GET OUT OF AFGHANISTAN

2001 war in Afghanistan, also known as Operation Enduring Freedom

1. Lasting; continuing; durable: a novel of enduring interest.
2. Long-suffering; patient.

We are increasingly gaining the hatred of the Afghans, who will never act like, say, the Germans once we won the war.

Brandon wrote:

We should try to defeat the people we're at war with. That is normally the goal in war. It cannot help us for everyone to know that if an enemy makes it tough for us, we'll always skulk out.

The enemy certainly made it tough for us in Iraq, but we persevered, and now we're even going to draw-down our troops there. What exactly have we won there, though? The suicide bombings have been reduced, but not eliminated. We've bought off the Sunni and Shiite factions that are against our presence there. Iran stands to make significant political ties with the Shiite dominated government in Iraq. We've about faced and agreed to a timetable for leaving. Is that something along the lines of the defeat of, and victory over our enemies we're to expect in Afghanistan? Our ruinous trillion dollar wars amount to those kinds of victories?

You appear to me to have the mindset that European style warfare is the norm. Defeat the opposing army and victory is conceded. Other peoples don't see it like that. Generational wars are for the long haul. In Afghanistan, they should have planned a strategy for going in and getting bin Laden, then getting out. Instead, they moved in and squatted. That changed it from a get even for 911 operation into nation building in a nation that does not want us. In short, we are persevering in a war without a cause. Time to get out.

We forget that the Talaban are Afghans, and that they didn't attack us. Admittedly, they ran the government on 9/11, and they harbored al-Qaida, but they did not engineer the attack on us.

Accordingly, it is now time for us to go away. We are increasingly gaining the hatred of the Afghans, who will never act like, say, the Germans once we won the war.

What's your point, that we have no right to retaliate when attacked on our own soil, that when a war proves difficult, that's the signal to give up?

October 9, 2008
U.S. Study Is Said to Warn of Crisis in Afghanistan
By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON " A draft report by American intelligence agencies concludes that Afghanistan is in a “downward spiral” and casts serious doubt on the ability of the Afghan government to stem the rise in the Taliban’s influence there, according to American officials familiar with the document.

The classified report finds that the breakdown in central authority in Afghanistan has been accelerated by rampant corruption within the government of President Hamid Karzai and by an increase in violence by militants who have launched increasingly sophisticated attacks from havens in Pakistan.

The report, a nearly completed version of a National Intelligence Estimate, is set to be finished after the November elections and will be the most comprehensive American assessment in years on the situation in Afghanistan. Its conclusions represent a harsh verdict on decision-making in the Bush administration, which in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks made Afghanistan the central focus of a global campaign against terrorism.

...the truth doesn't always sound encouraging .

So you're going to blame Obama for all the "declines" that are already happening, are you?

[... let's get back to discussing Afghanistan./quote]

Good idea!

Good idea!

Brandon wrote:

What's your point, that we have no right to retaliate when attacked on our own soil, that when a war proves difficult, that's the signal to give up?

My question is: are our trillion dollar wars of retaliation worth what we're getting out of them?

Having thousands of our civilians deliberately murdered on our own soil is a "war without cause???" - Brandon

They took the Taliban out of power. Then they let Bin aden slip away. The actions they are now fighting have little or nothing to do with 911 anymore. It is nation building in a nation that does not want our presence.

We should think of the fate of the Roman Empire. It wasted its assets by going on costly ventures far afield.