Afghanistan's Dirty Little Secret

[roo_ster]

Exactly.  We have almost 200,000 troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.  And where have the latest problems come from?  Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan.  So, do we put 100,000 troops there too?  Where are we going to get them?

I've said it once and I'll say it again.  This is not a war for BCTs and DIVs.  It's a war for SF teams, air strikes, CIA guys, CA teams, State Department development teams, and other soft power units.  Throwing thousands of troops at the problems is like trying to pin down water with your finger.

Oh, the Big Army has its place.  Not enough special ops to go around.  Certainly not enough to bounce the rubble.

Besides, it is hard for an enemy and its civvie population to feel invaded and defeated if mystery men jump outta they sky, kill a score of bad guys, and then ride off in an RSOV.

The mistake is leaving them there, as the locals become familiar with them and familiarity breeds contempt.  Our .mil ought to be seen as a force of nature: earthquake, tidal wave, horde of locusts, etc.  There and then gone, leaving destruction and a totally disrupted country in its wake.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

Oh, the Big Army has its place.  Not enough special ops to go around.  Certainly not enough to bounce the rubble.

Besides, it is hard for an enemy and its civvie population to feel invaded and defeated if mystery men jump outta they sky, kill a score of bad guys, and then ride off in an RSOV.

The mistake is leaving them there, as the locals become familiar with them and familiarity breeds contempt.  Our .mil ought to be seen as a force of nature: earthquake, tidal wave, horde of locusts, etc.  There and then gone, leaving destruction and a totally disrupted country in its wake.

to quote  caligula

if they are gonna hate you add a lil fear to it

[kgbsquirrel]

Sadly, I support Roo-ster's notion of war.  War is serious business and should not be entered into unless one's national security and way of life is at stake.  It should be an absolute last resort. 

Once Congress and the President come to the above conclusion then pull the trigger and apply Armeggedon along with a warning, actually a fait accompli to potential allies of the threat.

While I agree with regard to the self protection aspect, is it absolute in the justified reasons for going to war? My apologies for waxing philosophic but at what point does silently watching the aggressions of outside groups against other outside groups become intolerable? In Afghanistan the Taliban regime would drag women who had learned to read onto the pitch in a soccer stadium and shoot them in the head. Iraq used chemical weapons against portions of it's own population. Or perhaps the systematic genocide over the past century conducted in Sudan, Sierra Leone, the Balkans, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Cambodia, Burma, and so many others. No, I do not have the answer, but these are the sort of things that nag at me when ever I ponder over the concept of an isolationist/defensist doctrine.

As for the second part, yes. If you do make the decision to go to war you should execute it with all the wrath and fury you can muster. Half measures and "limited" warfare has done nothing but to prolong a conflict and ultimately increase its costs beyond what it's participants can stomach.

[makattak]

to quote  caligula

if they are gonna hate you add a lil fear to it

Oderint dum metuant.

[grampster]

As for the second part, yes. If you do make the decision to go to war you should execute it with all the wrath and fury you can muster. Half measures and "limited" warfare has done nothing but to prolong a conflict and ultimately increase its costs beyond what it's participants can stomach.

For those of us who are old enough, that is the lesson of Korea and Vietnam and after.  If one is placed in the position of having to go to war, and as a result, if one is to nation build, then one must destroy what goes before in the nation that is to be built.  Europe and Japan were destroyed and then rebuilt.  Most of the world profited from that...except for E. Europe and Russia.  Patton was right.  The Russians should have been pushed back into Russia and then dealt with like the Capitalists that we were and are.  America is the modern day re-incarnation of the Phoenician traders...we are businessmen having great power and great restraint.  Unfortunately, once fanatical religiousity is the moving force behind barbarism, threat to our way of life, culture and our national security, one is not left with much choice.  Who are the fanatics and how do you wipe them out?  I submit you cannot.  All you can do is create a lesson so terrible that those fanatics are forced back into the holes from which they came and dare not come forth for maybe another thousand years.

Of course all of this is easy for me to say, sitting here at my keyboard sipping on a brandy......

[Jocassee]

  There and then gone, leaving destruction and a totally disrupted country in its wake.

And sow the land with salt.

Of course high sodium land is no longer in vogue.

[Phantom Warrior]

roo_ster,

I don't disagree with you in theory.  I just can't think of many targets (i.e. nation states) that require a full up invasion.  Most of our problems seem to be coming from small groups operating in failed states or almost failed states.  Not much to defeat there.  Lots of opportunities to get bogged down nation building.

Agree that leaving troops there after we wreck everything is a huge mistake though.

[Perd Hapley]

And sow the land with salt.

