

Afghanistan’s fearful future

So long, buddy


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I have observed conflicts for many years and my gut tells me that there are no realistic reasons to believe that remaining in Afghanistan will result in greater security for anyone.

There is a real cost involved in remaining and I don't think people have counted the cost correctly and compared it against any reasonable outcome. Thousands of dead American soldiers and billions of dollars compared against a stubbornly backwards culture and what some Americans expected to evolve is grossly out of balance. Regional politics are another set of negative factors: Pakistan will never allow the situation to improve unless they see a direct advantage to them.

I opposed boots-on-the-ground and the subsequent nation-building from the beginning. We should never have occupied Afghanistan, and we should remove all our troops today. Being rational and realistic is better than being culturally arrogant and wreckless with other peoples' lives.

kevinahcc20 in reply to MySetDancer

You have learned the lessons of 1988-2001 not at all. It would be nice if there was always a good rational choice that had reasonable costs and high probability of total success, but this is about vital national interests. We are not going to turn Afghanistan into a functioning 21 century state...check back in the 22nd century for an update. If we leave altogether, the Taliban followed shortly by Al Quaeda will reestablish their presence and things will return to real chaos...not the ugly stuff we see today but back to the madness of the late 1990s. A force sufficient to train the Afghans, pick away at Taliban/AQ leadership and keep the enemy down must be maintained. We've kept troops in Europe for 68 years, South Korea for 50 years and neither of those conflicts began with 3,000 dead American civilians on their home soil.

D. Sherman

"It was deliberately denied heavy weapons or much of an air force on the assumption that America would provide key “enablers” for years to come."

Let's get real here. It was deliberately denied those weapons on the assumption that sooner or later such weapons would be used against the US, sarcastically referred to sometimes as "NATO".


The 5th Century called ... they'd like their country back.


There's little likelihood that amid the corruption, incompetence, and venality that is the Afghan "government" any meaningful counter-terrorist activity by SF troops could be sustained over more than a few months after general troop withdrawal. Better to acknowlege reality (it's a lost cause) than to continue to waste lives & money. You can't take a stone-age society into the modern age, no matter how many bullets and weapons systems you might deploy. Social and political backwardness will defeat all good intentions.

umghhh in reply to CA-Oxonian

That is a very static perspective which does not reflect reality. It is indeed a problem for stone society as you call it. But not all of it is stone age types and that is why we have a civil war there (or is it only low level fighting). Not all people want Taliban back. Not all of those do not mind Taliban cannot be convinced. It takes time and money as well as blood and destroyed lives - that is reality of war and I am not quite sure if whether by withdrawing we actually do the right thing. OC you must be able to sustain the costs of such military campaigning and there is a very valid question there whether the west can afford that.

Damn Dirty Ape

We should leave no one behind. Get out completely but leave one message: If you allow people to come to your land and plot the murder of US civilians we will come back and kill all of you man, woman, child and goat. The world is too small for terrorists. Live and let live or die.

pinotpomeroy in reply to Damn Dirty Ape

By leaving an adequate number and composition of forces in Afganistan we can help keep violence to a manageable level and maintain a military / intelligence capability if a very sensitive region. Altruism? No. Self interest.

Inshai in reply to Damn Dirty Ape

Why leave Afghanistan now when Yankee Apes can no longer take the Kicking by the Telly-bans or whoever they are?
Yes ,the world is noosing in on the mother of all terrorists:USA no longer world sheriff...will be meatballed before fleeing.

Connect The Dots

In the past two years, the Most Dangerous Threat to NATO Soldiers is NOT the Taliban guerilla fighters. Not enemy maneuvers. Not IEDs. Not sabotaged infrastructure.

The Deadliest Threat is Allied Afghan 'Friendly' Troops turning their machine guns on any Western Soldier while they are offering hands in friendship.

I think the Afghans are independent enough to be left to their own fate--for good or ill.

Muslims and the West can not hope to get along together.
There is a divide as tall as the Himalayan Range.
Three cups of tea is an illusion as phony as alchemy.

ONE burnt Koran book will lead to an Alamo seige overnight.
And sabotage a decade of trans national cooperation.

