Dumb question: if more troops didn't make a difference in Iraq, why would they in Afghanistan?

[yurbud]

I agree with Obama that the surge had little to do with things calming down in Iraq, but if that's the case, why would it help in Afghanistan?

Why not build schools and give them some economic choices beyond growing poppies and polishing the pipeline?

[anonymous171]

1. The Taliban

[rzemanfl]

2. It is a whole different military situation they need to get into the

border areas cross into Pakistan if necessary and finally get that fucker Bin Laden (if he really is still alive). Bin Laden will not survive Obama's first term, if he isn't dead already.

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[GihrenZabi]

16. What does this have to do with anything?

Must you volunteer for any cause to champion its necessity or wisdom? That's ridiculous reasoning at best.

[jody]

23. Post #2 said we must attack into Pakistan. My question was in response to broaden the war because

that clearly requires more troops than DoD has at the moment.

[Cha]

17. Your thread was locked on that but you just keep

trying to stir SHIT.

[jody]

24. See my #23. n/t

[rzemanfl]

19. I'm sixty years old, wars should be fought by old guys with less

to lose, but they'd probably have to get someone to carry me and my gun.

[Danger Mouse]

22. How is it relevant and how is it any of your GD business?

[jody]

25. See my post #23. n/t

[Danger Mouse]

34. I don't think we should invade Pakistan. I think our first job is starting to get out of Iraq

before we pour troops into afghanistan.

[jody]

35. Agree. In the meantime, DoD still uses stop-loss to keep troops on active duty beyond their

commitment.

We are short of troops and we should spread the risk of fighting among all levels of society if we are going to fight overseas.

I would like to see Obama and McCain promise to never use stop-loss as president but use the draft instead.

[Danger Mouse]

42. That would be wildly unpopular,neither option is very good but stop-loss is worse

[Marrah_G]

33. Ignore it, they are just flamebaiting

[jody]

36. I'm making a point that McCain and Obama are both war-mongers. Afghanistan is not a threat to the US

but oil-companies will not be able to build a pipeline from the Caspian oil basin to ports in Pakistan as long as Afghanistan's government is not pro US.

Those who support any presidential candidate unconditionally automatically support her/his Bush-like war policies and they should volunteer to fight in wars of US aggression UNLESS that supporter aggressively lobbies against that candidate's war policies.

I won't give Obama or McCain any slack on that issue.

[stillcool]

44. Bush like war policies?

or war policies of the United States since WWII?

[jody]

45. Good point. n/t

[jody]

3. The Afghanistan peoples will solve their own problems, not some foreign invader.

The population is composed of:
* Pashtun: 42%
* Tajik: 27%
* Hazara: 9%
* Uzbek: 9%
* Aimak: 4%
* Turkmen: 3%
* Baloch: 2%

The Taliban is composed primarily of members of the Pashtun group.

[Kdillard]

4. I thought Obama wasn't just calling for more troops which are desperately needed but also for us to

use diplomacy and all other methods available to us so that a dent can be made in Afghanistan. At least from what I have heard I don't think he believes that the troops alone can get the job done. He seems to be aware of the intricacies involved in the region moreso than McCain.

[hobbit709]

5. How many troops did the Soviets have there?

And how far did that get them?

[Hippo_Tron]

10. They would've done fine if we hadn't given the Mujahideen our weapons

[Bad Thoughts]

15. Actually, some of the most successful receive liitle aid from US

Massoud received surprisingly little aid--almost no money and no arms.

[PurityOfEssence]

29. Up to 104,000 at any one time; 13,836 killed over 10 years. Over 1 million Afghans killed.

The wounded, drug-addicted, disabled and otherwise ruined people are in the numerous millions.

Personally, I'd like ANYBODY to describe what a "victory" would look like before we go on this crusade.

[Bad Thoughts]

6. The point of the Surge was not an injection of troops

This is a difficult point to get across in normal political discourse: Democrats always said that the occupation of Iraq was undermanned and that more soldiers were needed.

According to its original mission, the Surge was supposed to create military conditions, particularly in Baghdad, that would allow Maliki to pursue reconciliation among Iraq's social and ethnic groups.

That mission failed. Maliki was both unwilling and incapable of pursuing reconciliation.

The resources dedicated to the Surge were then dedicated to supported a transformation already taking place. Sunni insurgents ended their accommodation with al Qaeda. They did not share the same vision of a theological state, and the two groups turned on each other. Patreus offered money, material and support to this movement after it was already half a year old.

Here's the kicker: the Surge armed the insurgents. It armed the Jihadists, many of the people who were killing our soldiers.

More soldiers would probably help in Afghanistan. European troops are better at peace keeping and nation building tasks, but they are being used for counter insurgency. More US soldiers could take over this task, and everyone would be doing what they do best. Arming the Afghani insurgents is risky, to say the least, and it was in Iraq.

I highly recommend Steven Simon's The Price of the Surge (Foreign Affairs, May/June 2008).

[Occam Bandage]

7. "Why not build schools and give them some economic choices?"

Difficult to do that when the Taliban has effective control of the town, now isn't it?

[yurbud]

26. it's harder to get control if people don't want you. Also, is the Taliban a threat to us or just

their own people?

[Marrah_G]

31. Mostly to their own people, but they also happily sponsor terrorists

......not just against us, but also against other countries.

[yurbud]

39. ''host'' terrorists would be more accurate. The ''sponsors'' were Saudi Arabia per Congress'

Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/09/05/911_hijackers_tied_to_saudi_government_graham_says_in_book/

[spindrifter]

9. The number of troops is not going to do anything

to help except as they serve as guards for projects to repair the infrastructure.

