Official: Obama to Send Enough Troops to Keep Al Qaeda at Bay

[Slaughter]

There's also not a damned thing we can do about it without ethnic cleansing of an area the size of Indiana.

That would be mercy-killing.

Places like most of Africa and the Middle-East are going to be low-qualityFOREVER. By 3009 they will almost as bad as they are today, except with cooler tech.

The best thing we could do to those people is putting mercy bullets on their heads.

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[Berzerker]

Invading was a big mistake, now we're "obliged" to stay and protect the population from the Taliban and Al Qaeda just sits in Pakistan while we bleed for a corrupt regime - sound familiar? The notion of keeping Al Qaeda at bay is a failing proposition, if leaving Afghanistan enticed Al Qaeda to move back in we'd be much better off. We could launch attacks on them with near impunity without getting bogged down nation building. They'd actually have to be pretty stupid to move back in, but cultural pressures might be enough to push them out of hiding. Like it or not, the Taliban aint going away... Smarter to let Iran deal with them if and when they over reach.

 

[otago]

Invading was a big mistake, now we're "obliged" to stay and protect the population from the Taliban and Al Qaeda just sits in Pakistan while we bleed for a corrupt regime - sound familiar? The notion of keeping Al Qaeda at bay is a failing proposition, if leaving Afghanistan enticed Al Qaeda to move back in we'd be much better off. We could launch attacks on them with near impunity without getting bogged down nation building. They'd actually have to be pretty stupid to move back in, but cultural pressures might be enough to push them out of hiding. Like it or not, the Taliban aint going away... Smarter to let Iran deal with them if and when they over reach.

Just another one hundred thousand troops, now when was that said ?
Protected hamlets, yep, heard of that idea before.
How long before do we hear the ,we had to destroy the village to save the village ?
How many decades is the US prepared to stay in Afghanistan ?
Do a MacArthur by invading Pakistan ? that would be interesting.

Of course it would help if a few more trigger pullers made up the numbers rather than those who just sit in protested bases doing paper work.
A lot more engineers would help as well.

 

[JollyRoger]

The best thing we could do to those people is putting mercy bullets on their heads.

That's great advice for avoiding potential future suffering. I'm a bit shocked and awed you haven't taken it yet.

 

[The Last Conformist]

There are differences between the Taliban and the IRA.

Do you think if we let the Taliban have involvement in the Afghanistan government that they would just be all fine and dandy and be peaceful and quit being oppressive, murdering, terrorist supporting, and ruthless?

The US cooperates with plenty oppressive, ruthless, and generally nasty regimes, including in Afghanistan itself. The Taliban are not being targeted for being awful as such but because of their choice in who to be awful against.

 

[emzie]

Do you think if we let the Taliban have involvement in the Afghanistan government that they would just be all fine and dandy and be peaceful and quit being oppressive, murdering, terrorist supporting, and ruthless?

Depends if their concerns were heard or not. If some tribal area of Afghanistan wants to stay tribal, and letting them dictate that to the government for their own area is the concession, then so be it.

The elements of the Taliban and their supporters that want to just be left alone need to be allowed into government. It makes me nauseous to say this, but there's little we can do for the women in those areas for now. The ones who want more than to preserve their own way of life, who want to implement it on others, need to be killed.

We can't save everyone. We can't even come close. We have an obligation to try, to offer security and safety to those who are able to seek it. But beyond that, we cannot kill the fundamentalist ideas that the Taliban is rooted in without committing genocide.

Look at the IRA, the remnants of it at least. There is very rarly terrorist activities going on by the remnants of it. For the most part the IRA was disbanded. Do you think the Taliban would disband and integrate into society and quit being oppressive, murdering, terrorist supporting, and ruthless? I don't think they would.

The political wing of the IRA wasn't disbanded. They're a major party still. They work within the system; well that's not quite true, I don't think SF takes their seats in British Parliament.

 

[bhsup]

The Taliban is not a terrorist organization, they are the remnants of an oppressive government regime.

Sorry, The Bush Doctrine clearly states that if you support a terrorist, you are a terrorist.

 

[Cutlass]

Sorry, The Bush Doctrine clearly states that if you support a terrorist, you are a terrorist.

So anyone who supports America's Founding Fathers is a terrorist. I think you just explained why Obama can get a Nobel Peace Prize for not being Bush.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

A more modern analogy would be American funding of the Contras, or its continued harboring of Luis Posada Corriles.

 

[Kraznaya]

That would be mercy-killing.

Places like most of Africa and the Middle-East are going to be ***** FOREVER. By 3009 they will almost as bad as they are today, except with cooler tech.

The best thing we could do to those people is putting mercy bullets on their heads.

Because the Middle East was a ***** a thousand years ago.

Not.

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[amadeus]

So anyone who supports America's Founding Fathers is a terrorist.

That is if you believe something as asinine as the idea that Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, etc. were terrorists.

 

[emzie]

That is if you believe something as asinine as the idea that Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, etc. were terrorists.

If you were a redcoat, you thought something similar about American militia.

Sorry, The Bush Doctrine clearly states that if you support a terrorist, you are a terrorist.

If you stop supporting terrorists? Surely an attack on American military is not terrorism.

 

[Gilder]

If you were a redcoat, you thought something similar about American militia.

Heck, some of them were considered terrorists before that, what with the Sons of Liberty and their antics. In particular, their delightful tea parties.

 

[TheLastOne36]

That would be mercy-killing.

Places like most of Africa and the Middle-East are going to be ***** FOREVER. By 3009 they will almost as bad as they are today, except with cooler tech.

The best thing we could do to those people is putting mercy bullets on their heads.

I'm sure the Arabs were thinking the same of the Europeans not to long ago.

 

[Shylock]

I read the title as "Nixon to send enough troops to keep Viet Cong at bay"

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

I read it as "Napoleon to send enough troops to keep guerrillas at bay."

 

[Dachs]

"Gorbachev to send enough troops to keep mujahidin at bay" over here

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

You must be using the old 2007 edition; Gorbachev never added troops to the Afghan War.

 

[Dachs]

You must be using the old 2007 edition; Gorbachev never added troops to the Afghan War.

Nixon didn't to Vietnam, either. So?

 

[Verbose]

Right, we have no viable military strategy for either winning or exiting.

We also seem not have a civilian strategy for turning Afghanistan around into some kind of working state that is not a potential or actual threat to world politics.

Somehow it might even be, that we could use somemore anthropologists and sociologists on the job of working out how the place actually operates.

The monarchy that for all its weaknesses traditionally kept the place at least nominally together is defunct.

When exiting the country the Soviets were followed by a tail of tens of thousands of educated, professional Afghans who had thrown in with them in the bid to make Afghanistan a modern nation, more or less defaulting to the religious traditionalists of the tribal society.

We might have to work within the actual format of the situation with the material at hand.

After all, there's and Afghan proverb:
"You cannot buy an Afghan, but you can always hire him."