End of Afghan War in Sight?

 
OhioBobcatFan06 said:
Trump doing what Obama could not, ending the endless wars.

The people of Afghanistan don't want us there. If the Saudis and Iranians want to fight a proxy war there, that's their prerogative. Just leave my tax dollars out of it
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It's ridiculous to think you can change those parts of the world. I recall back in the
60s when the Indians and Pakistanis got into a shooting match. Peace corps workers were brought in to the embassy and then sent to Peshawar air station. Talking with a young agricultural "expert" he told me of working hard to get the area farmers to see the benefit of using fertilizer on their fields. One agreed and used it. Next planting season the worker was encouraged to start with the other farmers because he had this good example. When he got with the farmer and asked him to help convince the other farmers to use fertilizer the farmer said "No sahib, I'm not going to farm this year. I grew enough last year to carry me through this year." How do you work with a people with a mindset like that?
 
USA70PP said:
It's ridiculous to think you can change those parts of the world. I recall back in the
60s when the Indians and Pakistanis got into a shooting match. Peace corps workers were brought in to the embassy and then sent to Peshawar air station. Talking with a young agricultural "expert" he told me of working hard to get the area farmers to see the benefit of using fertilizer on their fields. One agreed and used it. Next planting season the worker was encouraged to start with the other farmers because he had this good example. When he got with the farmer and asked him to help convince the other farmers to use fertilizer the farmer said "No sahib, I'm not going to farm this year. I grew enough last year to carry me through this year." How do you work with a people with a mindset like that?
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Since we're a country that pays our farmers not to farm, I could see the difficulty in understanding how to work with someone that doesn't farm because he has no need. ;)

Changing a place with forced dictators certainly doesn't work. All we can do is set the example and hope it takes or let them implode. Their civil strife is only theirs to fix. If Pakistan didn't have a bomb I doubt we'd be anywheres near the part of the world. Is that why you were stationed there?
 
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eastisbest said:
Since we're a country that pays our farmers not to farm, I could see the difficulty in understanding how to work with someone that doesn't farm because he has no need. ;)

Changing a place with forced dictators certainly doesn't work. All we can do is set the example and hope it takes or let them implode. Their civil strife is only theirs to fix. If Pakistan didn't have a bomb I doubt we'd be anywheres near the part of the world. Is that why you were stationed there?
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I was in and out with trips to Kabul and Delhi. It was a good time to be alive and think you were doing something worthwhile. I sometimes wonder if maybe we should have just let the area players duke it out among themselves without us being there. Without our presence in the area down the road there may have been no reason for 9/11.
 
Funny watching all you pubs take an about face on these issues in the name of the leader.

I can honestly say I was against these wars from the beginning.
 
irish_buffalo said:
Funny watching all you pubs take an about face on these issues in the name of the leader.

I can honestly say I was against these wars from the beginning.
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I never thought any of them were a good idea either, but I can remember when all the Democrats in Washington were saying Bush was wrong to invade Iraq and we should have invaded Afghanistan instead.

Let's not pretend that this is all the fault of Republicans.
 
irish_buffalo said:
Funny watching all you pubs take an about face on these issues in the name of the leader.

I can honestly say I was against these wars from the beginning.
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I was 100% behind Afghanistan 18 years ago. If you were not, you were not very aware. I can’t imagine conflating this with Iraq
 
irish_buffalo said:
Funny watching all you pubs take an about face on these issues in the name of the leader.

I can honestly say I was against these wars from the beginning.
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A bit presumptive on your part there IB. I'll admit I was all in on the GW Bush wars. I was naive and thought they were necessary to avenge the 9/11 attack and to protect us from future attacks. Bush lied to us. The goal went way beyond responding to Islamic terrorism and involved nation & culture building on an enormous scale. Something most of us would NOT have bought into up front.

For a lot of us this was the point that we started to see that there was a DC swamp that needed draining. We also could see that the brightest bulbs in our Intelligence & State Department were a bit dim. These people were fools and they were getting our fellow citizens killed and spending a LOT of our tax money.