[Hippo_Tron]

11. Increased aid is a crucial part of Obama's foreign policy

He is the author of the Global Poverty Act which will increase our foreign aid to .7% of GNP like the rest of the developed world does. Given that Afghanistan and Pakistan are probably the most crucial nations to our foreign policy, they will have special emphasis.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

12. Because Afghanistan is not Iraq

In Afghanistan there is an armed militia that is taking and holding strategic positions in the country, not just a disjointed series of snipers and car-bombers. What's more, that armed militia is capable of destabilizing TWO nations, one of which has a nuclear arsenal. The Taliban relies on its militia, which can be defeated militarily.

That being said, there are a host of issues that not even guns AND butter will solve in Afghanistan. And unfortunately, a generation of political isolation by the Taliban means that there aren't any natural third party nations that can provide us with much assistance.

[Avalux]

13. Actually, Obama has said the addition of 30K troops would quell the violence.

That's not the issue. The issue is crediting the surge with any sort of political change, like the Sunni Awakening, which began before the surge.

It's a complicated and the Republicans, like they so often do, have tried to make black and white. The media plays along.

If people would listen to Obama they'd hear what he said at the time of the surge and now.

[pansypoo53219]

14. because we coulda done it right in afghanistan.

but no, the taliban is back and stronger. the usual shitjob from midass.

[ChimpersMcSmirkers]

18. To be quite honest, I think we need to be raiding Pakistan more.

Pakistan is too much of a sanctuary for the Tali-ban and Al Quida. How we do that without destabilizing a nuclear country I'm not so sure.

[Hippo_Tron]

20. You can't, and that's the problem

As Joe Biden said during the debates "Under Bush we haven't had a Pakistan Policy we've had a Musharraf policy". Essentially we've put all of our bets on Musharraf and if he falls, we're screwed. And lets not even get into the fact that Musharraf is an anti-democratic thug.

[Marrah_G]

32. Spot on

[yurbud]

40. We would not be screwed. Pakistan would. If they sold their nukes to terrorist and one got here...

they would be wiped off the map.

None of those countries is a threat to us. The worst case scenario is that our influence over them declines, nothing more.

Further, Pakistan is in bed with the Taliban and to a murky degree even al Qaeda.

[Levgreee]

21. Because right now they are undersupplied and under-manned

when you have deficiency in these categories you need more. Iraq didn't have a deficiency, per se (although in a way it did since it would take 500k troops to police the area), because in relation to the mission in Iraq the difference in troop level wouldn't make a strategic difference.

[bobd0]

27. Juan Cole - A Social History of the Surge

McCain is drastically oversimplifying, ignoring, and in some cases outright lying about events in Iraq and their effects prior to and during "the surge". And the MSM talking heads, like Moron Joe and his embarrassingly ditsy sidekick Mika Brzezinski on MSNBC, repeat McCain's oversimplifications to simpletons until they become accepted political dogma.

"EVERYONE knows the surge worked!"

Yeah, right.

http://www.juancole.com/2008/07/social-history-of-surge.html

Understanding complex events is hard work and most Americans have no stomach for that type of hard work. So, unfortunately, oversimplification is what many Americans crave -- ergo the success of the Republican Party. They know their target audience and its capacity, or lack thereof, to research or comprehend complex events.

I have very little faith that the American electorate will take the time or make the effort to fully understand this or any other issue. That's how we wind up with intellectually lazy idiots in power like Bush -- because so many Americans are intellectually lazy idiots just like him.

Present company, of course, excluded.

This is why I fear we could wind up with an intellectually lazy idiot like "I can't find the internet" McCain as president -- and, God forbid, four more years.

[stillcool]

43. I am one of those...

who do not fully understand this issue. The only thing I know about Afghanistan is how it played in the pipeline end of things, and the all so lucrative poppy. But that was years ago. I don't even know if those pipelines (oil and gas) are being built, or are still proposed. I understand when those the U.S. puts in power don't do the right thing..shit happens. How all the surrounding countries in the Middle-east, as well as China, Russia and the rest of the world play into all this is completely unknown to me. I had it kind of figured out, but it seems like it's all changed..and every time I see the word "Terrorist", I disengage. The word has become synonymous with propaganda.

[muryan]

28. This isnt the urban/metropolitan fighting of Iraq

Afghanistan is a country where boots on the ground, helping cover larger amounts of territory can make a difference.

And who said more troops in Iraq didn't make a difference? Thats buying into the republican bullshit attack line. The fact of the matter is those troops made a big difference, as well as the sunni awakening, and some of the shia militias going into hiding. McCain wants people to think iraqs current condition is an end result of the surge, and nothing else. That simply isnt true

[jody]

38. IMO some of the stability in Iraq is the result of communities completing their local version of

ethnic cleansing with Shia and Sunni and Kurds effectively within their own cultural communities.

I believe about 65% of the marriages in Iraq are between first and second cousins. That is the tradition in a tribal society of which the Hebrews of Old Testament fame are one instance.

I doubt if western nations can force the Iraqi peoples to instantly renounce their heritage and adopt western cultural.

[yurbud]

46. and figuring out that the al Qaeda (Saudi) foreign fighters were assholes who weren't helping to end

the occupation

[iconicgnom]

30. Well, that's Obama's plan. He plans on changing direction.

[Johonny]

37. there were reports last year

about the gains Afghanistan made since the Taliban was thrown out of power and the lack of strong international follow up to security was having to that stability. I think there was at the time a general consensus an increase in security forces was needed to keep the Taliban from reforming and to keep the social reforms safe. I think had Bush 7 years ago made more effort a strong international force could have made a real difference to that country. Now I think it may be too late.

[yurbud]

41. no one cares about helping Afghans. they want the poppies or the pipeline, nothing more