISI masters - people like Musharraf and all the current and previous Pakistani military commanders who have commanded the ISI to sponsor terrorism against us. This is our war and we should never, ever give up the prosecution of our war against our enemies to anyone else. The whole notion to sub-contract our war to governments as unreliable as the Afghan and Pakistani governments is deeply flawed. We must retain command of this war ourselves and for example, instead of giving money to the Afghan national army we should spend that same money on raising an auxiliary force of Afghans under the command of NATO generals. That is the only way to be sure that their orders are to fight the Taliban not come to some kind of dangerous accommodation with them.
No, it wasn't working in terms of getting any closer to a final victory but maybe it seemed to be doing OK for a while. All the Pakistanis had to do was to surge the Taliban enough to begin to overwhelm our forces in Afghanistan and when they did, the Bush Afghanistan strategy began to fail. McCain said - "Surge in Afghanistan, like we surged in Iraq". Obama said "OK but Iraq was the wrong war we should only have surged in Afghanistan" so that's what Obama did - he drew down from Iraq and surged in Afghanistan. OK. One of the tasks they attempted with all those "redundant troops" was to try to secure the Afghanistan / Pakistan border - a practically impossible task except in winter when many of the mountain passes are closed. As Herkdriver put it in post #51. The important point however is that in our war, the war against terrorism based in this region, that Afghanistan / Pakistan border has absolutely no significance whatsoever. We need to attack terrorists and their state sponsors either side of that border, in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Not only were the border posts easy to attack, but supplying them by road made the supply convoys a very easy target too. We lost a lot of good guys trying to police that border and it was for nothing. OK but in terms of the roads that we really had to secure - the main supply roads to our bases - the main highways of Afghanistan, we never properly secured those, so any traffic on those - "highly visible" or not was not safe from road-side bombs or ambushes. That meant our supply lines were vulnerable and we had to pay warlords, some with association with the Taliban to get our supplies delivered by road. So it wasn't that the principle of a defensive line was wrong because defensive lines are very useful if placed appropriately. What was wrong was where the defensive lines were established - along the Afghan / Pakistani border - where we didn't need them - and not along our supply lines - which we did need defending, something like this. If we had secured our essential supply routes like that instead of mucking about along the Afghan / Pakistan border we could have saved thousands of our guys from being killed or injured in attacks on those roads. Well some things they only partially messed up. We did need to train up an Afghan auxiliary force to help defend the supply roads. So the big effort to train up Afghan soldiers was correct. The problem with that however was those Afghans were paid to fight for Karzai in the Afghan national army, instead of being paid to help defend our supply roads. We needed to take command of all Afghans we were paying for to make as sure as possible the recruits we were working with were loyal to us - would not shoot our guys in the back - and of the appropriate skill level - no junkies, thieves and the rest that Karzai was happy to recruit because for every man he could name he got paid more by us for him, be he good soldier or not. We did need a surge to train up Afghans into our own NATO auxiliary supply route protection force. We did need a surge to defend our supply routes. We got the surge but we never used the surge for what we needed it for. However we do need to increase the quantity of air-strikes and drone missions into Pakistan. This is likely to enrage Pakistan to the extent that they will surge the Taliban like they have never surged them before. So we do need to have our airbases very well defended against the threat of siege by Taliban forces, perhaps even supported by Pakistani regular forces and Afghan National Forces who will be annoyed if and when we stop paying them to pay our own auxiliary Afghan force instead. What is required is a precisely prepared plan to fortify the Afghan air bases. Clearly, such a task requires a special team of scientists and engineers set up by either NATO or the Pentagon to specify the fortifications required, though the construction itself could be done in large part by the military engineers we have - such as the US Army Corps of Engineers and the British Army Corps of Royal Engineers. (The problem with UK forces being I believe it is UK PM Cameron's intention to withdraw all combat troops by the end of 2014. As a better British friend to the US than he, I would offer 1/5 of the number of US forces at 10,000 or more post 2014. So if the US had 10,000 in Afghanistan I would send 2,000 British troops. If the US had 20,000 I would send 4,000 British troops) We need well defended airbases to surge the air-war over Pakistan. If and when we have the resources available it would also be worthwhile securing a land supply route between our airbases and to an external land supply corridor, most likely via the Northern Distribution Network. Supply by airlift into airbases would be the ideal first move and critical to the fight against terrorism and Pakistani imperialism via the Taliban but to secure Afghanistan and Pakistan fully, for responsible government, which serves the people, for the long term and to help integrate Afghanistan into the modern economy then land supply routes and railways are a worthwhile aim. This would be not so much "nation building" but claiming bandit territory for the modern world - insisting by force of arms that there are to be no "no go" areas for modernity and development. It is not for us to say what nations there should be, nor what borders there should be - simply that there should be no safe areas for terrorism. That need for no failed states and no areas for terrorism to flourish applies to other parts of the world as well but Afghanistan is where we have our troops just now, that's the mission before us and that's how I would lead it to success.
