Let's admit the obvious: Afghanistan War is unwinnable

@Baldimo,

The stated goal of Afghanistan was to get Bin Laden, we got him. Mission accomplished. There are terrorist in every country in the world, bad leaders as well. It makes more sense to be more mobilized to go where the most need is at any given time rather than getting bogged down into nation building for people who don't want us to rebuild their country in the first place. Right now, ISIS is bigger threat than Afghanistan is. We have technology and allies (unless Trump gets our allies too mad at him) to keep up with the terrorist everywhere. We don't need to be bogged down into one country.

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@revelette1,

revelette1 wrote:

The stated goal of Afghanistan was to get Bin Laden, we got him. Mission accomplished.

We aren't going to let the rest of al-Qa'ida off the hook.

revelette1 wrote:

There are terrorist in every country in the world, bad leaders as well. It makes more sense to be more mobilized to go where the most need is at any given time rather than getting bogged down into nation building for people who don't want us to rebuild their country in the first place. Right now, ISIS is bigger threat than Afghanistan is. We have technology and allies (unless Trump gets our allies too mad at him) to keep up with the terrorist everywhere. We don't need to be bogged down into one country.

We are not going to let the Taliban restore Afghanistan to a terrorist haven.

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@Baldimo,

Baldimo wrote:

Did you forget all about the Taliban? They were the leaders of Afghanistan, they might not have been recognized by the world as the leaders of Afghanistan, but they were the leaders none the less. They allowed bin Laden and his people to live and train for 9-11 in their country, they had their blessing. The Taliban were horrible leaders, do you not remember the video's of men dancing in the streets and cutting off their beards? How about the women who were allowed to walk around without a veil on or attend school. Except for some northern portions of Afghanistan, the Taliban ruled the country.

Don't forget the Taliban's preparations for genocide. All non-Muslims were required to have a yellow badge indicating their religion sewn onto their clothing.

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@revelette1,

Quote:

The stated goal of Afghanistan was to get Bin Laden, we got him.

Indeed we finally did. We can't really say ending bin Laden ended the threat from his organization.

Quote:

Mission accomplished.

I see what you did there.

Quote:

There are terrorist in every country in the world, bad leaders as well.

That is true. Truth be told, I don't want to invade or bomb any of them. The more I see the direction of the world, the more I want as many US resources as possible brought home. We are currently deployed in over 150 countries on various missions and I don't think they are all nessary. I would also like to pull funding from various parts of the world and let them be on their own. If they don't serve a direct interest of the US, we can pull up stakes and head home. I wouldn't mind seeing a small decrease in military spending as long as we brought people home to compensate for that loss of spending.

Quote:

It makes more sense to be more mobilized to go where the most need is at any given time rather than getting bogged down into nation building for people who don't want us to rebuild their country in the first place. Right now, ISIS is bigger threat than Afghanistan is. We have technology and allies (unless Trump gets our allies too mad at him) to keep up with the terrorist everywhere. We don't need to be bogged down into one country.

The problem is we are not just in one country, we have military deployed in over 150 countries. I agree with you on a flexible force.

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@Baldimo,

I am kind of amazed as well, I agree with you as well. I don't know too much about the military and all the places we are in the world but what you have said makes a lot of sense.

However, I have in the last ten years read quite a bit about Muslims/Muslim countries/terrorist from a variety of sources. It all comes down to most of the countries resent our presence even if they are more tolerant because we are heavy handed so to speak and we have killed innocent people along with terrorist and that would be tough to overlook to say the least. I am including Obama in the criticism with the drones. I know he wanted less boots on the grounds, but, there were a lot of loss of innocent lives with those drones. I don't know if the technology has improved or not.

I also think the war on terror will never be over, at least in our lifetime, so we always have to use our many resources to be diligent but also, think of ways to cause less resentment would help with those who are more tolerant and/or moderate.

