1 Iraq and Afghanistan have about the same population; Iraq is 29 million and Afghanistan is 31.

2 Psst! I think it's called Small Wars Journal.

3 Racist!

4 This isn't really surprising.

Iraq was 'doable' because it was a real country, it just suffered from a brutal dictatorship (and yes, sectarian issues). Still, they produced doctors, engineers, businessmen, etc that you need to have a real country.

Afghanistan? Um, not so much. It's not now, nor has it ever been, a country as the modern world understands the term.

We need to consider that 'victory' there is different from Iraq. We can't make it something it's never been but rather continue to deny its use by the enemy as a sanctuary from which to strike us.

That's not as satisfying but it might just be the best we can do.

5 Oh and Iraq has oil. Lots of oil.

It gives them something to build with.

Afghanistan's biggest resource? Poppies.

6 bush should of nuked tora bora with a coupla-three-four-more tactical nukes in 2001 and thake out all the AQ leadership and all the taliban leadership.

now what to do?

tell 10% bhutto and the other crooked pro-islamists running the show in pakiland that in one month we're gonna declare pakistan's FATA region an outta control lawless non-national territory and call "talibanistan" and then give the people there three weeks to evacuate and then nuke it / vaporize it.

end of problem. for us. pakistan and afghanistan,

7 THIS IS THE WRONG WAY:

President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has offered to provide security for the Taleban's reclusive leader, Mullah Omar, if he agrees to peace talks.

Mr Karzai made the offer despite the multi-million dollar bounty offered for the militant leader's capture by the United State

8 I think we should pull out of Afghanistan.  Go back in periodically and wreck it if they give us any problems.  but otherwise, just line up a firing squad and shoot the prisoners we've got and then leave.  Nation building is crap.  Fallacy.  Waste of resources.

9 Plus it's fucking land locked.

10 I'd like to see if these work--the smart mines:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_Munitions_System
As seen on TV!

11 Congress authorizes the size of the military, not the president.

12

Accoring to Dalton Fury, the Delta Force commander in charge at Tora Bora (see his book - Kill Bin Laden), our coalition allies wouldn't stand for us mining the escape routes out the back of Tora Bora. This did allow,in part, for the escape of some AQ.

His book, which is really politcally neutral, for the most part, describes in detail what went on in the much discussed battle of Tora Bora, and it's a very different account than the standard media stories. Plus it's very interesting look into Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta.

13

And that would be "according" ... never type immedialtely after a football induced sleep coma ... collecting favorite inspirational sayings .... just click on my name

 

14

Christopher Hitchens warned -- over three years ago -- that our drug-war motivated policy of eradicating poppy fields would backfire and I suspect that it is a big source of Al Queda resergence (it was how they initially rose to power in the first place). Rather than eradicating poppy fields, we should shift our policy to buying out the poppy farmers and using the crop for legal domestic medical uses, thus drying up Al Queda's financing. Kinda like what we should have been doing years ago in driving up supply of domestic oil production to drive down the price of oil and undemine Iran, Russia, and Venezuela.

15 >>>Congress authorizes the size of the military, not the president.

I cannot imagine congress would have refused.

16 provide security for the Taleban's reclusive leader, Mullah Omar, if he agrees to peace talks

Omar needs a helicopter "crash".  Those damn things are falling out of the sky all the time you know.  I'm just saying...

17 he'd be pretty secure 6 feet underground in a pine box ... like the idea Purple Avenger

18 I cannot imagine congress would have refused.

Congress can up it even if the president doesn't want it too.  The thing is, did the military want it? 

Do we even need it?  We've had 10's of thousands tied down in Korea for 50 years.  Maybe its time to take those training wheels off?   Same with Europe.  Its about time for the training wheels to come off there too.

We've got 10's of thousands garrisoning CONUS bases.  Are they really necessary?  Might they be offset with a older "home guard" type group?  It wouldn't be too hard to get older out of work guys to volunteer for domestic garrison/maintenance duty, but the military won't accept them.  A lot of the non-combat CONUS stuff could be handled by guys in their 50's or 60's.

I just don't think we've been too creative about where to obtain staffing from.

19

We need to get out, nothing to save there, no Oil to worry about.

These ttothless privatives deserve their fate, let Pakistan worry about it

Just let it become a SpecOps playground from here on out.

There is no real country to liberate/save

We would have been far, far better off doing the Iraq building in Iran

20 Let me expand on the other problem: logistics. 

Very simply put, we have only a few ways to provide supplies and equipment to our troops in Afghanistan.  As it is, we provide a lot of extra equipment and supplies because of the loss rate.  Now imagine putting in double again the troops that we have and trying to supply them with the two unprotected routes coming out of Pakistan, one route out of Tajikistan and some flights.

