Leaving Afghanistan

[nsplayr]

Obama to announce plans to begin withdrawal of 30,000 troops Wednesday night. Stay tuned. I won't miss the B-huts one bit but then again I think some of us are still gonna be there for a long time.

Maybe he had this on his mind...

[GKinnear]

Looks like it isn't all 30k at once. Here is a link saying its 10k over the summer and another 10k next year. Still, a 10k reduction will tie up the airlift community for a while.

Edited June 21, 2011 by GKinnear

[Rusty Pipes]

If I don't spend another day of my life anywhere near that shit hole it will be too soon! Here is what I think we should do... Petraeus should gather all the Tribal Elders, "Gov't Officials" and even all the terrorist leaders and take them to some mountain top with a nice view of a remote valley (plenty of remote valleys in that dirt hole of a country). Then they should just set off a small scale nuke in the valley for them to look at... "Listen here you ass clowns, we're all leaving... we're all leaving now and we aren't coming back! If we hear you even say as much as a Jihad knock knock joke we're gonna turn this place into a giant bowl of glass like we should have done almost 10 yrs ago! Any questions?!?" I'm guessing a bunch of them will run across the boarder to Pakistan to let their buddies know, so hopefully word will travel fast over there!

BTW... When was it that they announced the troop withdrawls from Japan, Germany, and Korea again?

Edited June 21, 2011 by Rusty Pipes

[Murph]

Hopefully the first 10K are the shoes that contribute nothing but uniform corrections to the war effort. Hopefully the next 10K are people like Rusty Pipes who put the same amount of thought into foreign policy as they do reading a children's book.

[Guest Hueypilot812]

Hopefully the next 10K are people like Rusty Pipes who put the same amount of thought into foreign policy as they do reading a children's book.

There's only so much you can do there before it starts costing too much. Point of diminishing returns...

[Prosuper]

Having not been there since 2002 it just seems they want their freedom to be given to them and they don't want to bad enough to fight for it or they don't understand the concept of what being free is. Of course all the work that has gone on there to build infrasture,schools, and a govt will be for nothing when the Farm animal fornicating Taliban take over again. Maybe the POTUS should offer to any Afghan woman refugee imigration status and take them home with us when the last US troops and diplomats leave when Kabul is surrounded by Taliban and Karzai is dead or living in Paris with some foreign aid or Opium money. We never learn. Hopefully we kill as many Taliban as possible before we leave.

[Rusty Pipes]

Hopefully the first 10K are the shoes that contribute nothing but uniform corrections to the war effort. Hopefully the next 10K are people like Rusty Pipes who put the same amount of thought into foreign policy as they do reading a children's book.

Seriously Murph, foreign policy? 99% of the country live in effing caves... CAVES!!!!! Maybe we could explain to them that we are giving them billions of dollars to build up their infrastructure. Of course since their literacy rate is 34% they don't know what a billion is anyway. We could try to explain all of this to their tribal elders who are around 40 yrs old even though they look 80... because the live in effing CAVES!!!!!!!

[ThreeHoler]

The major problem is cultural differences between Afghanistan and the US. We, as a whole, do not understand what makes them tick, and they do not understand the things we value.

A simple example: Joe Schmoe gives a construction contract to his brother. We see that as nepotism, cronyism, and all other kinds of bad. They see it as giving the contract to someone they trust who will not dishonor their family name.

[Rusty Pipes]

The major problem is cultural differences between Afghanistan and the US. We, as a whole, do not understand what makes them tick, and they do not understand the things we value.

A simple example: Joe Schmoe gives a construction contract to his brother. We see that as nepotism, cronyism, and all other kinds of bad. They see it as giving the contract to someone they trust who will not dishonor their family name.

Another simple example: When my daughter is done doing her homework she likes to watch old cartoons like The Flintstones, she thinks they are hysterical. They think that my daughter has no business being in a school because she is a girl... and they actually ARE The Flintstones. Because they live in effing CAVES!!!!!!!

