If the military wanted Al Qaida gone, they'd have done it already.

Right on.

@Barkey: You know how they love their ankle fetishes.

Another thing about Afghanistan no one has mentioned is the fucking geography of the place. Like Vietnam, it's like god created a country to be impossible to invade.

@OP: Well you obviously have no idea how insurgencies work.

edited 25th Jun '11 8:04:41 AM by Erock

Difficult, not impossible.

@OP: I'm with Barkey on this one, you're way out of your lane on this one.

edited 25th Jun '11 8:53:29 AM by Kino

^^ There's no such thing as impossible to invade. (For example, you could fit 15 entire divisions in areas along either the US-Mexico border or the US-Canada border and you will run up against very little real opposition in military terms. But what makes invading the US difficult is the fact it has no land borders running adjacent to someone hostile to it.)

Tom, while you're correct that there is no such thing as literally impossible to invade short of an impregnable physical globe enclosing the whole area, there are areas of the world that are for all practical purposes, impossible to invade with any real hope of success. And militarily, that's the same thing as "impossible to invade".

Afghanistan is not one of those areas.

Because you don't want it to be?

There's a reason why people state it's the place empires die in.

^^

To be truthful Tom, the only way to "win" in Afghan would be to start to galvanize the local populace to kick out the extremist elements, which is something that will take at least another ten years assuming we don't mess up.

Our force of arms alone will not accomplish this task, and that is something we need to face as reality. Until the Afghani people want the same things we do, we won't win.

I wish you would quit believing that it is somehow impossible for us to ever lose or draw, it doesn't matter how many insurgents we smoke, until we can convince the local populace that knows the terrain and the social hierarchy to get rid of this dissenting element, we simply can't have an overall victory where the violence stops.

Stop assuming we are all powerful, that is a grave mistake.

^^ Let's look at that from a historical perspective.

The British tried to take the region using a very lightfooted approach. They did not use or utilize anywhere near the capacity they did in things like the Boer Wars.

The Soviets had 5 different factors (3 of which are generally regarded as mistakes by today's standards) tugging on its operations. Had there been far less foreign meddling (which given the events of today really should not have happened in the first place), the Soviets would have kicked the shit out of the muhjahideen and taken the whole country.

The US deposed the Taliban from power (in record time compared to previous attempts at the region) and took wide swathes of territory and has held onto it from a security perspective pretty well. True the fighting is not over yet, but most of the signs indicate Afghanistan's reputation as the place where "empires come to die" is mostly a result of foreigners either meddling in another foreigner's escapades there or said foreigners thinking they could do the job with a light footprint.

^ The Afghans want us to win and they are helping us. It's just there are a few barriers (read: that idiot known as Karzai who really needs a bullet through his brain stem) preventing anything from working.

Force of arms did work, Al Qaeda presence in Afghanistan is less than negligible. Taliban presence in country is fairly insubstantial. Most of their bases and hiding spots are in Pakistan.

edited 25th Jun '11 9:50:34 AM by MajorTom

So basically, if the war was a total vacuum and the local people never reject what you are doing, and you've unlimited time and resources, you can take the country.

Untrue. There is no representative body of "The Afghans" that can speak on anything. While I agree that Karzai needs to gtfo, the Afghans, overall, don't particularly care for us. These insurgents are usually not Taliban or Al Qaeda, the people we've been fighting in Afghanistan are usually isolated militia groups that have one objective: They want the US out.

I don't know how you're so fucking deluded, I was deployed to Karzai's hometown, Kandahar, and even there they hated him and his government that they blame the US for putting in place.

I've been there, I've worked with Afghani's and seen these things. They either think we are invaders and want us out, or are apathetic about the whole thing because they are busy trying to make a living in their piece of shit country.

edited 25th Jun '11 10:02:36 AM by Barkey

Then it seems the one thing we must do in addition to security is "escort" Karzai out of the country in a wooden box.

You say they hate him, that's the truth. They do not hate us when you give them the alternative of going back to the Taliban. (The last time anyone did surveys out of Afghanistan some 80% of folks did not under any circumstance want the Taliban to return, and if we fail the Taliban will return to power there.)

