Obama Has Been Defeated By The Taliban

I'll respond to your other points later Chris but your ignorance over the role of Pakistan in controlling the Taliban is disturbing.

I note you are replying to my post #121.

However, I started posting in this topic at post #116. Frankly, I am worried that maybe you've missed important parts of the debate in my posts 116, 117, 118, 119 and 120?

Did you read any of those Chris and in particular have you watched the videos in post #117?

 

Well actually I did. And I think that those posts are valid and reasonable.

But I think the change in the relationship between the Taliban groups and the Pakistani government has changed more recently.
I mean it seems odd that an ally of the government would attack soldiers and police unless they were actually opposing one another.

Vice has done a few documentaries on Pakistan and the Taliban.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVeN1S2c0Xo

 

So, are you advocating an invasion of Pakistan? That's about the only way you could stop the Taliban from continuously raiding parts of Afghanistan.

 

Seizing satellites would essentially be an act of war, and aerial bombings of ISI assets would initiate a full-on war with Pakistan. More escalation just means more war in the long run.

 

It's the Pakistani state which has command and control over the Taliban - and it's a state whose leadership still operates like a military dictatorship, nowadays with lip-service paid to elected politicians, such as the elected president, who are saluted or assassinated as the generals see fit. That superficial democracy smokescreen camouflaging a military dictatorship has been erected to keep the funding of the Pakistani state from the US flowing.

The Pakistani state has had to use its conventional forces to discipline its various proxy terrorist groups but there's no intention by the state to eliminate these terrorist groups entirely. The intention is to get paid, to build an empire, to resist democracy asserting a control in Pakistan which would curtail the independent political authority of the generals.

It may seem an "odd" form of control to you but what is a lot more "odd" to my mind is that the US keeps funding this bloody Pakistani pantomime to the tune of, I think, about $2 billion a year. Most odd because the blood spilled includes thousands of US and allied soldiers in Afghanistan, whose deaths are being paid for on the buck of the US tax-payer.

Also odd that the UK also pays Pakistan to have our own soldiers killed - but I'd expect the UK to be run by foolish twits - and I would have hoped for better from a democratic republic like the US. So it's "odd" right enough.

 

No - unless you call the raid to get Bin Laden or other covert missions "an invasion", unless you call the drone operations in Pakistan "an invasion", unless you'd call bombing Pakistan from the air "an invasion".

So no, I'm not advocating a large-scale ground force invasion of Pakistan.

It will take ground forces finally to eliminate the Taliban in Pakistan of course, but I advocate that we regime-change Pakistan so that those ground forces required be Pakistani.

Until such time as we've pressured the Pakistan state to the point where it will genuinely intend to eliminate the Taliban then any cross-border raids by the Taliban should not be events we should allow to deflect us from the strategic task of regime-changing Pakistan.

The focus on preventing incursions by the Taliban across the Afghan-Pakistan border and deploying NATO-ISAF isolated, difficult to supply forward operating bases along the border, yet refusing to confront the Pakistani state itself, using only merely diplomatic persuasion and bribes, always was symptomatic of a strategic failure of command by NATO at the highest levels of command.

 

Well how do you eliminate an enemy that's capable of merging into the local populace. Terrorists are in many ways like guerrilla fighters. Also economic conditions can quite easily inspire people to join the aforementioned groups.
It's a similar story in Mali. Alot of poor young men with no place in their respective nations.

I don't it would be much of an empire particularly if funding came from a country that would be fundamentally opposed to it's creation.
And ultimately it's really up to Pakistan whether they want to be a fully fledged democracy or not. We can't force it.
To be honest I'd of thought that there was an equally significant problem coming from Iran in the form of weapons sales/supplies to the Taliban. I picked that up from a pilot in the US diplomatic service and they often get intelligence briefings on the situation.

Yes I do agree with you that the UK is poorly run who in my opinion are little more than overgrown schoolboys who are also clueless champagne socialists.
But in time this will change. People are becoming more aware of UK politics and the poor state of the economy is also heightening popular interest.

 

Of course because it is only acts of war against the state sponsors of terrorism, such as the Pakistani state, that can ever win the war on the terror threat to the world which has emerged from Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Bush Doctrine explains that justification and reason for war between the US and state sponsors of terrorism against the US are the terrorist acts against the US which those states have sponsored.

