I watched the President's speech tonight, and was left with the following logical gap.

Premise: Afghanistan is vital to national and international security.
Plan: Help the Afghans prepare to handle their own security and leave in eighteen months.
Flaw: What if they're not ready in eighteen months???

As a group of wargamers, we should all know the old adage, "no plan survives contact with the enemy." It's all too likely that, regardless of how many troops we send to Afghanistan, something will go wrong, and the Afghans won't be ready to take over on a strict timeline.

Now, if Afghanistan is so vital to our security, then isn't it vital that we commit to staying there until we meet the conditions of success, even if that takes more than eighteen months?

On the other hand, if we're admitting that we're going to give up in eighteen months, whether we were successful or not, then aren't we admitting that perhaps Afghanistan is not quite so vital as we're telling people? In this case, why send more troops at all, why not just pull out now?

I'm willing to believe the President's claim that Afghanistan is vital to our security interests. But, with accepting that, I want to know that we're not going to simply abandon this security need just in order to meet a deadline. In my industry, we don't ship a product that's not ready, even if that means missing a deadline. I tend to believe that the security of the nation is more important than whether someone's email views correctly.

It's kind of a carbon copy of what they did in Iraq. It is also and old tactic. As long as they think that the US and Nato will always bether to bleed and die they have no reason to fight for themselves. We are going to have been there for a decade we can't spend another trillion on these wars. they will have to stand on thier own too feet sooner or latter and chose thier own fate. We simply cant afford to spend any more blood and money there. The meatgrider/Mire must end. The afghan goverment did this to themselves by hiding Osama 8 years ago, The US will spend 30 billion in cash we can't afford and 30,000 troops, to give them one last chance to man up and protect themselves. Plus we've wasted the money, lives, and good will of all our allies in this war, we owe it to them as well. Ten years is more than enough time for them to shape up. The little bird for learn to fly on it's own.


Edit if things happen to be still be Gak in 18 months we'll push back the dead line, like has been done on closing Gitmo moving detainies. ALl of his generals say this can be done in 18 months with the extra troops, they know what the heck they are talking about more than any tv taking heads. the dead line is more to push the Afghans into getting thier act together.

Isn't the 18 month period simply the reassessment date for turning over control? That
doesn't mean pull out.

I'm no expert, but that's what I'm getting out of the spin.

Seems straightforward enough. We fight on the ground for 18 more months, then take off and nuke them from orbit.

It's the only way to be sure.

It's the point in where we start withdrawing our armies, like what happend in Iraq on "Iraq liberation day" in June. It's simply just nitpicking.

I somehow feel it will take longer to pull out than 18 months. That would be some irony.

It means they'll begin drawing down forces in eighteen months. The speed of that withdrawal would be dependant on how quickly the Afghans come up to speed. It's a pretty simple piece of politics - you set a date and give a feeling of progress without actually committing to a hard and fast deadline on anything.

sexiest_hero wrote:The afghan goverment did this to themselves by hiding Osama 8 years ago.

Hang on, what? You know the forces controlling Afghanistan then are not the forces controlling Afghanistan now, right?

Indeed sebstr, but thier people still sufer for that old governments bad choices. I could say the foces that controlled it then have slowly been regaining control.

A plan isn't the future, it's an idea of how to bring about the future you want.

Seems like a pretty decent way for Obama to continue on his train of rhetoric.

This will not end well, and I doubt we will leave in less than two, possibly even three years. Either way, it is a massive waste of resources, being poured into a very bad strategy.

I simply don't feel that one needs to be a general to understand exactly how implausible any solid type of success would be. No nation building? Good... that is about the only positive thing I took from this speech... but seriously Obama is doing a particularly strange job of making the democrats appealing for votes.

Redbeard wrote:
Premise: Afghanistan is vital to national and international security.

This should be taken to mean that troops will remain in Afghanistan indefinitely.

Redbeard wrote:
Plan: Help the Afghans prepare to handle their own security and leave in eighteen months.

This should be taken to mean that we will have fewer troops there after 18 months.

Redbeard wrote:
Flaw: What if they're not ready in eighteen months???

They'll reevaluate. Target dates are just goals, and goals may, may not be attained.

Iraq all over again, just in another part of the world.

Ah yes, the irony is so overpowering it's ironic, don't you think?

Somewhat different to Iraq.

1. We invaded it first. Iraq was a mistaken distraction from Afghanistan.

2. We invaded Afghanistan for the very good reason that it was full of Taleban supporting Al Qaeda.

3. It borders Pakistan, an unstable Muslim nuclear power, which has a west-friendly government we don't need to be overthrown by Taleban supported Al Qaeda.

I'm still waiting for the logical hole I was promised.

Kilkrazy wrote:3. It borders Pakistan, an unstable Muslim nuclear power, which has a west-friendly government we don't need to be overthrown by Taleban supported Al Qaeda.

How much of a role is Pakistan going to play in this? Not to say that it doesn't obviously effect the situation quite a bit, just wondering if they are going to end up helping or hindering whatever 'progress' we are making over there. Not that I really see that happening... but hey, words are pretty powerful tools I guess.

It's difficult to know.

One of the problems with Pakistan is that the government agencies are somewhat suspect.

While the ruling classes are westward leaning there is a lot of anti-western feeling in the country as well.

Rampant poverty, low standards of education and a constant rivalry with India add to the troubles of the country.

Ahtman wrote:I'm still waiting for the logical hole I was promised.

Logically Jonny-Taleban would now go quiet for 18 months, consolidate, get a few harvests in and wait for the US to "downgrade" their involvement and then maul whatever Afgan security force is left at that point. I'm sure Osy can play the long game, lets face it they are pissing trough their fighters at the moment, even fanatics will not keep throwing themselves at US/UK Apaches forever.

18 months down the line Jonny-Taleban has cash to pay for fighters and bribe the newly trained Afgan security forces [lets face it they do like to flip sides from time to time] - Unless Allied Forces can crush them utterly in the next 18 months you can either reset the clock to now or if an Allied pull-out takes place reset to the same situation as Afganistan 2000.

A possible strategy isn't a logical fallacy. Still waiting.

notprop wrote:
Logically Jonny-Taleban would now go quiet for 18 months, consolidate, get a few harvests in and wait for the US to "downgrade" their involvement and then maul whatever Afgan security force is left at that point.

Why wouldn't they have done that, say, 8 months ago? If they're aware of our timetable for withdraw, then they would certainly be aware of the level of discontent at home with respect to the conflict. The strategy of "wait till they leave" was just as viable before this announcement. Indeed, they'd get even more time to prepare for an eventual departure, and probably be able to take over the nation that much more quickly (provided any build-up remained undetected).

That doesn't even touch on the problems faced by a movement based on radical rhetoric when they suddenly become far less radical. Hard to make people believe your ranting when the target is on your doorstep, and you aren't doing anything about it.

I would not be surprised if the majority of the Taliban 'soldiers' were basically acting directly on impulse. Shake and bake army basically.

Over the course of say, another decade or so, I am pretty sure that we could actually have a huge impact on that area in general. With this kind of time frame however, I do think that an explanation could hold some merit within the terrorist ranks. Even complete whack-job extremists can get the fact that they are getting blown away statistically. I doubt however, that a 'hibernation' would last much longer than a year though.

It would not surprise me, if somewhere along the line, a huge amount of Taliban losses occurred, towards the end of this 18 month timeline. If they hide, it won't be for very long, these cats are not exactly lacking in testicular fortitude.

Gotta be thankful to the men and women serving in the military today; tours in Iraq are still happening and now Afghanistan is being escalated which is a lot worse off in many ways especially infrastructure. One hell of a morale challenge.

Ahtman wrote:A possible strategy isn't a logical fallacy. Still waiting.

The logical fallacy is that it is impossible to claim that something is vital, yet establish a hard timeline for abandoning it.

Anyone claiming that the deadline will be extended is simply admitting to the futility of having the deadline in the first place. While the withdrawal may be extended in reality, that doesn't invalidate the theoretical conundrum that having a deadline causes. Either it's vital to our security, and we stay there until our security is assured (which may mean extending deadlines) or it's important that we not be in a never-ending war, in which case it can't be all that vital. You can't have both, therein lies the problem.

Wot e sed.

Obama needs this guy.




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Seriously its a bad situation. Obama has few good options. So in that spirit I believe go Old School.

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/international/obama-confuses-afghanistan-with-country-that%27s-not-insane-200912022273/

Redbeard wrote:

Ahtman wrote:A possible strategy isn't a logical fallacy. Still waiting.

The logical fallacy is that it is impossible to claim that something is vital, yet establish a hard timeline for abandoning it.

Setting a time line for assessment isn't abandoning anything, nor is it a logical fallacy. As stated several times before, nothing is being abandoned so that is a factual error, but it to is not a logical fallacy.

Redbeard wrote:I watched the President's speech tonight, and was left with the following logical gap.

Premise: Afghanistan is vital to national and international security.
Plan: Help the Afghans prepare to handle their own security and leave in eighteen months.
Flaw: What if they're not ready in eighteen months???

As a group of wargamers, we should all know the old adage, "no plan survives contact with the enemy." It's all too likely that, regardless of how many troops we send to Afghanistan, something will go wrong, and the Afghans won't be ready to take over on a strict timeline.

Now, if Afghanistan is so vital to our security, then isn't it vital that we commit to staying there until we meet the conditions of success, even if that takes more than eighteen months?

On the other hand, if we're admitting that we're going to give up in eighteen months, whether we were successful or not, then aren't we admitting that perhaps Afghanistan is not quite so vital as we're telling people? In this case, why send more troops at all, why not just pull out now?

I'm willing to believe the President's claim that Afghanistan is vital to our security interests. But, with accepting that, I want to know that we're not going to simply abandon this security need just in order to meet a deadline. In my industry, we don't ship a product that's not ready, even if that means missing a deadline. I tend to believe that the security of the nation is more important than whether someone's email views correctly.

He could have easily said we're going to commit 30,000 more troops for ten months. If that doesn't work out, as an exit strategy we're going to plan B. We're going to call it a teachable moment and nuke the place, the Somali pirates, parts of Pakistan, Liechtenstein (just because I can't spell it) and anyone else that ticks me off that particular day.

It would have been a definite timeline.

I listened to some commentators before the speech discussing this same thing. The general consensus they had was that 18 months was the time the 30,000 troops would begin to draw down again. The whole point of sending in the 30,000 troops is to keep the Taliban's head down and try to take back areas such as Waziristan. I don't think that our eminent leader truly thinks that the Afghan army, police, and infrastructure can really be ready to take the reigns in 18 months. If anything, 18 months is a nice way to reassure people that this won't be drawn out into some highly escalated prolonged conflict.

youngblood wrote:I listened to some commentators before the speech discussing this same thing. The general consensus they had was that 18 months was the time the 30,000 troops would begin to draw down again. The whole point of sending in the 30,000 troops is to keep the Taliban's head down and try to take back areas such as Waziristan. I don't think that our eminent leader truly thinks that the Afghan army, police, and infrastructure can really be ready to take the reigns in 18 months. If anything, 18 months is a nice way to reassure people that this won't be drawn out into some highly escalated prolonged conflict.

Not that I am disagreing with you by any accounts, but is it our job as a nation to govern over another nation? As a soldier I honestly care less I say hey more money in my pocket for deployments cool. Year+ away from my family again not cool but they understand, and accept that for the moment and the past 9 years this uniform has paid the bills. The problem at hand though is we are building a dependency from the Afghan people upon us. Much like an addict they are finding more and more they cannot stand up on their own two feet, but in this case they can not run, and govern their own nation. America is in a state of economic disaster that we have never seen. The times atm are believe it or not worse then they were during the great depression with the unemployment rate, and bank forclosures. We need to pull back and regroup otherwise we face an enimate defeat, because yes people though I love my country to the end we are not as strong and as invincable as every civilian thinks we are.

