Afghans Seek Clarity
I think that Pres. Trump may have rattled the table like a poltergeist when he said that if necessary, he could bring the 18 year war in Afghanistan to an end in 10 days. It would wipe out the 10 million-person population of Afghanistan, and he added that he didn’t want to go that route.
Now, that upset the Afghans, who brought up the “empires” they claim to have defeated in the past, including the Mongols and the Soviet Union. Granted, the Soviets didn’t count on waging a long, bloody war the way we did in Vietnam, but after 10 years of trying to pound the the Afghans into the ground, Gorbachev brought it to a halt and said, publicly, “We’re broke. We can’t do this any more.”
So the Afghans want some clarity on this rather bold statement by Pres. Trump. Can’t say as I blame them. Where would they get money to go on making war on their neighbors?
Category: Afghanistan, Politics
I repeat what I have said many times. Just my opinion. Those Brothers and Sisters who have served there may have an idea that’s better.
GET THE F^CK OUT! NOW!!!! Pull all of our troops, equipment, money, aid, and what the hell else we have and leave. If it costs too much to move it, then blow it the hell up where it sits. Engineers like to destroy stuff as much as they like to build stuff. Let them have some fun. NO ONE has ever won in that God Forsaken corner of the world, and NO ONE ever will. I understand we want to keep an eye on the Taliban, China, Russia, and everybody else, but still. 18 years and counting. How many BILLIONS of dollars and THOUSANDS of American lives must we continue to throw away.
And make nice/trust the Pakis? Right! If you believe any of that is gonna work out, I have a real nice bridge leading to some primo beachfront property I’d like to interest you in.
SO, basically, 5th/77th FA what you’re trying, so gently to tell everyone is….(in case the reference is “eyes”..)
Very well, susincley, put! yo journalistic Mama would be so very proud!
I hold the opinion that if they are busy killing each other off, they will be too busy to bother us.
5/77 I’m in the choir and you’re preaching to me brother. I was deployed to AFG a decade ago and I thought OEF should’ve ended way back then. I was assigned to a multi-national camp on an Afghan Army base and worked with Afghans everyday.
Rather than use the dozens of US provided MRAPs our Afghan “partners” preferred to roll out in their Ford Rangers (built in Thailand) with a .50 cal mounted in the bed. Abandoning vehicles, equipment, radios, uniforms, weapons, etc. was not uncommon among the Taliban infiltrated Afghan National Army. Kinda hard to blame the Afghans though since they’ve been at war the last 40+ years – I think they may be getting tired of it too. And don’t get me started on the corruption, bribe taking, black marketing, illiteracy, superstition, etc..
Drones, fighter/bombers, MOABs, missiles, etc.. are good things to keep employing over there. Not convinced we need 14K troops on the ground to keep “mentoring” our “partners.”
^WORD^ I’m sure that someone, somewhere has kept up with what that sh6thole has cost us in Blood and Treasure.
enoughisenough
With regards to “winning” I’m reminded of the words of the character played by James Caan in the movie Gardens of Stone with regards to Vietnam: “Nothing to win and no way to win it.”
Let them know that if Afghanistan again starts to shelter Islamic terrorists we will squash those camps and any supporting infrastructure like bugs and get out.
Let them fight over the scraps amongst themselves the way they have for the past few millennia. Sooner or later someone will rise to the top of the shit heap and then we’ll know who to deal with.
Not only have we and our Allies done Combat Missions, we’ve wasted time and money trying to help certain groups of people that flat out CANNOT be made civilized.
If you make that ‘do NOT want to be civilized’, you’re closer to the truth.
I thought the MOAB greeting card would send a message. And it did! We need a bigger MOAB.
We’ve got lots of options. All the way up to 15 megatons.
I thought I was the only one that felt this way. Never lost anything there, nothing I want, let them fight each other to death. Stop trading with them, stop sending them any Aid, stop trading with anyone that trades with them. Need a closer look? Send a satellite. My son likes to say, “rare earth elements”. I say, we’ll find other ways. We can invent our way out of pretty much anything. We’re a Nation of Mongrels, Misfits, and Purebreds. If we can’t fix it, find it or fu*% it, we don’t need it.