If you ask permission from Pakistan for anything they will use the information you give them about your intended operation to limit its effect. So in this case, they'd make sure that all the people they wanted to save were outside that area to be saturation bombed and all the wedding parties and civilians they wanted killed to blame your operation on, were inside that same area. The only way we managed to get Bin Laden is because we kept our operation entirely secret and never let on that we had tracked him down. As has been already mentioned the border isn't just 300 to 400 miles long - it's longer so if we only saturate bomb 300 to 400 miles then that leaves the rest free. The only targets that are worth giving advance notice of to Pakistan or Afghanistan are static targets - such as buildings you want to demolish, such as the ISI HQ in Islamabad or the University of Jihad at Akora Khattak. Giving notice allows civilians time to get clear and you don't kid yourself that the bombing mission will kill any enemy - it's just the building that gets turned into rubble - not a war winning tactic - simply gives a very strong lead to our friends in Pakistan that the ISI and Taliban leadership are very much targets in the war to be taken out as and when the opportunity arises. Saturation bombing was used in Vietnam and it is very inefficient way to kill an enemy in the field who can dig themselves a bomb shelter and if they can get deep enough then no amount of bombs will kill them. Also it is much cheaper for the enemy to sit it out in a bomb shelter than it is to have bombs dropping all the time. While the enemy have got themselves dug in and safe the civilians in the area have not so those are the ones who get killed for sure. It is only our air bases and critical road supply routes where we need surveillance over and that's 24/7/52 - 24 hours a day / 7 days a week / 52 weeks a year - every year. This is where we need our heaviest fire power available in case of a mass attack or sustained siege. That's where your satellite and aerostat (balloon) and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) observation is of most use to locate enemy positions in association with smart weapons. What is a much better strategy for seeking out the enemy elsewhere in Afghanistan and Pakistan is intelligent targeting using agents on the ground who can infiltrate enemy territory, maybe they are individuals who live there anyway and are just fed up of the Taliban in their area, or want bounty money from us, so they blend in with the locals because they are locals, and use them to help guide in drone or air-strikes as forward air controllers. To co-ordinate such human intelligent gathering, CIA or allied country intelligence operatives sometimes need to meet with such agents and to do so in quite exposed circumstance. If our CIA or allied country intelligence operatives get discovered by the Taliban are in need of urgent rescue then we need airbases nearby to fly rescue missions from.
I think you are making the same errors that some in the military made. They want to treat Afghanistan as some sort of chess board with the goal of controlling as much area as possible. Unlike Iraq there was virtually no one that was under the impression that we were going to be able to rebuild a civilization (there wasn't one there to begin with) or that what was there was worth protecting, there is nothing in Afghanistan of ANY significance whatsoever worth protecting. If you want to look at it through the prism of area free of Taliban then you might be able to claim that the initial strategy wasn't working. That is not the correct way to look at it. The way to judge success is entirely on attrition. How many of their guys did we kill versus our guys getting killed. In that sense it was much higher with the original strategy of small teams sneaking around using air strikes. We only really started to take casualties when we began dumping redundant troops over there. Unlike Iraq there was never any need to maintain security of areas to allow for the return of a civilization. Afghanistan is filled with dirty savages who sleep with their goats. There is nothing redeeming at all compared to Iraq where they had an educated populace and modern infrastructure even if it was run down after decades of authoritarianism. The second reason is that it is always preferable to keep the enemy in the theater where you have the advantage. In Afghanistan we had free run to to anything compared to when we did strikes in Pakistan where you had to constantly juggle around diplomatic factors on top of the already existing military factors. It is much more difficult politically to do the same drone strike in Pakistan than it is in Afghanistan especially when you start talking about collateral damage which is an issue with the increase in drone strikes lately. It doesn't help our cause pissing of the Pakistani government if we mess up in their country but there is no one to protest in Afghanistan. If I was running the show I would have kept the original strategy going and then started pumping out bull(*)(*)(*)(*) stories about how the battles were close and it could tip either way for control of Afghanistan. Hell make up some stories about some victories by Al Queda forces. This turns one of the key elements that the new Al Queda has utilized, decentralization and minimal to non existent communication between cells, to our advantage since they wouldn't be able to verify the stories. While this wouldn't fool every terrorist it would certainly mean that some of them would come running to Afghanistan to try and become the hero of the day and then we can kill them in OUR preferred thearter of war instead of worrying about dealing with another government like Pakistan or Indonesia.
