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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Feb 26, 2012 - 11:09am PT
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It's a matter of us asking ourselves, "Do you want to start a conflict and win it??? What are you willing to do to achieve that objective???"
If that involves giving the U.N. the finger, I'm all in.
Our troops die everyday because our Rules Of Engagement (ROE) are that of a civilian police dept or worse. Look it up. It's disgusting.
We could have wrapped this sh#t up long ago...but pussies in the Pentagon and the U.N. always f*#k it up!
I like you Blue so sorry for calling you on BS twice today.
And this is total BS. The Soviets got their asses handed to them in Afghanistan and they didn't have pussy rules of Engagement. People fighting for home don't back down and Pastuns even less.
We killed 2-3 MILLION in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (and for what, they didn't attack us) That's half as many as Hitler killed Jews in WW2. Then some GOP types complained then about sissy rules of engagement, that we could have won if we just killed far more innocent people????
Screw the war mongers that think it's OK to kill and destroy countries for some trumped up sh#t. Not one of the highjackers or planners were Afghani and the US, at the same time, was harboring that terrorist Posada who blew up an airliner. Hypocrisy that makes me sick
Peace
Karl
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Feb 26, 2012 - 12:31pm PT
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I kinda agree, Karl. But from the other side. If you go to war, you are going to defeat somebody, not "win them over". Not make friends. You destroy them until they are ruined.
This is why war should always be the last resort. Think about it. You send men with loaded weapons to a foreign country to do what???
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Feb 26, 2012 - 06:51pm PT
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Coz, truer words were never spoken. They were so happy to see us come along
so they could let up on each other for a while. I could care less except
for the poor kids and women.
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laughingman
Mountain climber
Seattle WA
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Feb 26, 2012 - 09:37pm PT
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The last people to "defeat" the Afghans were the Mongols and even then the defeat was shallow because Pashtun tribesmen continued to wage a longstanding guerilla war for the next century.
They call it the "graveyard of empires" for a reason...
Somehow we forgot what...
Also I fail to see the logic into trying to apply 21st century modern political thinking to a society stuck in the 15th. We should have looked other former warlord / tribal states and seen what produces a stable state. Then apply a similar settlement to Afghanistan.
For a good book on Afghanistan I suggest one reads Flashmen by George MacDonald Fraser even though it is fiction it gives a good insight into the failures of politicians and carrier soldiers in the face of Afghan tribalism. The book is also hilarious....
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Feb 26, 2012 - 09:52pm PT
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Read Charlie Wilson's War to understand the last 30 years, or the last
600 and next 100 if you will.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Feb 26, 2012 - 10:31pm PT
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I kinda agree, Karl. But from the other side. If you go to war, you are going to defeat somebody, not "win them over". Not make friends. You destroy them until they are ruined.
This is why war should always be the last resort. Think about it. You send men with loaded weapons to a foreign country to do what???
Bro, you're just saying stuff with no justification. Afghanistan was guilty of what, harboring a handful of guys we suspected of being involved with 911. They asked for evidence and offered to send him to a neutral Islamic country for trial and we told them to pound sand? and that's enough to ruin an entire country of innocent people?
Total hypocrisy and like I said, we were unabasedly harboring a known terrorist ourselves! Is that grounds to ruin our country?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Posada_Carriles
Plus the place was already ruined and we ruined it even more. That still won't allow us to rule it anymore than they could rule us if they somehow came here and defeated us
What are you thinking. It just doesn't work. YOu could reduce them to stone age life, killing 90 percent of them and spend 5 trillion dollars and the result wouldn't be much different
Peace
Karl
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Feb 27, 2012 - 01:29am PT
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Coz...would that be the caspian oil fields....? RJ
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Feb 27, 2012 - 03:45am PT
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For whatever reason we went there, I'm just sayin it's immoral and will never work
Didn't work for the Soviets or anybody else who invaded there.
Peace
Karl
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Feb 27, 2012 - 04:28am PT
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You destroy them until they are ruined.
The only problem with a "bomb them back to the stone age" approach is it doesn't really work when they already live in the stone age.
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sandstone conglomerate
climber
sharon conglomerate central
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Feb 27, 2012 - 09:11am PT
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someone once cdescribed afghanistan as "the 14th century with tanks." pretty good summarization.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Feb 27, 2012 - 11:15am PT
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Didn't work for the Soviets
Well, not to put too fine of a point on it but the Soviets were very likely
just a few months from securing the better part of the country until Charlie
Wilson's Stinger missiles equalized the battlefield. But that is just
arguing details.
There are two points that I do find highly cogent to today. The first is
that Charlie and the CIA 'experts' who were egging him on were initially
enamored of the 20mm Oerlikon cannon. The fact that these people thought
that this weapon could be lugged around the Afghan mountains on donkeys and
would be useful against Hind gunships shows what a dreamworld our policy
makers inhabit. They even went so far as to send over several hundred very
nice Kentuckey mules to lug those cannons around as Afghan donkeys were not
up to the task. It turned out the mules weren't either - they did not fare
well on the bleak forage there and some CIA operatives reported that the
Afghans were loathe to risk their new girl friends in battle. I kid you not.