What you don't seem to appreciate IB is that a lot of us on the right started questioning these wars when Iraq blew up. It seemed to us that the Bush administration was more interested in remaking Western Asia & the Middle East then avenging 9/11 and making sure it didn't happen again. Long before Trump came on the scene it seemed like we were spending to many precious lives and to much money on what looked more & more like endless wars.

We didn't change our views to accommodate Trump. Trump was one of the only (Rand Paul was another) GOP candidates to question EVERYTHING about the wars. We were looking for a candidate who said what Trump was saying. The only "about face" was that we had to hold our noses early on and vote for a Billionaire NYC Developer & reality TV show star to do what no one else in the GOP wanted to do.

Oh and for the record, by military standards we won BOTH wars. It was the decisions of the Bush & later the Obama administrations after the military victories that messed everything up.
 
lotr10 said:
A bit presumptive on your part there IB. I'll admit I was all in on the GW Bush wars. I was naive and thought they were necessary to avenge the 9/11 attack and to protect us from future attacks. Bush lied to us. The goal went way beyond responding to Islamic terrorism and involved nation & culture building on an enormous scale. Something most of us would NOT have bought into up front.

For a lot of us this was the point that we started to see that there was a DC swamp that needed draining. We also could see that the brightest bulbs in our Intelligence & State Department were a bit dim. These people were fools and they were getting our fellow citizens killed and spending a LOT of our tax money.

What you don't seem to appreciate IB is that a lot of us on the right started questioning these wars when Iraq blew up. It seemed to us that the Bush administration was more interested in remaking Western Asia & the Middle East then avenging 9/11 and making sure it didn't happen again. Long before Trump came on the scene it seemed like we were spending to many precious lives and to much money on what looked more & more like endless wars.

We didn't change our views to accommodate Trump. Trump was one of the only (Rand Paul was another) GOP candidates to question EVERYTHING about the wars. We were looking for a candidate who said what Trump was saying. The only "about face" was that we had to hold our noses early on and vote for a Billionaire NYC Developer & reality TV show star to do what no one else in the GOP wanted to do.

Oh and for the record, by military standards we won BOTH wars. It was the decisions of the Bush & later the Obama administrations after the military victories that messed everything up.
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Very well said.

I don’t think Bush meant to lie to us. He was a puppet of Cheney&Co
 
What we have here is the USA walking away from another war without really winning it it. We have not won a war since WWII. Came close in Iraq and then we let them tell us how the surrender would go. I hate the fact that we fight and lose American lives and then do not win in the end. We could but we just don't and I can not tell you why. Tell me what you think the future for Afghanistan is when we walk away? Tell me why did Russia walk away before we decided to set up camp there?
 
cabezadecaballo said:
Very well said.

I don’t think Bush meant to lie to us. He was a puppet of Cheney&Co
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My anger at Bush stems from the fact that when I voted for him I didn't think I was voting for a puppet. I was fine with Cheney and the neo-cons as a voice among many advising the POTUS. I welcomed the diversity. But I voted for a man that I thought would stick by his guns and do what's right for the country. I was wrong AND naive.

But when the Bush administration and most of the Congress/Senate (BOTH democrats & republicans) establishment supported nation building in these sh#t holes I became aware of two facts:

* Our leadership didn't give a rats about us.

* We had the worst elite leaders in the history of this country.

This is why we supported Trump. What the hell did we have to lose?
 
lotr10 said:
A bit presumptive on your part there IB. I'll admit I was all in on the GW Bush wars. I was naive and thought they were necessary to avenge the 9/11 attack and to protect us from future attacks. Bush lied to us. The goal went way beyond responding to Islamic terrorism and involved nation & culture building on an enormous scale. Something most of us would NOT have bought into up front.

For a lot of us this was the point that we started to see that there was a DC swamp that needed draining. We also could see that the brightest bulbs in our Intelligence & State Department were a bit dim. These people were fools and they were getting our fellow citizens killed and spending a LOT of our tax money.

What you don't seem to appreciate IB is that a lot of us on the right started questioning these wars when Iraq blew up. It seemed to us that the Bush administration was more interested in remaking Western Asia & the Middle East then avenging 9/11 and making sure it didn't happen again. Long before Trump came on the scene it seemed like we were spending to many precious lives and to much money on what looked more & more like endless wars.