Away in a manger, No crib for His bed The little Lord Jesus Laid down His sweet head The stars in the bright sky Looked down where He lay The little Lord Jesus Asleep on the hay The cattle are lowing The poor Baby wakes But little Lord Jesus No crying He makes I love Thee, Lord Jesus Look down from the sky And stay by my side, 'Til morning is nigh. Be near me, Lord Jesus, I ask Thee to stay Close by me forever And love me I pray Bless all the dear children In Thy tender care And take us to heaven To live with Thee there
OK....you are assuming a few things here like a previous poster did. First of all....the vast majority of Taliban and what is left of Al-Qaeda cross back into Afghanistan from Waziristan over 300 to 400 miles of the boarder and even those who are spread out along 800 miles of the Pakistan boarder still travel along the boarder on the Pakistan side and enter Afghanistan primarily along only 300 to 400 miles of the boarder. They do this for a few reasons one being they do not have anywhere near the level of Command and Control and Communications ability of our forces and in many cases DIRECT PHYSICAL COMMUNICATION....thus meeting points are planned on the Pakistan side of the boarder before they enter back into Afghanistan. Now...I am WELL AWARE that asking permission of Pakistan to bomb 10 miles inland is like sounding an alarm for all the enemy to hear....but we could disguise such a request and NOT tell them the extent such operations will exist at or when they will occur but it IS COMPLETELY NECESSARY....unfortunate as this reality is....as the President will NOT give a go for such an operation without first requesting permission to bomb Pakistan soil. Now....as I told another member....FORGET ABOUT ARC LIGHT TYPE SATURATION BOMBING!!! We don't need to do that anymore and to do so means we would have to literally destroy a swath of land 40 to 50 miles wide by 400 miles long.....carpet bombing style. To do this might kill a lot of civilians. We have the capability to bring in B-52's, B-1B's and B-2's and use AIR BURST IR-SEEKING SELF PROPELLED CLUSTER BOMBS. This form of Cluster Bomb does NOT violate the International BAN....which I believe we have not signed anyways...on Cluster Bombs as each one of these anywhere from the size of a 250, 500, 750, 1000 and up to 2000 lbs bomb.....the last one usually being an AIR LAUNCHED from a B-52 Cruise Missile.....well these bombs are guided to target's via REAL TIME SATELLITE and other methods and they AIR BURST over a target and this releases SELF PROPELLED MINI-MIRV'S.....each one as small as a .50 Cal round but longer....which will guide itself to any IR-SIGNATURE. So....since we have Drones and Satellites that can completely detail the IR-Signature an entire COUNTRY down to heat signatures the size of a MOUSE.....we use Supercomputers to have Satellite and Drone IR-DETECTION to locate pockets of Taliban and Terrorist Groups crossing into Afghanistan....and since this entire thing can happen over just 24 hours.....as we will allow them to come into Afghanistan about 30 miles and perhaps up to 40 miles....but 30 miles is better....and 10 miles on the Pakistan side as it takes them all about 7 to 10 days to cross in almost all enemy forces and they are spread out at the point we would wish to strike them 40 to 50 miles in depth into both Afghanistan and Pakistan and 300 to 400 miles in length along the boarder.....and this area is where the USAF would concentrate dropping Air Burst IR-Seeking Sub-munitions. Anywhere out of this area is going to be small pockets of the enemy crossing in and we could simply use standard Navy F-18 Superhornets as well as use Apache Long Bow Choppers and A-10's to deal with smaller groups. WE CAN DO THIS EASILY!!! It only takes political will. And I can tell you this....there were only a couple hundred of us on the ground in Afghanistan directing Air Strikes that killed THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS OF THE ENEMY.....and of the very few that survived our strikes....they either quit....or if still active against us DO NOT WANT TO GO THROUGH THAT AGAIN!!! We do this....it would COMPLETELY BREAK THE WILL OF OUR ENEMY. AboveAlpha
I disagree. Those AKs they were using were just as dangerous as the ones at Khe Sanh. Different training and equipment capabilities of our troops, without the massive improvements to the military in the Reagan era casualties would be a multiple of what they were.
