U.S. Considers Faster Pullout in Afghanistan after Obama / Karzai videoconference fallout

Originally posted by Trueman
Now he better kick out all illegals working with fake papers and give those jobs to our veterans.

Maybe I'm asking too much from him.

What do "illegals" have to do with anything? Immigration is not a real issue. People have been migrating here from Mexico for decades. They have not collapsed the country. If anything they have strengthened America. Illegal immigration is a fake issue just like abortion designed to inflame tensions and distract from real issues like Afghanistan.

reply to post by Stealthwatch


Now, I may be wrong, but I sense that you may have a small issue with the US. Not sure, really. It's just an intuition I get from reading your posts.

I'm somewhat good at reading subtle hints like that.

reply to post by MrSpad


Problem isn't that we can do better, problem is that we cannot get hired by anyone else, not matter what we decree. Our country doesn't want to hire us for whatever reason that may be it's something I'm never going to forget. I always wondered why so many veterans were homeless or down in the dumps, now I understand why.

Companies only hire the famous or seriously wounded veterans otherwise the rest they don't care about, and if you think that's bad, think about the veterans who got out honorably right before this whole mess started...

Why they will hire illegals and underskilled over a vet is only something I can compare to greed. May someday our world change, but for the better for once.

Some sad facts, my area has a high veteran population, high unemployment population, and also the highest concentrations of DoD companies near one another than anywhere else in the US, how does that happen? Wouldn't the DoD companies want direct field input / experience?

reply to post by MrSpad

The reason illegals do the jobs they do is because nobody else will.

That is a myth. People would be more than willing to pick tomatoes and stuff. They just would not be willing to do it for the miniscule wages Mexicans do it for.

Up the wages, deport the illegals I say.

Know where I got my first job when I got out of the service in 2005? It was at the huddle house as the night shift cook for 7.50 an hour. And this was back when everyone was all, USA! USA! Imagine how it is in todays job market.

I was literally going around begging for a job. After about 6 month I got on at a factory but still, goes to show what the job market for alot of veterans is like.

I spent 8 years as a tanker. But there are no tanks in the civilian world, so all that experience meant nothing at all on a resume.

Originally posted by Expat888
the u.s failed to learn from history .. NO outside invader has ever conquered afghanistan ..

Rule of thumb:

Never invade a country that hasn't been conquered by its own citizens first.

reply to post by Expat888


Although your right in the first part, I take issue with the second part. If the people responsible for hiding Bin Laden were in Kansas, we would have gone in and destroyed them. It just happened to be Afghanistan (for awhile anyway before they fled to Pakistan). We didn't go into Pakistan because they have nuc's.

reply to post by Stealthwatch

Yeah, but it was fun while it lasted!

reply to post by beezzer


Yeah you right i have huge one.

How sure are you all those unemployed veterans are "unemployed".

reply to post by wrkn4livn


Be careful that fin might be coming to neighborhood near you soon. And you gonna know some of the faces. That is the #ty part.

Isn't the real issue that were at war against the Taliban, which is a non-defined portion of the population, rather than with all of Afghanistan? You can’t compare this war to WWII, or the Nazis. It’s not like you can look at a crowd and pick out the enemy by the color of their shirt. Not to mention there is no real way to judge the success of our goals. Had we entered Afghanistan with the objective of conquer and eradicate the population in a defined boundary we could have easily define ‘victory’, but since our objective was as vague as defining our enemy, its next to impossible to achieve victory.

This lack of a victory is not the fault of the generals, but rather the fault of the policies we have towards ‘war’. I’m sure the generals would have had no issue conducting a massive shock and awe campaign complete with carpet bombings followed by air strikes of all key military and civilian infrastructures. Follow this up with ground forces (with massive air and artillery support) to clean up the towns one by one, purging them of any remaining populations. Then strip them of all resources and claim the land for the US. However when we have a ‘promote democracy’ policy instead of a conquer and occupy policy we limit ourselves in what methods we use.

reply to post by EnoughAlready10


You did carpet bomb everything, the whole afganistan were a target, that include woman and children.

Will just point out that generally speaking, the military doesn't make policy, they enforce it. So blaming the failures to "win" on the "general staff" is a bit absurd. The President decides what constitutes a "win" for our side, and then is SUPPOSED to leave it to the military to figure out how to get there. The problem is there is no clear idea of what a win is for us, and the military is being micro-managed when they try to implement whatever the policy of the week is. But hey it's cool, just blame the generals for it. Makes sense.

Originally posted by Expat888
the u.s failed to learn from history .. NO outside invader has ever conquered afghanistan ..

... without regretting it? In which case the outside invader Pakistan may live to regret sponsoring the Taliban to invade, conquer and try to hold down Afghanistan with Pakistan's help?

But with the US we are discussing invited guests who come as friends and allies of the Afghans, not conquerors. The Afghans wanted the Taliban conquerors off their backs and asked for help from the US to get that done.

Originally posted by Expat888
u.s had and has no valid reason to have military in afghanistan .

The US's reason to send military to Afghanistan was spelled out in the Bush Doctrine - the Taliban regime was a state sponsor of terrorism against the US.

So there was a coincidence of interests - Afghans wanting shot of their Taliban masters and the US wanting the same.

Originally posted by Expat888
the sooner the u.s is out - entirely the better .. for both afghanistan and for the u.s ..

The sooner the US confronts Pakistan the better ... for both Afghanistan and the US.

Originally posted by HanzHenry
Better Generals could win, for 40yrs there have been spineless politicians as generals..

But it's been 68 years since the US won a war by dropping a couple of nukes which arguably was the last solid evidence of US generals with a pretty ruthless determination to win without political calculations restraining their means of war too much.