So Pakistan in sponsoring Bin Laden and Al Qaeda to do 9/11 and in sponsoring the Taliban to kill thousands of US soldiers in Afghanistan has thereby provided the initial cause for war with the US, according to the Bush Doctrine.

Of course it does take a US president to understand that that state of Pakistan has and is sponsoring terrorism and to then summon up the political courage to follow through with the logic of the Bush Doctrine and declare war with Pakistan or with the Pakistani state.

Bush didn't and Obama hasn't, yet.

Nit-picking about the particular acts of war I am advocating - whether they be - stopping aid funding to Pakistan, bombing ISI assets or whatever - is anticipating a debate with you which can only really follow when you have made the critical missing link in the US's current approach to the war in Afghanistan which is the missing declaration of Pakistan to be a state sponsor of terrorism against the US and therefore Pakistan is to be treated as an enemy state currently war with the US.

Once you and your American government find the wits to understand that the Pakistani state is currently engaged in an undeclared war-by-terrorist-proxy with the US and that in your own self-defence the US ought to defend yourselves in that war by waging war back - then it makes some sense to debate which particular acts of war against Pakistan would most appropriate.

Well the reason the war in Afghanistan has dragged on for so long, and so many casualties have been taken there is that because the US and allies have not fought the war to win.

You only win a war if you are prepared to attack the enemy commanders in their bases. You can't win a war by just targeting the foot-soldiers on the front line. You have to know your enemy and hit them back, not give the enemy headquarters a free pass nor give the enemy billions of dollars to try to appease them.

 

ISAF Casualty, July 4th




2013-07-C-002

For Immediate Release

ISAF Casualty, July 4th



KABUL, Afghanistan (July 4) – An International Security Assistance Force service member died following an enemies of Afghanistan attack in western Afghanistan today.



It is ISAF policy to defer casualty identification procedures to the relevant national authorities.

http://www.isaf.nato.int/article/isaf-releases/isaf-casualty-july-4th.html

 

It is on topic here for me to explain how to eliminate our Taliban enemy and in the process also eliminate the other terrorist groups which, like the Taliban, were created, trained and are supplied by the Pakistani state - those after all are "the aforementioned groups".

I know you have an interest in history Chris but I really do have to keep a focus on the task in hand and not get diverted into a discussion of all terrorist and guerrilla wars in the history of the world.

The issue is that the Pakistani state, as of right now, has no intention of eliminating its own creation, the Taliban, that serves the generals who run the state, the Taliban that for a time got the Pakistani generals control of Afghanistan as client state of the Pakistani military empire and the Taliban which currently gets the Pakistani state billions of dollars from the US and other naive aid donors.

For you not to grasp what the issues are again leaves me with the very disturbing feeling that you do not understand the relationship between the ISI, the Pakistani state military intelligence service and the Taliban that the ISI sponsors.

I have to ask you again. Did you watch "SECRET PAKISTAN"? Or did you click to the video, watch 2 minutes then get bored and go off and do other things? It is a 2 hour documentary Chris. There are important issues in that video which you don't seem to grasp. It seems to me that either you've not watched it, or you have forgotten the content already. In one ear and out the other?

Or do you have a slow internet connection which does not allow you to watch videos? Will these videos not play smoothly for you? Or please explain the issue as to why you still seem blissfully ignorant of the content of these videos?

So the Pakistani state that sponsors the Taliban, the Pakistani state which the US, the UK and allies fund, is the real enemy whose hand is controlling their Taliban puppets.

So an issue is how do we eliminate our own taxes going to fund the Taliban?

Simply we have to take political action against the idiots running our own governments in the US, UK and other NATO countries who are so gullible that they can be duped into funding the Pakistani state which in turns passes some of our aid money onto the Taliban to kill our soldiers in Afghanistan with.

The Taliban does not "merge into the local population" in some way which is invisible to the Pakistani state. Recruits for the Taliban first attend indoctrination schools and training camps set up and run by the ISI for the Pakistani state and the Taliban have bases and supplies provided by the Pakistani ISI.