My plan is a lot different from what has been tried. This is a global war on terror therefore the chessboard is the whole world, and even includes satellites in geostationary orbit as well. So for example, moves on the global chessboard we should take but haven't yet are Seizing control over Pakistani, Saudi. Iranian, Egyptian etc TV satellite and broadcast our own TV instead to clip the wings of regimes that are sponsoring terrorism. Not inviting Musharraf to the White House, or arresting him and other Pakistani generals when they visit the West. Financial and trade sanctions Naval blockades Afghanistan is, so to speak, only one square on the global chessboard. Therefore the war cannot be won solely within the borders of Afghanistan. What we do in Afghanistan has to be coordinated with a global strategy. The supreme military commanders we've had, at NATO HQ in Brussels, at the Pentagon in Washington, haven't particularly got the global strategy correct - maybe it is their fault, maybe the politicians won't allow them the authority they'd need to take some of those global actions. The failures of global strategy - Musharraf at the White House, Pakistan given billions in aid as it sponsors terrorism and builds nuclear weapons, trading with Saudi Arabia as it sponsors terrorism, satellite TV never seized, no sanctions imposed - all those failures have been much more fatal to winning in Afghanistan than the failures of our field military commanders within Afghanistan itself. As for "controlling as much area as possible", my previous posts just explained that I didn't support trying to hold a defensive line along the Afghanistan / Pakistan border with the unrealistic thought that doing so could keep the enemy out of all of Afghanistan, that the whole area of the country of Afghanistan could be controlled by such border policing. Well Afghanistan before all the wars, back in the 1960s was making progress to modernity before the wars wrecked everything. You ought to look at some photographs and read about Afghanistan back then. Afghanistan In The 1960s. Prepare To Be Very, Very Surprised. Afghanistan in the 1950s and 60s It really has been all the wars and the breakdown of civil order which has trashed the civilisation that they had and could have had by now. Well there are still people there and the Afghans would like to protect themselves and probably could do so very effectively if it were not for Pakistan sending the Taliban over the border to attack them and if they had a national army to establish basic law and order. OK. Point made and I never disputed those sort of tactics have a place. Some points about this though. 1.You still need well defended airbases in Afghanistan to fly from. Both for air-strike missions and to rescue or recover your forward air controllers if they get spotted or when they have run out of supplies and need some rest and recovery time. Those airbases need a robust defence because the Taliban know where they are and will target the bases themselves and the traffic in and out of them - by air and by road. So you need a good plan for static defence as well. 2. The Taliban enemy can sustain a much higher casualty rate than our forces, so long as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are pouring money in to recruit, train up, arm and supply new Taliban then we don't get a final victory. To get a final victory we have to "drain the swamp", stop the flood in from Pakistan of new Taliban recruits. That takes the sort of global strategy I have been describing. No, we have been taking casualties all along but you are right to point to the unacceptable casualties we began to sustain when surge troops were deployed like tethered goats into isolated hard to supply forward operating bases and got trapped or the supply convoys got ambushed or road-side bombed. I've already explained how I would have deployed surge troops differently. So I would not make the same mistake with surge troops as has been made already. Well it is not our duty to use our troops to maintain security everywhere in Afghanistan but it serves our purposes if we have those areas at least not being used to base terrorist camps. Where we do need good security is in and around our bases and supply roads and that has never been achieved because of the unprofessional leadership of our military in such matters. So it was in our own best interests to establish an excellent level of security and civilisation in limited places and to use air power to prevent Taliban and terrorist bases from getting too established elsewhere in as much as air-power can achieve that but I agree that it really is up to the Afghans to take on the wider task of securing and rebuilding their own country but our efforts would make that possible, it would give the Afghans a fighting chance whereas with us not helping them at all, with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia helping the Taliban, the Afghans had no chance. We ought to retain our compassion for our fellow human beings. We have values that make us who we are and if we go to Afghanistan and forget who we are that's another way we could lose this war. If we become indifferent, callous and cruel to the Afghans then we become the terrorists we are trying to fight. As I quote above, "bless all the dear children" and that means Afghan children too. Afghanistan has been pushed backwards by events but more are being educated now because of our efforts and of that progress alone we should be proud of our achievements and sacrifices. In terms of winning the global war on terror, Afghanistan is not the battleground of choice for us. There are virtually no enemy assets to destroy or confiscate. So we don't weaken the enemy's core strength in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan whatever we do in Afghanistan. No we can't do "anything" because civilian casualties give our operations a bad reputation with global opinion and that brings support to our enemy. We must be responsible in the use of force. However, it makes no sense to put our forces in danger "patrolling" where enemies can pop up from crowds and attack us when our forces are given rules of engagement which prevent them firing back because of the risk of civilian casualties. This is why I don't support the COIN (counter-insurgency) methods of embedding our forces into cities and towns where they become easy targets, take casualties and eventually have to pull out anyway. That's policing and it should be left to those who live there to do. We have to confront the Pakistani regime, especially the military who are sponsoring terrorism but the Pakistani elected government might not be too pleased about the sanctions etc we should impose on the whole country to force them to address the traitor enemies within the Pakistani military. We need a policy of ultimatums, sanctions and war with Pakistan and that means yes, they are going to get very "pissed off". No, if anything we need to think about extending our operations into Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Afghanistan is most useful for airbases to fight terrorists both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This means that Pakistan may well surge the Taliban like never before, may well use their regular forces in support of Taliban operations. So be it. We get ready to repel any such enemy surge by fortifying our airbases immediately and later fortifying the supply routes as and when resources allow. What will be most effective to winning is allowing the people of the region to hear the truth, plain and simple, by seizing control over, for example, Pakistani satellite TV and calling for the arrest of the political leaders of the Taliban who have been terrorising Pakistan and Afghanistan and the military leaders of the ISI and the commanders who control the ISI and have ordered them to sponsor terrorism.
