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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.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
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".