Trump voluntarily submits to Al Qa'eda in Afrghanistan

[Elixir]

Yup. That makes no sense.

And I believe funinspace is implying something about a "sock-puppet", which is an account started by someone for the purpose of deception, but I'm not sure *exactly* what funinspace is implying either.

Hum...I guess I should have gone for the more obvious...

View attachment 16985

But, FWIW a sockpuppet has several uses, including my intended one that is underlined:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Sockpuppet

The reasons for sock puppetry can include:

Rigging voting results (Modern Library, anyone?[2])
Rigging discussions by creating a sockpuppet who "agrees" with your argument.
Rigging discussions by creating a sockpuppet who makes deliberately extreme or moronic (usually strawman) arguments against your own view.
Attempts to avoid rules, blocks or scrutiny.
Boredom
LANCB — but returning under an assumed sock

The picture looks like a hay-man to me. [/nitpick]

 

[bilby]

Yup. That makes no sense.


Hum...I guess I should have gone for the more obvious...

View attachment 16985

But, FWIW a sockpuppet has several uses, including my intended one that is underlined:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Sockpuppet

The picture looks like a hay-man to me. [/nitpick]

That's just clutching at straws.

Sorry. That was corny. I will bail at this point.

 

[Elixir]

Yup. That makes no sense.


Hum...I guess I should have gone for the more obvious...

View attachment 16985

But, FWIW a sockpuppet has several uses, including my intended one that is underlined:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Sockpuppet

The picture looks like a hay-man to me. [/nitpick]

That's just clutching at straws.

Sorry. That was corny. I will bail at this point.

That's "bale", but I don't blame you - it's easy to confuse the twine.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Is this what the right wing spin machine told you to say? Good boy.

Because when Obama was drawing down troops, those same 'people' accused him of surrendering, being weak on foreign policy, etc. Ya'll should at least work on being consistent, but since most of the 'base' has the memory of a goldfish, I guess that's not a requirement.

Are you replying to anyone in particular?

I thought it was pretty obvious that I was responding to Jason H.

It wasn't obvious. I'm consistently anti-war and anti-intervention, was so under both Bush and Obama. You're going to have to do a lot better than to say my anti-war and anti-intervention position is the result of the "right wing spin machine".



Anti-war is now a right-wing position?

 

[phands]

Trump’s strategy in Afghanistan is failing badly as the Taliban gains ground

As if we needed any more proof that the tangerine shitgibbon is woefully inadequate in everything he does.....

Remember the war in Afghanistan? It never ended, and now President Donald Trump faces harsh questions about what appear to be serious military setbacks in that perennially troubled nation.

This article was originally published at Salon


At least 200 to 300 Afghan security forces have been killed by Taliban insurgents since Friday, awith the lower number reported by ABC News. (Other sources have reported greater numbers of casualties.) The first attack was an intricately coordinated effort by the Taliban to capture the city of Ghazni, 75 miles south of Kabul, the Afghan capital. Since then, U.S. military “advisers” and airstrikes have been deployed to flush out Taliban fighters from Ghazni’s residential neighborhoods, with the violence only seeming to subside on Wednesday.

After the skirmish in the city of Ghazni, another Taliban attack occurred some distance away in Ghazni Province. This time the battle took place in Arjistan, a western district of the province, and 50 members of the security force were reported killed. Taliban casualties appear to be unknown.

In northern Afghanistan, Taliban fighters also killed more than 100 people during an attack on an Afghan Army base in Faryab Province on Friday. Even Kabul saw some violence, with a Shiite neighborhood victimized by a suicide bomb attack on Wednesday that killed at least 25 people and wounded at least 35 others. It is unclear what group was responsible for that attack, since acts of violence in Kabul aren’t necessarily perpetrated by the Taliban.

more at https://www.rawstory.com/2018/08/trumps-strategy-afghanistan-failing-badly-taliban-gains-ground/

 

[whollygoats]

You think Cadet Bonespurs has 'a strategy'?

ROFLMAO.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Have you considered the strategy of saying “Well, this was a dumb waste of time, money and lives. Good day to you all”.

It worked for the British.

 

[starwater]

Oh Cadet Bonespurs just leaves all that up to the Generals and the Pentagon, so he can continue to worship the paper with the green and black writing on it.

 

[Opoponax]

Actually, you can't blame this on Trump*. I hate to use the "I Know A Guy" argument, but------I know a guy who is high up enough in the Army, who's been to Afghanistan far too many fucking times, and that I've known for long enough to trust.

The military is operating itself with little to no oversight from Trump. They tell him what they want to do and he just says "Okay." So if there is any blame to go around, it's on the U.S. military leadership. That said, the Taliban has long been eliminated as an effective fighting force.

So they pulled one over on some unsuspecting, likely poorly trained soldiers. It happens. They didn't take any significant ground for any significant period of time, there were no follow up attacks across a wide area; they didn't recapture an important strategic position, etc. Now it's over and most of those who participated in the attack are dead. Maybe some time next year they'll be able to amass another several dozen morons to try it again. And they are morons. They've now stirred up a ferocious little shit-storm that's going to bring serious retaliation down on them when the Army was likely not very interested in them before this.

The answer isn't to leave Afghanistan. The U.S. as well as the UN needs to be there because leaving will absolutely put the Taliban or some other organization just like it back in control of that nation, which will then provide a haven for terrorists, which means we'll end up back there again anyway.

*Technically, you can blame this on Trump because he's the CIC. However, he has no policy of own here. Whatever the Army's policy is, that's what Trump's is. That brings up the disturbing specter of nearly zero civilian oversight with respect to the military, but that's another topic.

 

[whollygoats]

Yeah, yeah, yeah...It's a process whereby they experiment with the equipment and morons they have in order to use up some of the stockpile and justify the manufacture and provision of more better killing stuff. If they don't use the stuff, they don't know what to ask for in terms of improvements for the next several rounds of Defense budgeting. So, the military are merely the expendable factotum functionaries for the MIC test theater. They are 'chust followink orders'.

Imputing 'strategy' to the current inhabitant of the Oval Office seems ridiculous to the extreme.

 

[J842P]

The answer isn't to leave Afghanistan. The U.S. as well as the UN needs to be there because leaving will absolutely put the Taliban or some other organization just like it back in control of that nation, which will then provide a haven for terrorists, which means we'll end up back there again anyway.

It's *already* a haven for "terrorists".

 

[whollygoats]

The answer isn't to leave Afghanistan. The U.S. as well as the UN needs to be there because leaving will absolutely put the Taliban or some other organization just like it back in control of that nation, which will then provide a haven for terrorists, which means we'll end up back there again anyway.

It's *already* a haven for "terrorists".

Yeah...Just look at the number of U.S. troops on the ground there.