That may well be the slack-minded, loose definition of our mission goals which is indeed how our political and military leaders might express themselves. But we need a better, more accurate statement of mission goals to win. We really ought only to support in principle an Afghan auxiliary force which is commanded by our own generals. Our forces can on a case-by-case basis give operational support to the Afghan national army if we happen to agree with the particular operation being considered. Being choosy about when we support the ANA and when we refuse to do so keeps control over our forces and our finances within our own control at all times. What we should not do is give a lot of cash or equipment over to the Afghan national army which we ourselves need for our mission goals. There's value in training up Afghans who can choose whether to serve with the Afghan national army or serve with our auxiliary force but we get much better value if we pay for forces we command because an Afghan national army serving an Afghan president may be ordered to do things which harm our mission. Taliban prisoners should always have been kept in NATO-ISAF jails, accountable to us, NOT and NEVER AGAIN in Afghan state hands. The fact of the Taliban prisoners that Karzai has already released, never mind the rest, the fact that Taliban fighters have been seen patrolling with the Afghan National Army and the fact of the green on blue or insider attacks on our soldiers from that Afghan army are further proof, if any were needed, of the utter folly of funding an Afghan state which we can have no political control over. We should only ever fund our own military, police, prisons, economic development and humanitarian aid so that we know the money is being spent appropriately in accordance with the wishes of our taxpayers not the wishes of some foreign corrupt politicians. We should fund our own guys and simply hire any additional Afghans we need to work for us for our money, sure, but always in future following our orders! Don't pay Karzai or whoever is the next Afghan President anything, never mind billions of dollars in military aid, for his (or her if the next Afghan president is a woman) agreement on security. Don't sign anything which commits us to any peace talks with the Taliban. If we need an Afghan force to secure our supply lines as we drawdown then re-organise the Afghan forces into 2 parts. 1) An Afghan national army commanded by the Afghan president which Afghans pay for out of their taxes. We pay nothing for this. 2) An auxiliary Afghan force run as part of NATO-ISAF, commanded by our generals, which gets our billions of dollars in military aid spent on it. Well we have war on terror aims. We fail in our mission if "Afghanistan" run by the Taliban or Taliban-dominated forces decides to host Al Qaeda. We invaded Afghanistan first of all because of what had happened on 9/11 after a commonly held view of diplomats, which was a slack-minded notion of "Afghanistan controlling its own fate", had not objected too much, not called for action, when the Pakistani military imposed the Taliban upon Afghanistan and allowed Al Qaeda - again secret agents of the Pakistani military - to set up training bases for global jihad there. So no, actually, we have to control Afghanistan's fate within certain boundaries. There are certain fates for Afghanistan which we find unacceptable because of the risk from terrorism. In this war particularly it is very dangerous to talk in loose terms about what we support. It is much more important to focus on who the enemy is, apply exacting scrutiny to forensically identify that enemy. Being "nicey nicey" about what vague things we might be sort of for, is really useless when absolute precision about the enemy is required. The AfPak Mission statement [video=youtube;0eH8eJAuhVw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eH8eJAuhVw[/video] The AfPak Mission on the internet is about war on terror military and security strategy for NATO and allied countries with ground forces in action in Afghanistan and air and airborne forces including drones and special force raids in action over Pakistan. The AfPak Mission helps implementation of the Bush Doctrine versus state sponsors of terror and is inspired by the leadership of Condoleezza Rice. The AfPak Mission approach to the Taliban is uncompromising. There should be no peace with the Taliban. The only "good" Taliban is a dead Taliban. Arrest all Taliban political leaders and media spokesmen. Capture or kill all Taliban fighters. The AfPak Mission identifies useful content across multiple websites. On YouTube, the AfPak Mission channel presents playlists of useful videos. The AfPak Mission forum offers structured on line written discussion facilities and the forum is the rallying and reference centre of the AfPak Mission, linking to all other AfPak Mission content on the internet. The AfPak Mission has a Twitter, a Flickr and a wordpress Blog too. You are invited to subscribe to the channel, register with the forum and follow on twitter, flickr and the blog. The AfPak Mission links Channel http://www.youtube.com/user/AfpakMission Forum http://scot.tk/forum/viewforum.php?f=26 Twitter http://twitter.com/AfPakMission Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/afpakmission/ Blog http://afpakmission.wordpress.com/