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@revelette1,

revelette1 wrote:

The stated goal of Afghanistan was to get Bin Laden, we got him. Mission accomplished. There are terrorist in every country in the world, bad leaders as well. It makes more sense to be more mobilized to go where the most need is at any given time rather than getting bogged down into nation building for people who don't want us to rebuild their country in the first place. Right now, ISIS is bigger threat than Afghanistan is. We have technology and allies (unless Trump gets our allies too mad at him) to keep up with the terrorist everywhere. We don't need to be bogged down into one country.

I personally think the whole Bin Laden seal team assassination never happened.

I bet what happened was he died of kidney failure months before and our leaders thought, "Well that was anti-climatic, maybe we can stage a fake assassination."

Oh yeah we are going to dump the body in the sea because Muslims would be pissed if we took it back and put it on display.

Within 8 months of the event half of the seal team members were dead by strange events? Really, maybe one death is understandable but multiple is highly unlikely.

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@Krumple,

Quote:

Within 8 months of the event half of the seal team members were dead by strange events? Really, maybe one death is understandable but multiple is highly unlikely.

You are going to have to provide some proof on this one.

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@Baldimo,

Krumple is like you Baldy. If he posted it it must be true. No proof is required of you two.

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@RABEL222,

I've posted proof plenty of times, in fact much more than you have. This is about the full substance of a majority of posts. You and Izzy, 2 peas in a pod.

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@Baldimo,

Thanks, I would rather be compared to Izzy any day than be compared to you.

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@hightor,

hightor wrote:

The operation was financed by bin Laden and al Qaida. We had every right to track him down and break up his criminal network. We had no reason to sign on to a fifteen year campaign of nation building and ineffective warfare against militant tribes who are no longer in any way remotely responsible for the attacks in 2001.

We invaded shortly after the Taliban repeatedly refused to extradite bin Laden. Since they were accessories to the murder of thousands of our citizens, we had a perfect right to invade. Anyone who attempts to execute thousands of our civilians, not as collateral damage, but as the primary intended targets, has forfeited the right to any consideration.

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@Brandon9000,

Where did I say that we had no right to invade? I said just the opposite:

Quote:

We had every right to track him down and break up his criminal network.

What's your point?

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So this is an unwinnable, endless war. Kind of reminds you of Vietnam, except we were smart enough to get out of Vietnam. What some of you are saying is if we get out Afghanistan it will become a terrorist nation so we are bound to stay there forever. That’s a wonderful thought.

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@xingu,

Quote:

What some of you are saying is if we get out Afghanistan it will become a terrorist nation so we are bound to stay there forever. That’s a wonderful thought.

That's not really what we are saying at all. We don't look toward "taming" Afghanistan, we are looking to end Terrorists hold on the population. If they can pull together and feel a sense of nation over a sense of faction/flavor of Islam they could really make a wonderful country for themselves. Muslim extremism has blinded the general population to a normal education and until they can quell the extremists, they are doomed to be a 3rd world country. I've been there and meet some of the people, they actually have a beautiful country during some parts of the year, other parts of the year they don't see any rainfall for at least 5 or 6 months.

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After decades of terrorism aimed at us we have started asking loudly why the radical elements of the world hate us.

The West, powered by technological advantages, imposed ruthless imperialism over much of the world for material advantages for three centuries. This caused a lot of suffering. After the world wars, the mankind, in general, has learned that conquering other countries hurts the conqueror more than it helps, in the long run. The US, having more fair and humane attitude internally had made huge progress by then, and had employed milder international policies up to that time. This made her emerge as the leader of the war-broken West. But since then, we have exploited the underdeveloped world economically. And to achieve and support the economical advantages we manipulated underdeveloped countries’ politics. In some instances we even have been the ‘king maker’. This has generated pains round the world.

Pain generates anger. A culture handles its anger according to its emotional makeup, which in turn is influenced by its collective religious base, whether be it based on dogma or reason. Thus some cultures are more forgiving of the past then others. In addition, different cultures have more home-generated hate than others, stemming from their family, social and political environment.