Of course high sodium land is no longer in vogue.

Sure it's in vogue.  I think that was in the Discovery Channel shooter's manifesto; something about limiting the food supply to STOP THE SPREAD OF FILTHY INFANT FILTH!

[230RN]

There's a lot to be said for a Pax Americana.

[roo_ster]

...at what point does silently watching the aggressions of outside groups against other outside groups become intolerable?

Short answer: Until it becomes a threat to America and our interests...and maybe our allies'(1). 

I would say that, given humanity's track record, we learn to tolerate it.  Unless we want to conquer, colonize, and otherwise subjugate all the barbaric acres of this world.  Even the Romans didn't require tributary states to change their culture and folkways (however barbaric they may have been), other than to acknowledge Roman hegemony. 

It took the West how many years after the fall of Rome to claw back to an equivalent level of civilization and develpment?  Over 1000 years(2).   I expect some parts of the Earth to still treat women worse than cattle and urinate in the same streams they drink from at that time, 1000 years in the future.

The term, "Never again," come into vogue after WWII, but it is pretty apparent that those words have no meaning or only apply to one particular ethnic group.  How many genocidal campaigns have been waged since WWII?  I can think of maybe a half dozen in Africa alone.  Some are barely reported on, let alone stopped by some outside force.





(1) We ought to re-learn how to reward friends and punish enemies, rather than the reverse, which has become fashionable in the American ruling elite.

(2) Modern Paris's standard of living equaled/exceeded that of Roman-era Paris only in the late 19th century.  ~1400 years.

[MicroBalrog]

It took the West how many years after the fall of Rome to claw back to an equivalent level of civilization and develpment?  Over 1000 years(2).   I expect some parts of the Earth to still treat women worse than cattle and urinate in the same streams they drink from at that time, 1000 years in the future.

Read Le Goff. 400 years after the fall of Rome, European humanity produced more food and had a varietry more civilizational advantages. The Carolingian Rennaissance started even earlier.

How many genocidal campaigns have been waged since WWII?  I can think of maybe a half dozen in Africa alone.  Some are barely reported on, let alone stopped by some outside force.

And you suggest... what viable alternative?

[vaskidmark]

And you suggest... what viable alternative?

As a number of folks who left African nations as they transitioned from colonial/commonwealth rule to independence:  Let them kill each other off, starve to death, or otherwise bash each other until there is one group left standing; then we can decide if we want to ally with them or exterminate them.

As has been discussed already, it is difficult to impose one's own culture upon those who did not originally espouse that culture.  Unless you either rule them with an iron fist (no velvet glove) or kill them down to the youngest generation (generally considered to be less than 3 years old) and raise them up under the new culture.

A few years ago I might have had less reservation about attempting to roll over various nations and start them off again from just a little bit beyond emegence from the primordial ooze.  However, there are just a few too many "countries" that share either common culture/values systems or merely a great dislike of the USA and either the ability on their own or with the connivance/assistance of those sharing their culture/values to wreak more than mere retaliatory inconvenience on the USA.  Additionally, I have zero confidence that our current or probable future political leaders would ever have the fortitude to wage all-out war (not thermonuclear arrmageddon), no matter what the provocation.

stay safe.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

There's a lot to be said for a Pax Americana.

We'll miss it when it's gone.

 

[grampster]

 Alexander the Great understood warfare, at least according to the couple of books I've read about him, to the extent that one needed to give a severe spanking to whoever he was trying to overthow, to the point that they would be willing to talk, discuss how things would change.  (But stay much the same, other than the tribute paid.)  He conquered Afghanistan for example, by kicking some fanny, killing a kingo or two and by marrying the daughter of one of the local king/warlords, iirc and installed his satraps.  He also absorbed the conquered armies into his.

A'stan is not much different now than it was a thousand years ago.  Alexander was probably not much advanced, civilization wise, that those he conquered.  Our problem is that we are far advanced over the miserable conditions in the places that represent problems for us.  In fact we are so advanced that we've become stupid about it.  1.  We seem to think that every country wants to be like us and that they really are like us, just oppressed by some strong man.  Well, most rough cultures are nothing like us at all and they probably have a distorted view of who we are.  In The Closed Circle, the author talks about how Arabs, tribal Arabs, envied the West and that it seriously confused them and made them hostile when Westerners went Native....why would they want to do that? was the Arab thinking.
2.  In the face of the reality that energy is what makes civilization work, we have refused to become independent in that regard.  We have focused rather, on pie in the sky, elitist, wrong headed environmental nonsense and refuse to exploit the resources we have in the Western hemisphere regarding energy.  Perhaps stupid is the wrong adjective for us...maybe grandiose over educated stupid is a better term.