To do any surge of that size, we would basically have to re-invent the Berlin airlift.  But, this time, you'd know that the enemy would have no compunction about shooting down the hundreds of air craft coming in there because we are already at war. 

It would be a target rich environment.

21 In short, while Iraq is not won, Afghanistan is a disaster in the making. We have the tiger by the tail and no clue how to get off. The good news is that Afghanistan, is probably the less important front, aside from some unforseen earthquake in pakistan. The bad news is it's also the choice front, for largely sentimental and partisan political reasons at that, of our idiotic new leadership. Woohoooooo.

22 Christopher Hitchens warned -- over three years ago -- that our drug-war motivated policy of eradicating poppy fields would backfire and I suspect that it is a big source of Al Queda resergence (it was how they initially rose to power in the first place).

Maybe ol Chris can explain "damned if you and damned if you don't" to you since you think some general commentary pundit can write war policy? 

Look, it wasn't some moralistic "war on drugs" that had us eradicating poppy fields, crack heads.  It is because the billions of dollars that these drug lords are making and funneling to AQ and the Taliban to support their war efforts.

So, basically, it's a choice between letting them make billions of dollars to buy weapons, EFPs and people to support their insurgency or it is piss off the locals by eradicating their money making crops, who then join the insurgency.  but, at least they'll be poor insurgents with just an AK-47 instead of rich insurgents with EFPs and MANPADS and other weapons that can really do harm to our troops.

The real issue here is not whether we should or should not destroy poppy crops, but whether there is a long term solution to replacing those crops as money making crops that create a better condition of living.  The two problems there are that a) the land: is it arable? will it support other crops (it's not a given that poppies growing in one place means any other crop will suffice)  b) planting cycles: you can't just go in, in the middle of a planting cycle,destroy their crops and then try to get these farmers to plant something that will not have enough time to grow and mature before the growing cycle is up.  They will have no money to live through the winter.  Their families will starve.  That is one reason why the past eradication of poppies created more insurgents.  Not just because they were pissed about the poppies being gone, but because they needed money to support their families when the poppy crop was gone and had no way to make it but to pick up a gun. 

You have to be smart about it.  We were not smart.  We did it as "drug war" instead of "agricultural improvement". 

23 The two problems there are that a) the land: is it arable? will it support other crops (it's not a given that poppies growing in one place means any other crop will suffice)  b) planting cycles:

Let me add c) market decline for agricultural products: if the price of the replacement crops cannot compete with the price of poppies then the farmers don't make enough money.  That is why in some areas they have tried to replace the poppy crops with a crop that has two or three planting cycles before the winter. You have to start at the beginning of the planting cycle. 

But, that also leaves the question of what will the land and weather in the area permit for crops. 

I would also note that the idea of buying poppies for pharmaceutical purposes has been pushed off.  As many might be aware, morphine was originally an extract of opium or poppies.  However, because the purity actually is hard to control and, thus, the dosing, it is now made with synthetics. 

24 Everyone here knows this, but on change.gov, Obama says he and Biden will "...finish the fight against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan...Obama and Biden will refocus American resources on the greatest threat to our security -- the resurgence of al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan..."

That gun grabbing stuff is back in the Agenda too.

25 but whether there is a long term solution to replacing those crops as money making crops that create a better condition of living.

BTDT.  There were/are already many efforts underway to show the locals how to grow something that pays better than poppy (the locals do NOT get rich off the poppy harvest, its everyone downstream who cashes in). 

The problem of course is that the Taliban needs the locals growing poppy rather than exotic flowers, beans, whatever, because poppy is a weapon and source of income for them.  Hence, locals who do cut over to more lucrative (for the locals) cash crops wind up terrorized and murdered by the Taliban. 

Afghan farmers have no love affair with poppy, they do want to keep their lives though.  As in Iraq, it all boils down to local security.  Lacking that, reform efforts inevitably fail.

26 Atlas Shrugged has a transcribed speech from VDH that is his usual laser sharp insight into BO and expectations.

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/

"I think in the Obama view , men like him that are charismatic, articulate, they can change the world because it's naturally a peaceful thing until people like George Bush rush in and through their stubborness "smoke 'em out dead or alive" vernacular destroys it but the fact of the matter is the only reason there is any semblance of peace and tranquility in the world today is because in places as diverse as the Aegean, planes overflying in Greek airspace daily, where there's near fighting on Cypress, or whether we are talking about the Korean sea and the Philippines, Taiwan, South Korean democracies not going nuclear because the United States is there ... or whether Russian ships keep [intelligible] away every hour ... all of that is predicated on the presence of the United States.