We didn't change our views to accommodate Trump. Trump was one of the only (Rand Paul was another) GOP candidates to question EVERYTHING about the wars. We were looking for a candidate who said what Trump was saying. The only "about face" was that we had to hold our noses early on and vote for a Billionaire NYC Developer & reality TV show star to do what no one else in the GOP wanted to do.

Oh and for the record, by military standards we won BOTH wars. It was the decisions of the Bush & later the Obama administrations after the military victories that messed everything up.
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I can always expect honesty from you. ;)
 
cabezadecaballo said:
Very well said.

I don’t think Bush meant to lie to us. He was a puppet of Cheney&Co
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I could not agree more. A guy named Bush? From Texas? Run him!

In all honesty I have come to like W from afar. He seems like a great guy who deep deep down did not want any part of being president. He was told to take on Cheney and Rummy and those neo-cons ran the show.
 
19AL63 said:
What we have here is the USA walking away from another war without really winning it it. We have not won a war since WWII. Came close in Iraq and then we let them tell us how the surrender would go. I hate the fact that we fight and lose American lives and then do not win in the end. We could but we just don't and I can not tell you why. Tell me what you think the future for Afghanistan is when we walk away? Tell me why did Russia walk away before we decided to set up camp there?
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Because we have not fought a traditional war since WWII.

From Korea to Iraq/Afghanistan we are fighting in BS entanglements against non-sovereign factions (Communists, Taliban, Al-Queda, ISIS). It is almost as if we need two military entities these days. One to prepare for the unlikely conventional war with a foe like Russia or China and another to fight shadow warfare against these nation-less entities. The days of conventional warfare are over but some folks made some big money off attempting to fight those entities conventionally.
 
Seems like something good has already happened in this peace-seeking effort - there is some agreement from Yappsters who usually always are at odds.

"Let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with me."
 
Our job has been done but we need to keep a local presence so they don't get too comfortable with rebuilding their groups
 
thavoice said:
Our job has been done but we need to keep a local presence so they don't get too comfortable with rebuilding their groups
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Rebuilding their groups? We just brokered a deal with the f-ing Taliban. They are pretty rebuilt.

They can have that useless rock of a f-ing country. Check in with them 200-300 years from now and not much will have changed.

I am no fan of Trump, I hate his behavior, but there are things I can agree he has done well and this is one of them. We are long overdue to stop, or at least footing the bill, to be the world's policeman. Get the F out of these foreign $hitholes. If one more soldier loses a life in one of these wastelands it will already be too many.

Dropped a couple f-bombs so everyone understands my passion about this. :D
 
irish_buffalo said:
Because we have not fought a traditional war since WWII.

From Korea to Iraq/Afghanistan we are fighting in BS entanglements against non-sovereign factions (Communists, Taliban, Al-Queda, ISIS). It is almost as if we need two military entities these days. One to prepare for the unlikely conventional war with a foe like Russia or China and another to fight shadow warfare against these nation-less entities. The days of conventional warfare are over but some folks made some big money off attempting to fight those entities conventionally.
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Maybe Bloomberg would be better off giving millions to “contractors” like Blackwater than burning it on campaign ads ? Americans would be better served. Mini-Mike’s international hit squad
 
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irish_buffalo said:
Because we have not fought a traditional war since WWII.

From Korea to Iraq/Afghanistan we are fighting in BS entanglements against non-sovereign factions (Communists, Taliban, Al-Queda, ISIS). It is almost as if we need two military entities these days. One to prepare for the unlikely conventional war with a foe like Russia or China and another to fight shadow warfare against these nation-less entities. The days of conventional warfare are over but some folks made some big money off attempting to fight those entities conventionally.
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Our military is capable of fighting either type of battle. And we haven't been fighting conventionally for a long long time. But I think people just look at it incorrectly. The wars we fight now are not "winnable", any more than our winning the war on crime in our own country. There will always be bad guys, some places just have more than others. The culture in Afghanistan is such that it will always be a hole. If they decide to change their culture, only then will things change there.
 
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