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2019-04-18 Afghanistan
After 18 Years, It Is Past Time To Face The Truth About Afghanistan
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Posted by Besoeker 2019-04-18 06:48|| || Front Page|| [1 views ]  Top

#1 Should be obvious by now. It is very difficult to prevail in a conflict where adjacent sanctuary states are involved. Until Pakistan is fixed, forget everything else. Their tribalism and broken religion are no help as well.
Posted by Besoeker 2019-04-18 06:54||   2019-04-18 06:54|| Front Page Top

#2 about 14,000 soldiers there now with some contract personnel and quite a few civilians
Posted by lord garth 2019-04-18 07:26||   2019-04-18 07:26|| Front Page Top

#3 Turning the place into glass would have communicated a message 17 years has failed to do. This is what happens when you don't really go to war. People seem to skip over we bombed the **** out of Germany and Japan first before we decided to play nation building. They knew they were defeated.
Posted by Procopius2k 2019-04-18 08:00||   2019-04-18 08:00|| Front Page Top

#4 17 years of attempts told Islam we were low towing and weak.

This is another good lesson to come out of the war. You must have a serious end game and a non-Muslim state cannot influence a Muslim population these days, we can’t/won’t do what is necessary so anything we try will end up as a propoganda victory for enemies.

We should have:
• Supported Northern alliance and left them in charge. Then helped them as we deemed necessary but kept our fighting troops free as a threat to others.
• Done a full-force attempt to support non-wasabi mosques.
• Put massive pressure on Saudis to clamp down on rogue princes and other support to our enemies
• Pushed for nuke power to replace oil as soon as was possible (fracking worked but took way to long).
• IF we went into Iraq we should have handed the place over to Jordan and supported them but not gotten involved in internal politics.

That would have been a start at least.

Posted by Rjschwarz 2019-04-18 08:48||   2019-04-18 08:48|| Front Page Top

#5 In a nutshell Bush jr’s Push for Democracy in the region was a bad plan.
Posted by Rjschwarz 2019-04-18 08:48||   2019-04-18 08:48|| Front Page Top

#6 In a nutshell Bush jr’s Push for Democracy in the region was a bad plan.

It's not entirely about democracy. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, need I go on ?
Posted by Besoeker 2019-04-18 08:56||   2019-04-18 08:56|| Front Page Top

#7 ...on the lesser note, the legs finally got equipment and materials they would have never gotten in the bureaucratic hierarchy prioritization of funding usually reserved for gee-whiz billion dollar tech platforms.
Posted by Procopius2k 2019-04-18 11:20||   2019-04-18 11:20|| Front Page Top

#8 Some modern thinker on the subject (trying to search on who that was) has pointed out that "killing is the sine qua non of war." Burning poppy fields, arresting people and arming locals who turn around and kill our guys is not war, but whatever it is, it's shockingly wasteful and impossible to defend, if you ask me.
Posted by M. Murcek 2019-04-18 14:48||   2019-04-18 14:48|| Front Page Top

#9 Areas with groups of warring tribes can not and never will be able to become a nation.

Don't try and treat it as one.
Posted by Bright Pebbles 2019-04-18 20:55||   2019-04-18 20:55|| Front Page Top

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