I think you misinterpreted what I meant about chessboard. I was referring to the insistence of having total control over the land like playing a game of risk. Perhaps checkers would be a better analogy. It doesn't matter what land is controlled with obvious exceptions such as corridors for supplies. The ONLY important factor is to kill as many of them as possible. Afghanistan is in fact a great theater of war for the US to engage it. If fact its perfect because there is very little infrastructure for AQ to sabotage, only a few major cities of any note as most of it is sparsely populated so you can keep civlian casualties at a minimum compared to say our efforts in Iraq where the insurgence killed over 100,000 civilians by the end of the war. We literally had kill ratios of 30 to one at the low end estimates and 100 to 1 at the high end estimates in Afghanistan. There is nothing mythical about the Taliban they are just as hampered by the difficult mountainous terrain and cold climate as any US soldier is. Even early on when the Taliban had the advantage of knowing the local terrain better and having already been acclimated to the thinner air the US still kicked their asses. Now that advantage is long gone and in fact knowledge of local terrain is evened out and obviously soldiers over there are now acclimated. The US can also call in airstrikes at whim, there is very little vegetation so that the best areas to hide are caves and if you are discovered in a cave you are essentially dead as they can just suck all the oxygen out of them and everyone inside will suffocate to death. Caves are only useful if you are the only ones that no you are hiding out in them, they are a deathtrap if the enemy discovers you. The areas prone to attacks aren't the forward air bases anyways they are the stupid fire bases that they insist on setting up ala Vietnam. Any progress Afghanistan had been making was wiped out with the Soviet invasion, we agree there but what they had absolutely paled in comparison to other countries in the region such as Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Egypt etc. The list of countries in the region less developed at any time than Afghanistan is extremely short if there is even anyone that fits that category. Even Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are more developed than Afghanistan. Regarding enemy assets, there most important asset are the people. We know from captured documents that Al Queda was having difficulty replacing their officers. Any schmuck can pick up an AK-47 and wave it around but far fewer people can actually lead another group of people successfully into combat. Al Queda does not have bases or naval yards or air force bases anywhere in the world. They don't have motor pools or tank factories. They are not a traditional standing army they designed around asymmetric warfare. They have small temporary camps of maybe 100 people at most and are highly decentralized. Aside from Al Queda members themselves there is nothing of tactical value to destroy. Sort of agree on extending operations into Saudi Arabia especially since we now are getting a tremendous increase in domestic petroleum production. We were already doing strikes into Pakistan albeit secretly even before going after Bin Laden. That was one of my complaints with the concept of total control and kicking the Taliban and AQ completely out of Afghanistan. They should let the Taliban come to them into Afghanistan so that we can kill them at whim without having to worry about pissing off another country. As I said earlier, let the Taliban and AQ think that they have a fighting chance so that they keep flooding resources and manpower into Afghanistan. While I have compassion for any human being Afghanistan made its own bed when it embraced Islam which is a degenerate, backwards, savage religion of intolerance and violence. They made their bed so they can sleep in it. Time and time again we see that Muslims are in fact NOT a religion of peace. The US cannot save everyone in the world and frankly there are more deserving countries in Africa or Asia that would be much higher on my list of countries to help. As long as Islam is the center of Middle Eastern society they will continue to be nothing but uneducated, inbred, troglodytes that contribute absolutely nothing to mankind an in fact are an embarrassment to mankind as a whole. At least Christianity grew up and matured at some point. Muslims still act like toddlers.
Taxcutter says: The AKs were the same but the Afghans are nowhere near as good as soldiers as the NVA.