The Taliban is no more "merged into the local population" with respect to the Pakistani ISI than is a Punch and Judy puppet merged into the audience with respect to the puppeteer. The ISI has its hand up the back of the Taliban, so to speak.

Now it is public knowledge where the Pakistani ISI headquarters in Islamabad is located. We know too where the University of Jihad is located. These institutions of the Pakistani state are not in any sense "merged into the local population". Those enemy bases are places on the map which we can bomb, if we choose to go to war with the Pakistani state directly, instead of limiting ourselves to waging war on the Taliban, the agents of the Pakistani state.

Again you raise other interesting points but we do really need to nail down your understanding that the Taliban work for the Pakistani state before we can proceed with a sensible debate.

 

It's alot to respond to so I'll stick with questions you've handed me.

Yes I did. Now to be fair with you I also listened to it whilst working and I finished off p2 just now.
It was broadcast in 2011. What I'm trying to say is that the relationship may of changed from proceeding years.

I cited the Vice documentaries as possible evidence of that change. I should of written my previous statements with a sense of uncertainty. But as it happens I have worded it inappropriately. Sorry for any misunderstanding.
Yes I was wrong about how embedded the ISI was with the Taliban to the point were they could exercise some control over them.

Well I think the best way is to vote or create a party that has a favourable foreign policy.

There is one thing that does come to mind. How exactly do we know that Pakistan has given full sanction to the ISI in regards to their relationship with the Taliban? I mean could it be possible that the ISI have exceeded their authority?

 

Maybe he should've bombed the surrounding countries, although that didn't seem to work out too well in Indochina.

 

Indeed. We should be blaming US policy along with Soviet policy from 20 years previous.

 

Very suggestive post, especially considering the obvious debt the US owes to said hellhole of a country, as you described it.

 

The problem is that Obama is instead starting other wars and making other conflicts.. Plus he can't just switch the "enemy". Congress declared war on the AQ, and the Taliban.. If you want to surrender to them then fine, but you can't just start destabalizing Libya, Syria etc. If that war's over you have to go home.

Also, you can't blame Pakistan, you must blame Obama. Obama is creating the cross-border raids himself with his indiscriminate terrorist bombing campaign there, which has killed thousands of innocent Pakistanis. This radicalizes the locals, makes them want revenge, and their US targets to get revenge against are across that border in Afghanistan. There's no way Pakistan could control this while Obama keeps radicalizing these people via terrorism.

 

Maybe Obama should have done the right thing in 2009 by completely withdrawing from Afghanistan. Instead he escalated and now on the cusp of defeat by Fuzzy Wuzzies from the Dark Ages.

 

Twas a joke, friend. I couldn't give a (*)(*)(*)(*) about America saving face and I don't know why anybody, including Americans, would.

 

The most relevant extract from "SECRET PAKISTAN" which speaks to that question is this.



SECRET PAKISTAN - BACKLASH
Transcript

Play this excerpt from SECRET PAKISTAN on YouTube

Narrator -
"President Obama had already decided to act."


Bruce Riedel, US Presidential advisor 2009 -
"The phone rang and a familiar voice came on and said, 'Hi Bruce, it's Barack. I have an offer for you!'"


Narrator -
"Riedel was asked to investigate the secret Pakistan, hidden from the West.
He reviewed every scrap of intelligence America had about Pakistan's involvement with terrorist groups and above all, the Taliban."


Riedel -
"Our own intelligence was unequivocal. In Afghanistan, we saw a ... insurgency that was not only getting passive support from the Pakistani army and the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, but getting active support.
Pakistan was raising money, was training the Taliban, even sending in experts with the Taliban for attacks on NATO forces."


Narrator -
"In Riedel's opinion, the powerful ISI was the key player. It operates from this headquarters in Islamabad. The ISI is part of the military. Its agents are mostly soldiers and it's always commanded by a senior general.


Bruce Riedel, US Presidential advisor 2009 -
"The ISI is a professional intelligence agency. People don't go blowing up other countries' embassies or giving guns and money to terrorists without the authority of the head of the Pakistani army, chief of army staff. The notion that the ISI is some kind of rogue organisation is a myth."