My second point is that Soviet troop morale was abysmally low. Admittedly
they were poorly trained, poorly paid and cared for, and poorly led, but,
more importantly they knew they were on a fool's mission even had they
prevailed. While none of the previous problems apply to our people, unless
you consider absurd rules of engagement as poor leadership, I do firmly believe
that in our brave soldiers' hearts they too know they are on a fool's mission
if for nothing else the fact that we are soon to pull out and turn the war
over to a corrupt regime whose forces will not last six months against the
Taliban.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Feb 27, 2012 - 11:23am PT
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And now those towel heads have our Mules....? crikey..RJ
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Feb 27, 2012 - 11:26am PT
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RJ, don't tell Piton Ron, he'll go ballistic (sorry - can't avoid bad puns).
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tradmanclimbs
Ice climber
Pomfert VT
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COMMENTARY | According to CNN, the Pentagon comptroller said during a congressional budget meeting that it cost "about $850,000 per soldier" per year in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments reached a more expensive conclusion: $1.2 million per soldier per year. The estimate is supposed to increase for 2012.
The Pentagon comptroller, Department of Defense undersecretary Robert Hale, said higher weapons operating costs were "a good part that's probably 50 percent of the budget" when explaining the $850,000 per-soldier statistic.
Something is wrong when the U.S. is spending around $1 million per soldier per year to fight in Afghanistan. It's more wrong when we're getting "probably" and "a good part" and other ambiguous terminology. While I'm struggling to pay my rent on a public school teacher's salary, I want to know why the Department of Defense lacks hard-and-fast figures on its overseas spending.
I want to know who allowed military spending to swell to the point that enough was being spent per individual soldier to pay 21 Americans at home a comfortable $40,500 annual salary.
Weapons operating costs? Are they firing shells of pure gold? Platinum bayonets? Are Humvees suddenly being made by Rolls-Royce? Hearkening back to the wars of generations past, how would generals like Pershing, Patton, MacArthur and even Westmoreland view a figure like $850,000 per man per year?
When the nation still struggles to pull its way out of a recessionary pit, why are we spending like this? The recent riots over the Quran burnings at Bagram Air Base, explained by ABC News, show our billions of dollars have not helped us secure and solidify the notoriously unstable nation of Afghanistan. If we've been unable to turn Afghanistan around in over a decade worth of active intervention, why do we continue to burn through taxpayer dollars like they grow on trees?
One million dollars per soldier has not given us anything resembling a true victory in Afghanistan. It's time to go back to the drawing board. It's time to decide whether we want higher unemployment and an inefficient military or whether we want an effective balance; a nation where we're willing to help the poor and unemployed and forego gold-plated bullets.
Just read this on yahoo.
Bing west who is a gung ho marine wrote a very good book called Afganistan the wrong war. worth reading.
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fear
Ice climber
hartford, ct
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We forget that there really is no "Afghanistan". Just because we've drawn lines on our maps that claim that does not make it so...
So to conquer "them" is impossible. 400 different tribes, some loosely affiliated wandering extreme terrain does not constitute something that can be crushed.
Follow the money/oil. 'Terrorists' have nothing to do with it. Only the stupid Sheeple believe that.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Mar 17, 2012 - 09:38pm PT
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It's time to bail. Fall back to two fortified airbases and get our guys out!
Maintain the two bases. Secure them. Get our guys out of the field. Brig in the CIA, operate drones liberally.
The Rules of Engagement have lost us this war. It's not a loss, but certainly not a victory. We CANNOT WIN as things stand.
It may not be playing as bold in the headlines, but a family of 11 women and children were killed when their station-wagon ran over an IED. But then that's our fault...again...
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ipoI-J0T2rgZsArE_2hDGekHj3LQ?docId=CNG.e545a7831a23eeaff8a32d42c57854b0.1a1
and we are constantly criticized for trying to avoid this shit!!!! I'd like to hear more from Human Rights Watch on the f*#king Taliban!!!!
And then who does HRW look to to liberate sieged countries?? Their game is up. This is why I despise liberals.
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BooYah
Social climber
Ely, Nv
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Mar 17, 2012 - 09:46pm PT
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Neutron bomb the whole country. It's the only way to be sure. It's probably the only thing those tenacious bastards will understand. Even Ghengis Khan had trouble in this place. No one's going to miss them.
It will change the tune of the rest of the World, too, of that you could be sure.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 17, 2012 - 09:51pm PT
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Follow the money/drugs.
not oil are the overriding dynamic,
and it leads next door to Pakistan.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Mar 17, 2012 - 09:53pm PT
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We need a McArthur type to go in an let them know how sh#t is going to be. If they disagree, we fall back to 2 bases until we can bail. Then WE decide when to completely bail.
Remove 60% of personnel from Germany too. WTF??
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