I think it’s the next world power’s chance to go in there. China, Afghanistan is calling! Paging China.
If the Chinese went in, they would wipe them out. 1.5 Billion people, a couple of generations out of whack due to the one child policy leaving a surplus of males, a general dislike of Muslims, and no concerns about using human wave tactics, I could see the Chinese actually putting them down. And if they fail, who cares? Kind of like the quote attributed to Kissinger about the Iran-Iraq war, “It’s a shame they both can’t lose.”
Even better if the Afghans took a bite out of them, A-stan isn’t known as “The Graveyard of Empires” for no reason!
Actually, the Chinese already have a muslim problem which they will need to rectify first. They take the long view and have done what the muslims are trying to do in Europe by sending large numbers of Han Chinese to dilute the population and destroy the culture. I’d say they will get a little more resistance in Afghanistan.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-39137420
The Chinese are already there. They are busy taking all the resources they want, making roads and infrastructure to support stealing it all, and when they are done the corrupt politicians and stone age population can have their country back…China is not interested in trying to tame the Afghans!
“The top exports of Afghanistan are Grapes ($143M), Insect Resins ($102M), Tropical Fruits ($101M), Coal Briquettes ($59.7M) and Other Nuts ($58.4M), using the 1992 revision of the HS (Harmonized System) classification.”
https://oec.world/en/profile/country/afg/
The place doesn’t have a decent road system much less an adequate railroad system (all subject to interdiction). The country may have mineral resources but exploitation of them has been and always shall be “potential”.
As for their road system, as soon as parts of it get rebuilt or repaired with foreign money, the diaperheads blow it up soon after and let’s not forget about how they’ll change sides even during a battle!
Texas is looking at opening up a rare Earth elements mine somewhere out in West Texas.
That would be good, China also has huge mines for them and they supply most of those elements for batteries, computers, cell phones etc.
Taking that away from the ChiComms would also be a good thing too !!!
Ya just gotta love Texas !!!
As a country, we have not been allowed to win a war since WW2. Thanks to politicians we never will win one again…ever. So, we neither have the balls to win nor the balls to leave. This IS NOT the American way.
One can argue that we weren’t even allowed to win WWII.. look at all the concessions given to Stalin..
LEAVE immediately.
We can ALWAYS go back and kill anyone who need’s killin’ when we want to.
The problem with Trump’s statement is that we are not at war with The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, we are at war with the Taliban, who control part of the country and continue to threw en it’s future. So, his implied threat to bomb the country and kill everyone in it is essentially threatening an ally or partner.
Afghanistan did not come up with the name Graveyard of Empires, historians did, to acknowledge the fact that many empires, going back to the Persians (yes, including the Mongols) have tried and failed to control the country.
Civilized is a relative term. Afghanistan as we know it is a relative and Western term. What we call Afghanistan the nation is a Western idea, born of The Great Game between a Russia and Great Britain. Very few Afghans see themselves as Afghans as defined by the west- they see emaelves as members of their tribe first and ultimately their larger ethnic group (Hazari, Pashtun, etc). Watch The Kite Runner or read the book. ‘My brother over my cousin, my cousin over a foreigner’.
China is already in Afghanistan. They’ll share a border, and China is extending their Belts and Roads initiative there:
http://www.outlookafghanistan.net/topics.php?post_id=21989
We had just start s playing chess in Afghanistan, and Trumpmis taking us back past checkers to tic tac toe. The national game of a China, of course, is Go
This was type (poorly) on my iPad while on an elliptical machine.
China and Afghanistan currently share a border. Afghan territory has a weird narrow tentacle that leads to China- this is a remnant of the Silk Road, which China is trying to reinvigorate
Spot on Reddevil!
Reddevil…actually your typo was not wrong. China is already in Afghanistan. As I mentioned in my post above, they are actively exploiting the natural resources of Afghanistan (and paying a small fee to the Afghanis for taking it all back to China after Chinese workers do all the work (they don’t even hire local).