I am not so sure. They are pretty battle hardened and have outlasted in 2 wars of attrition against 2 superpowers against volunteers. No other people in history can boast that. They have claimed many Seals and Spetnaz. The Marines killed plenty of NVA too. I think they killed like 14k at Khe Sanh and lost like 200. Those are numbers close to Fallujah I think. All committed enemies that blend in with the populace are hard fights. The equipment mismatch is just greater this time.
The scale of Khe Sanh was much bigger plus the NVA had some Soviet heavy weapons. All the Afghans can really say is that we didn't kill them all.
Well thank you for your service. This whole campaign has been bedeviled with logistics disasters and catastrophes from day one. I don't say that is only the fault of logistics but if you needed help from other parts of the military to sort things out, did you even ask for help? I quite understand when anyone in logistics doesn't want to discuss the specifics of the dog's breakfast that passes for "logistics" in this campaign. However, we do need to talk about these issues on open channels, we do need to keep embarrassing not only the logistics people but the high command who have allowed this logistics shambles to continue year after year sabotaging the whole mission, wrecking the hopes for a proper victory and end to war because solving the logistics problems is the key to victory in this campaign I believe. First the problem and then what the solutions might be. The problem is we have been supplying through enemy-held (Pakistan) or insecure (Afghanistan) territory. We've never had really secure supply routes and so our enemies have held us to ransom by blocking or threatening to block our supplies. Now maybe we could forgive the first US generals who led the invasion of Afghanistan who didn't at that time know that Pakistan is the enemy; they didn't know then that it's Pakistan's Al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorists we are at war with. But each successive general who took over stuck with the same bad plan - supply via Pakistan's roads. None of them had the wits to change the bad plan! They should have tried harder to get completely out from under our dependence on Pakistani roads to supply and to ship stuff in and out. To be fair some progress was made for other supply routes like - the Northern Distribution Network for Afghanistan - So that's progress that gives us another logistics option. That's all to the good to have the NDN available. Then there's strategic lift capability direct into Afghanistan. This video purports to show a C-17 Globemaster flying a Abrams main battle tank into Afghanistan in 2012, but I'm not sure what airbase that is though - Bastion, maybe? [video=youtube;3AqemxvyKPY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AqemxvyKPY[/video] So that too is great that we've developed some strategic airlift capacity of direct flights into Afghanistan because it is not easy to do because the Afghan airbases' runways have had to been lengthened. All looked pretty quiet in that video but to have a strategic airlift capacity available when an army is attacking and besieging an airbase is a very hard military task. There needs to be a very wide area around the airbases has to be secured with extensive fortifications to a scientific plan that will keep the runways open and the airbase operational no matter what a besieging enemy can do with mortars and rockets and will keep the landing and take-off flight-paths secure no matter what a besieging enemy can do with anti-aircraft fire and ground-to-air missiles. So one question is why, when Afghanistan is not exactly well supplied with airbases which could be properly defended to allow strategic airlift under attack, and if Bastion was one such airbase that was ideal for this task, why is Bastion to be closed and not one of the airbases in General Dunford's and NATO's Resolute Support plan for 2015? How can we possibly hope to get really secure airlift into Kandahar when Kandahar itself is within 10 mile rocket range of the airbases, and if in future the Taliban take control Kandahar or parts of it, they could close the airbases for operations, right? Especially if their buddies in the ISI supply the Taliban with loads of 10 mile range rockets and if the Afghan forces are not up to kicking the Taliban out of Kandahar or don't want to do it. Sure we should I think keep control of Kandahar airbase because it is closer to the border with Pakistan for air missions into Pakistan but you wouldn't want to be dependent on getting the mission's main airlift supplies flown in and out of Kandahar because the enemy can threaten Kandahar more easily, right? Wouldn't you want to fly your strategic lift in to a more secure airbase routinely, such as Bastion could be I think because you can enforce a wider exclusion zone around the airbase at Bastion than you can at Kandahar? I don't see the logic in a logistics decision to close Bastion airbase? I blame the UK for that as much as anyone because UK PM Cameron is intending on withdrawing all combat troops from Afghanistan at the end of 2014 and Bastion was a British airbase first. Still that's no reason not to keep using it just because the Brits are going home. So the next question is why, if there are and should be by now good alternatives to using Pakistan's roads, why do US & NATO generals keep using Pakistan's roads? No-one is claiming logistics into Afghanistan is easy and it takes investment to increase capacity and security but we have been there for 12 years! The only time the generals have not used Pakistan's roads is when Pakistan themselves have closed them! We need to stop using Pakistan's roads! Otherwise we don't have a plan to win! We need to fight