I do definitely see the nepotism though... you know, like when their president is looking to have high level drug warlords run certain parts of his country and he picks his very own brother to be the highest level drug warlord in the whole country. I guess he just trusts him! Oh yeah, and we also don't stone women to death because they get raped... just another small cultural difference I guess.

Sorry, ThreeHoler, I get your point and this is not a slam on you... I've just flown way too many flag draped transfer cases out of Afghanistan to say the major problem is cultural differences.

[bfargin]

I'm with RustyPipes on this one.

Heck, I'll even brush the dust off of my old flightsuits and volunteer to fly a fully loaded Buff (nuke load only, please) on a weekly basis to drop off some "foreign policy" on those rump ranging pedos!! I'd love the option to choose some alternate targets in the area as well.

[HU&W]

Good news

Barack Obama has ordered defence chiefs to plan for a full American withdrawal from Afghanistan should the Afghan government refuse to sign a security agreement.

[Happymann]

Good news

In my opinion, this is only so much politicking.

If the security pact is never signed, the Pentagon's biggest challenge will be closing large military facilities, including the Bagram and Kandahar air bases, which could take several months.

The election is in April. All of the front runners have said that they would sign the agreement. If we start moving out TODAY, it would still take several months just to get down to 10,000. If the treaty is signed in April as one of the first acts of the incoming president, we will still have troops there. If Obama had told the Pentagon to start drawing up these plans MONTHS ago, then it would have been possible. But now, in my opinion, Obama has made it abundantly clear that we WILL NOT be leaving Afghanistan. And I hate that.

[Wolf424]

Good news

Deid runs for all my airlift friends!

[MooseAg03]

I hate the thought of risking any more American lives in that crap hole part of the world, but we had a huge hand in starting the mess in the first place. I'm halfway through reading "Ghost Wars" and it royally pisses me off. We were so focused on giving the mujahideen the upper hand in killing as many Soviet troops as possible, we didn't look 10 years down the road and failed to see the part we had in fueling the civil war that led to the rising of the Taliban. Pakistan and the ISI had more responsibility for direct support to the Taliban that allowed them to take over most of the country, but the fact that the Bush 41 and Clinton administrations had zero stomach for engaging in any sort of constructive foreign policy in Afghanistan helped create the mess where the Taliban gave harbor to bin Laden and Al Qaeda. For those reasons we wound up back in the country just over a decade after the CIA's well funded covert war ended, and this time we would spend 10x as much money and thousands of our own troops would die, not just the proxy Afghan fighters we had armed in the 1980's. So I hate to say it, but our foreign policy got us into this mess in the first place, and our hasty withdrawal of support and influence after the Soviet departure is a large part in why we had to spend the last 12 years fighting there. I don't see how another hasty withdrawal would fare any better another decade from now. I would love for us to pack up shop and never look back, but it makes me fear that our kids will wind up back there in the future.

[MKopack]

In some ways those of you that have been in and out of Afghanistan over the past dozen years already are our kids going back there. My Dad, former USAF, was based at Peshawar Air Station (in what had to have been a real "garden spot" in 1962-63) with the USAF Security Service. With his work, he made a lot of trips through the Khyber Pass and in and around much of Afghanistan. (He still doesn't have a lot of wonderful things to say about his stay in either Pakistan or Afghanistan.)

Even back in 1980 when the Soviets invaded I can remember him saying that it was a bad idea, and he repeated it with our own - "no matter how long you stay, there's no 'win' in Afghanistan" (the British have been saying that since what, the 1870's?) and that "we can bomb all that we want but there isn't much in the entire country that would even be worth the cost of a MK82."

I'm watching this from way on the outside and I think we've done good things in Afghanistan, we've given the good people there at least a chance. Maybe I'm wrong (wouldn't be the first time) but it seems to me to be a case of diminishing returns. I'm not sure that our presence for another year, another two years, or another five years will make a substantial difference in the region at the time that our own kids, and their kids, are our age.

