America has lost the war in Afghanistan

Yep, the US gets nothing from Afghanistan while giving up so much. Pulling out the troops and instituted a severe travel ban would be a more reasonable path than listening to "the generals".

 

Ralph Nader wrote a bit about this a few months ago.

https://blog.nader.org/2017/05/11/the-losing-warfare-state

 

lol what

 

We went into Afghanistan to take out the Taliban in retribution for 911. We took out Bin Laden and most of the ring leaders of 911 not through troop occupation but intelligence and special ops. However the Taliban that is there today continues on as it will for the foreseeable future.

The fact is we will always have to have strongholds to operate out of in the Middle East to be able to take our a Bin Laden type if there are cells planning to attack the US and also to launch drone strikes and operate to take out funding of terrorist groups.

But more occupational troups will never work. The Taliban or worse groups will be willing to wait longer than you are willing to stay all the time.

Even Trump knows this which is why his speech tonight will come back to haunt him. He wanted to rally the war hungry old school GOP behind him for a few days or even just a day until tomorrow when he will almost certainly undercut his own message tonight.

Pointless speech and a pointless plan-no plan. The "plan" should be the obvious thing to actually staff the state department and invest more in intelligence to actually counter real terrorist acts that might find their way overseas. There is just no way to truly do away with the Taliban and frankly they are probably the lesser of two evils between them and Isis.

 

The most unsettling part of his speech was referring to how his administration will combat Islamic terrorism and then refers to our nuclear arsenal!?!?!

I'm trying to draw out hypotheticals here people but I'm lost. How the **** are nuclear weapons a role in combating Islamic extremism?

 

I didn't catch the part about Nukes for whatever reason but not surprising. Everything with this guy is a d$&@ swinging contest.

My guess is he's threatening Pakistan who does have nukes too. Boy that'd be a smart move. Let's take out the government of another Middle East country. Sounds like a great strategy. The mention of India too was no accident with the purpose of pissing off Pakistan as well.

Great strategy 45.

 

McMaster has had a raging harden for Afghanistan ever since he got pulled in. It might be the right thing to boost for his department, but more surprising is yet another president getting fished into this boondoggle.

It's like every 4 years we put lipstick on the Afghanistan pig convincingly enough that we then make out with the pig rather than leaving gracefully.

 

The U.S. had to invade Afghanistan, at least to some extent. I realize it's ungovernable and the decision to occupy looks misguided.

What burns me to this day is how things might have been different without the catastrophic mistake of invading Iraq in 2003.

 

If we are going to continue to mess with Afghanistan; we need to establish multiple permanent bases, take complete control of the government for the present and future... and lastly start moving US settlements in with the promise of free land and the military removal of those that try to stop our settlements.

 

Any invasion war is an ultimate failure from day one. Just hope Afghanistan people can unite and defeat the invaders after all that two decades of suffering.

 

Feel like the only way you'd ever win this is by deploying millions of soldiers and mow through the entire region on foot, similar to the old (eg WWII) wars. Groups like the Taliban are far too decentralized to defeat with modern strategies, killing leaders and small cells with missile/drone strikes doesn't accomplish sh** and you'll see the next leader pop up a week later.

This of course isn't feasible and would never be supported by the general public or army, as losses would be huge.

 

It's exactly what they want, slowly drain opposition ofMorale and economic support. remedial Guerrilla warfare 101 yet every cowboy, righty, lefty, commie, brit takes the bait.

Every bomb that misses the target and gets innocent people killed is a free recruitment video and the taliban doesn't have to pay for it to be aired. Then people wonder why the terrorists are out for so much blood after every foreign force has had presences on their soil wanting something.
Tactical raids if it was up to me or I would leave the middle east to the middle east but we're 100 too years late for that. =/ i actually respect what trump said, there was even some honesty.

 

for me, it was that he never addressed on Russia's continuing negative influence on the Afgan quagmire.

it has been reported, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/mar/30/us-generals-see-russian-influence-in-afghanistan/ , that

high-ranking U.S. generals have been accusing Russia of providing weapons and material support to the Islamist group in an effort to expand Moscow’s influence in the war-torn country. Moscow is also reportedly involved in efforts to restart peace talks between Kabul and the Taliban, without U.S. involvement.
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what we have here is the latest eg of Putin's useful idiot at work !

 

I think the verdict is in on the post-911 actions.

Large scale military operations against an underground terrorist network was inadvisable.

But we had a raging revenge boner and needed to see bombs dropping and troops marching.

In retrospect, the minority left (and to their credit some libertarians) that insisted on maintaining treating terrorism as a police/intelligence matter were right.

 

I am sure president Trump could do it, he knows more about wars than the generals.

 

My post was tongue and cheek.

Having said that, I don't know that it would be a money pit. There is ample water, and the terrain is diverse. Not to mention that there is well over a trillion dollars worth of precious metals/minerals waiting to be harvested.

 

No need to worry. Kushner is on it.