Situation in A'Stan Deteriorating - Adm Mullen

I hate to say this but the damned insurgency and everything is giving a lot of America haters a lot of undue hope.
If folks think this is bad... wait until the next war comes rolling in. Right or wrong, it's going to be a LOT harder to fight.

The problem is that the enemy has time on its side. Whereas the American public want results within four months, they can continue to slug it out for forty years (or more).
 
We just don't have the stomach for closing down the Pakistan border effectively; so our forces have one arm tied behind their backs; Redneck's forecast of a possible 40 years is over-optimistic; they would enjoy 100 years of duck-shooting our troops. It is war and they are fighting for keeps, but at their leisure.

US has already been hit in its very heart, that's what started this; the enemy meant it and their method deliberately displayed their hatred; enjoying the fate of women and children on planes. Those US warriors who took them on , on the plane , led the way and gave the right call.
 
Last edited:
They want it to be clean and quick and realtively bloodless. No they don't have the stomach to understand what needs to be done to win this, nor to comprehend how long it will take to do it right,or why it needs to be done right in the first place.

Case in point the issue with the F16's and stolen fuel tankers, recently. OMG they killed civilians it's the Germans who called in the airstrike's fault....it's the Pilots fault. Those poor innocent civilans were just siphoning gas. No mention of the taliban who stole the tankers or the fact that the civies might actually be in cahoots. Nope it's our fault. People don't understand that insuregents mix among the people and you can't avoid all civie casualties.
 
Yep. With the enemy, it's no holds barred. It pays always to remember that. That is why they consider that they are stronger, tougher, than us; and are happy to tell us that, and what they are going to do to us; of course, we never believe them. Listen to them, they mean it.
 
the_13th_redneck said:
The problem is that the enemy has time on its side. Whereas the American public want results within four months, they can continue to slug it out for forty years (or more).
Click to expand...
Forty,...??? I think that you'll find that figure should be four hundred. just look at the Afghan's past. They approach this with an entirely different mindset to us. they will just keep going until they win,... as every individual fighter sees this not as a national thing, but as a personal affront to his manhood and his religion, and if you have the slightest inkling of their culture you will realise that that is a fatal error to make.

Unlike our culture, they have no qualms whatsoever about using treachery and murder of whoever gets in their way, as a weapon, and they do it willingly and completely without reservation. The only way to actually "beat" them is to kill them. Unfortunately our rules of warfare will not allow us to do it in the same ways as they do, because we are supposedly "civilised" and have made rules which put us at a very serious disadvantage.

At the risk of being called traitorous I will say that we cannot win using our current strategy. Other than nuking the whole place and starting again, we will either get dragged into another guerrilla war lasting beyond our lifetimes, or we will end up doing as the Russkies did and weaselling out of the place.

I firmly believe that we should adopt a strategy whereby we become technically superior guerrillas, effectively taking them on at their own game and beating them with our technological superiority, sitting miles away and using our skills to acquire intelligence and then use knowledge to pick off targets of opportunity with UAVs etc., without a man within hundreds of miles of the place.

If we try to duke it out, man for man, we will lose, as have done every other group who have attempted to control the Afghans. they made it too messy for the Russians to accept, so we will have no chance whatsoever we are only fooling ourselves..
 
Last edited:
I agree that some people don't have the stomach (they are annoying) for the realities of war and the world leaders should just ask or remind the People ...do you want the Terrorists to come to our own homeland? ...then our leaders should loosen up the military R & R's and hit hard. Maybe blank out reports for that specific duration but show the rebuilding. :type:
 
I think we're just doing it wrong.
If you want to catch someone, the best way to do it is to watch out for him, hear him... while giving him the impression that he is absolutely safe.
 
That strategy would have to be the Afghani's themselves since most of our own military guys would stick out of the crowd though, wouldn't they? :)
 
There are other ways. Wait a year... he's going to want to make a phone call. Another year after that or maybe two years.. he'll make a few more. Then he's going to start feeling a little invincible. He will eventually make a pretty fatal mistake. That's when you get him.
 
I think the leadership in Afghanistan jumped the gun on this "Soft Power" approach. I am sorry but you can not send out AG units into combat zones and expect them to do their job. That area has to be taken and held before we can do ANY kind of populace/economy building. My mom is trying to jump on one of these missions and I am a bit worried about it. She is not a combat soldier. You send your grunts out to draw fire, they engage and push the enemy back. They lock the town down and weed out any scumbags still in hiding. THEN you send in the pogues.

The only path to victory I see to this war is hunter-killer teams. Plain and simple. You locate the enemy, utterly destroy them and move on to the next. Chase their asses back to Pakistan if you have too... Yes we need to build relationships with the locals but a relationship means nothing if you have scumbags trying to kill your family on a daily basis. As us military folks are always taught, nothing comes before security. Pakistan needs to pull their heads out of their asses and man up as well. Go tear those maggots up who have taken over your country....... Soldiers on the ground are getting fed up being mortared from Pakistan. They have already sent rounds over the border and all it takes is one pissed off BC to start dropping some heavy ****.
 
Just me Z but I think this whole soft power thing is being dictated above the head of the theater commander. Hearts and minds is great but I think certain entities don't want to be seen as fighting an all out war.
 
