Trump for the win

[bobtodrick]

Anyone watching the presidential broadcast tonight on Afghanistan.
Looks like Trump wants to win and will be upping the ante.
About time.

[Twisted Canuck]

So, he is planning on joining the long list of other foreign invaders who have had great success in pacifying Afghanistan...? With a whole 2000 more troops?

Good luck with that. A history lesson may be in order.

There have been allied and US boots on the ground there for 16 years. The Soviets were there from Dec 1979 till Feb 1989, over 9 years. How's that all worked out? And you can keep going back and back. I think they have had more years of war than peace in the last 200 years. Pretty sure nobody won yet...

[Unregistered user]

You missed his speech or misinterpreted it.

[Twisted Canuck]

Originally Posted by Unregistered user

You missed his speech or misinterpreted it.

I can't listen to him for too long, it makes my IQ drop. Doesn't matter, nothing he says or does will make a lick of difference there. 25 years of hardcore war there out of the last 38 years. Progress made?

[bobtodrick]

Originally Posted by Twisted Canuck

So, he is planning on joining the long list of other foreign invaders who have had great success in pacifying Afghanistan...? With a whole 2000 more troops?

Good luck with that. A history lesson may be in order.

Did you watch the broadcast (course not, but comment anyways).
He specifically did not mention numbers, because (and he is correct in this) obviously Obama's method of broadcasting everything you're going to do beforehand didn't work.
You don't think his (Obama's) telling the world the exact date they were going to pull out of Iraq wasn't a joke.
I can see it now...all of the people who became ISIS sitting there laughing and saying 'hey, we just have to lay low til 2011 and it's all ours'.
As far as learning from history the problem has been that no one has committed the time it takes to change a society in Afghanistan.
The Brits devoted 100 years to India and it worked...it went from a feudal tribal country to what is going to be one of the future economic powerhouses...so it can be done.
Whether Trump (or succeding presidents) will stay the course remains to be seen.
But in the last couple of years their has been a massive resurgence of Al Quiada and ISIS (and the Russians have been shown to be covertly funding them)...a abandoning Afghanistan now is definitely not the thing to do.

[Dubious]

Originally Posted by bobtodrick

Anyone watching the presidential broadcast tonight on Afghanistan.
Looks like Trump wants to win and will be upping the ante.
About time.

At its peak the Americans had around 90,000 boots on the ground that dosnt include the ISAF troops combined the troop numbers were closer to 140,000. I don't think the increase to 8000 is really going to do a lot for trump and his "winning" Afghanistan is a very complicated place I'm sure it will remain in its current state for decades to come just as it has been for Thousands of years since Alexander the Great held it.

[Grizzly Adams]

Originally Posted by Unregistered user

You missed his speech or misinterpreted it.

Point is, Afghanistan is a bottomless pit, when it comes to invaders. Best course would be to seal off the borders and let them kill each other, that's what the Afghans excel at. Afghans put the final nail in the coffin of the Soviets, time will tell if that holds for the Americans as well. they've been there 16 years and have accomplished nothing. Seems to me victory was declared once already and everybody went home, including the Canadians

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...=.220d950217e6

Grizz

[Twisted Canuck]

Trump: 'blah blah blah in the end we will win blah blah blah Americans are weary of not winning wars blah blah blah....'

That about cover it bobtodrick?

Do you really think that because Trump said it, it's going to really happen this time? Hell, he can't even deal with health care in his own country. Or ban Muslims from travelling there. Or build a wall. And he's going to fix Afghanistan now? Hmmmm. The Brits tried war 3 times at the height of their Rule Brittania days, from 1839 I believe until 1919? Yeah. The Anglo Afghan wars were a bloodbath too. They invented PTSD there, the old save the last bullet for yourself and don't let the women take you alive. Read about it sometime.

As I said, good luck with that.

[Red Bullets]

Trump needs to smoke some afghani weed. Then Afghanistan would be his buddies.

[EZM]

Trump has a history of making big promises and accomplishing nothing.

Trump has a history of compulsive lying.

Trump has demonstrated a staggering lack of understanding the most basic foreign policy and world politics.

I watched his pattern repeat on a daily basis for the last 8 months and I expect nothing significant to occur in Afghanistan that will improve the situation there. This is yet another giant puff of hot air to divert the attention from his last daily self inflicted train wreck.

[bobtodrick]

Twisted...you obviously have no idea what is going on right now in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
If we (meaning at this point the American's) just pull out now, what we have been dealing with in regards to ISIS (and assorted others) since 2014 is going to look like child's play.