By the way if anyone wants to know the alternative and why we must not fail in Afghanistan read this. That book tells you how brutal and oppressive their regime was and a clear cut reason why even if it takes 1000 years we must not fail.

They don't want the Taliban because every local warlord or elder wants their village to themselves. They don't want us, it's just the Taliban are so nasty that they gave up and quit fighting them.

We are not capable of such nastiness, and cannot hope to control the population, which is what they see our presence as.

That's just how it is. It's great that they don't want the Taliban, but they don't want us either, and we are easier to fight than the Taliban because we have rules. There's a reason Afghanistan is called the Graveyard of Empires, instead of trying to improve on the mistakes of other empires that tried to invade, we should be the smart ones and just get out. We've fucked enough shit up over there, let's just go home.

Polls about how much the locals love America are just as fucking skewed as the last Karzai election, quit trying to act like you know, you don't.

edited 25th Jun '11 10:27:56 AM by Barkey

Like we did to Vietnam? 2 million people were killed in the aftermath of us running away like pansies there. Running away from Afghanistan will only get more people killed than sticking around.

And staying will get people killed too. Afghanistan is a violent and mostly lawless country, people dying there is a way of life and the natives are comfortable with this fact because it's all they've ever known.

Plus, they aren't our people. I'm done with having friends come back with prosthetics, I've had enough with it. There isn't enough to gain to make all this worth it any longer.

The problem is that, after you break it, you buy it.

You can't just go there, fuck shit up and get out. The smartest thing would have been to pick a generally likeable, respected, not particularly corrupt, relatively modern local leader (appropriateness criteria: Other tribes' feelings about that dude should be apathy, not hatred), set him up to govern, and let the Afghanis know that as long as they stay put, they'll get shiny new infrastructure and some much needed public services. Maybe even some real jobs and the opportunity to actually buy stuff.

Restoring the Afghan Monarchy in a sort of democratic and constitutional way would have been practical. Put Old Guy on the throne, put our Modern Haji in government, fudge elections to give Our Guy a solid plurality but allow other voices so he's gotta make concessions to other local leaders to stay on top, kick Taliban butt while the other Afghans leave us alone.

But that'd have been playing things smart, uncharacteristic of Bush's foreign policy.

Tom, its obvious that "America should always win and would have if it weren't for [insert reason X]" is an axiomatic value for you, I mean its is REALLY obvious, so if you are just going to be taking this on faith then why are you trying to convince people who actually know more about it than you?

The line about Afghanistan being the graveyard of empires and "impossible to invade aren't" true; a few dozen ODA, a couple hundred Afghans on horseback, and precision air would say otherwise. We snuck in, linked up with the local resistance, and did i a few months what the Russians and British were unable to do in years.

AQ are dealt with, now it's the Taliban, local insurgencies, foreign fighters and Abdul P. Afghan who's getting paid $50 to plant an IED. As Barkey pointed out earlier, it's the human terrain that will determine Afghanistan future; it's on the Afghans.

Afghans don't understand the concept of central government; it's all about the family, clan and tribe.

edited 25th Jun '11 10:55:41 AM by Kino

^

Aye. The only way to bring relative peace is to get the Afghans to police themselves and become one actual nation. I could see that happening in another 10-20 years, but that also means us staying for a decade or two, which is unacceptable.

If I wanted to throw in all the bells and whistles to do this I'd do it with education. Build those schools, get proper attendance, help Afghani's make enough of a living for their sons and daughters to go to those schools. Get them to learn english and get them access to the internet, wait 20 years for that generation to grow up with those qualities, and you can win.

edited 25th Jun '11 10:55:49 AM by Barkey

Then introduce them to the concept of guys that build stuff we need as long as we don't piss them off. Put a guy that they don't hate in charge, and it could even work.

Wow; I can't spell ODA.

^^

That doesn't work for them. They want our free stuff, but they don't want the strings that are attached.

And I forgot to add, start taking large numbers of Afghans to visit first world countries, and then after a month or two, bring them back. Let them see what to work towards.

edited 25th Jun '11 10:57:54 AM by Barkey

So what you're saying is build one large airport, and offer free travel out...

Dear me, I see a lot of Frequent flyer programs being rewritten.