Leave them to their Neolithic ways.
Barbarism is one identity of modern man.
And some cultures are comfortable with it.

umghhh in reply to Connect The Dots

You cannot really hope to live in peace if big part of human kind becomes hostage of 'barbarians'. BTW: use of words lie this does not really help to solve the problem and solve we (all) must. The reason why it is a must is that the earth is small and technological advance (meaning cheap weapons of great destruction power) as well as demographic dynamic means we either come to terms with each other and try to live in peace together or aside or we are for a bloodshed - these violent minorities that drive the huge groups of people back into stone age are not small enough to be ignored in our small world. Once we understand this we can make proper decisions. This does not mean we have to stay in Afghanistan - maybe we in the west lack the stamina to do that? I think we should closely look at what we can and see if this what is possible can do any good up there in the mountains. Chances are that if we forget and try to live in isolation then the evil ones come to us anyway... Sometimes we must confront the evil and stand up to the challenge. Not sure if it is as far as it was in Marathon but I do not think just letting things go its course there is best solution.

guest-iijejwo in reply to umghhh

why doesnt al qaeda attack japan or south korea or china or even india?

why not brazil? mexico? or argentina?

why are they focused only on the US? or the West only? (although they never attacked canada, france or germany or austria or even russia)

dont you think there is something the US is doing they really dont like?

why not focused on that thing they really dont like? maybe the US dont have to spend money just fighting these militants if only the US can discover the thing they dont like?


kevinahcc20 in reply to guest-iijejwo

What they don't like is the modern world, where reason rules, women are equal and faith can be taken or left as you chose. The focus on the U.S. as the leader of the modern world. So by your approach, we could just cast aside modernity, reason, equal rights, freedom of (and from) religion and be friends with these bozos. The world of Al Quaeda and the modern world cannot long coexist and they know this. The information flood from our technical world will destroy their feudal nightmare world soon enough. That is why they have chosen to fight now.

L6QjhvJGVk in reply to kevinahcc20

"The focus on the U.S. as the leader of the modern world.................. The information flood from our technical world will destroy their feudal nightmare world soon enough" - your comments. I believe that you do not understand Asia. The reason why Al Quaeeda (or the Vietcong) target the USA is very simple. All militant groups in Asia resent American policies that lead to military interventions in Asia. All these interventions were without any reason - e.g., Korea (no reason), Vietnam (no reason), Afghanistan (no reason), Iraq (no reason), etc. All military interventions in Asia resulted in military defeats - at great cost (in terms of lives and money). Life moves on - after being defeated in Vietnam, American companies are queuing up to do business there. The lesson for policy makers in the USA is - "soft" power is much more effectively than military power - "shock and awe" is not a coherent military doctrine in asymmetrical warfare.

5M6bkSdZgq in reply to L6QjhvJGVk

Not true the Korean war took place because South Korea was fighting the communist North and it was a un police action not for no reason and as a result South Korea is still democratic modern country seperate from the dysfunctional north.

sikko6 in reply to 5M6bkSdZgq

You must be smoking something!
America invaded Korea to keep its fascist puppet dictators in power so that Korea doen't become economic super power and challenge America's economic status.

L6QjhvJGVk in reply to 5M6bkSdZgq

The 38th parallel was an administrative boundary established by the USA and the Soviet Union after WW2. After that it became a domestic dispute between the 2 Korea's. The need for UN intervention was marginal, at best. The UN got involved because the Soviet Union was boycotting the UNSC in those days, because of the US insistence that Taiwan was China - quite absurd!!! In any case, the "UN force" was 92% American forces. Just like the "coalition" in Afghanistan is 98% American forces.

5M6bkSdZgq in reply to sikko6

Are you some kind of troll.South Korea today is still a top world economy there is way that could be the motive behind the Korean war.It was not just the U.S. involved in the Korean War. So your saying it was a U.S. plot with the help of the UN and at least 22 other countries. Your post does not make sense.

emmess74 in reply to sikko6

Let me get this straight
You are saying America started the Korean war because it didn't want a wealthy united Korea i.e. a North Korea over the whole Korean peninsula and no South Korea
If you say someone is smoking something, you must be injecting it.


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