A quick refutation, things are not near as bad as they were during the Great Depression for a number of reasons. The recession is over. The stock market has recovered (which is the leading indicator in these things), jobs just have to recover (which is the trailing factor in all this).

I understand what you are saying, but being isolationist will not speed our recovery. I'm not a big fan of prolonged military action as I think its just makes the general populace weary. At the same time, America is clearly looked up to as "Big Brother".

youngblood wrote:A quick refutation, things are not near as bad as they were during the Great Depression for a number of reasons. The recession is over. The stock market has recovered (which is the leading indicator in these things), jobs just have to recover (which is the trailing factor in all this).

I understand what you are saying, but being isolationist will not speed our recovery. I'm not a big fan of prolonged military action as I think its just makes the general populace weary. At the same time, America is clearly looked up to as "Big Brother".

So you think the recession is over?

Frazzled wrote:

youngblood wrote:A quick refutation, things are not near as bad as they were during the Great Depression for a number of reasons. The recession is over. The stock market has recovered (which is the leading indicator in these things), jobs just have to recover (which is the trailing factor in all this).

I understand what you are saying, but being isolationist will not speed our recovery. I'm not a big fan of prolonged military action as I think its just makes the general populace weary. At the same time, America is clearly looked up to as "Big Brother".

So you think the recession is over?

At least the decline from an economic standpoint. Houses will still be foreclosed on, jobs will still be lost, but our economy is no longer shrinking.

youngblood wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

youngblood wrote:A quick refutation, things are not near as bad as they were during the Great Depression for a number of reasons. The recession is over. The stock market has recovered (which is the leading indicator in these things), jobs just have to recover (which is the trailing factor in all this).

I understand what you are saying, but being isolationist will not speed our recovery. I'm not a big fan of prolonged military action as I think its just makes the general populace weary. At the same time, America is clearly looked up to as "Big Brother".

So you think the recession is over?

At least the decline from an economic standpoint. Houses will still be foreclosed on, jobs will still be lost, but our economy is no longer shrinking.

Three words for you
Double
Dip
Recession

Frazzled wrote:

youngblood wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

youngblood wrote:A quick refutation, things are not near as bad as they were during the Great Depression for a number of reasons. The recession is over. The stock market has recovered (which is the leading indicator in these things), jobs just have to recover (which is the trailing factor in all this).

I understand what you are saying, but being isolationist will not speed our recovery. I'm not a big fan of prolonged military action as I think its just makes the general populace weary. At the same time, America is clearly looked up to as "Big Brother".

So you think the recession is over?

At least the decline from an economic standpoint. Houses will still be foreclosed on, jobs will still be lost, but our economy is no longer shrinking.

Three words for you
Double
Dip
Recession

Is that when the president dips the economy in salsa, takes a bite, and then dips again?

No, thats me

Ahtman wrote:

Redbeard wrote:

Ahtman wrote:A possible strategy isn't a logical fallacy. Still waiting.

The logical fallacy is that it is impossible to claim that something is vital, yet establish a hard timeline for abandoning it.

Setting a time line for assessment isn't abandoning anything, nor is it a logical fallacy. As stated several times before, nothing is being abandoned so that is a factual error, but it to is not a logical fallacy.

No one ever claimed there was a fallacy here. I said there's a hole, not a fallacy. There is. If you can't see it, I can't make it any more obvious.

The speech I heard didn't say anything about assessment. It said that they would start withdrawing troops in eighteen months. Obama said, "After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home. These are the resources that we need to seize the initiative, while building the Afghan capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces out of Afghanistan."

There's no assessment, no evaluation, simply a statement that the troops will start to come home. Once, he mentioned something about 'conditions on the ground', but went on to say that we're not going to fight an open-ended war. Claiming that revising deadlines isn't the same as being open-ended, well, that's a fallacy. If you set a deadline and continually push it back, that is open-ended.

(As a side-note, I agree with Youngblood - there's no way the Afghans will be able to control the Taliban themselves in eighteen months, or even eighteen years, regardless of whether we send an extra 30,000 (which is, by the way, less than a quarter of the number of men who fought at Austerlitz, today-in-history) or an extra 300,000. No one in history has ever been able to control Afghanistan. The Russians failed, and had far more people over there than we do now, and that was only 20-30 years ago. As someone said, "Afghanistan, where Empires go to die."

I have to agree with Frazzled plus you may think we are no were near where we were with the great depression, but a lot of that has to do with the checks and balances system as much as the FDIC. Statistically if you pick up a wall street journel you will read that we are at and have even been below the level were our people were in the 1920's. This difference is the population increases and the insurances our gov't has set in place to help ease the burden. Our currency is at the weakest it has been in a while(well almost last year canada's was higher then our ), and the unemployment rates are still through the roof.

Hell I was thinking of even becoming a recruiter being as the national gaurd and reserves had to stop recruiting from april to june because they excedded quota for the first time since the war began back in 2002. This is due to the lack of work out their. I can understand why you would "think" the recession is over, but if you do that just means you either are too young to have to worry about taking care of a family, or you have a nice cushy job that you think you can't get fired from. I dropped out of college to go full time military again in my life, and moved across country just to insure I had a job to take care of my family.

Empchild wrote:I have to agree with Frazzled plus you may think we are no were near where we were with the great depression, but a lot of that has to do with the checks and balances system as much as the FDIC. Statistically if you pick up a wall street journel you will read that we are at and have even been below the level were our people were in the 1920's. This difference is the population increases and the insurances our gov't has set in place to help ease the burden. Our currency is at the weakest it has been in a while(well almost last year canada's was higher then our ), and the unemployment rates are still through the roof.

Agreed, which is precisely why this isn't like the Great Depression. Unemployment is still half what it was in 1932 (19-23%), in terms of absolute numbers, we hit the high in October with 15.7 million americans unemployed (10.2%). Anyway, this has become way off-topic.

So ya... go pres.

As someone who really cares about statistics, you will find that we have suffered less casualties the entire time our military has been deployed in iraq and afghanistan than in the first 2 days of Operation Overlord, and yet people have been describing this as a meatgrinder. I find that ridiculous in the extreme. More people die in the U.S. in one day than our death count during the entire Iraq War.

Also, the only reasons the Soviet Union (not Russia, there is a difference) lost that war is because:

1. We provided the Afghans with weapons and training.
2. The Soviet Union had a horrible economy that was going down the gutter and could not support the war.
3.The Soviet troops had poor training and morale.

And don't say we have a horrible economy now, the problems with the U.S. economy are nothing compared to the problems the Soviet Union had.

youngblood wrote:

Empchild wrote:I have to agree with Frazzled plus you may think we are no were near where we were with the great depression, but a lot of that has to do with the checks and balances system as much as the FDIC. Statistically if you pick up a wall street journel you will read that we are at and have even been below the level were our people were in the 1920's. This difference is the population increases and the insurances our gov't has set in place to help ease the burden. Our currency is at the weakest it has been in a while(well almost last year canada's was higher then our ), and the unemployment rates are still through the roof.

Agreed, which is precisely why this isn't like the Great Depression. Unemployment is still half what it was in 1932 (19-23%), in terms of absolute numbers, we hit the high in October with 15.7 million americans unemployed (10.2%). Anyway, this has become way off-topic.

So ya... go pres.

Again, why do you think we hit the high yet?

Frazzled wrote:

youngblood wrote:

Empchild wrote:I have to agree with Frazzled plus you may think we are no were near where we were with the great depression, but a lot of that has to do with the checks and balances system as much as the FDIC. Statistically if you pick up a wall street journel you will read that we are at and have even been below the level were our people were in the 1920's. This difference is the population increases and the insurances our gov't has set in place to help ease the burden. Our currency is at the weakest it has been in a while(well almost last year canada's was higher then our ), and the unemployment rates are still through the roof.

Agreed, which is precisely why this isn't like the Great Depression. Unemployment is still half what it was in 1932 (19-23%), in terms of absolute numbers, we hit the high in October with 15.7 million americans unemployed (10.2%). Anyway, this has become way off-topic.

So ya... go pres.

Again, why do you think we hit the high yet?

I don't. What I said was that unemployment is not the leading indicator of economic decline. Typical (as in, with every recession/depression America has had) the markets are the leading indicators as to where the economy is headed. The markets tend to be 9 months (give a take a few) ahead of the rest of the economy. I'm not saying that this is gospel gold, just that this is what has happened in the past.

double post, ignore this comment


Automatically Appended Next Post:
where it says depression, it should say recession.

youngblood wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

youngblood wrote:

Empchild wrote:I have to agree with Frazzled plus you may think we are no were near where we were with the great depression, but a lot of that has to do with the checks and balances system as much as the FDIC. Statistically if you pick up a wall street journel you will read that we are at and have even been below the level were our people were in the 1920's. This difference is the population increases and the insurances our gov't has set in place to help ease the burden. Our currency is at the weakest it has been in a while(well almost last year canada's was higher then our ), and the unemployment rates are still through the roof.

Agreed, which is precisely why this isn't like the Great Depression. Unemployment is still half what it was in 1932 (19-23%), in terms of absolute numbers, we hit the high in October with 15.7 million americans unemployed (10.2%). Anyway, this has become way off-topic.

So ya... go pres.

Again, why do you think we hit the high yet?

I don't. What I said was that unemployment is not the leading indicator of economic decline. Typical (as in, with every recession/depression America has had) the markets are the leading indicators as to where the economy is headed. The markets tend to be 9 months (give a take a few) ahead of the rest of the economy. I'm not saying that this is gospel gold, just that this is what has happened in the past.

I'll restate this to be clear. Your assumption is that the recession is over.

The market is only one indicator. As a reminder the Depression stiock markets went up as well and largely missed the 2nd and much deeper dip.
I am hopeful there is no second dip. However while its safe to assume the Panic of 2008 (old use of the term meaning a financial panic) is passing, most indicators are all over the place for whether or not the recession has passed and if so, whether there will be a second dip.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

GundamMerc wrote:double post, ignore this comment


Automatically Appended Next Post:
where it says depression, it should say recession.

There are so many things wrong with this statements that its staggering.

Redbeard wrote:

Ahtman wrote:

Redbeard wrote:

Ahtman wrote:A possible strategy isn't a logical fallacy. Still waiting.

The logical fallacy is that it is impossible to claim that something is vital, yet establish a hard timeline for abandoning it.

Setting a time line for assessment isn't abandoning anything, nor is it a logical fallacy. As stated several times before, nothing is being abandoned so that is a factual error, but it to is not a logical fallacy.

(As a side-note, I agree with Youngblood - there's no way the Afghans will be able to control the Taliban themselves in eighteen months, or even eighteen years, regardless of whether we send an extra 30,000 (which is, by the way, less than a quarter of the number of men who fought at Austerlitz, today-in-history) or an extra 300,000. No one in history has ever been able to control Afghanistan. The Russians failed, and had far more people over there than we do now, and that was only 20-30 years ago. As someone said, "Afghanistan, where Empires go to die."

No one in history was able to defeat Japan either; until of the course the US of A and her allies became involved after Pearl Harbor. Largely thanks to Bush's crusade against Iraq we haven't been able to devote as much resources or troops into the Afghanistan conflict. However one would be somewhat correct in that winning in Afghanistan will not be a conventional win and instead we have to take a modern and non-Cold War/conventional approach to it. Infiltrate their politics and society and spread reform that way while at the same time putting bullets in the heads of terrorists. Another poster already brought up significant differences in how the Soviets handled Afghanistan and the status quo; imo the modern American military is much more suited towards modern combat than the Soviets and even Cold War America.