Narrator - "In March 2009, on board Air Force 1, Bruce Riedel presented his findings to President Obama."


Riedel - "I spoke pretty much non-stop for about 45 minutes and then we spent another hour, or hour and a half, talking about it.
I told the President that Pakistan was double-dealing us and that the Pakistanis had been double-dealing the United States and its allies for years and years and they were probably going to continue to do so."
​

So the generals have indeed given their authority to order the ISI to support the Taliban for most of its activities.

Now the Pakistani courts have charged former military dictator General Musharraf with exceeding his constitutional and legal authority, banned him from standing for election etc. and when the Taliban assassinates politicians who rival the authority of the generals, who can't be fooled by the lies and tricks of the generals and so who get killed off instead, this is the abuse of power and authority which a military dictatorship seizes for itself.

We need to tell the people of Pakistan what their military have been doing and say to them "Hey people of Pakistan, the ISI and their generals, have been supporting the Taliban, without your consent and without the authority of the people - they have exceeded their legitimate authority, betraying the constitution and nation of Pakistan - they are a bunch of traitors, the state has been taken over by traitors to the people of Pakistan - so let's remove those traitors from control of the state."

In politics, the point is to take the authority to act away from those whom we don't trust with that authority, and give authority to those whom we do trust.

Further, so long as the West keeps giving our cash to Pakistan, then many in the Pakistani state are going to keep getting the wrong message from us that somehow their actions to support the Taliban have not exceeded the authority of the West since it seems the West keeps paying up, like fools.

If we don't want to give our authority to Pakistan to support the Taliban then we need to stop giving them money and instead start waging war against the Pakistani state sponsors of terrorism.

 

Oh but it is your fault, Western tax-payers and voters.

Like I told Serfin' USA.

Which is exactly what Western governments have been doing with your taxes - funding Pakistan which funds the Taliban. So each and every Taliban hellhole you have funded the creation of, is your fault.

Well some wiser Australians, unlike yourself, are correctly blaming the policies of their own Australian government.

ABC News: Australia urged to rethink Pakistan military aid

The Federal Government is facing calls to withdraw support for Pakistan's military, which has been accused of harbouring Osama bin Laden.
Bin Laden was killed in the Pakistan town of Abbottabad, 60 kilometres from Islamabad, in a compound close to a military academy.
Security analyst Rory Medcalf from the Lowy Institute says parts of Pakistan's security establishment were either aware of his location or were harbouring him.
Mr Medcalf says in continuing to support Pakistan, the international community risks more of the same treatment.​

 

Would that be Taliban "Fuzzy Wuzzies from the Dark Ages" who work for the Pakistani state which has a modern 21st Century military with nuclear weapons, which controls satellite TV channels and which gets funded by aid payments from Western governments empowered by Western tax-payers and voters?

 

I think we need to be alert to who has most to gain from switching the enemy? It's mostly in the Pakistani-state-sponsors-of-the-Taliban's interests to stir up the Syrian civil war so as to sew division between Russia, who backs al-Assad and the West who opposes al-Assad's brutality. Otherwise if Russia and the West stay united on defeating the Taliban and keeping supply routes to NATO forces in Afghanistan open, sooner or later that means united on sucessfully defeating the Pakistani state sponsors of the Taliban. The ISI want a West-Russia fall out and for NATO-ISAF to worry about its Northern Distribution Network supply routes into Afghanistan which Russia might attempt to close if relations deteriorated, which would give Pakistan a veto over the only remaining land supply routes into Afghanistan, through Pakistan. So the ISI and the Taliban have everything to gain by stoking up a Russia-West fall out over Syria.

Oh we must blame Pakistan, especially the Pakistani ISI for embedding Taliban targets in Afghan and Pakistani civilian areas. The Pakistani state does control its own military intelligence agency, the ISI, which does to a significant degree control the Taliban, as the videos I have posted here, explain.

Now sure, you must blame Obama too. After all, he was clearly told that Pakistan is to blame yet his administration is not doing all that much about Pakistan, apart from wisely keeping them out of the loop in the operation to get Bin Laden. So that's a start but it is a very small start when the US is still funding Pakistan to the tune of $2 billion dollars a year. I mean, Obama's not even officially named Pakistan as a "state sponsor of terrorism".

