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2020-10-21 Afghanistan
HR McMaster Calls Trump's Afghan Policy a 'Travesty'
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Posted by trailing wife 2020-10-21 02:25|| || Front Page|| [11134 views ]  Top

#1 The promotion rate absent active military operations is really low, eh?
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-10-21 03:56||   2020-10-21 03:56|| Front Page Top

#2 Since the enemy was really pakistan will McMaster be advocating invading pakland as well?
Posted by Bright Pebbles 2020-10-21 04:10||   2020-10-21 04:10|| Front Page Top

#3 What IS our end in Afghanistan? As far as I know, it's an open-ended commitment to keep troops in Central Asia where they can harass Chinese lines of communication and stay near Pakistan's nuclear weapons in case we need to attack them.
Posted by Muggsy Hapsburg5230 2020-10-21 04:15||   2020-10-21 04:15|| Front Page Top

#4 McMaster was promoting his new book

Whore.

"War is a contest of wills. And we have to have the will ourselves to prevail," McMaster said.

Yup. Triumph of The Will: that's the ticket.

Any day, er, year, ah decade now. Victory is right around the corner. What's 19 years in the bigger scheme of things?
Posted by Bigfoot Angetle6961 2020-10-21 04:34||   2020-10-21 04:34|| Front Page Top

#5 Globalist. No, the defense of America is not trying to defend everything any place in the world. Fredrick the Great is attributed with the statement - he who defends everything defends nothing. You have limited resources, cause someday someone is going to stop taking the toilet paper the Treasury keeps issuing. There is no 'winning' strategy anymore, only 'avoid losing'.

The promotion rate absent active military operations is really low, eh?

That is part of the problem. They kept the peacetime promotion system during wartime. War is the ultimate test of a leader and it should have been reflected in throwing out bureaucratic boards and reviews and time in command with promotions and selections based upon performance in the field. The HR desk bound types always cry equity and fairness. Combat is not fair or equitable. They'd be picking combat commanders not people who got their institutional card punched towards promotion.
Posted by Procopius2k 2020-10-21 07:35||   2020-10-21 07:35|| Front Page Top

#6 I'm beginning to think the days of merit retention have past. Term limit everyone. Sunset every law and institution. Anything is better than the encrusted mediocrity, log-rolling and self-dealing we have now.
Posted by M. Murcek 2020-10-21 07:39||   2020-10-21 07:39|| Front Page Top

#7 have passed / are passed. I'm off to a slow start...
Posted by M. Murcek 2020-10-21 08:12||   2020-10-21 08:12|| Front Page Top

#8 McMaster was promoting his new book....

What, not a Sunday morning regular on MSNBS? Not on the board of Lockheed-Martin or Boeing or Rayethon? What a shame.
Posted by Clem 2020-10-21 08:18||   2020-10-21 08:18|| Front Page Top

#9 ...similar to Europe’s appeasement of Adolf Hitler

Gee, you'd think he would have used Champ's sellout to Iran as more appropriate...no, wait.
Posted by Mercutio 2020-10-21 08:29||   2020-10-21 08:29|| Front Page Top

#10 re: MM

I agree that sunsetting everything could be the way to go. Frustration breeds the knock it all down and build from scratch mindset.

I don't agree that things couldn't get worse.
Posted by AlanC 2020-10-21 08:30||   2020-10-21 08:30|| Front Page Top

#11 Yeah... if he keeps it up we might end up not in any wars! That would be a travesty!
Posted by CrazyFool 2020-10-21 08:36||   2020-10-21 08:36|| Front Page Top

#12 H.R. McMaster, H.R. Pufnstuf - just sayin'...
Posted by Raj 2020-10-21 09:25||   2020-10-21 09:25|| Front Page Top

#13 McMaster was a good battlefield commander. But he, like all of those officers, were brought up with the US being the world policeman and most of their career from 1991-2014 was with the training and expectation the US had to be the one keeping order and the Bretton Woods agreement would spread wealth and democracy throughout the world.

Reality has proven otherwise. Countries got rich off the US and corrupt businessmen and politicians have let our manufacturing might be almost completely siphoned off. China and other countries became much more authoritarian and are now the US's major adversaries.

He sees the US leaving as a vacuum where terrorists will once again take root and start attacking our allies and the US homeland again.
It may happen, it may not. I see it as more likely it won't now that arabs are normalizing relations with Israel. Where he sees fear and comes at the issue with 20th century thinking, the battlefield has moved past that and I think Trump does understand it. Keeping troops there and dumping trillions of dollars every year isn't going to fix the issue.
War is a contest of wills and you have to hit the centers of power. This can be done at the ideological level and the peace agreement is the start. McMaster is an outdated General still fighting the last war.
Posted by DarthVader 2020-10-21 09:59||   2020-10-21 09:59|| Front Page Top

#14 'The world no longer looks up to America': Former top Navy SEAL who oversaw the Osama bin Laden raid says he voted for Joe Biden 'because black lives matter and climate change is real'
Posted by Skidmark 2020-10-21 10:00||   2020-10-21 10:00|| Front Page Top

#15 15 people are trampled to death, including 11 women, as thousands wait in Afghanistan to collect visas to enter Pakistan
Posted by Skidmark 2020-10-21 10:38||   2020-10-21 10:38|| Front Page Top

#16 He does not understand. We can seal that place off, go in occasionally and kill bad guys, and not waste our national treasures of money and lives in the shithole that has not desire to enter the 19th century. Why spend American treasure on this place, when they spark up, send in the B52s. Mcmasters will never turn that pace into a respectable nation, ever.
Posted by 49 Pan 2020-10-21 10:43||   2020-10-21 10:43|| Front Page Top

#17 49Pan's Law:
McMaster will never turn that p[l]ace into a respectable nation, ever.