As for troop withdrawal imo whats going to happen is just more tours except different military personnel will be substituted. So those troops being sent now will be coming home in 18 months but there will likely be more ready to go and like the case of Iraq; unfortunately many will likely be serving repeated tours. As for projecting large troop withdrawals thats obviously dependent on a ton of factors and uncertainty - just like when past American presidents claimed to have wars won by X-Mas; great idea and something most Americans would want but like what they say in the IT field: "It depends".

Redbeard wrote:I watched the President's speech tonight, and was left with the following logical gap.

Premise: Afghanistan is vital to national and international security.
Plan: Help the Afghans prepare to handle their own security and leave in eighteen months.
Flaw: What if they're not ready in eighteen months???

This translates as Vietnam 1971.

The OpFor need only say, hold for eighteen months, the end is near. Obama has no stomach for the fight, I have some sympathy for that we should never have gone in to begin with but Bush wanted his pound of flesh and Blair followed him yapping.
This was the wrong thing to say, now only the enemy can see the light at the end of the tunnel. How typical of a self serving politician, he wants to cover his own face and leaves the troops on the ground to swing, things will be much tougher now and morale will deterioriate rapidly.

Orlanth wrote:

I have some sympathy for that we should never have gone in to begin with but Bush wanted his pound of flesh and Blair followed him yapping.
This was the wrong thing to say, now only the enemy can see the light at the end of the tunnel. How typical of a self serving politician, he wants to cover his own face and leaves the troops on the ground to swing, things will be much tougher now and morale will deterioriate rapidly.

I disagree. We had no choice. This isn't Iraq. We were attacked and thousand of Americans and hundreds of Brits were killed in that attack.
We've smashed Al Qaeda and the Taliban who were protecting them. Some would say Afghanistan. They started. We kicked their teeth in. Time to go. This whole nationbuilding thing in a place that has never been a nation is misplaced. If Alqaeda re-appears, nuke them, otherwise let Afghanistan rule itself in whatever form the Afghanis choose to. If they permit they psycho taliban to regain power then they deserve what they get.

Translation: We didn't go there to be cops and social workers. We went there to kill a whole lot of people. Now that we've done that time to get out of that bad neighborhood.
But again, thats one opinion. There are many.

Cane wrote:
No one in history was able to defeat Japan either

No one?

Don't forget the Chinese stopped them in Korea back in the hack n slash sword days.

GundamMerc wrote:As someone who really cares about statistics, you will find that we have suffered less casualties the entire time our military has been deployed in iraq and afghanistan than in the first 2 days of Operation Overlord, and yet people have been describing this as a meatgrinder. I find that ridiculous in the extreme. More people die in the U.S. in one day than our death count during the entire Iraq War.

Also, the only reasons the Soviet Union (not Russia, there is a difference) lost that war is because:

1. We provided the Afghans with weapons and training.
2. The Soviet Union had a horrible economy that was going down the gutter and could not support the war.
3.The Soviet troops had poor training and morale.

And don't say we have a horrible economy now, the problems with the U.S. economy are nothing compared to the problems the Soviet Union had.

Ok you are right in the basics of your statement, but so incredably ignorant to the overall. First off yes the overall KIA figures are much less this is due A: to the advanced body armor and tanks, and B: to the advancements in medical treatment. The U.S has in a sense adopted Napoleans belief that if you can remove a wounded soldier from the battlefield within 30 minutes of the action then the soldiers chances of survival increase exponentially. The Use of Helocopters has also played a mainstream role in our wars of current as well.

You are by no accounts counting in the civilian "contracters" kia's with that number either. This number last reported(don't ask me where because I can't remember which paper I read it in) was almost 3 times the numbers of our combat troops. Also remember the wars of the past are just that the past. Unless we have another world war casualty figures like that will hopefully never be seen again.

Finally go because for you to even think of soldiers like that shows how utterly distasteful you are and how lazy you are as well. For you to think like that shows me and many others that you are probably the type of person who I like to call an armchair general. The Presidents plan though very ummm difficult to say the least is highly understandable. Yes it is by no means a way to end this war, but I feel it is better then most atm. Their is no winner in a guerilla war as both side decimate each other pretty heavily. Supplies is the strongest factor for the winner and until the American population cuts the bonds holding our soldiers back we can not win any war thrown at us. Our own citizens hold us back and call for peace, but they forget that we were attacked, and we as a junk yard dog have to be unleashed otherwise that thief will just come back and hit your house. Their is no such thing as an innocent on the battlefield sad to say.

sorry for that wierd post by me earlier about ignoring the post, the internet was going on the fritz

Redbeard wrote:

Cane wrote:
No one in history was able to defeat Japan either

No one?

OOO DEAR GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Modquisition on. Gentlemen politeness is required. This is a public warning to everyone to tone down personal attacks. Further posts of that nature will lead to disciplinary actions.

I think what people may be overlooking is that the deadline is about Karzai. It's well-known this administration doesn't trust him and doesn't think he's up to the job. So they're likely putting him on notice that his police, army and corruption situations need to improve in 18 months, or we're cutting our losses and getting out.

That would mean A-Q and the Taliban would move right back in like the past 9 years never happened. And that's bad for us. So yes, the deadline is likely a bluff, but one that Karzai may not be willing to test, given that he'll end up powerless and beheaded if he's wrong.

Regarding this recession and the Great Depression, there's absolutely no comparison. And anyone suggesting this needs a history lesson and a better grasp of economic data. It's tremendously insulting to those who lived through the Great Depression to even suggest such a thing. It's also disturbing to me that anyone would even seem to be rooting for more bad times for American families simply because it "hurts" the current administration.

Who on earth is rooting for more bad times Gorgon?

Redbeard wrote:

Cane wrote:
No one in history was able to defeat Japan either

No one?

Whoops meant in the war sense. Battles =/= war. If we're talking about battles than America and even the Soviet Union won a few of those against Afghan terrorists.

That battle was part of an undeclared war resulting in a neutrality pact where both empires respected specific territories and borders.

Frazzled wrote:

Orlanth wrote:

I have some sympathy for that we should never have gone in to begin with but Bush wanted his pound of flesh and Blair followed him yapping.
This was the wrong thing to say, now only the enemy can see the light at the end of the tunnel. How typical of a self serving politician, he wants to cover his own face and leaves the troops on the ground to swing, things will be much tougher now and morale will deterioriate rapidly.

I disagree. We had no choice. This isn't Iraq. We were attacked and thousand of Americans and hundreds of Brits were killed in that attack.
We've smashed Al Qaeda and the Taliban who were protecting them. Some would say Afghanistan. They started. We kicked their teeth in. Time to go. This whole nationbuilding thing in a place that has never been a nation is misplaced. If Alqaeda re-appears, nuke them, otherwise let Afghanistan rule itself in whatever form the Afghanis choose to. If they permit they psycho taliban to regain power then they deserve what they get.

Translation: We didn't go there to be cops and social workers. We went there to kill a whole lot of people. Now that we've done that time to get out of that bad neighborhood.
But again, thats one opinion. There are many.

We more or less agree actually. Goin in in 2001 to beat up the Taliban was acceptalble, its trying to stay that doesnt work. Afghanistan swallowed up the Soviet army, something alot closer larger and meaner than anything we have got simply because when the Kremlin pulls their gloves off they really do come off. they still lost. You cant win a war against a religion, you can only skew the body count while staying in combat. its a vast game of whack-a-mole the arms will get tired long before the critters stop emerging.
Though nukes are not the answer.

Cane wrote:

Redbeard wrote:

Cane wrote:
No one in history was able to defeat Japan either

No one?

Whoops meant in the war sense. Battles =/= war. If we're talking about battles than America and even the Soviet Union won a few of those against Afghan terrorists.

That battle was part of an undeclared war resulting in a neutrality pact where both empires respected specific territories and borders.

Vietnam was an undeclared war. I guess it stays that way so that the US can keep claiming they've never lost a war. Japan invaded mainland Russia with an army. The Russians destroyed that army. Then they negotiated a peace. Just because the initial invasion was undeclared doesn't mean that the Japanese were any less soundly defeated, or that the invasion of a sovereign nation's territory with an army is anything less than a war. It may not have been on the same scale as some other wars, but it's still an invasion.

gorgon wrote:
Regarding this recession and the Great Depression, there's absolutely no comparison. And anyone suggesting this needs a history lesson and a better grasp of economic data. It's tremendously insulting to those who lived through the Great Depression to even suggest such a thing.

First of all, there have been significant changes in how data is counted, especially in regard to unemployment. I've read several reports that say that if we counted the unemployed using the same method that they used during 1930's, we'd have higher unemployment than we did then. The new unemployment figures throw out claims over a certain age, as they assume (wrongly, in most cases) that the people aren't looking for work anymore. While stocks may not have fallen as far and fewer banks may have failed (due to better safeguards on both), the impact on many families is greater in today's recession than it was during the great depression. The number of families living beneath the poverty line is comparable, and there are tent cities springing up among the newly-homeless that are similar to the 'Hoovervilles' of the Great Depression.

Secondly, if you can find me someone who lived through the Great Depression who is posting on Dakka, I'll be happy to apologize to them. Otherwise, I don't think anyone here is offended or insulted at the comparison. Feigning insult on behalf of people who aren't present is stupid. Maybe it's not as bad, but to say there is no comparison is ignorant and tremendously insulting to the very real people who are jobless and homeless currently (some of whom are on dakka, and can read this). There are clearly similarities between the two, comparison is possible.

Being in the military and having fought in Iraq twice I know for a fact the 30k troop numbers is an outright lie. When talking about troop numbers and strength they only include the infantry based units. This makes it more palatable to the people. They conviently forget the cooks, bakers and candle stick makers because for every one infantrymen it takes roughly (service dependant) 5 support personnel to make him combat effective. These support personnel range from aircraft mechanics, truck drivers, APC crews ect ect. These personnel will fill combat roles. Some of the trainers they speak of come from support units (in the Marines any ways) because they have the personal to give up without taking away from their combat effectiveness. It will not be 30k it will be more alone the lines of 150k and no one will notice until we are kicking the crap out of anything dumb enough to shoot at us. Same thing happened in Iraq and all the commentators scratched their heads trying to figure out have an additional 100k troops were sent over. Congress didn’t even figure it out until late 2006 in Iraq. It is a bait and switch that has worked for the past 8 years and will continue.

Redbeard wrote:
No one ever claimed there was a fallacy here. I said there's a hole, not a fallacy. There is. If you can't see it, I can't make it any more obvious.

They're the same thing. If you can't see that, either your understanding of the word logic, or the word fallacy is incomplete.

Redbeard wrote:
Claiming that revising deadlines isn't the same as being open-ended, well, that's a fallacy. If you set a deadline and continually push it back, that is open-ended.

And if you set a deadline, and then adhere to it, then its not. Open-ended is a phrase which means "without end". Technically, nothing is open-ended as all things eventually end. So it doesn't make any sense to use the phrase in future context. Otherwise I could tell you that you're completely wrong because Afghanistan has to end, even if it takes the destruction of the United States in order to bring that eventuality about.

No, the phrase open-ended in the context of a statement with respect to planning is meant to reference the lack of a desire to bring any given thing to a close. In this context the 'thing' can be considered to be either the 'war' or the deployment of large numbers of soldiers to Afghanistan. Obama did not state he would bring all soldiers home, he stated the process would begin. This, in concert with the claim of vitality, implies that our soldiers will remain in some capacity indefinitely.

