US Doubles Down on Afghanistan (again)

[bayonetbrant]

The Aussie viewpoint

[Sir Slash]

Too true. The garrison left behind by Alexander the Great deserted in masse when word arrived in Afghanistan he had died. None of them there wanted to be there, and nobody there wanted them to be there. Somethings don't change.

[OJsDad]

Whats the alternative.

[bayonetbrant]

Whats the alternative.

leave.

when they fuck with us, go back and kill the guys that fucked with us, then leave again

You can't remake a medieval culture in a modern image without a multi-generational overhaul in education, equal rights, rule of law, ending of corruption and tribalism, and separation of church and state.  Afghan culture has shown a remarkably strong resistance to every one of those for 15+ years, and I really don't have any desire to spend any more US lives in a multi-generational nation-building event when they don't even want us there.

Kill the people that need killing and leave.  Go back and kill the next batch that'll inevitably need killing, then leave again.  Staying just gives them a more convenient target.

[Barthheart]

Whats the alternative.

leave.

when they fuck with us, go back and kill the guys that fucked with us, then leave again

You can't remake a medieval culture in a modern image without a multi-generational overhaul in education, equal rights, rule of law, ending of corruption and tribalism, and separation of church and state.  Afghan culture has shown a remarkably strong resistance to every one of those for 15+ years, and I really don't have any desire to spend any more US lives in a multi-generational nation-building event when they don't even want us there.

Kill the people that need killing and leave.  Go back and kill the next batch that'll inevitably need killing, then leave again.  Staying just gives them a more convenient target.

This.  Only stay long enough to kill who needs killing then get the F out. Rinse and repeat until either 1) they leave use alone or 2) they are all gone.

[JasonPratt]

Supposedly nation-building isn't on the schedule this time. Just killing the guys that need killing.

However, it's a lot easier to kill the guys that need killing if you have bases there to stage from, with the proper logistic support from and through those bases. Real counter-insurgent operations are somewhat more involved than Ghost Recon: Wildlands.  ::)

[OJsDad]

Brant, that's fine as long as we have the political will to do that.  There were a number of times we should have dealt with the cancer growing in Afghanistan in the 90's, but we didn't have the political will to do it.

[bayonetbrant]

Brant, that's fine as long as we have the political will to do that.  There were a number of times we should have dealt with the cancer growing in Afghanistan in the 90's, but we didn't have the political will to do it.

We should've gone in heavy in 2001, shot the living shit out of the place, said "fuckit" on trying to partner with the Afghan gov't, and once Bin Laden was dead, yelled "deuces!" and had a mad dash for the plane.
Failing that, we should've left in 2009 when we capped the bastard.  We had our pretext and we fucking blew it.

[OJsDad]

Should of cleaned things out in the late 90's.  But that's my point, we knew of the growing problem, but we didn't have the political will to take care of it.

[bayonetbrant]

Should of cleaned things out in the late 90's.  But that's my point, we knew of the growing problem, but we didn't have the political will to take care of it.

In the mid- to late-90s, we had the Northern Alliance that was actually rolling up the Taliban quite well.
Ahmad Shah Massoud (name spelling I had to look up) was doing a really great job of whacking Taliban asshats, right up until he got whacked by the Taliban asshats
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmad_Shah_Massoud

We didn't need to go in b/c there was a proxy doing it quite well....  :)

[Airborne Rifles]

Should of cleaned things out in the late 90's.  But that's my point, we knew of the growing problem, but we didn't have the political will to take care of it.

In the mid- to late-90s, we had the Northern Alliance that was actually rolling up the Taliban quite well.
Ahmad Shah Massoud (name spelling I had to look up) was doing a really great job of whacking Taliban asshats, right up until he got whacked by the Taliban asshats
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmad_Shah_Massoud

We didn't need to go in b/c there was a proxy doing it quite well....  :)

So well that the 9/11 attacks happened literally hours after he got whacked  :).