[SlimChance]

Originally Posted by bobtodrick

As far as learning from history the problem has been that no one has committed the time it takes to change a society in Afghanistan.
The Brits devoted 100 years to India and it worked...it went from a feudal tribal country to what is going to be one of the future economic powerhouses...so it can be done.

To learn from history you need to get it right first.

The British conquered the Mughal empire in India, which was anything but a tribal, feudal society. Before the British conquest, the Mughals manufactured a quarter of the world's textiles and had a shipbuilding industry larger than the British and Dutch combined. They build the bloody Taj Mahal 200 years before the Brits showed up. They conquered an economic powerhouse, they didn't build it.

The British also spent 80 years trying to gain control of Afghanistan (amounting to three major wars). It never did work out for them.

[Twisted Canuck]

Originally Posted by bobtodrick

Twisted...you obviously have no idea what is going on right now in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
If we (meaning at this point the American's) just pull out now, what we have been dealing with in regards to ISIS (and assorted others) since 2014 is going to look like child's play.

Obviously. Because the smart money (like the Trillion already spent) is on continuing on this same course of action, (definition of insanity?) because eventually ISIS and the Taliban will all retire to the Shady Oaks Retirement Home for Ideological Zealots when they realize that Trump Really Means What He Says.

Obviously.

[ETOWNCANUCK]

I thought this was going to be about him looking at the eclipse.

[Redfrog]

Originally Posted by Twisted Canuck

Obviously. Because the smart money (like the Trillion already spent) is on continuing on this same course of action, (definition of insanity?) because eventually ISIS and the Taliban will all retire to the Shady Oaks Retirement Home for Ideological Zealots when they realize that Trump Really Means What He Says.

Obviously.

How do you think the situation should be handled?

[Twisted Canuck]

Originally Posted by Redfrog

How do you think the situation should be handled?

Hell if I know. Build a 1000' wall around the whole country and fill it with water? Could it possibly be that there isn't actually an answer to that question? Trying to apply our western civilized mind set to that situation is quite possibly never going to provide a solution that will 'fix' it. Trying to impose our idea of what the solution is, obviously isn't fixing it either. Short of an all out nuclear holocaust and turning the whole area into a sea of radioactive glass, I don't see a solution (and I don't endorse that one). Ideological zealots don't come with a very reliable instruction manual. Their default world view is pretty much anathema to anything our minds can comprehend, and trying to solve it with conventional (warfare) means, or economic sanctions, or diplomatic talks and treaties, seems to plays right into their ideological game plan. We aren't talking about sane people here, by our metric of judging sanity.

And I am not suggesting that ALL the people living in those hell holes are ideological zealots, I am very specifically talking about the zealots. But the folks who live there don't have any capacity to deal with them either, apparently.

We could pull out the troops, leave them to their own devices, and be dealing with them on our own soil (which is already happening to our allies) in an ever escalating battle here. Or nuke them there. Pretty much sums it up in my mind. Teaching them to 'police' themselves and behave is a joke.

Maybe we could flood their country with flat screen tv's, Xboxes, playstations, smart phones, Netflix, and energy drinks by the boatload, so that in another generation their youth will be too apathetic to wage jihad?

So, no real solution. What have you got?

[260 Rem]

Obviously, we would all like to see the bad guys crushed but there are some realities...the most obvious being that there will always be more bad guys...and there will always be places for bad guys to hide. EDIT: The hiding places no longer need to be countries, not even cities....just an apartment with an internet connection.

It appears the most likely path for peace in Afghanistan involves a coalition with the Taliban and it is unlikely that a few more thousand US troops will force the Taliban to the table when only a few years before, the surge to 90,000 didn't do the job.
Without targeting sites inside Pakistan, there is little reason to believe that bad guys will not continue to hide there.
It looks the status quo will prevail throughout the Trump admin which the bad guys are probably assuming will only last another three years...and they are a patient lot.

[Bub]

Originally Posted by ETOWNCANUCK

I thought this was going to be about him looking at the eclipse.

Lol

[Unregistered user]

Originally Posted by Twisted Canuck

Obviously. Because the smart money (like the Trillion already spent) is on continuing on this same course of action, (definition of insanity?) because eventually ISIS and the Taliban will all retire to the Shady Oaks Retirement Home for Ideological Zealots when they realize that Trump Really Means What He Says.

Obviously.

Again, you never heard the speech. Trump said the previous plan did not work and they are taking a new approach to solving the problem. The U.S. just wants to kill the terrorists then let Afghanistan reuild itself the way it deems fit and not in "America's image". The US is not an invader but an ally that wants to help Afghanistan create its own secure and independent future.

