Quote:
Originally Posted by kane
My opinion is a simple one. He should have gone up there and said, "Here is the plan for Afghanistan. It is a shit hole. It has been for as long as anyone can remember. It always will be. They are extremists. You can't reason with extremists. We are packing our shit and leaving. We will still use drones to keep an eye on them. Anyone in the country that doesn't want to live under Taliban rule (or the rule of whatever nutjob takes over) pack your shit and come with us, we will find you a decent place to live. If you choose to stay, you get what you asked for. Nobody has ever won a war here, I'm not going to continue to spend American dollars and American lives trying to prove we can."
That is it.
My take on what will happen: We will send the troops and we will kill a few terrorists and we will get some kind of control over the country and eventually we will decide that everything is good and we can leave. We pull out and not too long after that there is a coup and an extremist takes over the country and we are right back to square one. I predict the same for Iraq as well.
I guess I am a little pessimistic.
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My confidence level about your prediction on what will happen is high. It is not with hindsight when I state that...both the Iraq conflict and the Afghanistan conflict...were not handled properly. Our civilian leaders appear not to learn anything at all from previous conflicts. The best Commander in Chief in my lifetime was President Bush Senior...in that he gave General Powell and General Schwarzkopf...the time and the forces that they requested...and abided by the Powell doctrine of warfare.
In a way I blame our military leaders for the failure to conduct war in the manner that they know a war should be conducted. I understand the multiple reasons why they do what they do, but I wish they would not do it. As an example of what I am talking about...when General Tommy Franks was asked by the Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld what force levels he would need to invade Iraq...General Franks told him 400,000 warm bodies. Rumsfeld told him he could have 75,000...which was ultimately raised to 140,000. When the actually invasion began we went in an entire Division short of the alloted forces because Turkey...at the last minute...would not allow the Division to jump off from their country.
Actually General Franks 400,000 number was not a good request. The number should have been a minimum of 500,000 and closer to 700,000. He should have resigned before agreeing to go with less than his requested number...but Generals do not do that and as I stated I understand the multiple reasons why they don't...even though I think that they should.
In addition to denying force levels to our Generals the civilian leadership will deny targets (for political reasons) that our Generals know should be taken out. SNAFU (Situation Normal All Fucked Up) is the keyword when it comes to civilian leadership making war time decisions.