Afghanistan — A suicide bomber driving a truck attacked an advance NATO combat post in central Af

Originally posted by sk0rpi0n
Reality and fact is this : the damn war in Afghanistan is almost 10 years old. No victory in sight.
Not saying its a good thing... but try and ponder over that

The reality is it's an Occupation...

We are still sitting on Germany, Japan and South Korea for more than 60 years.

Realize that.

reply to post by SLAYER69


Congratulations on sitting on Germany, Japan and South Korea for more than 60 years.... countries with REAL armies.

So then, how does that help the situation in Afghanistan again?

Originally posted by sk0rpi0n
reply to post by SLAYER69

 

Congratulations on sitting on Germany, Japan and South Korea for more than 60 years.... countries with REAL armies.

So then, how does that help the situation in Afghanistan again?

Before you embarrass yourself further, what exactly is your military background?
Matt Daimon movies?
World of Warcraft?
HALO?

reply to post by beezzer


As if one needs to be from a military background to know who's NOT winning battles. Please.

So tell me again, why do you blame the politicians sitting in D.C for soldiers unable to secure victory? What do the politicians have to gain from not letting the troops fight?

Ok guys stop with the personal attacks. There is no reason why you can't discuss this in a respectful way. Your opinions are obviously different but I think we can all agree that this war has been painful for everyone. It's been painful for the mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters. the wives, husbands and alike. Regardless of these arguments war should always be a last decision. The human life is more valuable than money, or any other materialistic thing.

Originally posted by sk0rpi0n
reply to post by beezzer

 

As if one needs to be from a military background to know who's NOT winning battles. Please.

That says volumes. Also explains much.

So tell me again, why do you blame the politicians sitting in D.C for soldiers unable to secure victory? What do the politicians have to gain from not letting the troops fight?

Without a proper frame of reference, you really wouldn't understand. It's been explained countless times by may posters already. Repeating the same thing would not be effective. You really need to learn a subject before debating.

reply to post by beezzer

That says volumes. Also explains much.

Doesn't explain anything. Americas failure in afghanistan speaks volumes. Blaming it on politicians is not helping.

Without a proper frame of reference, you really wouldn't understand. It's been explained countless times by may posters already. Repeating the same thing would not be effective. You really need to learn a subject before debating.

Right..in case you aren't aware, you have been REPEATING the same thing about "chain of command" not letting the troops win... instead of addressing the obvious American failures before the Taliban.

And no... Im not even debating. Im just stating fact.... that the US is failing in Afghanistan.

No victory in 10 years? There wont be one in another 10.

Originally posted by sk0rpi0n
reply to post by nenothtu

 

That's not an offer to hand bin Laden over to the US, it's an offer to discuss handing him over to a third party IF the Taliban's demands were met.

The Taliban were willing to negotiate... its more than what anyone expected from them.
Bush, on the other hand, had his sights set on a war from the beginning.... a war that time showed could never be won. The Taliban are not responsible for the dead of the Americans... Bush is.

Yeah.

We negotiated.

It seems our position of strength beat their "position of strength".

I can't blame the US. I don't generally enter sit down negotiations on non-negotiable issues. I usually opt for the "extension of diplomacy by fire" when someone tries to blow smoke up my ass with such tactics as saying "We might talk about giving bin Laden up to someone other than you if you meet all our demands, which we will set as impossibly high as we can".

Ever seen the movie "The Fifth Element"? It has one of my all time favorite lines in it - "Anybody else want to 'negotiate'?"

See, "negotiations" are not "handing over bin Laden".

Bush was reading books to schoolkids at the time - he didn't have time to bring down the towers, blow a hole in the Pentagon, and dirt-dive in PA. Therefore I ain't quite getting how you arrive at the conclusion that "Bush is responsible for the dead Americans".

reply to post by Kemal


I'm from Afghanistan and I can tell you that Afghanistan is much worse now under U.S. occupation than it ever was in its history. I agree with you that the Taliban are idiots but they atleast controlled the drug trade and made sure it was banned. Nowadays, drugs, rape, and prostitution is so rampant in Afghanistan that it is pathetic. I really wish Afghanistan was much more like Turkey in modernity, but now since we are occupied, it will only take awhile before we reach that stage.

Originally posted by sk0rpi0n
No victory in 10 years?

Im just stating fact.... that the US is failing in Afghanistan.

Name or quote any major battles the US/NATO have lost in Afghanistan.

Historically after the fall of the Nazi Regime within Germany, there was an insurgency of ex-Nazi soldiers/officials against the Allied occupation force that lasted for over 10 years.

After a decade or so however, the insurgency winded down slowly but surely.

This is commonplace during occupations.

Historically speaking Afghanistan's insurgency can be compared with other insurgencies and this will provide insights and correlations.

Originally posted by sk0rpi0n

An occupation for what?
Osama was killed a while back.... thereby the US finished its retaliation for 9/11... the main reason the US went to war with Afghanistan in the first place.

Why are you still there? Is it a just reason?

One guy killed, and you're ready to piss on the fire, call in the dogs, and go home? Naw, I ain't finished with the "retaliation", not by a long shot. I'll be done when every single jihadi is taking a dirt nap. Not until.

