Dexter Filkins
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I can't recommend Filkins' book "The Forever War" enough. Today they're running a preview of his piece coming up in the Times Magazine. You can check it out here.
Actual reporting from an actual reporter. Better than a link from Drudge headline. I promise.
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From the piece:
Success takes time, but how much time does Stanley McChrystal have? The war in Afghanistan is now in its ninth year. The Taliban, measured by the number of their attacks, are stronger than at any time since the Americans toppled their government at the end of 2001. American soldiers and Marines are dying at a faster rate than ever before. Polls in the United States show that opposition to the war is growing steadily.
Worse yet, for all of America’s time in Afghanistan — for all the money and all the blood — the lack of accomplishment is manifest wherever you go. In Garmsir, there is nothing remotely resembling a modern state that could take over if America and its NATO allies left. Tour the country with a general, and you will see very quickly how vast and forbidding this country is and how paltry the effort has been.
And finally, there is the government in Kabul. President Hamid Karzai, once the darling of the West, rose to the top of nationwide elections in August on what appears to be a tide of fraud. The Americans and their NATO allies are confronting the possibility that the government they are supporting, building and defending is a rotten shell.
In his initial assessment of the country, sent to President Obama early last month, McChrystal described an Afghanistan on the brink of collapse and an America at the edge of defeat. To reverse the course of the war, McChrystal presented President Obama with what could be the most momentous foreign-policy decision of his presidency: escalate or fail. McChrystal has reportedly asked for 40,000 additional American troops — there are 65,000 already here — and an accelerated effort to train Afghan troops and police and build an Afghan state. If President Obama can’t bring himself to step up the fight, McChrystal suggested, then he might as well give up.
“Inadequate resources,” McChrystal wrote, “will likely result in failure.”
The magnitude of the choice presented by McChrystal, and now facing President Obama, is difficult to overstate. For what McChrystal is proposing is not a temporary, Iraq-style surge — a rapid influx of American troops followed by a withdrawal. McChrystal’s plan is a blueprint for an extensive American commitment to build a modern state in Afghanistan, where one has never existed, and to bring order to a place famous for the empires it has exhausted. Even under the best of circumstances, this effort would most likely last many more years, cost hundreds of billions of dollars and entail the deaths of many more American women and men.
And that’s if it succeeds.
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The Taliban, measured by the number of their attacks, are stronger than at any time since the Americans toppled their government at the end of 2001. American soldiers and Marines are dying at a faster rate than ever before.
I have been reading that since Obama has taken over as Commander and Chief that our soldiers and marines have not had the equipment they need to fight and defend themselves.
Lets add in the new "Rules of Engagement" more and more will die because of his cowardly policies.
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The Taliban, measured by the number of their attacks, are stronger than at any time since the Americans toppled their government at the end of 2001. American soldiers and Marines are dying at a faster rate than ever before.
I have been reading that since Obama has taken over as Commander and Chief that our soldiers and marines have not had the equipment they need to fight and defend themselves.
Lets add in the new "Rules of Engagement" more and more will die because of his cowardly policies.
I have been reading that since Obama has taken over as Commander and Chief that our soldiers and marines have not had the equipment they need to fight and defend themselves.
Lets add in the new "Rules of Engagement" more and more will die because of his cowardly policies.
Because you read nonsense.
As for the new rules of engagement, those have been drawn up by McCrystal himself, working off the plans used in Iraq. If you'd read the piece, or read anything else about the war, you'd know that.
You're just a nutcase who hasn't the first clue what he's talking about.
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The Taliban, measured by the number of their attacks, are stronger than at any time since the Americans toppled their government at the end of 2001. American soldiers and Marines are dying at a faster rate than ever before.
I have been reading that since Obama has taken over as Commander and Chief that our soldiers and marines have not had the equipment they need to fight and defend themselves.
Lets add in the new "Rules of Engagement" more and more will die because of his cowardly policies.
I have been reading that since Obama has taken over as Commander and Chief that our soldiers and marines have not had the equipment they need to fight and defend themselves.
If memory serves me correct, T, the lack of quality equipment has plagued US forces since the day we invaded Iraq.
The problem, in my humble opinion, has to do a lot with greed and lack of purchasing discipline by the Pentagon, etc.
First, the gas masks were questioned. Then it was the vests. I just read an article about the unreliability of the M4, manufactured right here by Colt.
No discipline. No quality control. Greed. They all sum up to put our troops in dangers they should be protected from.
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The troops have the equipment they need. They're dying more because the Taliban is regaining strength and they're being asked to push further into the countryside to confront them, often outnumbered.
This is why we're deciding whether we should keep doing this with more troops, or finding our way out of this.
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The troops have the equipment they need. They're dying more because the Taliban is regaining strength and they're being asked to push further into the countryside to confront them, often outnumbered.
This is why we're deciding whether we should keep doing this with more troops, or finding our way out of this.
The troops have the equipment they need. They're dying more because the Taliban is regaining strength and they're being asked to push further into the countryside to confront them, often outnumbered.
This is why we're deciding whether we should keep doing this with more troops, or finding our way out of this.
If the Soviet Union taught us anything, it should be that this is a losing proposition. I say we cut bait, in a dignified sort of way.
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The Taliban has just left N. Pakistan because Pakistan's army finally went after them there.
So, they have gone to fighting our troops in Afghanistan, because of a liberal president with
no values or courage to guide him, not to forget a dismal view of our country as a whole.
Obama's leftist views is what terrorists will be encouraged to step up fighting by...
the chance to convince a leftist to politically cya and quit.
The trouble is, he's now PRESIDENT, and must do the right thing.
I will say this: The NATO commander, not American, denied air support for our Marines because
of "rules of engagement" - terrorists fight from behind or next to "civilians" so the rules of engagement won't
let the good guys fire back to avoid those civilian casualties.
And we don't have to stop these kinds of terrorists? We do. But a hands behind our backs war of attrition, LBJ style,
is a gutless decision to make and loses American soldiers' lives for no good reason.
I say, we need more troops, in populated areas, and air support, etc, combating
the militants traveling in the remote areas via special forces...
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