Obama's VietNam????

[spartan61]

I'm very confused. I know that Obama is sending more troops to Afghanistan and I realize that this might not even be the answer to stabilizing the situation and may even only be a band-aid. I'm hearing much criticism about this from the MSM but nothing about bush. After all, if bush had not turned his attention to Iraq from Afghanistan, this war most likely could be over or, at best, contained. I have great faith in Obama and I don't want him to be the scapegoat for the problems in Afghanistan that were brought on by the bush administration's poor handling of the situation there.

[BlooInBloo]

1. One wonders if people realize that the media will criticize Obama no matter what he does.

[rug]

3. If he plans to escalate Afghanistan there will be more than criticism.

[zbdent]

12. GM stock could soar to $200 a share under Obama

and everybody could be able to afford gold toilet seats ...

and the ReRushicans would still be all over the "liberal media" saying that, not only did the stimulus not work, but it would have worked even better if Obama listened to their ideas of cutting all taxes to billionaires and eliminating every dime of spending ...

:silly:

[rug]

2. Isn't he rethinking that?

[elleng]

4. I thought I read that he's got a big push on to study it;

would likely wait for Holbrooke to advise. It won't be quick or easy, and COULD turn into something WORSE than Vietnam, in the wrong hands. SO, I don't take very seriously today's reports that say he's 'putting XXX troops into Afghan,' certainly not without discussion about how that conclusion was arrived at.

[Occam Bandage]

5. Well, let me try to deconfuse.

There is only one method of fighting a guerrilla war that has ever been proven to work, and that is a form of expanding benevolent territorial control. Simply put, you start with the most pro-you parts of the country near threatened areas, and you control that so well that you can implement humanitarian programs successfully. You then slowly expand your control, so that you are controlling areas encircling the loyal territory, leaving only what amounts to a police force behind. The insurgency is unable to ever launch any effective attacks against you, since you maintain overwhelming local force, and they eventually find themselves without any safe territory. Without safe territory, they cease to be a self-replenishing organization, and will wither and die. This strategy has worked in a number of UN missions in Africa, and a highly modified form of it worked very well in Iraq after most of Bush's idiosyncratic and inane strategies only resulted in predictable bloodbaths. This is, more or less, what Obama is planning on for Afghanistan, though of course it will be again adapted for the particular war.

What we are currently doing in Afghanistan is very different. What we are doing is a sort of defensive war, much as we we fought in Vietnam. We wait for the Taliban to do something, then if we think they'll be in one place for a while we run over and fight them, then they retreat across the Pakistan border, then we go back to Kabul and wait for them to do something else. This isn't very effective, since any insurgent activity below a critical level goes completely unopposed, and it does nothing about the root cause of the problem, being that the Taliban has a safe territory in the border region out of which they can operate freely (targeted airstrikes realistically do very little; people can be replaced easily).

Overhauling Afghanistan for a smarter strategy will require far more troops than we have, as we switch from a Vietnam responsive mentality to an active peacekeeping mentality. Unfortunately, one problem remains: Pakistan.

A few days ago, Pakistan effectively surrendered to the Taliban. Pakistan agreed to stop all military action against the Taliban, to impose Islamic law in the northwest, and did not even demand the Taliban disarm in return for these concessions. The Taliban is not only safe in Pakistan, they are legitimate there. We can control every square inch of Afghanistan, and have every Afghan citizen sing songs of praise to us all day, and yet we will still not have won the war, for the Taliban will still have its safe territory in northwest Pakistan, still launching raids and biding its time for when we finally leave.

Our war effort in Afghanistan, then, will be something of a leap of faith, in which we spend money and lives rebuilding a country knowing full well that it will all be for nothing unless the political situation in a neighboring country improves drastically.

(On edit: yeah, like anyone's going to bother reading this)

[Jennicut]

9. Thanks Occam. That is the best explanation I have gotten about Afghanistan.

So it all depends on Pakistan. Even if we do all we can to stabilize Afghanistan, it will not matter without Pakistan actually doing something.

[Occam Bandage]

13. Right. With Pakistan, unfortunately,

it's not a matter of just asking them. Their government is weak, with the Pakistani people willing to accept change in almost any guise, and with a number of groups, from militarists to religious fundamentalists to liberals, all prepared to launch a coup if the government offends too much in their direction. Pakistan stopped its actions against the Taliban not because they simply didn't feel like it, but rather because their campaign against the Taliban was politically unsustainable; religious fundamentalists and militarists alike were growing increasingly upset with Pakistanis killing religious Pakistanis to appease Americans. The world had been applying all the pressure it could bring to bear, and yet Pakistan was still unable to continue.

[Jennicut]

15. Pakistan is a mess. I thought with Mushareff gone it would improve

but the underlying problems are still there.

[spartan61]

10. I did read this and I'm impressed with your explanatiion. Thanks.

[elleng]

11. I read WaPo to suggest

what we're doing now is preparing for their August elections, and continuing to review as we must.
Unfortunately, this isn't mentioned until late in the article.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/17/AR2009021702411.html?hpid=topnews

[RaleighNCDUer]

14. My (probably vain) hope for Pakistan is that after a period of time

in which Sharia is the only law in the tribal regions, the people will themselves demand the government come back - just as the people in Afghanistan initially turned on the Taliban in the early days of the war there.

If not, I hope that we have a brigade sized strike team on standby ready to seize control of Pakistan's nukes.

[anonymous171]

16. That was awesome. nt

[billyoc]

6. An accurate description, since Obama chose escalation in an unwinnable war.

[ShortnFiery]

7. Afghanistan: Where EMPIRES go to DIE. n/t

[bdamomma]

8. again this maybe the reason why we are there.

but we are up against extreme Islamic religious fundamentalists/nuclear weapons. now this is scary.


http://www.ringnebula.com/Oil/Pipeline.htm