Agreed. We have to take the fight to our enemy, thats our doctrine. I know that our leadership has did their time and know their **** but come on. It seems like there is too much micro managing going on. Let those eager rifle companys go out and do their thing.
 
Personally, I don't think that "Soft Power" has much bearing on the way this will end, unless of course you are advocating that we literally bomb the whole country back into the stone age. Never the less i still don't think that would have a great effect so long as there was one religious fundamentalist remaining, as these people are trying to drive the country back in that direction themselves.

What ever we do, the fact remains that the only areas we can actually control are those where we stand at any particular moment.

One day we have a sweep through an area and clear out the bad guys, then the moment we move on it reverts to Taliban control, or in some cases somewhat before that, and in other cases it is never ours as the "civil" occupants are the Taliban.

Our style of warfare whether it be hard or soft has all the benefits and characteristics of a cinder block standing in a stream, while our enemy just flows all around us slowly, but ever so surely, wearing us down.
 
Last edited:
You are right about holding ground. We could use some more NATO troops to hold that ground while we send other elements to do the clearing. It is a pretty large country to have some form of force in every area. Our biggest problem is that our enemy has freedom of movement in some areas. If your enemy has freedom of movement that also means he can take the initiative. This is a pretty complicated situation but its not lost. We have rock solid procedures for dealing with this type of thing. We can operate in a way that no matter what you do you can not stop us.

As cheesy as this sounds I am always reminded of COL Kurtz in Apocalypse Now when I think of the way our soldiers hands are tied.

"If I had 10 divisions of those men this war could be over really quick" and its not the troops on the ground thats the problem.
 
Last edited:
I'm just wondering as to what the main objective in Afghanistan is.
Is it the arrest of Osama Bin Laden?
The destruction of the Taliban?
Creation of Afghanistan as a democratic state?

If the objective is to get Osama Bin Laden, it's being done all wrong.
If it's the destruction of the Taliban, you're going to need a lot more troops.
The third one means American troops have to be present until those guys actually get a half decent economy going. Basically the US military has to be in Afghanistan in full force for a very very long time.

Personally with things like 9/11, I'm a bigger fan of bringing maximum violence to the enemy in the shortest amount of time and not getting stuck in a ground war with them. Part of what empowers the enemy is the ability to actually physically fight against the Americans. If you remove that, they will actually lose a lot of their power base.
Maximum violence meaning destroying their villages, fields and just about everything and leaving a warning note saying if anyone tries that 9/11 thing again, they will be eating glass.
The next time some dude shows up at their village calling for volunteers for Jihad the reception won't be so hot.
Send in UAVs to do the gardening duties as necessary.
 
Big_Z said:
We have rock solid procedures for dealing with this type of thing. We can operate in a way that no matter what you do you can not stop us.

As cheesy as this sounds I am always reminded of COL Kurtz in Apocalypse Now when I think of the way our soldiers hands are tied.
Click to expand...
To me it sounds typical of something out of a movie, and that's the problem people are letting their imagination do their reasoning instead of facing the facts. If we had every UN soldier in the world, it would make no difference as there are simply not enough to put one on every single square yard of Afghanistan, because that is what it would take.

"If I had 10 divisions of those men this war could be over really quick" and its not the troops on the ground thats the problem.
Click to expand...
That is quite correct, they are certainly not the problem,... where the problem lies is in the fact that they are not the solution either. As much as we like to think we are in control, you only have to look at what is happening to realise that we in the coalition are the only people over there that believe it.
 
senojekips said:
To me it sounds typical of something out of a movie, and that's the problem people are letting their imagination do their reasoning instead of facing the facts. If we had every UN soldier in the world, it would make no difference as there are simply not enough to put one on every single square yard of Afghanistan, because that is what it would take.

That is quite correct, they are certainly not the problem,... where the problem lies is in the fact that they are not the solution either. As much as we like to think we are in control, you only have to look at what is happening to realise that we in the coalition are the only people over there that believe it.
Click to expand...

I am not sure where you stand on this matter. What is it you think we should do? And no Im not being a smartass. The only solution I can see is to fight. Take away thier playground and you will be seeing them on your street.
 
the_13th_redneck said:
The question is can you have a hundred thousand soldiers in Afghanistan for the next hundred years?
Click to expand...


In that case should you even be there at all if you do not have an end game strategy, realistically no nation is going to tolerate a sizable chunk of it armed forces at risk for that long.

It seems to me that one of the biggest problems faced in the "War on Terror" is that it has no end game, you can't tell when you have won and for the most part you cant even tell if you are winning because there is no measure of success.

In terms of Afghanistan I think the easiest option is to pick a tolerable warlord and let them fight it out with western support.
 
MontyB said:
In terms of Afghanistan I think the easiest option is to pick a tolerable warlord and let them fight it out with western support.
Click to expand...

Completely on board with this one.
Or else there is no end.
Let him know that the support does require him to adhere to "some" rules or else it becomes awkward for the West to provide him with the edge to be the de-facto power and ruler of Afghanistan.

Monty, the way things are going I don't see HOW our side can ever not have a hundred thousand troops there for about a hundred years. Can you? If people think this sort of thing ends with Pakistan, they're badly mistaken there as well. Like you said, we need a dictator in Afghanistan that isn't crazy about blowing up our own people.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top