[bobtodrick]

Originally Posted by 260 Rem

Obviously, we would all like to see the bad guys crushed but there are some realities...the most obvious being that there will always be more bad guys...and there will always be places for bad guys to hide. EDIT: The hiding places no longer need to be countries, not even cities....just an apartment with an internet connection.

It appears the most likely path for peace in Afghanistan involves a coalition with the Taliban and it is unlikely that a few more thousand US troops will force the Taliban to the table when only a few years before, the surge to 90,000 didn't do the job.
Without targeting sites inside Pakistan, there is little reason to believe that bad guys will not continue to hide there.
It looks the status quo will prevail throughout the Trump admin which the bad guys are probably assuming will only last another three years...and they are a patient lot.

You're not the first to bring up the '90000 troops and that didn't do any good'.
But the majority of those troops were involved in nation building...working with towns and villages to try and convince the people to come to our way of thinking...not going to happen unless we're willing to invest a century of 'nation building'.
Trump has changed the game plan...he's not nation building...he's changed it to killing terrorists and that includes a change in policy. No more being hamstrung by the ridiculous rules of engagement they've operated under in Afghanistan and Iraq.
This is going to be more of a special forces war...go in quietly...kill the terrorists when found and then leave.
Will it work...I don't know any better than anyone else.
But you wage war to win it...not have tea with the elders and hope everyone likes you.

[ReconWilly]

Opium and vimanas!

[.257Weatherby]

Originally Posted by Red Bullets

Trump needs to smoke some afghani weed. Then Afghanistan would be his buddies.

Actually Afghani hashish is more like it....
History is about to repeat itself in Afghanistan...

Rob

[Twisted Canuck]

Originally Posted by Unregistered user

Again, you never heard the speech. Trump said the previous plan did not work and they are taking a new approach to solving the problem. The U.S. just wants to kill the terrorists then let Afghanistan reuild itself the way it deems fit and not in "America's image". The US is not an invader but an ally that wants to help Afghanistan create its own secure and independent future.

You are not correct in your assumption. I listened to the speech, as much as I could handle. I heard his 'new' plan. It's really nothing new, the Brits tried it for 80 years more or less. Kill Them First, I get it.

The problem with that plan is that every time you kill a terrorist, his two sons, or nephews, or nieces, become the next terrorists. It is simple minded idiocy to think you can kill all the terrorists, and then the country is going to be A-OK. All it does is create a vacuum for the next group of ideological zealots to fill with their own home grown brand of Jihad. Syria and ISIS being the perfect example of that.

But you keep on believing that Trump is going to get it right this time. I will say this, Trump is really stuck and can't do anything else. He inherited this mess that spans two previous presidencies and 16 years of trying various ineffective approaches. It's not the plan. It's Afghanistan and Pakistan and the region in general. They LIKE to be at war. They have no concept of living in peace. Having foreign troops there to kill gives their lives meaning.

[Dubious]

I hope they don't send any Canadian troops for trumps poor plan people seem to forget the 159 that have dies so far that war has bogged down into the modern day vietnam. America had a very poor record in the Middle East and trump hasn't done anything in Iraq or Syria to "win" 2 weeks ago he was going to go to war with North Korea. Afghans are very smart and even if trump doesn't give a date they know that's there's an election in 3 years if he even makes it that far.

[260 Rem]

The US strategy in Vietnam was to count bodies for the win ... not controlling territory. Pretty hard to argue they didn't get booted out of that one.

[Okotokian]

Originally Posted by bobtodrick

Anyone watching the presidential broadcast tonight on Afghanistan.
Looks like Trump wants to win and will be upping the ante.
About time.

Sorta like Obama's surge, eh? Did he say it was gonna be fantastic, the best ever? LOL There will be no winning. They will eventually quietly withdraw and let it slide away. The US doesn't know how to win that war. Neither Democratic nor Republican Presidents have figured it out.

[bessiedog]

You may have all the guns..



But we have the clocks.


4 year election cycles will never conquer this area.

THATs our biggest weakness.

[Okotokian]

Originally Posted by bobtodrick

But in the last couple of years their has been a massive resurgence of Al Quiada and ISIS (and the Russians have been shown to be covertly funding them.

That's nothing but fake news generated by Obama and Clinton to demonize Russia. Trump nailed that one during the campaign. Donald has maintained that Russia is our friend, not our adversary.

[Unregistered user]

I guess all we can do is watch.

[Okotokian]

I think the best we can hope for is a dictator/warlord who isn't religiously motivated. He will keep the lid on things by force. We just have to forget all this democracy/human rights stuff. Who in the heck thought it was a good idea to get rid of Saddam???