From a strategic point of view its a decision designed to gauge the relative level of violence we might expect during a continued garrison, which thereby helps to determine the feasibility of such a garrison.

Redbeard wrote:

Cane wrote:

Redbeard wrote:

Cane wrote:
No one in history was able to defeat Japan either

No one?

Whoops meant in the war sense. Battles =/= war. If we're talking about battles than America and even the Soviet Union won a few of those against Afghan terrorists.

That battle was part of an undeclared war resulting in a neutrality pact where both empires respected specific territories and borders.

Vietnam was an undeclared war. I guess it stays that way so that the US can keep claiming they've never lost a war. Japan invaded mainland Russia with an army. The Russians destroyed that army. Then they negotiated a peace. Just because the initial invasion was undeclared doesn't mean that the Japanese were any less soundly defeated, or that the invasion of a sovereign nation's territory with an army is anything less than a war. It may not have been on the same scale as some other wars, but it's still an invasion.

I see what ya mean but imo that war was more along the lines of The Korean War; both the United Nations and North Korea didn't really win - more or less a stalemate and there too was immense casualties and land conflict. In that Soviet-Japanese War both parties had conditions working for them at the end of it, similar to The Korean War. Vietnam was definitely a loss since it was mishandled politically and we had to leave; leading to Communist control of the country in the aftermath.

I served there twice. The Afghan army were actually pretty good.. well.. when i say "good" i mean "not entirely dogshit"

The police however were absolutely shocking.

I think its going to take over 18 months, but it is certainly feasible that we can scale down alot in the next few years and have 90% of the ground work done by the Afghan Security Forces with a small multi national (ok, USA/UK troops because everyone else is too busy at the disco in Kabul International Airport) QRF who can rock up when required.

And also plenty of armour and especially air support.

But we can definately scale down from current numbers, and It is definately not a war we can "lose" per se.

I mean, look at the big picture, we are trying to get the countries security forces trained and sorted out, and we (espcecially in Helmand province) and getting alot of bother as a result of that, but we have still only lost a "handful" of troops if your looking at things from the slimy poiticians view.

ie. 947 Americans, 236 Brits (at last count, i might have missed a few)

Dont get me wrong, im a soldier myself. It means alot to us and to the families and friends of killed soldiers, and it might sound harsh to say it, but lets cut to the chase, can the US and UK governments easily soak up a few thousand more casualties?

Absolutely.

mattyrm wrote:I served there twice. The Afghan army were actually pretty good.. well.. when i say "good" i mean "not entirely dogshit"

The police however were absolutely shocking.

I think its going to take over 18 months, but it is certainly feasible that we can scale down alot in the next few years and have 90% of the ground work done by the Afghan Security Forces with a small multi national (ok, USA/UK troops because everyone else is too busy at the disco in Kabul International Airport) QRF who can rock up when required.

And also plenty of armour and especially air support.

But we can definately scale down from current numbers, and It is definately not a war we can "lose" per se.

.

How do we lose here? Al Qaeda is smashed. Al Qaeda attacked the US not the Taliban.

Yeah Frazz i said we CANT lose.

The "per se" bit is referring to the unwashed hippy types who keep calling the Afghan conflict "an un-winnable war"

Cool.

mattyrm wrote:I served there twice. The Afghan army were actually pretty good.. well.. when i say "good" i mean "not entirely dogshit"

The police however were absolutely shocking.

I think its going to take over 18 months, but it is certainly feasible that we can scale down alot in the next few years and have 90% of the ground work done by the Afghan Security Forces with a small multi national (ok, USA/UK troops because everyone else is too busy at the disco in Kabul International Airport) QRF who can rock up when required.

And also plenty of armour and especially air support.

But we can definately scale down from current numbers, and It is definately not a war we can "lose" per se.

I mean, look at the big picture, we are trying to get the countries security forces trained and sorted out, and we (espcecially in Helmand province) and getting alot of bother as a result of that, but we have still only lost a "handful" of troops if your looking at things from the slimy poiticians view.

ie. 947 Americans, 236 Brits (at last count, i might have missed a few)

Dont get me wrong, im a soldier myself. It means alot to us and to the families and friends of killed soldiers, and it might sound harsh to say it, but lets cut to the chase, can the US and UK governments easily soak up a few thousand more casualties?

Absolutely.

We can win this easily it will take man power though. I love serving with you Brits btw. You guys always see Marines and want to kick it. Your Royal Marines are some crazy SOB's too. You also always have the good hooch I am probably headed there after I graduate from Warrant Officer school and look forward to a possible tour as an instructor trainer. I have heard and you can probably confirm that the Afghans will actually fight were the Iraqi's we trained lacked a spine. That should speed the process up a bit.

Does anyone know if there's much sectarian violence in Afghanistan? I haven't heard anything about it.

youngblood wrote:Does anyone know if there's much sectarian violence in Afghanistan? I haven't heard anything about it.

Actually a lot as Afghanistan for the past few years has been predominately a sniper, and mortar( HELLZ YA) war. I was a mortarmen so don't anyone get their panties in a bunch. This has actually resulted in some extremely bloody fighting not to mention the attack last month or a few motnhs ago( time just blends in for me to much) were we lost 8 soldiers in one day.

I've heard before that the police in Afghanistan are terribly corrupt.
Sounds like that'd be a major problem in stabalising the country. (Durr, understatement )

Mattyrm, you've a good (or not negative at least) view on the military? Could you see them taking up a policing role at any stage?
One thing I find it hard to wrap my head around is the number of fanatics willing to fight on the other side. The coalition must be inflicting heavy causulties on them, and there's always more? Guys must be freakin' mental.

Empchild wrote:I have to agree with Frazzled plus you may think we are no were near where we were with the great depression, but a lot of that has to do with the checks and balances system as much as the FDIC. Statistically if you pick up a wall street journel you will read that we are at and have even been below the level were our people were in the 1920's. This difference is the population increases and the insurances our gov't has set in place to help ease the burden. Our currency is at the weakest it has been in a while(well almost last year canada's was higher then our ), and the unemployment rates are still through the roof.

Hell I was thinking of even becoming a recruiter being as the national gaurd and reserves had to stop recruiting from april to june because they excedded quota for the first time since the war began back in 2002. This is due to the lack of work out their. I can understand why you would "think" the recession is over, but if you do that just means you either are too young to have to worry about taking care of a family, or you have a nice cushy job that you think you can't get fired from. I dropped out of college to go full time military again in my life, and moved across country just to insure I had a job to take care of my family.

I don't really understand the logic of the argument here.

It seems like saying our ship is worse than the Titanic, except it isn't but only because the architect made sure to provide lots of lifeboats.

BTW the US dollar is probably destined for a long period of weakness. It has only been sustained so far by its de facto status as the major world reserve currency since the abandonment of the gold standard. That status is fading and being replaced by a basket of currencies.

Having a weak currency isn't necessarily bad. It will make your exports cheaper and imports more expensive, which will help your balance of trade. The Japanese are hurting desperately because of the strength of the Yen.

How did all this attach to the Afghanistan plan anyway?

Empchild wrote:

youngblood wrote:Does anyone know if there's much sectarian violence in Afghanistan? I haven't heard anything about it.

Actually a lot as Afghanistan for the past few years has been predominately a sniper, and mortar( HELLZ YA) war. I was a mortarmen so don't anyone get their panties in a bunch. This has actually resulted in some extremely bloody fighting not to mention the attack last month or a few motnhs ago( time just blends in for me to much) were we lost 8 soldiers in one day.

I was asking because one of the largest hurdles for Iraq was sectarian fighting. Just getting people together was a huge task. They didn't want to work together, fight together or anything. I was wondering if the general Afghan populace desires to kick the Taliban out.

youngblood wrote:

Empchild wrote:

youngblood wrote:Does anyone know if there's much sectarian violence in Afghanistan? I haven't heard anything about it.

Actually a lot as Afghanistan for the past few years has been predominately a sniper, and mortar( HELLZ YA) war. I was a mortarmen so don't anyone get their panties in a bunch. This has actually resulted in some extremely bloody fighting not to mention the attack last month or a few motnhs ago( time just blends in for me to much) were we lost 8 soldiers in one day.

I was asking because one of the largest hurdles for Iraq was sectarian fighting. Just getting people together was a huge task. They didn't want to work together, fight together or anything. I was wondering if the general Afghan populace desires to kick the Taliban out.

Iraq was a little different though. The educated class was not allowed to leave the country for decades. Once Saddam fell they got the hell out of that hell hole and moved to Europe or more modernized Arab Nations. We were left with the uneducated to fix a broken country. Afghanistan for the most part is all uneducated. Going to be a very up hill battle on that front. The extremist thrive on the ignorant.

mstersmith wrote:

youngblood wrote:

Empchild wrote:

youngblood wrote:Does anyone know if there's much sectarian violence in Afghanistan? I haven't heard anything about it.

Actually a lot as Afghanistan for the past few years has been predominately a sniper, and mortar( HELLZ YA) war. I was a mortarmen so don't anyone get their panties in a bunch. This has actually resulted in some extremely bloody fighting not to mention the attack last month or a few motnhs ago( time just blends in for me to much) were we lost 8 soldiers in one day.

I was asking because one of the largest hurdles for Iraq was sectarian fighting. Just getting people together was a huge task. They didn't want to work together, fight together or anything. I was wondering if the general Afghan populace desires to kick the Taliban out.

Iraq was a little different though. The educated class was not allowed to leave the country for decades. Once Saddam fell they got the hell out of that hell hole and moved to Europe or more modernized Arab Nations. We were left with the uneducated to fix a broken country. Afghanistan for the most part is all uneducated. Going to be a very up hill battle on that front. The extremist thrive on the ignorant.

Sectarianism hardly has anything to do with education level. Being better educated doesn't strip away prejudice. Reading your answer though, I'm guessing that there isn't a problem with sectarian violence in Afghanistan.

Kilkrazy wrote:

Empchild wrote:I have to agree with Frazzled plus you may think we are no were near where we were with the great depression, but a lot of that has to do with the checks and balances system as much as the FDIC. Statistically if you pick up a wall street journel you will read that we are at and have even been below the level were our people were in the 1920's. This difference is the population increases and the insurances our gov't has set in place to help ease the burden. Our currency is at the weakest it has been in a while(well almost last year canada's was higher then our ), and the unemployment rates are still through the roof.

Hell I was thinking of even becoming a recruiter being as the national gaurd and reserves had to stop recruiting from april to june because they excedded quota for the first time since the war began back in 2002. This is due to the lack of work out their. I can understand why you would "think" the recession is over, but if you do that just means you either are too young to have to worry about taking care of a family, or you have a nice cushy job that you think you can't get fired from. I dropped out of college to go full time military again in my life, and moved across country just to insure I had a job to take care of my family.

I don't really understand the logic of the argument here.

It seems like saying our ship is worse than the Titanic, except it isn't but only because the architect made sure to provide lots of lifeboats.

BTW the US dollar is probably destined for a long period of weakness. It has only been sustained so far by its de facto status as the major world reserve currency since the abandonment of the gold standard. That status is fading and being replaced by a basket of currencies.

Having a weak currency isn't necessarily bad. It will make your exports cheaper and imports more expensive, which will help your balance of trade. The Japanese are hurting desperately because of the strength of the Yen.

How did all this attach to the Afghanistan plan anyway?

More or less kill we were discussing the strain of the war on the U.S economy.