27 I really don't think the countries population would effect a surge strategy. You would have to run it differently of course, since it's a different country, but it could be adapted. Also you would have to run it on a larger scale, but Afghanistan doesn't have more than 2 million people more than Iraq.

28 Different country you need a different strategy. Send it to the "think tank" like they did in Iraq.

Side note, my friends nephew deployed to Afghanistan; when he came back he described it as "a shit hole with nothing there"

29 Nonsense.  Borders are securable, it just takes defining the difference between secure and unsecure areas/borders. 

Consider the task like a Risk game where you start with one or a couple disconnected countries surrounded 'countries' surrounded by bad guys. Taking over the region requires a strategy where newly secured territory eliminates or reduces the need for border security in some fashion, allowing border security to be moved to new borders.  Sometimes one expands outwardly, sometimes one surrounds and crushes outside in, sometimes one squeezes -- allowing the enemy an "escape" route that is turned against them in some fashion at the choke point.

 There's also various counter guerilla options based upon how insurgents tend to 'live' off the land a lot -- Leave goods with various innocuous tracking devices (like UPS does to shipments) to be stolen that can be tracked to 'home'.  

30 Bush really should have increased the size of the armed forces by a division or two on Sept 11.

kat-missouri is right. The problem with putting troops in Afghanistan is not lack of troops, it's "how many combat troops can we support there?" That is a limitation of the country, it's land locked status, and it's crappy transportation network. We've been working on improving the last problem, which is why we can probably support more troops there now than we could have 5 years ago.

But the problem with Afghanistan is logistics, not number of US Troops.

31

Bush should have reinstated the draft after 9/11.  the armed forces should have been beefed up, tax cuts rescinded and the whole country made to sacrifice in time of war.  Instead the volunteer armed forces and national guard carried the whole burden and for the great majority of the country 9/11 faded into the past.  My wife asked me if we would prevail against terrorism after 9/11 and I replied only if it was quick, otherwise the country would forget and lose interest.  That is exactly what happened!!!

I am a New Yorker, i can no longer look at the downtown skyline without grieving.  When I find myself softening I remember my fellow New Yorkers holding hands with strangers and leaping from the towers to escape death by inferno.  My hatred is fresh and has not cooled.

Bush did a decent job but he never rallied the country to his cause.  GWB did not know how to use the bully pulpit.  My daughter, a ACLU card carrying super lib, was for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet she pointed out the GWB was terrible at making his case. 

During WWII there were movies called "Why WE Fight", in the age of the internet there should have been a modern equivelant.

GWB almost destroyed the Republican party because of his war on terror.  Democrats were able to stake out the position that this was not their war.  They then proceeded to bash us over the head for years for trying to do the right and honourable thing.

Look at our party now.  We are in opposition and the majority party is led by Obama, Reid and Pelosi.  How the hell did this happen.  Not in my wildest nightmares did I forsee this!!!  What has happened to my country.  We were attacked, fought a war on terror and somehow lost almost everything.  My heart is broken.

 

 

 

 

 

32 @30: Most of the NATO troops in Afghanistan are a drain on logistics, too.  They require supplies, but - with a few exceptions - they don't fight.  They should be replaced with troops who actually *add* to the combat strength in country.

33

Ace, we effectively DID add several combat divisions after 9/11.

The heart of each division was its manuver brigades, and each of the Army's ten divisions (mostly) had three on 9/11. 2nd Infantry in Korea only had two, so did the 10th Mountain at Drum. I forget when 1st Cavalry got their 3rd Brigade again, I think it was in the late '90's.

Now seven years later, most every one of the ten divisions has four, and in one case, by absorbing the expanded 1/501 Parachute Infantry in Alaska, the Hawaii-based 25th ID has five. You also still have the independent players of the 2nd and 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiments and the Italy-based 173rd Airborne Brigade. While we didn't add more division HQ's, which is a good thing, we went from ten old-pattern divisions to the equivalent of something like fourteen. It's the number of deployable brigade/regimental combat teams you have to keep an eye on.

34

Bush really should have increased the size of the armed forces by a division or two on Sept 11.

More like eight-plus or so.

And someone should've taken Rummy aside on 9/11 and said, "I know you're not fond of nation-building vs. high-tech warfare against a peer competitor, but our national security environment is going to have a whole bunch more of the former than the latter. Deal with it."

35 Kat-Missouri:  I don't get you. You slam me as an ignorant crackhead and then parrott my entire point in a much longer form. You might want to cut back on your psyche meds.

36

I like how we ran Somalia.  Have the Ethipians go in and fuck around without these pussy ROE.  Use some drones and naval gunfire and planes and such.  Don't fucking land and try to civilze the fucking barbarians though.

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