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2018-02-12 Afghanistan

Asking the Hard Questions About Afghanistan – Free Range International

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Posted by newc 2018-02-12 00:00|| || Front Page|| [3 views ] Top

#1 Shedding a little light:

for Afghans, duping well-meaning but ignorant foreigners into funding their wars is the national pastime. The artistry and skill of separating foreigners from their money has been passed down from fathers to sons among regional tribal elders and modern-day politicians for millennia. Simply stated, this is what they do.

Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2018-02-12 00:39|| 2018-02-12 00:39|| Front Page Top

#2 Near the conclusion:

President Trump should form a team of advisors to develop an actual tangible goal and strategy to achieve it... I doubt President Trump will form the committee or if he does they can’t or won’t clearly state a Final Result Desired. Not because the questions above are hard to answer, they aren’t. Rather the answers these questions produce cannot be sold to the American people which means new tactics are just the noise before eventual defeat.

Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2018-02-12 00:45|| 2018-02-12 00:45|| Front Page Top

#3 Baba Tim has been to every province in that place.

Posted by newc 2018-02-12 00:56|| 2018-02-12 00:56|| Front Page Top

#4 Point of Order - the one invader who did succeed were the Mongols. They didn't play by the local's rules.

Posted by Procopius2k 2018-02-12 07:09|| 2018-02-12 07:09|| Front Page Top

#5 The enemy no longer requires remote “safe havens” in places like Helmand province to plan attacks on our homeland. And even if they have a few safe havens our current ability to detect and destroy them is light years ahead of where it was in 2001. So, ask yourself, what are we really getting in return for our investment?

The guy makes a good point. Money might be better spent on a wall or infrastructure instead of an endless war.

Posted by JohnQC 2018-02-12 08:24|| 2018-02-12 08:24|| Front Page Top

#6 What is the end-game? What does “success” even look like?

Make Afghans, Muslims and other international players understand that organizing and facilitating asymmetrical attacks on the US and the West in general is a deadly mistake, always. IOW restore and enhance US & Western deterrence after the challenge of 9/11.

This would have been the essential and indispensable objective after 9/11. Rebuilding Afghanistan & the ME, stabilization, development, aid etc would have been options only after achieving this central objective.

Alas, what happened was tactics without a strategy and a political framework. Western deterrence has faded away further. Others have been emboldened to challenge the West.

Now the rational assumption is that Western threats are empty bluster.

Posted by Elmerert Hupens2660 2018-02-12 08:34|| 2018-02-12 08:34|| Front Page Top

#7 achieving this central objective
That is the crux of this issue. The electorate can't or won't face it. Our officialdom is not serious in its refusal to face it. Last I checked (about 2002) the USA doesn't even have publicly available college instruction in Dari, the lingua franca of Afghanistan. Dari (despite what the internet says) is not the same as Persian.

Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2018-02-12 09:12|| 2018-02-12 09:12|| Front Page Top

#8 We continue moving forward because no one has learned how to back away gracefully.

Posted by Skidmark 2018-02-12 09:54|| 2018-02-12 09:54|| Front Page Top

#9 Dari language skills would have been an elements of the optional program after deterrence was restored.

Making the Taliban share in the terrorists' fate, whether the Afghans approved or not, and holding the Afghan people accountable for having tolerated the Taliban, that was the indispensable goal.

Some in the Bush administration paid lip service to it in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Nothing more was done about it later.

The Afghanistan intervention is tactics without strategy that even worked as a political conduit for the importation of Afghanistan's alien tyranny into the West.

Ultimately the Afghanistan war has rendered Western deterrence less than credible.

The consequences are emboldened enemies, war in Europe, a cancerous police and surveillance apparatus in the West, tensions in Asia, and the prospect of asymmetrical WMD attacks.

Posted by Elmerert Hupens2660 2018-02-12 11:47|| 2018-02-12 11:47|| Front Page Top

#10 An interesting read. Mining in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan may hold 60 million tons of copper, 2.2 billion tons of iron ore, 1.4 million tons of rare earth elements such as lanthanum, cerium and neodymium, and lodes of aluminum, gold, silver, zinc, mercury and lithium.Sep 4, 2014

Yes to completely wiping out the Turbanbunnies.

Posted by Woodrow 2018-02-12 13:38|| 2018-02-12 13:38|| Front Page Top

#11 If Afghanistan has all that wealth the US should set up something akin to the privateers of the Elizabethan era. Allow mining companies to legally take over responsibility and use mercs to pacify lawless zones in the name of the flag.

Left would hate it, but it'd be better than throwing blood and lives into a black hole.

Posted by rjschwarz 2018-02-12 16:28|| 2018-02-12 16:28|| Front Page Top

#12 W's first big mistake was trying to create Democracy in Afghanistan instead of setting up a MacArthur style occupation. If the Imperial Japanese could be made peaceful I believe the Afghan tribes could have been. If not, destroy and move on.

Posted by rjschwarz 2018-02-12 16:30|| 2018-02-12 16:30|| Front Page Top

23:05 Sock Puppet of Doom
23:03 Sock Puppet of Doom
22:22 KBK
22:16 Skidmark
22:01 Sloluting and Tenille8977
21:52 KBK
21:37 KBK
21:26 CrazyFool
20:33 Besoeker
20:09 Raj
19:42 Bright Pebbles
18:52 newc
18:43 Ulaigum Ebbineng7056
18:41 Bobby
18:37 S. Omolet4728
18:24 charger
18:23 lord garth
18:18 newc
18:03 Iblis
18:01 Phinenter Borgia4439
17:32 BrerRabbit
17:28 Procopius2k
17:03 S. Omolet4728
16:37 rjschwarz