When deep anger is allowed to linger on, or to grow by additional factors, it crystallizes over time, and turns into hate. Hate differs from greed, in that, hate does not weigh gain against cost; it just wants to destroy. This is directed more towards the US for two main reasons, because she is the leader of the West, and the memories of our unfair dealings are fresh in the minds around the world. Even our gestures of generosity have been tainted by political considerations. Greed goes hand in hand with pride, which keeps us blind to our follies. As mighty as we are, new technologies are making it feasible for a few to hurt many. And, some cultures are producing large numbers of hateful people who are ready to risk their lives to cause us pain. They will overwhelm our policing resources not too far in the future.

We need to focus our generosity towards the pains of people around the world more, and less on our immediate gains from these efforts. In the long run, this self-less generosity can earn emotional goodwill of the common populace around the world. We all think emotionally somewhat. But the Eastern cultures are more emotional than the Western cultures. We can influence the Eastern cultures more easily through their emotions than through objective representations. Such efforts will divert their hate to somewhere else, and we can stop being their prime target. Change of attitude frog-leaps by generation. It is better to pay for our deeds by reducing the pain of others early than by incurring suffering later. Hate is a monster that devours itself, if nothing else is available. Let us pull out from its path. Meanwhile we can keep defending ourselves with force, need of which will taper down, as goodwill grows.

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@Baldimo,

Quote:

...we are looking to end Terrorists hold on the population. If they can pull together and feel a sense of nation over a sense of faction/flavor of Islam they could really make a wonderful country for themselves.

It would be nice if we even appeared to have a clue as to how to go about this, how to nudge it along.

I'm not criticizing our fighting forces — charged with an impossible mission they do the best they can with what they have to work with. But we've been at this now for over 15 years. We don't see any sign that the Afghans are turning away from Islamism. We don't see any drop in the number of terrorist attacks. We don't see a weakened Taliban.

It's the whole "nation building" problem. Looks great on paper. I think that in order for moderate forces to gain a permanent footing we would really need to commit to much higher troop and civilian contractor levels, gain military control over tribal areas of Pakistan and other 'stans where terrorists take haven, invest heavily in education, healthcare, good governance programs, a sustainable economy — for another generation or two. Everyone knows we're not going to do that. So what's the endgame?

How do we leave? One suggestion is that we don't get involved in these sorts of projects to begin with. Bush II declared war and that pretty much set everything in motion. To end a war you need victory or a treaty — kind of hard to do accomplish either of these when your enemies are stateless criminal terrorists inspired by what amounts to a religious death cult.

Not getting involved in these exploits is another thing that sounds easier than it is. Obama was committed to not intervening in Syria, if at all possible. He was criticized from the right and the left and our inaction allowed Russia to enter the war, insuring that the Assad regime would not be overthrown. Personally, I think he did the right thing — but it wasn't
a policy that made anyone swell with pride. It's a very unsatisfying option. So we sink into the quicksand of nation building? What are the options?

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@hightor,

hightor wrote:

Where did I say that we had no right to invade? I said just the opposite:

Quote:
We had every right to track him down and break up his criminal network.

What's your point?

hightor wrote:

We had no reason to sign on to a fifteen year campaign of nation building and ineffective warfare against militant tribes who are no longer in any way remotely responsible for the attacks in 2001.

They have forfeited the right to any consideration. The US is trying to attack al-Qaeda and deny it a safe haven in Afghanistan by removing the Taliban from power. The Taliban have a significant presence in Afghanistan. About one-fifth of the country is currently controlled or contested by the Taliban

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@Brandon9000,

Than why dident we attack Saudi Arabia?

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@RABEL222,

RABEL222 wrote:

Than why dident we attack Saudi Arabia?

Saudi Arabia didn't sponsor an attack on our country that killed thousands.

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@Brandon9000,

Neither did Afghanistan. They just didn't turn over Bin Laden. Pakistan had him sitting pretty for quite a good while we were in Iraq for no reason and we didn't bomb and invade Pakistan.

1 Reply

Let's admit the obvious: Afghanistan War is unwinnable

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