These situations are dicey and I fall more into the category of, you broke it... now it is your responsibility. The media likes to to say Afghanistan is our longest conflict, but such a statement is such an asterisk. US troops have been in Germany and Japan for how long?! The Korean War is still technically alive, and our troops are still there.
Factually, SK and Germany are quite irrelevant to the Af-Pack situation. We aren’t at combat nor are our solders coming home with missing limb and PTSD due to deployments there. When was the last US soldier killed by hostile fire in SK? And how many in the last 16 years?
The George W Bush Administration mistook the ease of displacing the Taliban as the ease of eliminating the Taliban, and ulitmately looked towards Iraq to continue bringing the message of Justice. Whether this was the Point of No Return, we'll never know, but the loss of focus in Afghanistan was our fault, not the Afghans.
The Shrub never had focus to lose in Afghanistan. Destroying shit is the easy part, even a moron should have figured that out.
<snipped good maps>
We've been here before. The US left the proxy war in Afghanistan, ultimately to become the very cradle that would soothe the ailing al Qaeda when it was booted from Africa. Then they would strike the US on 9/11, which has kind of given the US a major chip on the shoulder.
When you look at Iraq and the retaking of Mosul, and the general defeat of ISIS in that small portion of the world, it teaches us that it is possible to help train the nations we fucked up, how to solve the problems we largely created. Obviously Iraq was and is several lightyears ahead of where Afghanistan is development wise (even prior to 9/11).
Are you talking about the Iraq that is now pretty much a rump state, fighting to regain the western front from ISIS, that wouldn’t have happened without significant Iranian help? Yeah, we did fuck up good there, as we and our Sunni allies helped create the ISIS Frankenstein monster that we now are trying to ‘fix’. We didn’t solve shit there…as well is being a derail from the issues around Af-Pak.
But honestly, to say it costs to much, that the human toll (I'm sorry, the US soldier toll) is too high to fix our fuck up... is bullshit.
My point is not so much that the cost is too high, as there is no solution we can impose upon Af-Pak, not 5 years ago, not this year, nor in 10 years within the constraints of what the general public would tolerate for ‘helping’ Afghanistan.
To say that we've been there too long, while we've had troops in Germany and Japan for 80 years is supreme bullshit.
Well there certainly is some BS, but again it has nothing to do with our conflict in Af-Pak.
This is more about how some Americans don't think that the locals are worth it.
I’m sure some think that way, but that is not my point nor my POV.
It is obvious, without the US, a major shitstorm will follow, and it'll cost a lot more people their lives, and a lot of women (that dared to step into the 21st century from the 19th) will suffer greatly. That decision was made back in the 80s as well, and... that bit the US in the ass real hard nearing on 16 years ago.
The US made a choice in 2001. We must not give up. Yeah, it is hard. Yeah, victory will likely never be what we wanted in a Hollywood sense, but the US has an obligation. To turn back on it would be a disgrace.
So when the US finally bugged out of Vietnam, a shitstorm followed an lots of people suffered. However, we were never going to be able to ‘fix it’. After a long time they emerged and are doing tolerably ok. If we had never aide the French with their pet dictator, Vietnam would have fallen, a shitstorm would have hit 15 years earlier, and they would probably have emerged from it much sooner without the western elongated war. The only plausible window of opportunity died within the Shrub administration. Pres. Obama, dealing with the financial crisis, could have never done what was needed to give civilizing a chance, even if it was still possible 8 years ago.
The US cannot ‘fix’ Afghanistan in any period of time,
without a massive occupation force (and far fewer contractors). Even with Pres. Obama’s 30,000 soldier surge to 100,000, all we were able to do was to temporarily stabilize the majority of the country. The American public would not tolerate garrisoning roughly 150,000 soldiers in Afghanistan for the decade it would probably require to stabilize the place at this stage of the play. One thing that would absolutely be required, would be to partially create a DMZ along the Pakistan border in those very high mountains. We can’t make Pakistan do shit, but we could seal up the border at a high cost. And that assume that Pakistan wouldn’t get so pissed off that it tells us to fuck off and stay out of their ports and airspace. Then how do we get stuff in/out of Afghanistan? Beg for favors from Russia again; kiss and make up with Iran; bribe Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Georgia to let us fly over from Europe and hope Russia doesn’t coopt one of them? Current reality: Pakistan has been getting more chummy with China, so they need the US less; Iran and Russia probably have started lightly aiding the Taliban, so if we tried to up the ante they might as well.
The game of the last few years is a pathetic and sick joke, Lite Surge II is no different. Both are a disgrace. Doing more of the same is a strange version of ‘not giving up’. It is not a disgrace to admit the truth that we don’t have the stomach to do what would be necessary to civilize Afghanistan in the face of the interests of the other countries bordering the area. El Cheato isn’t going to do the right thing. So then after 20 years of doing the same shit, do you think the next President could convince the American public to a massive and indefinite surge?