Yeah Boss, the Afghan National Army are alright. The thing with the Afghans culture is, its all about revenge. I think that is the reason why we try to be so softly softly with the local civvies. Many of the ANA guys i spoke to had friends or relatives killed/tortured by the Taliban, and they see it as their "duty" to serve with the ANA, this is why they have the "spine" that people are talking about. Many of them do have the will to fight, they just need to be trained properly and motivated.

The police genuinely are terrible and it is above my head as to what the plan is there. They whinged about how curruption was rife when i was there 18 months ago, and now we saw one a fortnight ago put a magazine into the British lads who were mentoring them.

IMO a good idea would be to offer a pay rise to the cops, try and spin it as a decent job, and then transfer some of the ANA guys over who we percieve as loyal to try and weed out the bad apples and give the ANP some credibility. You know, like forcing some Sternguard Veterans to transfer over to the Imperial Guard for a while!

There's no doubt about that.

Much of the damage was done years ago, though.

The job in Afghanistan should have been finished before diverting attention to Iraq.

That's water under the bridge now, though.

Redbeard wrote:First of all, there have been significant changes in how data is counted, especially in regard to unemployment. I've read several reports that say that if we counted the unemployed using the same method that they used during 1930's, we'd have higher unemployment than we did then. The new unemployment figures throw out claims over a certain age, as they assume (wrongly, in most cases) that the people aren't looking for work anymore. While stocks may not have fallen as far and fewer banks may have failed (due to better safeguards on both), the impact on many families is greater in today's recession than it was during the great depression. The number of families living beneath the poverty line is comparable, and there are tent cities springing up among the newly-homeless that are similar to the 'Hoovervilles' of the Great Depression.

I'd like to see that report, because unemployment was more impactful at a time when vastly fewer families had more than one income.

Setting unemployment aside, let's examine some other stats:

2008-2009 recession: <2 years, <4% decline in GDP
Great Depression: 4 years, 26% decline in GDP

2008-2009 recession: <1% bank failures
Great Depression: 50% bank failures

2008-2009 recession: largest drop in the Dow - 54%
Great Depression: largest drop in the Dow - 89%

"Worst since the Great Depression" <> "comparable to the Great Depression." There are different scales at work here. It's a crappy economy, but the recession is over and it was AA ball compared to the major league event that was the Great Depression. That's not to say there aren't similar factors or that everyone's out of the woods. But nothing NOW is as bad as it got THEN.

My advice to people is to take the financial media with a grain of salt. They're very, very shrill and have a tendency to create news and hysteria. Mostly because there's too many outlets and not enough real financial news to fill air time and web/print space. I can tell you the money managers I talk with A) don't think the two events are remotely comparable and B) aren't expecting to see the return of bread lines, the WPA and the CCC anytime soon.

Secondly, if you can find me someone who lived through the Great Depression who is posting on Dakka, I'll be happy to apologize to them. Otherwise, I don't think anyone here is offended or insulted at the comparison. Feigning insult on behalf of people who aren't present is stupid. Maybe it's not as bad, but to say there is no comparison is ignorant and tremendously insulting to the very real people who are jobless and homeless currently (some of whom are on dakka, and can read this). There are clearly similarities between the two, comparison is possible.

See, I really don't think we're free to insult anyone who isn't posting here. But I'm not going to get drawn into another snark battle with you.

This is about recognizing history and one's place in it. If you legitimately think our people, nation and world are suffering to the degree they did during the Great Depression, I probably can't convince you otherwise without a time machine to prove it. I just have to tell you it's really not the case thanks to the many changes that era brought about.

So imagine an elderly person in 1930 who had their life savings in a bank that failed (9,000 of them did). What do you think happened to them considering no part of their deposit was insured by the government and that they had no Social Security to provide income and no Medicare to cover medical costs?

Again, you can draw some parallels between the two events, but perspective is needed here. One situation was far deeper, more destructive and more dire.

gorgon wrote:
See, I really don't think we're free to insult anyone who isn't posting here. But I'm not going to get drawn into another snark battle with you.

I don't we're free to insult anyone either, but I also don't think it is insulting to draw such comparisons between two events.

This is about recognizing history and one's place in it. If you legitimately think our people, nation and world are suffering to the degree they did during the Great Depression, I probably can't convince you otherwise...

No, I don't think your nation, as a whole, is suffering as badly. However, I do believe that there are plenty of individuals who are suffering just as badly, if not moreso, than individuals did during the great depression.

I know people who are out of work, who have lost their home, who are in thousands of dollars of debt due to medical bills that they'll never pay, and who have lived under bridges at times because of this recession. I'm sure they'll be happy to acknowledge how much worse it was back then.

See, you can't tell someone who has lost their job, their home, and their savings that it was worse in the 30's. To the people actually impacted by current events, their situation is just as dire as a similar individual's was in the 30s. Recessions aren't just about countries and GDPs, they're about people's lives.

I just don't see Obama keeping his promise about pulling out in 18 months.

He claimed to have Gitmo shut down by the end of this year and last I heard that won't happen, his HCR Bill won't get passed before the end of the year (not that I want it to pass at all in it's current state).

He has done nothing he's promised in the time he's promised it. I have friends apparently going over there in 2011 (according to their higher ups) so unless things change it will be like Iraq in that the men and women who should be here in the states (the NG for sure) will be sent on another "peace keeping mission" and be stuck in a country that they have no place in.

I've always wondered what a Democrat President would have done in response to the 9/11 attack.

Fateweaver wrote:I just don't see Obama keeping his promise about pulling out...

GundamMerc wrote:As someone who really cares about statistics, you will find that we have suffered less casualties the entire time our military has been deployed in iraq and afghanistan than in the first 2 days of Operation Overlord, and yet people have been describing this as a meatgrinder. I find that ridiculous in the extreme. More people die in the U.S. in one day than our death count during the entire Iraq War.

Also, the only reasons the Soviet Union (not Russia, there is a difference) lost that war is because:

1. We provided the Afghans with weapons and training.
2. The Soviet Union had a horrible economy that was going down the gutter and could not support the war.
3.The Soviet troops had poor training and morale.

And don't say we have a horrible economy now, the problems with the U.S. economy are nothing compared to the problems the Soviet Union had.

Also, the Soviets had massively different operational goals. They wanted to control the region long term. The US wants to install a sufficiently acceptable government, limit Taliban capability and support then get out. It's still a hard thing to do, but it's not like the near impossible Soviet ambitions.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Frazzled wrote:This whole nationbuilding thing in a place that has never been a nation is misplaced.

Except for having been the Durrani Empire from 1747 to 1823, when it became the Emirate of Afghanistan until 1919, at which point it became the Kingdom of Afghanistan from 1933 to 1973.

Other than all those times it was a nation, you're right, it's never been a nation.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Orlanth wrote:We more or less agree actually. Goin in in 2001 to beat up the Taliban was acceptalble, its trying to stay that doesnt work. Afghanistan swallowed up the Soviet army, something alot closer larger and meaner than anything we have got simply because when the Kremlin pulls their gloves off they really do come off. they still lost.

No, simply being meaner doesn't mean you win insurgencies, it only hurts your chances. The more violent and indiscriminant an occupying force is the more likely the general population will take up arms against them. While force is a necessarily element to maintain control, a resistance is beaten by removing legitimacy from the resistance.

You cant win a war against a religion, you can only skew the body count while staying in combat. its a vast game of whack-a-mole the arms will get tired long before the critters stop emerging.

It isn't a war against a religion. It's a war against a minority of fanatics/criminals. Remember that when the AQ and the Taliban were trounced at the start of the war there were 1,000 special forces directly used, the vast bulk of the fighting forces were Afghanis... because they really hated the Taliban. Unfortunately, we installed Karzai and he built a grossly corrupt administration, and while few like the Taliban they're unwilling to take up arms for Karzai.

Fateweaver wrote:I just don't see Obama keeping his promise about pulling out in 18 months.

He claimed to have Gitmo shut down by the end of this year and last I heard that won't happen, his HCR Bill won't get passed before the end of the year (not that I want it to pass at all in it's current state).

He has done nothing he's promised in the time he's promised it. I have friends apparently going over there in 2011 (according to their higher ups) so unless things change it will be like Iraq in that the men and women who should be here in the states (the NG for sure) will be sent on another "peace keeping mission" and be stuck in a country that they have no place in.

I've always wondered what a Democrat President would have done in response to the 9/11 attack.

It's impossible to know, of course.

Previous Democrat presidents faced with dangerous international crises include Woodrow Wilson, F D Roosevelt, Harry S Truman, John F Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson.

If that creates any kind of precedent, perhaps a Democrat would have done all right.

Fateweaver wrote:I've always wondered what a Democrat President would have done in response to the 9/11 attack.

I'm going to go with 'not invaded Iraq'.

At least they would have got something right, then.

I seem to remember Obama, during the campaign to become president attacking Bush for doing the Iraqi troop surge.... but it worked there.

Also LOL to the Nobel Peace Prize judges.

Though a bit non-sequitur, with all the interest in planning and execution of conflicts I would be remiss if I didn't recommend "The Fog of War" documentary. It is a long interview with Robert McNamara about the thinking and planning behind and during the Vietnam conflict.

Waaagh_Gonads wrote:I seem to remember Obama, during the campaign to become president attacking Bush for doing the Iraqi troop surge.... but it worked there.

Also LOL to the Nobel Peace Prize judges.

So he's seen a good idea which worked and now he's copying it.

Kilkrazy wrote:So he's seen a good idea which worked and now he's copying it.

I assume WGs mockery is directed at the president's own hypocrisy. He bashes a strategy of GWB, but when he gets into office, "Hmm, it wasn't so bad." I approve of his using common sense on this issue, I can understand the frustration with a double standard.

To be fair, Obama changed his position on the surge well before entering office.

In case you you guys missed it, Mr. Gates discussed this whole "18 months" bit more. 18 months is the planned draw down time if "conditions are favorable". 10 months in is assessment time. To Obama's credit, he was very vague about the 18 months thing.

Back to jobs as a sign of the recession ending: A lot of the jobs will not come back. Companies have figured out how to permantly eliminate positions. Also due to the internetz people in other countries (i.e. those who will work for less cash money and benefits). This is a little idea called outsourcing. Anyway, don't look for the jobs to come back as a sign that the recession is over.

here's an interesting Planet Money post about the governments view in all this: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2009/12/_how_much_would_pay.html

sebster wrote:

Fateweaver wrote:I've always wondered what a Democrat President would have done in response to the 9/11 attack.

I'm going to go with 'not invaded Iraq'.

We dont know that. President Clinton wanted to invade for the exact same reasons with the exact same intel in 1998. I was sitting on a grinder waiting for the order to load up and ship out for a week. The Iraqi Govt. (Saddam) backed down the same way two bit dictators always do. I would put a pay check on any president doing the exact same thing.

He also did start a war in Kosova over what national interest of the US again?

Kilkrazy wrote:

Fateweaver wrote:I just don't see Obama keeping his promise about pulling out in 18 months.

He claimed to have Gitmo shut down by the end of this year and last I heard that won't happen, his HCR Bill won't get passed before the end of the year (not that I want it to pass at all in it's current state).

He has done nothing he's promised in the time he's promised it. I have friends apparently going over there in 2011 (according to their higher ups) so unless things change it will be like Iraq in that the men and women who should be here in the states (the NG for sure) will be sent on another "peace keeping mission" and be stuck in a country that they have no place in.

I've always wondered what a Democrat President would have done in response to the 9/11 attack.

It's impossible to know, of course.

Previous Democrat presidents faced with dangerous international crises include Woodrow Wilson, F D Roosevelt, Harry S Truman, John F Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson.