 

Nope. The Haqqani Network is Pakistani supported. The Quetta Shura of Mullah Omar is broke and needs to participate in the discussions. The Heymatyr Gulbedhin (sp) Gang isn't participating in the negotiations if ever they occur.

 

What now, do we have to make Afghanistan as the 51st state,
just to show complete victory.

 

It would make everybody happy:

They are bing on drugs that would make liberals happy

They barely have a government and that would make conservatives happy.

 

Before I get started, just by the way, Wikipedia disagrees with you about Gulbuddin Hekmatyar

Not that I would want to be reconciled nor have peace talks with any of that lot.​

My point is they didn't have nuclear weapons nor satellite TV in the Dark Ages and so your description of the President Obama's military escalation or surge into Afghanistan as "on the cusp of defeat" by "Fuzzy Wussies from the Dark Ages" is just plain wrong because Pakistan, which is the true enemy the US faces in Afghanistan, is no "Dark Age" power with its

• Pakistani nuclear weapons - not from the Dark Ages
• Pakistani satellite TV - not from the Dark Ages
• Pakistani supported terror groups like Al Qaeda, using modern communications methods - video, websites, etc - to spread its propaganda globally - not from the Dark Ages
• Pakistani former agents like Robin Raphel (a former Washington lobbyist employed by the government of Pakistan) appointed by Obama to work right in the heart of the Obama administration on Pakistan policy - she's not from the Dark Ages either.

So Pakistan is a modern 21st Century imperial power, not in the least "Dark Ages", and it is this 21st Century power which is currently handing Obama his ass in Afghanistan.


Oh, the US and allies can still win in Afghanistan, but winning does require appointing new competent generals with an actual strategy for victory, perhaps along the lines I have posted, in contrast to Obama's approach which as you correctly said in your OP amounts to a process of surrender.

Rather than withdraw entirely and accept defeat we need a new winning strategy, which I offer here.

I anticipate you want specifics for victory, here and now, right? Maybe?

Well anyway, here are the main points of my strategy for victory.

In this short 5-minute video, I reject of the idea of peace talks with the Taliban and present an outline of my proposed strategy to beat the Taliban (and win the war on terror).


[video=youtube;aXMHnu-7ZZk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXMHnu-7ZZk[/video]


Peter Dow's "no" to Taliban's surrender terms. Afpak strategy for victory in war on terror. - YouTube


My 4-point plan to beat the Taliban and win the war on terror


Point 1


* The US and Western allies ought to name Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt as "state sponsors of terrorism". We ought to name in addition, the other oil-rich Arab kingdoms who are also financial state sponsors of terrorism. This has implications such as ending bribes and deals with back-stabbing hostile countries and instead waging war against our enemies with the aim of regime change or incapacitating the enemy so that they can do us little more harm. The war could be of varying intensity depending on the enemy concerned and how they respond to our initial attacks, whether they wish to escalate the war or surrender to our reasonable demands.


Point 2


* We need to take the fight to the Taliban leadership wherever they are based in Pakistan. For example, there ought to be drone strikes on the University of Jihad. (Darul Uloom Haqqania, Akora Khattak, Pakistan) In addition, we ought to employ aerial bombing of all other bases for the Taliban in Pakistan. This may have to be extended to include certain Pakistani state bases which are supporting the Taliban - such as the Pakistani ISI headquarters mentioned a lot in the BBC documentary "SECRET PAKISTAN". If this is not handled very carefully, it could escalate into open war with the Pakistani military. I will explain how to manage Pakistan later.


Point 3


* We ought to seize control of Pakistani, Egyptian, Saudi and Iranian TV satellites and use them to broadcast propaganda calling for the arrest of all involved in waging terrorist war against the West. Often, these satellites are made, launched and maintained by Western companies and should be easy to take over. Other satellites provided to the enemy by non-Western countries could be jammed or destroyed. Air strikes against the enemy's main terrestrial TV transmitter aerials is another option to silence enemy propaganda.


Point 4


* When occupying territory, always ensure secure bases and supply routes from one base to another. I will provide a lot of details about how this can be done militarily.