[bayonetbrant]

Should of cleaned things out in the late 90's.  But that's my point, we knew of the growing problem, but we didn't have the political will to take care of it.

In the mid- to late-90s, we had the Northern Alliance that was actually rolling up the Taliban quite well.
Ahmad Shah Massoud (name spelling I had to look up) was doing a really great job of whacking Taliban asshats, right up until he got whacked by the Taliban asshats
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmad_Shah_Massoud

We didn't need to go in b/c there was a proxy doing it quite well....  :)

So well that the 9/11 attacks happened literally hours after he got whacked  :).

Yes, the 9-11 attacks were planned in spite of him and his allies.  But how much worse could it have been if he wasn't there for the previous several years?

We'd already been thru Khobar Towers, the USS Cole, the African embassy attacks, etc. and could've counterattacked earlier.
To OJsDad's point above - it wasn't just a "lack of political will".  Every time Clinton took a shot a Bin Laden he was accused of "wagging the dog" to distract from the growing Lewinsky scandal.  Moreover, after Somalia, who could blame the administration for being gun-shy about sending in ground troops?  It wasn't just his political will - you should read the quotes from folks like Tom Delay leading up to Kosovo, and that was just opposition to what was then an air-only mission.

[Airborne Rifles]

Should of cleaned things out in the late 90's.  But that's my point, we knew of the growing problem, but we didn't have the political will to take care of it.

In the mid- to late-90s, we had the Northern Alliance that was actually rolling up the Taliban quite well.
Ahmad Shah Massoud (name spelling I had to look up) was doing a really great job of whacking Taliban asshats, right up until he got whacked by the Taliban asshats
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmad_Shah_Massoud

We didn't need to go in b/c there was a proxy doing it quite well....  :)

So well that the 9/11 attacks happened literally hours after he got whacked  :).

Yes, the 9-11 attacks were planned in spite of him and his allies.  But how much worse could it have been if he wasn't there for the previous several years?

We'd already been thru Khobar Towers, the USS Cole, the African embassy attacks, etc. and could've counterattacked earlier.
To OJsDad's point above - it wasn't just a "lack of political will".  Every time Clinton took a shot a Bin Laden he was accused of "wagging the dog" to distract from the growing Lewinsky scandal.  Moreover, after Somalia, who could blame the administration for being gun-shy about sending in ground troops?  It wasn't just his political will - you should read the quotes from folks like Tom Delay leading up to Kosovo, and that was just opposition to what was then an air-only mission.

Don't worry, I'm not disagreeing with, just giving you a hard time. On the other hand, if we are going to do this counterinsurgency/nation-building thing (whether or not we do it is a different question from whether or not we should do it, right?), its going to take either a lot of violence (like the Philippines) or a very long time. It looks like we're on the "very long time" COA to me.

[OJsDad]

1.  If Clinton has kept his pecker in his pants, do you believe he would have done anything different.
2.  The political will isn't limited to just the president.  The president, members of congress, and every citizen has to have the political will.
3.  McMaster was at a press briefing a little while ago.  He made a comment along the line of we've been fighting 16 one year wars.  We're not going to do that anymore. 

[bayonetbrant]

1.  If Clinton has kept his pecker in his pants, do you believe he would have done anything different.

No, because we were still pretty scarred from Somalia - a mission initiated under Bush 41 (which everyone forgets...)  There was no way ground troops were going into Afghanistan.

2.  The political will isn't limited to just the president.  The president, members of congress, and every citizen has to have the political will.

On that we agree, and there isn't a lot of it in the US pulling in the same direction anymore.

3.  McMaster was at a press briefing a little while ago.  He made a comment along the line of we've been fighting 16 one year wars.  We're not going to do that anymore. 

McMaster is a really smart guy, and his pacification of Mosul under 3rd ACR was a thing of beauty.  But there's no way the US is going to commit to open-ended occupations of foreign countries whose populations don't really want us there.  We're barely haolding on to 1-year rotations.  There's no way we're sending 3 divisions to Afghanistan for a 5-year mission.  Not a chance.