MR. Killkrazy is correct and to add onto that believe it or not if you look at history books, and gov't statistics it will show the U.S suffered more terrorist attacks both demestically and abroad under the clinton administration then we did under any other president in our history. I can give examples, but please just google as it is a lot of them.
If that creates any kind of precedent, perhaps a Democrat would have done all right.

Yeah Frazz but the Muslim world really appreciated us going into Kosovo eh?

On a serious note.. i think it was hard to call the whole Kosovo thing, i mean, many of us in the West tend to lean towards a dislike of Islam as it seems to be very misogynistic and intolerant of people from outside the faith, but at the end of the day, innocent people were being killed and i feel that we do have a responisibilty to try and stop needless suffering when we can. I know we cant heal the whole world but... well.. its the bureaucrats make the decisions..

Frazz i think you would get along with my notoriously politically incorrect father who incredulously shouted down the phone at me

"Eight crusades and now we HELP them!?!"

mattyrm wrote:Yeah Frazz but the Muslim world really appreciated us going into Kosovo eh?

On a serious note.. i think it was hard to call the whole Kosovo thing, i mean, many of us in the West tend to lean towards a dislike of Islam as it seems to be very misogynistic and intolerant of people from outside the faith, but at the end of the day, innocent people were being killed and i feel that we do have a responisibilty to try and stop needless suffering when we can. I know we cant heal the whole world but... well.. its the bureaucrats make the decisions..

Frazz i think you would get along with my notoriously politically incorrect father who incredulously shouted down the phone at me

"Eight crusades and now we HELP them!?!"

In fairness though the human rights violations that went on in Kosovo caused the UN not just the US but the UN to go in and liberate kosovo from Slobadon(or however it's spelled). Plus we actually, much like we do now, have muslim nations working with us in muslim countires.

Empchild wrote:

mattyrm wrote:Yeah Frazz but the Muslim world really appreciated us going into Kosovo eh?

On a serious note.. i think it was hard to call the whole Kosovo thing, i mean, many of us in the West tend to lean towards a dislike of Islam as it seems to be very misogynistic and intolerant of people from outside the faith, but at the end of the day, innocent people were being killed and i feel that we do have a responisibilty to try and stop needless suffering when we can. I know we cant heal the whole world but... well.. its the bureaucrats make the decisions..

Frazz i think you would get along with my notoriously politically incorrect father who incredulously shouted down the phone at me

"Eight crusades and now we HELP them!?!"

In fairness though the human rights violations that went on in Kosovo caused the UN not just the US but the UN to go in and liberate kosovo from Slobadon(or however it's spelled). Plus we actually, much like we do now, have muslim nations working with us in muslim countires.

You're right. Ever since the UN sent tank divisions to stop the slaughter in Sudan oh wait... never mind.

Frazzled wrote:

Empchild wrote:

mattyrm wrote:Yeah Frazz but the Muslim world really appreciated us going into Kosovo eh?

On a serious note.. i think it was hard to call the whole Kosovo thing, i mean, many of us in the West tend to lean towards a dislike of Islam as it seems to be very misogynistic and intolerant of people from outside the faith, but at the end of the day, innocent people were being killed and i feel that we do have a responisibilty to try and stop needless suffering when we can. I know we cant heal the whole world but... well.. its the bureaucrats make the decisions..

Frazz i think you would get along with my notoriously politically incorrect father who incredulously shouted down the phone at me

"Eight crusades and now we HELP them!?!"

In fairness though the human rights violations that went on in Kosovo caused the UN not just the US but the UN to go in and liberate kosovo from Slobadon(or however it's spelled). Plus we actually, much like we do now, have muslim nations working with us in muslim countires.

You're right. Ever since the UN sent tank divisions to stop the slaughter in Sudan oh wait... never mind.

Yup why would we save Christian lives when its Muslims killing them. It only matters in the reverse.

Hey Emp have you seen how Dog gak the Muslim soldiers are though? All these hippy types go on about the "elite" Revolutionary guard's and the "tough as nails" mujahideen.

My unit (40 commando) had charge of the AO incorporting the biggest ISAF base in Kabul, the American camp (Phoenix) and the British and Turkish camps too.

A VBIED went off outside Phonenix and my QRF hightailed it up there, we set up a cordon and asked for the other camps to send their QRFs to assist us and we got told by the Turks via the radio "We cannot fight today"

Another time a US convoy got attacked and in such cases you go into the closest ISAF base, it was the Turkish base and they made them sit outside the camp (on the MSR!) for 25 minutes while they "got ready"

Every week we had an intel meeting and every week they would say "we have nothing" there were whispers many of them were actively assisting the Taliban by "letting slip" convoy timings etc to the local nationals that worked on their camp.. i could go on and on.. but perhaps some of it would get me in bother. (although i doubt military intelligence reads dakkadakka)

They were the most unprofessional jackasses ive ever had the misfortune to work alongside. I firmly believe that they are loyal to their Religion first and their country second and somewhere at the arse end of that list the coalition.

If i had my way we would have no Muslims in the coalition simply because the danger of infiltration is there, sure they arent all bad, but plenty are! One of our TA (national guardsman) terps was caught speaking to Iranian intelligence on my tour of duty in 2006.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/nov/05/daniel-james-spy-iran


Anyway, i went off on a tangent, all im saying is, we do have them serving with us now, but i feel its a token effort to appease the locals, and their soldiers truly suck.

mattyrm wrote:Hey Emp have you seen how Dog gak the Muslim soldiers are though? All these hippy types go on about the "elite" Revolutionary guard's and the "tough as nails" mujahideen.

I had no idea that religious affiliation was directly related to soldiering ability. Ya, learn something everyday!

I have a theory about that.. they dont do much phys for one thing. And they seem to be fasting half the bloody time...

Redbeard wrote:However, I do believe that there are plenty of individuals who are suffering just as badly, if not moreso, than individuals did during the great depression.

I know people who are out of work, who have lost their home, who are in thousands of dollars of debt due to medical bills that they'll never pay, and who have lived under bridges at times because of this recession. I'm sure they'll be happy to acknowledge how much worse it was back then.

See, you can't tell someone who has lost their job, their home, and their savings that it was worse in the 30's. To the people actually impacted by current events, their situation is just as dire as a similar individual's was in the 30s. Recessions aren't just about countries and GDPs, they're about people's lives.

While I absolutely see the point about individuals who have been financially ruined and/or made homeless, I have to agree with Gorgon’s point that in discussing the severity of a national event you have to look at numbers. I can’t see us having big tent cities and bread lines again. I don’t see the rate of bank failure multiplying by 50. And as noted, we do have more social programs (like Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, etc.) to help nowadays.

The problem with this plan is we've got 18 months to create an Afghanistan that can stand on its own two feet and defend itself from absolutely zip. The central government is weak and untrusted. People show more loyalty to their local area than the nation. There is nothing to build a functioning military on top of and you've got 18 months to do it. Good luck not having everything so shot full of Taliban and Taliban sympathizers that the country doesn't completely revert to their control the moment we leave. Afghanistan is not Iraq, you're not rebuilding a country that was used to acting like a country before you go there. You're building a country out of a bunch of different factions with no real motivation to act like a country.

Mannahnin wrote:

Redbeard wrote:However, I do believe that there are plenty of individuals who are suffering just as badly, if not moreso, than individuals did during the great depression.

I know people who are out of work, who have lost their home, who are in thousands of dollars of debt due to medical bills that they'll never pay, and who have lived under bridges at times because of this recession. I'm sure they'll be happy to acknowledge how much worse it was back then.

See, you can't tell someone who has lost their job, their home, and their savings that it was worse in the 30's. To the people actually impacted by current events, their situation is just as dire as a similar individual's was in the 30s. Recessions aren't just about countries and GDPs, they're about people's lives.

While I absolutely see the point about individuals who have been financially ruined and/or made homeless, I have to agree with Gorgon’s point that in discussing the severity of a national event you have to look at numbers. I can’t see us having big tent cities and bread lines again. I don’t see the rate of bank failure multiplying by 50. And as noted, we do have more social programs (like Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, etc.) to help nowadays.

Don't use the bank one. Depending on what statistical game you want to play, we exceeded that in spades. Course you can make the same argument for what occurred during the S&Ls.

Tyyr wrote:The problem with this plan is we've got 18 months to create an Afghanistan that can stand on its own two feet and defend itself from absolutely zip. The central government is weak and untrusted. People show more loyalty to their local area than the nation. There is nothing to build a functioning military on top of and you've got 18 months to do it. Good luck not having everything so shot full of Taliban and Taliban sympathizers that the country doesn't completely revert to their control the moment we leave. Afghanistan is not Iraq, you're not rebuilding a country that was used to acting like a country before you go there. You're building a country out of a bunch of different factions with no real motivation to act like a country.

Go listen to the Press Secretary's conference. He addresses this whole thing. Obama was vague on purpose.

Mannahnin wrote:
I can’t see us having big tent cities and bread lines again.

We have big tent cities again.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-05-04-new-homeless_N.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/us/26tents.html
http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/wayoflife/03/19/seattle.tent.city/index.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26776283/

Do a quick google search and you'll find a lot of these links. The world is a different place than it was in 1930. In 1918, a flu epidemic wiped out millions. Today, we panicked because swine flu killed 2000 people in Mexico City. In 1930, you're right, we didn't have safeguards on banks, or fallback social programs. And yet, in spite of the last eighty years of progress, our unemployment rate is very comparable to what it was in 1930 (after you account for the differences in data). Companies have shed jobs, and aren't looking to refill them. (There was an article in the WSJ about this today.)

I really don't think our economy, taken as a whole, is in better shape than in the 30s. I think that the safeguards that we have in place to prevent the worst effects have helped. But, I also think that we're in a far worse position in regard to recovery.

Consider this. In 1930, stuff went down, but fundamentally, the country was in a position that, a decade later, we were able to ramp up production to supply the needs of World War 2. Much of the underlying infrastructure was still there. Much of the skilled, and unskilled labor was there. People were unemployed, but were able to be recalled to a productive state fairly rapidly.

Today, we're a consumer society. Our jobs aren't just lost, they're outsourced to 3rd world countries that do it cheaper. Our factories are closing, if not already closed. Our future (read deficit) is already leveraged several times over. We've already got the social programs and safeguards in place, and yet in spite of this, we've still got tent cities. Our idea of helping the economy isn't to fund large-scale infrastructure programs, because our workers are no longer trained to do this work. Instead, as a consumer society, we're told that in order to help the economy, we must spend money, and are given tax rebate checks that we might do this.

In short, I think we're worse off now than we were then. Back then, all it took were a few bright people figuring that the government could create jobs for people. Today, the people who are out of work are marketing executives and retail chain managers. What sort of 'new deal' can they be offered. Social Security helped save people in 30s, today, its been mismanaged so badly that we're left trying to figure out how to save Social Security.

I agree with Red that as an American people, we are worse off, but economically, we are far better off than in the 30's.

"The reports of my demise are premature."
-The United States

Redbeard wrote:Today, the people who are out of work are marketing executives and retail chain managers. What sort of 'new deal' can they be offered.

We can send them to Afghanistan to manage/market the new government.

Kill two birds with one stone!

Frazzled wrote:He also did start a war in Kosova over what national interest of the US again?

Pushing NATO's legitimacy, and therefore expanding its influence and membership.

Also, he didn't start the war. Not unilaterally anyway. The decision to intervene in Kosovo was a collective one, made by NATO. Certainly Clinton backed that decision, but had NATO not come to a consensus its unlikely there would have been any action.

dogma wrote:

Frazzled wrote:He also did start a war in Kosova over what national interest of the US again?

