Fast Forward: The War in Afghanistan is not going well (May 2011)

[zulchzulu]

I'm going to predict that Obama will demand withdrawing from Afghanistan even sooner than the July 2011 timeline date.

Here's the playbook:

The "mission" will not go well at all. Britain will have withdrawn their troops. The UN will be citing human rights issues and the continued bombing of innocent Afghans caught in the cross-fire from the combined civil war skirmishes between the Taliban and other Pashtun tribes who are fighting each other and concurrently both fighting the nearly toppled Afghan government and the US troops.

More targets will be available for the Taliban to pick off, hence many more US casualties and KIAs. The media will be reporting an average of 50 dead US soldiers a week during the warmer months.

Karzai will continue to run his Mafia-style narco-kleptocracy even though he will have been marginalized by NATO. Hell, he might even get assassinated (by the CIA/ISI) and the Afghan government will continue on a tailspin. The ISI (Pakistan secret service) have been doing special ops with the CIA and have grown tired of Karzai's narco-trading with the Taliban.

The Taliban will take over like they did in the 1990s with our approval and know we can come back and carpet-bomb them if they dare return alliances with Al Qaeda, which is fading out anyway. Other new groups have been spintering off from Al Qaeda since it has a big target on its back.

Pakistan will invade Afghanistan's eastern mountain region and all hell will break loose. They will have grown tired of the Taliban staging attacks in their country and will want to squash any Al Qaeda remnants that the CIA/ISI/Special Ops haven't slit the throats of.

Obama, faced with tumbling approval numbers on the quagmire, will demand the withdrawal happen even earlier than July 2011, since it actually is a "grab our shit and mop it up" operation anyway.

By the beginning of 2012, there will clearly be all indications pointing to a nearly complete withdrawal from the region. Unfortunately, another terrorist event will have gotten our attention either soon after or around that time. I hope not, but I just have a hunch.

On edit: if you Unrec, tell me where I'm wrong. Don't be a coward.

[dpbrown]

1. Same facts, but leading to another "surge" ala Vietnam

The generals will never allow us to pull back to our own borders.

[zulchzulu]

4. The generals want to get the hell out of there

I'd bet a majority of them know it's a clusterfuck from Hell.

[ieoeja]

2. Where you're wrong?

Britain won't abandon us. Neither will the UN.

We won't put the Taliban back in charge.

Pakistan will not invade. That would be a HUGE help for us, but they won't do it.

[zulchzulu]

3. Well...

Britain did leave Iraq earlier than they said they would and they are putting 500 soldiers in Afghanistan. 500. Wow, thanks.

I didn't say the UN would abandon the US. That's impossible. We are the UN.

If you think we would never put the Taliban in charge, maybe you forget that we put them in charge (or allowed them to gain power) and supported them as far back as the 1980s when they were part of the Mujihideen fighting the Soviet Union. Yep, them and Osama bin Laden...

If you think Pakistan will allow the Taliban to continue bombing their cities with terrorist acts (like they have been for years) and not go into Afghanistan (which they are now in), then you need to read up on what's going on.

That said, this is not something that is appearing to make Obama look bad. Obama inherited this crap and (as I have stated), this is actually a mop-up military operation to get out of the country and use Special Ops in conjunction with the CIA and ISI to take out whoever we need to.

[smalll]

5. You're wrong in that you assume that the future can hold nothing but your parade of horribles --

that we are always doomed to defeat. Leftbagger deviationists like yourself hardly seem to be part of the "reality-based community."

[zulchzulu]

7. Spill me the "facts" about how great Karzai is, how fantastic the Afghan soldiers are...

...and how the Taliban (who we historically supported since the 1980s until we needed an excuse in 2001) are not both attacking Pakistan and are not going to gain power due to our occupation and failure to stop them in a insane tribal civil war we have not been able to figure out in nine years...

I welcome you namecalling me a "Leftbagger deviationists" if you have the brain power and magical skills to pull revisionist and/or fictional historical vapor to prove me wrong.

Otherwise you are a simple jackass.

[Hippo_Tron]

6. I agree except for the Pakistan invading Afghanistan part

Pakistan doesn't have the military capability to invade Afghanistan and squash the Taliban in the tribal areas. Their strategy will be to concede autonomy over certain regions to the Taliban and pray to god they accept that and don't try to get more.

[zulchzulu]

8. Pakistan is already in Afghanistan via the ISI and are in Waziristan now

Waziristan is on the border of Afghanistan and, as part of FATA, is pretty much part of the extremely tenuous mountainous region where borders written by the British are murky at best. Anyone who has a child's understanding of that region knows that a "border" separating Pakistan and Afghanistan is tenuous at best.

The ISI and the CIA are already working in conjunction on many special military operations in that region, so to suppose that Pakistan would "never invade" Afghanistan is objectively debunkable.