[MooseAg03]

I'm watching this from way on the outside and I think we've done good things in Afghanistan, we've given the good people there at least a chance. Maybe I'm wrong (wouldn't be the first time) but it seems to me to be a case of diminishing returns. I'm not sure that our presence for another year, another two years, or another five years will make a substantial difference in the region at the time that our own kids, and their kids, are our age.

I agree that we may not see much improvement with continued engagement there. Hopefully we'll be able to find some place nearby to base our Reapers and when the radicals start their jihad training and terrorist plotting, we'll be watching and selectively eliminating them with Hellfires. Who knows if Karzai would even agree to that, but I bet if he doesn't he'll be one of the first ones the Taliban strings up from a light post in downtown Kabul.

[OverTQ]

If you want to understand them watch the Sopranos but imagine lots of mud houses, turbans and oh yeah take out the pretty women and booze. We don't owe those people anything.

[Homestar]

We've more than paid our share of restoring that failed state. They are light years ahead of where they would have otherwise been. Whether we leave tomorrow or in 50 years, it does not matter--Afghanistan will be what the Afghans make it.

[Butters]

We've more than paid our share of restoring that failed state. They are light years ahead of where they would have otherwise been. Whether we leave tomorrow or in 50 years, it does not matter--Afghanistan will be what the Afghans make it.

And there is the problem. Afghans have no national identity. Family/Tribe is at the top, country is somewhere around 4 or 5 on the list.

[TLAR]

How bad is it that I read through over half this thread before realizing the first post was three years old...

[Bobby]

Good news

[hispeed7721]

How bad is it that I read through over half this thread before realizing the first post was three years old...

Weird isn't it...if you took the date stamp off it would be hard to tell

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[waveshaper]

Some thoughts on Afghanistan.

First; We need to remember that the future of Afghanistan is what comes down from the hills when the foreigners leave;be it 2003, 2014, 2024, 2050, etc. Its been that way for millennia and its not about to change in our lifetime or our

children's lifetime. One more thing; there is no winning in Afghanistan because there simply is nothing worth winning

and never has been. The only acceptable measure of success I can foresee is to hopefully convince the Afghan tribes to

get back to their age old traditions of tribal turf battles and treatment of ALL foreigners/outsiders as the enemy,

including foreign Jihadist/Al-Qaeda.

Second; We need to get rid of the concept "you don't just break things and leave" and "you break it, you own it".

There are times and places where it may be much more effective and cheaper to break things " big time" and leave.

In hind sight, our current course of endless warfare and nation building in Afghanistan is not working and maybe the

break it and leave it strategy is the way to go when conducting war in shit hole countries like Afghanistan.

Planners may need to bring back the dated concept of "Punitive Expeditions" as a possible/viable method of conducting

some portions of limited/indefinite/endless warfare.

[frog]

The dirty secret is that we really did "win" in 2003. The Taliban and al Qaeda were brought to their knees, and some very ruthless tribes who hated our true enemies were ready to take over regionally. These guys will fight anybody who impinges on their tribal way of life. However, that answer wasn't clean and humane enough, so we had to take their power, centralize it, and attempt to create a federal government that could never work. In doing so, we ended up fighting all of the above, weakened our enemy's enemy, and allowed the Taliban and al Qaeda the chance to claw their way back into the picture. All while sacrificing the blood of thousands of Americans.

[Butters]

The dirty secret is that we really did "win" in 2003. The Taliban and al Qaeda were brought to their knees, and some very ruthless tribes who hated our true enemies were ready to take over regionally. These guys will fight anybody who impinges on their tribal way of life. However, that answer wasn't clean and humane enough, so we had to take their power, centralize it, and attempt to create a federal government that could never work. In doing so, we ended up fighting all of the above, weakened our enemy's enemy, and allowed the Taliban and al Qaeda the chance to claw their way back into the picture. All while sacrificing the blood of thousands of Americans.

This... because this is the way we put the Taliban in power and it worked until Al Qaeda showed up.