Pushing NATO's legitimacy, and therefore expanding its influence and membership.

Also, he didn't start the war. Not unilaterally anyway. The decision to intervene in Kosovo was a collective one, made by NATO. Certainly Clinton backed that decision, but had NATO not come to a consensus its unlikely there would have been any action.

Yea he started it. It was in response to no action on the part of Serbia. We didn't even have the excuse that they were shooting at US aircraft, unlike Iraq which was bombed during the same period.

NATO wouldn't have done squat had we not pushed it.

Frazzled wrote:
Yea he started it. It was in response to no action on the part of Serbia. We didn't even have the excuse that they were shooting at US aircraft, unlike Iraq which was bombed during the same period.

The excuse was that NATO, of which we are a member, intervened in the conflict. We may have supported the decision to intervene, but had NATO not agreed to do so it wouldn't have happened. Not militarily, anyway.

dogma wrote:

Frazzled wrote:
Yea he started it. It was in response to no action on the part of Serbia. We didn't even have the excuse that they were shooting at US aircraft, unlike Iraq which was bombed during the same period.

The excuse was that NATO, of which we are a member, intervened in the conflict. We may have supported the decision to intervene, but had NATO not agreed to do so it wouldn't have happened. Not militarily, anyway.

You said he didn't start the war. Guess what-he did. It was completely voluntary conflict that had no ecurity interest for the US.

Outside of the UK and Italy, how many NATO planes dropped ordnance over Serbia?

Frazzled wrote:
You said he didn't start the war. Guess what-he did.

No, he didn't. NATO started the war, Clinton pushed for it in NATO, but that's not the same thing as starting a war. You could claim that NATO is an appendage of the US, but then you'd also have to claim that any threat to NATO is a threat to US security.

Frazzled wrote:
It was completely voluntary conflict that had no ecurity interest for the US.

If by security interests you're referring only to incidences of direct threat, then yeah, you're right. But no one talks about security as an isolated concept. Its a thing which has an interdependent relationship with power. Generally, the more powerful you are, the more secure you are. A stronger NATO usually means a stronger United States (though that notion has its limits, and liabilities). It isn't hard to see why this was an easy choice for the US. Minimal risk, for moderate reward is a pretty clear choice; especially given that there existed relatively broad support with the Alliance itself.

Frazzled wrote:
Outside of the UK and Italy, how many NATO planes dropped ordnance over Serbia?

Germany, France, Canada, Spain, Denmark, Turkey, the Netherlands, and Belgium. So, a lot of others.

mstersmith wrote:Being in the military and having fought in Iraq twice I know for a fact the 30k troop numbers is an outright lie. When talking about troop numbers and strength they only include the infantry based units. This makes it more palatable to the people. They conviently forget the cooks, bakers and candle stick makers because for every one infantrymen it takes roughly (service dependant) 5 support personnel to make him combat effective. These support personnel range from aircraft mechanics, truck drivers, APC crews ect ect. These personnel will fill combat roles. Some of the trainers they speak of come from support units (in the Marines any ways) because they have the personal to give up without taking away from their combat effectiveness. It will not be 30k it will be more alone the lines of 150k and no one will notice until we are kicking the crap out of anything dumb enough to shoot at us. Same thing happened in Iraq and all the commentators scratched their heads trying to figure out have an additional 100k troops were sent over. Congress didn’t even figure it out until late 2006 in Iraq. It is a bait and switch that has worked for the past 8 years and will continue.

......No.

You've got it backwards.

Here's a good 2007 CBO publication on Iraq force increases. Pg. 7 indicates that the US military struggles to keep more than 15 combat brigades deployed for long periods.

15 brigades x ~4,000 personnel each =~60,000 troops, which hovers around 1/3 of the 150,000-180,000 total end strength that has been consistently reported for Iraq, the other 100,00 being the support folks that you are claiming never get mentioned or realized in anyone's calculations.

Pgs.9-10 go on to explicitly state:

U.S. forces in the Iraq theater of operation include personnel deployed to both Iraq proper and to neighboring countries (particularly Kuwait). Prior to the announcement of the increase in forces in Iraq, those forces included about 20,000 Air Force personnel, 25,000 Marine Corps personnel (with two regiments deployed), and 120,000 Army personnel (with 13 to 14 brigades deployed).

Not all of those personnel are in ground combat units. An Army combat brigade, depending on its type, will have between 3,400 and 3,800 personnel normally assigned to it (although it is common practice for the Army to assign more personnel to a unit deploying to a combat zone—in that case, personnel fill rates of 105 to 110 percent are normal). The remaining military personnel in-theater are associated with various units that command or support the combat brigades (for example, the corps headquarters, logistics commands, medical evacuation units, engineers, and so forth) The majority of those personnel perform functions that directly support combat brigades, and their number varies in proportion to the number of combat brigades in-theater. Marine Corps regiments are similar in that respect.

Here's a recent article on the upcoming deployment of Marines to Afghanistan. It points out that 2nd MEB's strength is ~10,000, 3,000 of which are in the infantry battalions. There are 9,000 Marines deploying so obviously the support folks are again accounted for.

Long story short, "30,000 troops" does NOT mean 30,000 11B's/0311's, with a "hidden" requirement/deployment for an additional 100,000 pogues and fobbits.

I would use more .gov/.mil publications to prove my point but I no longer have access to AKO, and have yet to get a login for whatever the Marine equivalent is.

JEB_Stuart wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:So he's seen a good idea which worked and now he's copying it.

I assume WGs mockery is directed at the president's own hypocrisy. He bashes a strategy of GWB, but when he gets into office, "Hmm, it wasn't so bad." I approve of his using common sense on this issue, I can understand the frustration with a double standard.

I'm not sure its hypocrisy to be opposed to an idea, see that it works and then start supporting that idea.

"When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"


Automatically Appended Next Post:

mstersmith wrote:We dont know that. President Clinton wanted to invade for the exact same reasons with the exact same intel in 1998. I was sitting on a grinder waiting for the order to load up and ship out for a week. The Iraqi Govt. (Saddam) backed down the same way two bit dictators always do. I would put a pay check on any president doing the exact same thing.

Clinton and his senior advisors talked strong on Iraq and often included phrases about possibly having to invade, but it was always in the context of maintaining sanctions and considering air strikes. There was never any intent to mount a ground war - look at the months of speaches and military preparation that occurred in the build up to Iraq to make invasion politically and militarily viable - Clinton never took the first step along tht path.

He certainly never wanted to invade, I suspect you've falled for a rather disingenuous email that's been floated around that took a number of statements out of context.

There certainly were people arguing for regime change, but this came from people like Trent Lott and Richard Armitage, the hardline of the Republican party, and was never entertained by Clinton's administration or by the Democrats as a whole. When those people came to power, they then set about the invasion. It's not sensible to say a similar policy would have occurred under a Democratic administration.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

mstersmith wrote:Yup why would we save Christian lives when its Muslims killing them. It only matters in the reverse.

Or possibly the political situation is vastly different, with the Balkans and surrounding nations having been open to intervention, while in Africa there is considerable hesitation to have military forces deployed from the former colonial powers (somewhat understandably, and somewhat infuriatingly completely inexplicable). This led a peacekeeping operation from African forces, which was both undermanned and underequipped, and predictably ineffective. There have been efforts since to form a peacekeeping operation since then, but it's a complex political environment.

Or maybe its just about how it totally isn't fair and everyone's picking on the Christians.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

mattyrm wrote:(although i doubt military intelligence reads dakkadakka)

No, but I'm beginning to suspect dogma is actually skynet, so you'd best be careful.

Anyhow, that was an interesting post, thanks for that. I'm not sure I'd be so quick to declare it a result of being Muslim, as much as being from a developing nation and not a first world military. There are lots of developing Christian nations out there with pretty gakky armies as well.

I'm not sure I'd be so quick to declare it a result of being Muslim, as much as being from a developing nation and not a first world military. There are lots of developing Christian nations out there with pretty gakky armies as well.

Fair enough, but he was talking about Turkey - I wouldn't call them a 'developing' nation. They have kebabs, a sure sign of civilisation.

Albatross wrote:

I'm not sure I'd be so quick to declare it a result of being Muslim, as much as being from a developing nation and not a first world military. There are lots of developing Christian nations out there with pretty gakky armies as well.

Fair enough, but he was talking about Turkey - I wouldn't call them a 'developing' nation. They have kebabs, a sure sign of civilisation.

In fact its a sign of High Culture and Sophtistication. Viva la Kabob!

Albatross wrote:

I'm not sure I'd be so quick to declare it a result of being Muslim, as much as being from a developing nation and not a first world military. There are lots of developing Christian nations out there with pretty gakky armies as well.

Fair enough, but he was talking about Turkey - I wouldn't call them a 'developing' nation. They have kebabs, a sure sign of civilisation.

True, true. When we form the Federation, we won't be looking for the development of ftl interstellar travel before we make contact, we'll be finding out if they've progressed enough to have kebabs.

Thing is, being muslim they can't drink alcohol - when the feth do they eat Kebabs? I can't eat one unless I'm absolutely steam-rollered.

Seb excuse that wee bit of nationalism.. i am of course well aware that a Christian and a Muslim are essentially physically identical, but for some reason those chickenshit Turks just dont cut it. I mean, im going to be a bit bias for our guys, but I was talking about this with some mates of mine and we couldnt think of a logical reason they would behave that way other than their culture or Religion.

To be fair, it might be more the culture thing, i used to train with the American guys who were attached to us, and the Canadians and Europeans/commonwealth guys always seemed to be a happy with mainting their skills.

But the Turks? They never ever seemed to exercise, i never once saw any training or running or shooting on the range or stripping and cleaning weapons or anything, all they used to do was pray, drink tea that smelt funny, pray, watch TV and pray.

One of them once wandered into the gym on camp for a look around, and i think he picked up a medicine ball for a few seconds, but he just kinda... sniffed it?

Aye their a funny bunch.

Albatross wrote:Thing is, being muslim they can't drink alcohol - when the feth do they eat Kebabs? I can't eat one unless I'm absolutely steam-rollered.

After the 15th Turkish coffee.

dogma wrote:

Albatross wrote:Thing is, being muslim they can't drink alcohol - when the feth do they eat Kebabs? I can't eat one unless I'm absolutely steam-rollered.

After the 15th Turkish coffee.

Or smoking some herb from a hookah

mattyrm wrote:Seb excuse that wee bit of nationalism.. i am of course well aware that a Christian and a Muslim are essentially physically identical, but for some reason those chickenshit Turks just dont cut it. I mean, im going to be a bit bias for our guys, but I was talking about this with some mates of mine and we couldnt think of a logical reason they would behave that way other than their culture or Religion.

But I explained it, it comes from the relative levels of development in Turkey compared to the US and the UK.

Throughout most of history the soldier was a thug with a weapon first, and a soldier second. The disciplined, professional military is not that common... certainly more common now than ever before thanks to the improvements made in modern militaries training and organisational structures, but still in the minority when you consider how many countries don't have those abilities. You should read up on the Russian army some time, horrendously brutal training and utterly corrupt officer class... that ends up producing horrendously brutal and utterly corrupt grunts. It's nothing to do with being Russian Orthodox, and everything to do with culture, politics and accountability.

Ah, the irony of it all.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091205/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_nobel.

He goes to accept his prize for Peace knowing he just sent another 30,000 Americans to some gakhole to fight a war. Haha. Sad really. If he had balls he'd turn it down but he doesn't so he won't.