[taurusowner]

to quote  caligula

if they are gonna hate you add a lil fear to it

Fear of what?  Death?  Death of course being their glorious reunion with Allah and their long awaited reward of virgins.  How do you make someone fear you when the thought of death at your hands is something they dream of.

I'll be the one to say it.  One of the biggest problems is Islam.  These atrocities stem from that religion and their following of it.  They think of woman as unclean possessions because Islam tells them it is so.  They walk proudly into a fiery death, killing civilians and soldiers alike, because Islam tells them they should.  None of the savagery in the region is going to have any chance of changing until people stop thinking God Himself wants them to behave like savages.

And another things about past warfare vs modern warfare, is that the wholesale killing of civilians was never really looked down upon like it is now.  We bombed the hell out of Germany and Japan.  Each German and Japanese citizen knew what it was to be wholly defeated by the Allies because we utterly destroyed them and their cities.  We don't do that anymore.  And so as a people they don't ever really feel like they've lost.

[vaskidmark]

Fear of what?  Death?  Death of course being their glorious reunion with Allah and their long awaited reward of virgins.  How do you make someone fear you when the thought of death at your hands is something they dream of.

It is my understanding that we are not talking about dealing only with the jihadist, but his wife, his children, his goats, and his pile-of-boulders hut.  Everything gone in a brilliant flash of light, a loud "Boom!" and a cloud of dust.   Same-same for his neighbors, their goats, and their huts whether they are also jihadists or not.  Either someone convinces Johnny Jihad to quit his ways and go back to goat herding or we keep going forward until there are no more jihadists or jihad supporters left.

Crude?  Yes.  Effective?  If we stick to plan, yes.

How do we deal with those who object?  See 2nd paragraph above.  Substitute "objector" for "Jihadist".

stay safe.

[Perd Hapley]

Yes.  Death is not the only thing to fear.

[kgbsquirrel]

Fear of what?  Death?  Death of course being their glorious reunion with Allah and their long awaited reward of virgins.  How do you make someone fear you when the thought of death at your hands is something they dream of.

Porcine derived counter-measures? 

[Strings]

Wrapping any jihadist bodies in pig skin for burial would be a good start

[Phantom Warrior]

Ragnar Danneskjold et. al.,

Remember that WWII was also a war against a nation state with a viable government.  When we beat the government everyone quit and went home and started rebuilding their country.  The GWOT/GWO Whatever is theoretically against an international terrorist group but has also grown to include local insurgencies, criminal groups, and just plain people that are pissed off that we are in their country.

None of which are easily discriminated from the population they live and operate among.  Nor do any of them have a center of gravity (capital, government, army) that we can destroy and force a surrender.  No amount of brutality will change those two facts.

[MicroBalrog]

Fear of what?  Death?  Death of course being their glorious reunion with Allah and their long awaited reward of virgins.  How do you make someone fear you when the thought of death at your hands is something they dream of.

Guess what:

Most of these people don't believe that on a depe, visceral level.

You know how I know that? Because there are tons - hundreds, thousands - of reports from fights conducted by allied forces where Al-Quaeda, Iraqi insurgents, etc. confront US forces whom they outnumber tactically, and then they break off and run away like whimpering little girls.

The terrorists are cowards.

Whimpering, inept, useless cowards.

[Perd Hapley]

The terrorists are cowards.

Whimpering, inept, useless cowards.

WRONG.  They are useful for target practice.

[Perd Hapley]

I'm a little chagrined I didn't catch this before, but it makes perfect sense for the administration to abandon the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.  They have their hands full occupying the United States.

[Blakenzy]

It is my understanding that we are not talking about dealing only with the jihadist, but his wife, his children, his goats, and his pile-of-boulders hut.  Everything gone in a brilliant flash of light, a loud "Boom!" and a cloud of dust.   Same-same for his neighbors, their goats, and their huts whether they are also jihadists or not.  Either someone convinces Johnny Jihad to quit his ways and go back to goat herding or we keep going forward until there are no more jihadists or jihad supporters left.

Crude?  Yes.  Effective?  If we stick to plan, yes.

How do we deal with those who object?  See 2nd paragraph above.  Substitute "objector" for "Jihadist".

stay safe.

 

[Antibubba]

To drift the thread back to where it started, the problem is that the pedophilia (though "buggery" is more accurate) is institutionalized.  And from what I've read, doesn't seem to carry the kind of stigma it does here.  If it's normal, how can you make it taboo?

I'm very curious to find out the levels of sexual abuse directed toward young girls (I'm not including 10 year olds who are married to older men.