In Afghanistan, there's still that pesky Taliban to deal with, and a country to rebuild so as to avoid the power vacuum that the Russians left, which led to the rise of the Taliban in the first place.

Whether or not those are "just" reasons may vary by opinion holder.

reply to post by muzzleflash

Historically after the fall of the Nazi Regime within Germany, there was an insurgency of ex-Nazi soldiers/officials against the Allied occupation force that lasted for over 10 years.

After a decade or so however, the insurgency winded down slowly but surely.

This is commonplace during occupations.

Historically speaking Afghanistan's insurgency can be compared with other insurgencies and this will provide insights and correlations.

Historically speaking... Afghanistan is NOT Nazi Germany, like you say.
Afghanistan has a history of being occupied by foriegn forces for periods of time longer than 10 years...and the Afghans fight back till the occupiers are gone.
The American forces are not the first.

reply to post by nenothtu


We've caused 300 times the casualties of 9/11. Is this not enough?

Originally posted by Unvarnished
reply to post by Kemal

 

I'm from Afghanistan and I can tell you that Afghanistan is much worse now under U.S. occupation than it ever was in its history. I agree with you that the Taliban are idiots but they atleast controlled the drug trade and made sure it was banned. Nowadays, drugs, rape, and prostitution is so rampant in Afghanistan that it is pathetic. I really wish Afghanistan was much more like Turkey in modernity, but now since we are occupied, it will only take awhile before we reach that stage.

Afghanistan has always been an unstable nation. Heck we didn't help rebuild Afghanistan after the Soviet left.

reply to post by nenothtu

One guy killed, and you're ready to piss on the fire, call in the dogs, and go home? Naw, I ain't finished with the "retaliation", not by a long shot. I'll be done when every single jihadi is taking a dirt nap. Not until.

The jihadis you are talking about come from the local population.... the ones who live in that country thats supposed to be rebuilt. They dont want the US there..... the longer you stay, the more reason these locals have to turn into these jihadis that the US is trying to fight.

In Afghanistan, there's still that pesky Taliban to deal with, and a country to rebuild so as to avoid the power vacuum that the Russians left, which led to the rise of the Taliban in the first place.

The pesky taliban are afghans! As for power vacuum... the US had its golden chance to get in there after the Russian defeat...when the US was "liked" there... the US blew it. Now it has this stupid unwinnable war with no end in sight to deal with.

reply to post by SLAYER69

Name or quote any major battles the US/NATO have lost in Afghanistan.

Battles? The big picture is that the US are not winning in Afghanistan...period.
If you are still convinced otherwise, then good for you.

I don't think we are fighting 'jihadists'.

I honestly think it is just politically and economically motivated individuals. There may also be a bit of revenge going on as well, no doubt.

I would actually suppose that religion plays less of a role in the insurgency than any of the other factors mentioned.

Just because someone wants us to get the hell out of their country doesn't mean they are religious nuts. They are just political opponents and they are willing to die to make sure we don't totally run over them without any repercussions.

There are also the random people that lost their loved ones in past events over the last decade, and they are doing what they do for simple revenge.

So we have a lot of factors involved, religion is more of the method of coping with reality rather than a reasoning to go revolt against the occupiers. There are already dozens of very good reasons to put up a fight.

Originally posted by sk0rpi0n
reply to post by jam321

 

If you send our troops to fight, then let them fight.

Yes, fight...
Thats what they have been doing in Afghanistan from day 1... fight with state of the art weapons and tech, armor, air support.... the works. All to fight a bunch of villagers armed with AKs and homemade bombs... too poor to even afford boots.

Dont blame the politicians. They ordered the war. Either the troops there are incompetent... or the Taliban are just that damn good. Which is it?

The generals are incompetent. Conventional generals haven't got the first damned clue of how to fight an asymmetrical war, but for some odd reason they insist on sticking their thumbs in the pie anyhow. End result is too many conventional troops in an unconventional theater, which in turn necessitates thoroughly ridiculous and counter-productive RoE's, which politicians insist upon when too many conventional troops are in too close proximity to too many 'civilians', many of whom are just that, and many of whom are anything but that.

So then, it's not the troops who are incompetent, it is the generals, who are misusing improper troops for the job. You don't swat flies with baseball bats - they're too unwieldy, too hard to get into motion and too hard to stop. The result is usually that something that didn't need smashing gets smashed, and the fly still keeps skating merrily along.

Conventional forces are meant for conventional wars. that's what they are trained for from day 1.

When Kabul fell initially, the US had 100 troopers there. That's it, just 100 men on the ground. The Northern Alliance did all the heavy lifting and provided all the fighting manpower. we were just there to advise as to tactics and strategy, direct fire, and call in air support for the Northern Alliance. had we left it running like that, the war would have been wrapped up long ago, and we would have moved on to the next nest of vipers.

What happened?

A bunch of conventional generals at CENTCOM saw the huge success, and decided they just had to get themselves a piece of that pie so they could get that on their own resumes, too, and started sending in THEIR boys. When that happened, we got the situation described above, and the clustered flock we have today in Afghanistan - and of course the clustered flocks in the endless "war debates" over who's right, who's wrong, and who's dying for what.

Muddy waters.

Originally posted by sk0rpi0n
Battles?

Yeah, Battles...

That's what you've been claiming we have been losing in.
You know, name a major Battle where they have won and we have lost.