Fateweaver wrote:
He goes to accept his prize for Peace knowing he just sent another 30,000 Americans to some gakhole to fight a war. Haha. Sad really. If he had balls he'd turn it down but he doesn't so he won't.

You neither understand the concept of peace, nor the purpose of the Peace Prize (which is minimal at best).

I know peace can only be had through winning wars (at least the Conservatives believe that, I'm sure the UC Berkley students would say otherwise).

It's still ironic. That'd be like Charles Manson winning a humanitarian award WHILE he was killing all those people because he ran into a burning building and saved some 8yo kid.

There are others more deserving of the prize. He won it because of what he SAID he would do during his inauguration speech. If that's all it takes I for sure could lie and bs my way to a Peace Prize. He did it so I'm sure anybody with a brain cell could.

Can't blame the guy really. Just stop and think about the uproar amongst conservative Americans if he had just said 'right that's it - I'm bringing all the troops home tomorrow!' you guys would crucify him. The fact is, there's a job to do and relatively speaking, Afghanistan hasn't received the commitment that Iraq has in recent years. Obama obviously sees Afghanistan as more important to US security. And I agree with him.

That is the beauty of this country. I can disagree.

Yeah, to totally pull out now would create a gakstorm, as someone so eloquently put it. I just remember with Bush in office all the anti-Bush people were criticizing him for NOT pulling out right away and no amount of explaining could convince the lefties that that wasn't in the US best interest either (and I don't mean from a security stand point).

So of course Conservatives are going to question the lefties when they say "well, it's not in the US best interest to pull out of Afghanistan due to security interests."

I just love how the shoe fits fine on one foot (Obamanation) but it happens to be too big or too small on the other foot (Bushnation).

Technically (and I don't mean politically) terrorists from all countries that are against the "big mean West" are a security threat. Pretending the terrorists in Iraq are no more threatening than those in Afghanistan is like trying to convince the public that David Karesh wasn't nearly as evil as Charles Manson.

If you can come up with evidence that Saddam Hussein was even remotely linked to Al Qaida then I'll concede the point.

And I thought the Anti-Bush Mafia were more opposed to the war in Iraq - that was certainly the case here - I thought most people understood the reasons for us being in Afghanistan. Anti-Afghanistan war sentiment is only fairly recent in the UK.

Iraq had/has it's terrorists though. It doesn't matter who leads them, they hate the West.

The thing is what would the rest of the world had done if they were put in our shoes? Would France have been so calm had terrorists crashed a plane into the Eiffel Tower? Would the PM of GB been so calm had terrorists crashed a plane into Big Ben? I'd hate to think either country would have just turned a blind eye and said "well, this sucks but there is no reason we should retaliate. We'll just ramp up security around the rest of our landmarks/national monuments."

The sentiment I get from other countries is that even if Bush picking Iraq was a random choice and not one based on actual facts (and IIRC the leader of the 9/11 attacks is an Iraqi) we should have sat back and did nothing.

I'm a Patriot (and perhaps even a little bit Nationalist) so that means if someone feths with the peace and solidarity of my country you damn right I'll be the first screaming for blood. It baffles me to this day when I hear anti-Bush people from my own country say we shouldn't have done anything at all about 9/11, to have just let it go.

So again, if the Eiffel Tower got taken out and 1,000's killed would any of you Europeans, especially the French, practice what you preach or would you expect your leaders to do what Bush did?

I know of only one sure way to get rid of terrorists of any regime in a given country but it's considered by many to be "genocide and anti-humanitarian." It worked to bring Japan to it's knees, I'm sure it'd do the same against other countries.

Fateweaver wrote:Ah, the irony of it all.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091205/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_nobel.

He goes to accept his prize for Peace knowing he just sent another 30,000 Americans to some gakhole to fight a war. Haha. Sad really. If he had balls he'd turn it down but he doesn't so he won't.

Are you against catching Bin Laden and stopping Al Qaeda?

So again, if the Eiffel Tower got taken out and 1,000's killed would any of you Europeans, especially the French, practice what you preach or would you expect your leaders to do what Bush did?

Invade Afghanistan. Probably. The Taliban were sheltering Al Qaida. What the feth has that got to do with Iraq? Brits were killed on September 11th. And again on July 7th.

and IIRC the leader of the 9/11 attacks is an Iraqi

Nope, don't think so. Couldn't find any refrences to this. Not that it matters. Most of the highjackers were Saudi - Saudi Arabia remains un-invaded.

Fateweaver wrote:
There are others more deserving of the prize. He won it because of what he SAID he would do during his inauguration speech. If that's all it takes I for sure could lie and bs my way to a Peace Prize. He did it so I'm sure anybody with a brain cell could.

That's usually what the Peace Prize is awarded for, at least with respect to American Presidents. You could probably extend that to any hegemonic nation, but we won't know until there actually is another one. If the next Chinese PM wins a Peace Prize for statements about human rights, we'll know.

Wasn't there some Russian scientist who had developed or was working on a vaccine for something.

How do empty promises outweigh that?

No, this is not anti-Obama talk. Had Bush gotten one in the time frame Obama did (ie 2 weeks) than I'd be asking the same questions.

Albatross wrote:

So again, if the Eiffel Tower got taken out and 1,000's killed would any of you Europeans, especially the French, practice what you preach or would you expect your leaders to do what Bush did?

Invade Afghanistan. Probably. The Taliban were sheltering Al Qaida. What the feth has that got to do with Iraq? Brits were killed on September 11th. And again on July 7th.

and IIRC the leader of the 9/11 attacks is an Iraqi

Nope, don't think so. Couldn't find any refrences to this. Not that it matters. Most of the highjackers were Saudi - Saudi Arabia remains un-invaded.

Probably because Saudi Arabia wasn't the organization backing the hijackers.

Al-Qaeda and the Taliban were.

he would have been awarded the noble prize for medicine, not the peace prize.

Kanluwen wrote:

Albatross wrote:

So again, if the Eiffel Tower got taken out and 1,000's killed would any of you Europeans, especially the French, practice what you preach or would you expect your leaders to do what Bush did?

Invade Afghanistan. Probably. The Taliban were sheltering Al Qaida. What the feth has that got to do with Iraq? Brits were killed on September 11th. And again on July 7th.

and IIRC the leader of the 9/11 attacks is an Iraqi

Nope, don't think so. Couldn't find any refrences to this. Not that it matters. Most of the highjackers were Saudi - Saudi Arabia remains un-invaded.

Probably because Saudi Arabia wasn't the organization backing the hijackers.

Al-Qaeda and the Taliban were.

Yeah, that's my point - nationality isn't that important, membership of Al Qaida is.

Fateweaver wrote:Iraq had/has it's terrorists though. It doesn't matter who leads them, they hate the West.

Putting every single terrorist in the same category then giving them the same motive and threat capacity is monumentally stupid. A guy planting roadside bombs in Iraq is not the same thing as a guy with the connections and funding to allow him to blow up. And neither are related at all to the countless terrorist groups that are driven by local issues, such as FARC or the Basque seperatists.

Seriously dude, you need to think before you post.

The thing is what would the rest of the world had done if they were put in our shoes? Would France have been so calm had terrorists crashed a plane into the Eiffel Tower? Would the PM of GB been so calm had terrorists crashed a plane into Big Ben? I'd hate to think either country would have just turned a blind eye and said "well, this sucks but there is no reason we should retaliate. We'll just ramp up security around the rest of our landmarks/national monuments."

Actually, Bush said AQ was responsible and they're in Afghanistan and the rest of the world said alright, and not only supported the attack but deployed troops of our own to aid.

It was when you went and attacked a country with no involvement in the attacks that a lot of countries backed off. That there was any support at all tells you how much goodwill the US had built up before that.

The sentiment I get from other countries is that even if Bush picking Iraq was a random choice and not one based on actual facts (and IIRC the leader of the 9/11 attacks is an Iraqi) we should have sat back and did nothing.

No, none of the attackers were Iraqi. It's been the most talked about event of the last eight years, you really should have the basic facts by now.

I'm a Patriot (and perhaps even a little bit Nationalist) so that means if someone feths with the peace and solidarity of my country you damn right I'll be the first screaming for blood. It baffles me to this day when I hear anti-Bush people from my own country say we shouldn't have done anything at all about 9/11, to have just let it go.

That's a crappy, crappy strawman. The criticism is due to invading a country that wasn't harbouring the terrorists, and supporting that invasion by drawing resources away from the securing and rebuilding of a country that was directly connected to the terrorist attacks.

I know of only one sure way to get rid of terrorists of any regime in a given country but it's considered by many to be "genocide and anti-humanitarian." It worked to bring Japan to it's knees, I'm sure it'd do the same against other countries.

You might only know one way, but that only shows your limited knowledge of the subject, and says nothing about the effective methods of stopping insurgencies.

The british certainly managed to deal with terrorism without resorting to nuclear weapons or even overwhelming military force. They don't get enough recognition for that fact, I reckon, especially over here. To my mind, they've some of the best schemes for dealing with terrorism because of that experience.

Yeah Boss, i served in Northern Ireland, and it was hard for us troops on the ground sometimes, because the things the command always pushed was "hearts and minds"

We basically got told to smile when people insulted us. It was really hard for a young lad like me, and for a long time afterwards i nursed some sort of, warped grudge against Irish people because literally every single person i met when i was in South Armagh absolutely hated me. I remember being outside a post office near Crossmaglen and i said "morning" to a young woman and she said "what the feth is your problem?"

The thing i realised as i got older was that we all get "brainwashed" in some degree. The people that i happened to meet, have been told since birth to hate either catholics or Prods or Brits or whatever, and it takes a certain world understanding with age to realise that there are people from all walks of life, in all countries on earth. There is no such thing as an "evil" country and the whole "patriotism" thing has always annoyed me, i do not think that patriotism is a virtue, and this from a guy who served in Iraq twice, Afghanistan twice, Sierra Leone, Northern Ireland.

With that knowledge, a certain degree of pity washed over me when i was fighting the Taliban. I understand that many of these people are given balaclavas and AK-47s before they can walk properly. What chance do they have? We should wage war if we must, but never give into blind hatred.

Basically I think that alot of these Republican types are far far too happy to see us bomb the gak out of people. Sure im happy to go to Iraq, but i dont glory in the violence. I am also endlessly irritated by peoples ignorance of the situation. Afghanistan is NOT Iraq, and a great many people seem to be ignorant of this. I remain firmly behind the Afghanistan conflict, but the more i think about it, the more i question why we went to Iraq. Being a military man i will never be up in arms about it, or go on a fething peace march. But im definately perplexed as to the point of it all.

I'm sorry you had such a negative experience, and glad you came out of it with such a good perspective. My brother would be very similar to you in outlook, he was also in the Royal Marines. I agree with you about patriotism, I've never been fond of it.

Fateweaver wrote:Wasn't there some Russian scientist who had developed or was working on a vaccine for something.

How do empty promises outweigh that?

He would have won the Nobel for Medicine. There are multiple categories.

The Peace Prize is essentially an award for pleasant, political rhetoric.

dogma wrote:The Peace Prize is essentially an award for pleasant, political rhetoric.

And a way to raise the international profile of a person and their actions towards peace. As a result they often hand it out to someone who is making an effort towards peace, rather than waiting until they've achieved their goals.

Which means you sometimes get a case like José Ramos-Horta, where the peace prize raised considerable international attention to his campaign for East Timorese freedom. Whereas other times you get Yassar Arafat.

mattyrm wrote: I remember being outside a post office near Crossmaglen and i said "morning" to a young woman and she said "what the feth is your problem?"

Wait I thought that was the standard greeting from all women...