Pakistan, especially the Pakistani ISI, the military intelligence service which sponsors Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. We need to bomb them, we need to drone them, we need to impose financial sanctions on Pakistan, seize control over their satellite TV and use it to call for the arrest of all involved in sponsoring terrorism. In short we need war with Pakistan but no war with Pakistan can be won if our generals live in fear of Pakistan closing their roads to our supplies. No, General Allen, the supply road to defeat for the US goes through Pakistan! Also in war, it defies military logic to wish to "stabilize" the enemy. It defies military logic to pay aid to the enemy. General Allen defies military logic by hoping for "stability" in Pakistan. In war, one seeks to destabilize and to bankrupt the enemy and in this war that enemy is Pakistan. Someone needs to tell that to our US & NATO generals like General Allen who are in denial about Pakistan's secret terrorist war against us. At least General Allen had the courage to mention the country "Pakistan" which is more than President Obama managed to do in his state of the union, This war on terror is with Pakistan and until we start fighting it as such we will never win! Pakistan is secretly at war with us. Pakistan denies it. We are in denial. For years the President and Congress have been spending American taxpayers money to aid Pakistan. All this time Pakistan has funded terrorists and built nuclear weapons and perhaps this is why the American taxpayer money spent on Pakistan did not feature in President Obama's State of the Union speech. Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan where he and the terrorist group he founded, Al-Qaeda, which attacked the US on 9/11, was hosted and sponsored by the Pakistani military. The same Pakistani military given $10 billion in military aid (and $ billions more in civil aid) by the US since 2001 is actually supporting, recruiting, training, supplying and directing the Taliban against our forces! The Taliban and other terrorist groups based in Pakistani territory are secret agents, proxies, irregular forces of the Pakistani military. The Taliban don't wear Pakistani military uniform of course, because that would give the game away, even to the fools who run NATO, the Pentagon, the MOD etc. The evidence for Pakistan's secret terrorist war against the West can be viewed in the BBC's "SECRET PAKISTAN" videos. [video=youtube;qSinK-dVrig]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSinK-dVrig[/video] [video=youtube;G5-lSSC9dSE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5-lSSC9dSE[/video] We need a new strategy which defeats the Taliban (and Al Qaeda) by applying the Bush Doctrine versus those states which sponsor those terrorists - Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Applying the Bush Doctrine versus Afghanistan alone makes as little strategic sense as it would have if we'd applied Cold War doctrine to say Cuba alone but not against the Soviet Union and its Eastern European client communists states! It is a military fundamental that you don't win a war by funding your enemy but rather you win a war by bankrupting your enemy, cutting off the resources the enemy needs to sustain its army. The correct, non-foolish war strategy, knowing what we know about Pakistan now, to fight this war is that our governments and military should change their policies in dealings with Pakistan - from a non-ingenious, self-defeating policy of diplomacy and aid, combined with a limited drone campaign against Al-Qaeda and now fewer Taliban targets - to a much more confrontational policy of ultimatums, sanctions and war against the Pakistani military and especially the Pakistani generals and former generals who dictate military policy to use the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence ("the ISI", a state within a state) to sponsor terrorism behind the window dressing of an elected but relatively powerless government of Pakistan. It may be Christian in some ways to turn the other cheek to the ISI as it kills our soldiers, but it isn't waging war in a common sense fashion. It's more akin to appeasement than war-fighting. It's like when a neighbour sets his savage dog to kill your child you only blame the dog and not the neighbour and you pay him money to keep him happy and to buy a new dog because the one he had got put down because it killed your child. That would be weak, stupid, lame and pathetic and no way to care for your children! The US and NATO allies have the most powerful military alliance in world history and we are being made fools of on the battlefield by Pakistan - a military power which our taxpayers are paying money to! This is really an absurd way to fight our war, with a blind eye as to who the enemy is. We must end the farcical tragedy of our very stupid political and military leadership of this war! We should apply massive pressure to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, up to and including war if necessary. Something fairly dramatic is needed to show the state sponsors of terrorism that their plan for a secret war against us with no chance of any blow-back has utterly failed and they are looking down the barrel of a real war with us or indeed are hearing the opening shots of that war in a way that is rather too close for comfort!
All of this has become moot. Hussein Obama is gutting the US armed forces, so getting out is the only option. Hope you like isolationism.
How embarrassing! Listen to this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2MjsjhQxqE Congressman Dana Rohrabacher about Afghanistan: -------------------- I like that man. He has common sense, like I do!! No more killing either side. Now you "experts" can take him apart!