Even those US generals allowed the Japanese to keep their emperor, which was a political calculation.

I mean if the US would have dropped a few more nukes on Japan then an unconditional surrender might have been had from the Japanese. But the US generals then didn't decide to drop more nukes. They agreed terms with the Japanese for their surrender. Reasonable enough, many would say.

So why do you say the generals you are thinking of from before 40 years ago, (that would be before 1973, towards the end of the Vietnam war) had no political restraint, were not "spineless politicians"?

I mean the US pulled out of Vietnam, not exactly in victory, without nuking anybody. So which generals in which war are you thinking of? The ones who you consider were in no-way "spineless politicians"?

In the Iraq war, we got Saddam Hussein, the dictator head of state, and we did that with a lot of politics in support of our military effort which was measured, constrained and to a significant degree successful. What was it about the generals before 40 years ago that was so much better than the outcome in Iraq?

If it is Vietnam you are thinking of the US didn't capture or kill the North Vietnamese head of state in that war, right?

Originally posted by HanzHenry
career promotion hounds instead of honorable hard working troop adored men.

What all generals since 1973?

Originally posted by HanzHenry
MAD DOG MATTIS could have won the war,

Well General Mattis was serving until last month. For a time 11 August 2010 to 22 March 2013, for 954 days, Mattis had command responsibility for Afghanistan as Commander, United States Central Command. So if he could have won it, shouldn't he have won it then?

If Mattis has had a good new idea since leaving his command responsibilities for Afghanistan, didn't he do what he could for our Afghanistan campaign, in an advice capacity, or was his advice ignored and is he free to speak out publicly now that he has retired? What's his new strategy for Afghanistan, is it much different from what he was doing while in command and what we've seen from the new Commander US Central Command since?

Originally posted by HanzHenry
McChrystal is a choad.

General McChrystal was the NATO-ISAF commander who promised victory in Afghanistan if only he got a big surge of troops, which surge Obama authorised but within the year McChrystal had resigned over his publicised views about the president's team.

If you mean the surge strategy was flawed I'd have to agree.

No Afghanistan strategy is going to win this unless it is an Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy which confronts Pakistan over its role in sponsoring the Taliban, Al Qaeda and terrorism world-wide.

Originally posted by HanzHenry
What really is needed.. Lewis Burwell Puller.. he can win anything

Chesty died in 1971 and whilst his service can inspire, he's not the general we are looking for.

reply to post by Mr Peter Dow


Wow dude, we think alike!

Scotland huh?

have you heard of a place called Bunchrew?

supposedly my family came from that area long time ago..

Originally posted by Rocker2013
The US needs to leave Afghanistan for one reason, those military resources will need to be used elsewhere. America cannot survive without being at war in one way or another. Too many businesses will suffer, thousands of troops will need assistance when arriving home, the business of war will end. That can't happen, especially not with almost $17 trillion of debt.

Well some of that debt is war on terror costs, mostly the costs of the Iraq & Afghanistan wars. So for that war debt it is lucky for us really that the Arabian countries have plenty of spare oil cash so instead of bearing the war debts ourselves our governments should simply demand payment of our war costs from the Arabs or threaten to re-invade and seize their oil fields as collateral for payment - and I mean specifically Saudi oil fields because those are the biggest, wealthiest oil fields and Saudi Arabia is one of the most guilty state sponsors of terrorism and not a regime we have any reason to respect, on any grounds whatsoever.

The Saudis owe us. They should pay-back, one way or another. The Saudis should think themselves fortunate if they can negotiate any terms with the West that leaves them still having a country called "Saudi Arabia".

Afghanistan's only industry is poppy production - heroin - the Taliban burned down the poppy fields - the american military protected the vast majority of poppy fields so that the CIA can continue their drug profits.

The "contractors" want to continue their drug profits - so much for the "war on drugs".

The war on the Taliban (which is horrible to women and children) is just as horrible as allowing the CIA to continue their opiate distribution.

Afghanistan - where empires go to die.

Let's get the heck out of there altogether.

Originally posted by sonnny1
reply to post by Mr Peter Dow

 

So...

Obama being" frustrated" is speeding things up?

I wonder if we can end ALL Wars on his watch by really getting him angry???

Whats it going to take to get Gitmo closed?

Pie to the face?

It's better to end a war by winning it. Meantime we can keep Gitmo open. There's no point in speeding Obama up in the wrong direction, to encourage him to surrender.

As I've mentioned we need to confront Pakistan and effectively regime change them to stop them sponsoring terrorism.

To regime change Iraq we had to arrest about 50 of Saddam's top henchmen which we listed as "WANTED" in a "deck of cards"



We do need to take out about another deck-of-cards-worth of top Pakistani / Al Qaeda / Taliban leaders to effect regime change in Pakistan, who are currently are being sheltered or are major power-brokers in Pakistan today.

So those would be the Pakistani military intelligence agency, the ISI, generals (especially including retired ISI generals who play a role in politics and ISI ideology to this day), former military dictator General Musharraf, the new Al Qaeda number 1, who took over after we got Bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Taliban leaders like Mullah Omar and his top commanders, the Haqqani network, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Sami ul Haq and a number of others.

So we draw up our deck of cards of wanted men in Pakistan and tell Pakistan to arrest them OR ELSE - hand them over and we can fly them to Guantanamo for interrogation so we can get the exact details of who did what and to make sure we've got them all.

The "or else" is pressure we can apply on Pakistan that doesn't involve invading Pakistan - that could be bombing, financial sanctions. seizing TV broadcasting satellites - many methods that don't need ground forces invading.