Corollary #1
Nobody will turn that place into a respectable nation, ever.

Corollary #2
Nobody will turn that place into a nation, ever.
Posted by Alaska Paul 2020-10-21 12:11||   2020-10-21 12:11|| Front Page Top

#18 First of all the Talibunnies were from other countries. The Afghans told me, "we call them cowboys". Interesting description. They didn't particularly like them.

My 2 cents, HR is correct, to a point. But to what end? In the meantime the CHICOMs are moving in to mine the rare metals.
Posted by Woodrow 2020-10-21 13:23||   2020-10-21 13:23|| Front Page Top

#19 The entire idea is for the US to use our wealth to conquer the entire world. We will then involuntarily surrender our sovereignty to a global governance. This new governance will, for the next few centuries, export the wealth of the former territory of the USA for the benefit of hostile peoples. Mcmaster is at the center of this. What other excuse justifies American meddling in Afghanistan?
Posted by Elmung Hatrack5948 2020-10-21 13:46||   2020-10-21 13:46|| Front Page Top

#20  Former top Navy SEAL who oversaw the Osama bin Laden raid says he voted for Joe Biden 'because black lives matter and climate change is real'

A nice demonstration of the fallacy that a person’s mastery in one area confers his mastery in all others.

First of all the Talibunnies were from other countries. The Afghans told me, "we call them cowboys". Interesting description. They didn't particularly like them.

Fascinating, Woodrow. To be sure, much of the cannon fodder is bussed direction from graduation in a Pakistani madrassah to whichever Talib unit they were (presumably) sold to, with gun instruction presumably given during the bus ride.
Posted by trailing wife 2020-10-21 15:03||   2020-10-21 15:03|| Front Page Top

#21 @#11, Hey Raj.
Here's a Pufnstuf factoid for ya.
The Krofft bros, creators of Pufnstuf etc., built a theme park of their characters in Atlanta. All the favorites were there. It closed mid '70s and was abandoned.
It's the block they bulldozed and then built CNN headquarters on.
(I think something seeped into the ground...)
Posted by ed in texas 2020-10-21 15:31||   2020-10-21 15:31|| Front Page Top

#22 They didn’t tear the old Omni international Complex, Ted moved CNN in and later bought the building and renamed it.

They did tear down the Omni that was adjacent and that’s State Farm Arena now
Posted by Beavis 2020-10-21 16:09||   2020-10-21 16:09|| Front Page Top

#23  bussed direction

...directly. *sigh*
Posted by trailing wife 2020-10-21 16:22||   2020-10-21 16:22|| Front Page Top

#24 I was wondering when the Military Industrial Complex would raise it ugly head and whine about pulling out of Afghanistan a $700+Billion a year war. A war going no where, while playing policeman at the cost if US GI lives.
Posted by NoBody 2020-10-21 16:26||   2020-10-21 16:26|| Front Page Top

#25 Pretty much the only scenario where you don't hear lefties whining "if it saves just one life..."
Posted by M. Murcek 2020-10-21 17:09||   2020-10-21 17:09|| Front Page Top

#26 A travesty for whom? The banksters?
Posted by JohnQC 2020-10-21 17:51||   2020-10-21 17:51|| Front Page Top

#27 Remember when the left was screeching about the wars in the middle east while Bush was president? Good times, good times...
Posted by M. Murcek 2020-10-21 18:18||   2020-10-21 18:18|| Front Page Top

#28 I balanced the world on my nose
And saluted the sun as it rose,
Though I rather thought Sol
Should've answered the call
I'd have made were I wearing his clothes...
Dammit, dawn, do not step on my toes!
Posted by Betty Crimble7900 2020-10-21 22:04||   2020-10-21 22:04|| Front Page Top

#29 Delightful, Zenobia F!
Posted by trailing wife 2020-10-21 22:27||   2020-10-21 22:27|| Front Page Top

#30 "we call them cowboys".

Recalling now, it was because of their black turbans.
Posted by Woodrow 2020-10-21 23:14||   2020-10-21 23:14|| Front Page Top

23:59 Betty Crimble7900
23:54 Waldemar Flomonter9347
23:51 gorb
23:49 gorb
23:47 gorb
23:45 gorb
23:43 gorb
23:42 Vespasian Ebbereng3110
23:17 swksvolFF
23:16 Skidmark
23:14 Woodrow
23:08 swksvolFF
22:56 Betty Crimble7900
22:55 Beavis
22:49 JohnQC
22:30 swksvolFF
22:27 trailing wife
22:25 trailing wife
22:04 Betty Crimble7900
21:48 magpie
21:45 magpie
21:22 M. Murcek
21:05 746
21:00 trailing wife









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