Whom precisely are we trying to help in Afghanistan?

[Spade]

Lt-Gen Andrew Leslie reported to the Senate Committee on Afghanistan that the Canadian military is stretched to the limit after seven years in a war with no well-defined outcome!
Military will need break when Afghan mission ends: Canadian army chief

 

[Colpy]

Anyone who is a blind American sychophant and who's concept of military doctorine makes a mockery of any miltary strategy and is sadly dificient in historical comparisons

You do this every time you get out of your depth, and are drowning in your own ignorance. You do when we discuss political structure, history and firearms.....the three subjects on earth I actually know something about. It never fails.

If you have a point, argue it.

If you don't, STFU.

You are wrong, and therefore unable to defend your comparison of Vietnam and Afghanistan.

So, you resort to insult, and climb up on a pedestal of self-important righteousness, pretending you know something nobody else does, pretending you've won, when you have clearly lost.

Are you a member of the NDP?:lol:

 

[Tyr]

You do this every time you get out of your depth, and are drowning in your own ignorance. You do when we discuss political structure, history and firearms.....the three subjects on earth I actually know something about. It never fails.

If you have a point, argue it.

If you don't, STFU.

You are wrong, and therefore unable to defend your comparison of Vietnam and Afghanistan.

So, you resort to insult, and climb up on a pedestal of self-important righteousness, pretending you know something nobody else does, pretending you've won, when you have clearly lost.

Are you a member of the NDP?:lol:

sure colpy. Tell yourself...

 

[Tyr]

It took “a long time for this elementary truth to be spoken,” my colleague Jeffrey Simpson wrote this week under a headline, “Yes, the Afghan mission is ‘failing' and, yes, the rituals continue.”

He was quoting, with approval and that weary wisdom common to those who live in Central Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's recent remarks on CNN to the effect that military victory isn't possible in Afghanistan.

“Now pouring out of Stephen Harper,” wrote James Travers of the Toronto Star on the same subject, “is the smoke that the Taliban can't be beaten.” His colleague, Haroon Siddiqui, said, “the Prime Minister says NATO cannot win, period. So what are we doing there?” The previous week, Mr. Travers's and Mr. Siddiqui's colleague, Thomas Walkom, said of the PM's acknowledgment, “I find this admission breathtaking … if the Taliban can't be beaten, what are Canadian troops doing in Afghanistan? If the Taliban can't be beaten, why are our soldiers still dying?”

Collectively, the pundits were surprised, if modestly pleased, that the Canadian PM had finally smartened up and was now seeing the war as they do, to quote Mr. Simpson, as “an ill-defined mission that defied all the rules of counterinsurgency,” led by “an enthusiastic general [this would be the former Canadian Forces' boss, Rick Hillier]” who bamboozled both press and politicians.
Wow: I don't know where these boys, including the PM, have been since 2006, when Canadian troops arrived in Kandahar; well I do know, and the answer is Ottawa and Toronto.

But that the Afghan mission, certainly once it moved to the south, was always going to be bloody difficult, fraught with peril, complicated, lethal and perhaps even doomed is not news. It isn't news to Canadian soldiers or to those who have covered them in Afghanistan, and it ought not to come as a shock to Canadians, either.

 

[OkiefromMuskoki]

We have chosen sides in a civil war. There is no good guys here!

 

[Machjo]

"We never had it" We had it, then left the clean up to NATO (BIG Mistake) while we went off to Iraq. I admit Afghanistan was our lost, never should have left before we were finished.

And no WMD's found either for all that effort.

 

[Machjo]

Lt-Gen Andrew Leslie reported to the Senate Committee on Afghanistan that the Canadian military is stretched to the limit after seven years in a war with no well-defined outcome!
Military will need break when Afghan mission ends: Canadian army chief

Oh waht does he know; he's just a Lt-Gen.:roll:

 

[einmensch]

"We never had it" We had it, then left the clean up to NATO (BIG Mistake) while we went off to Iraq. I admit Afghanistan was our lost, never should have left before we were finished.

Canada in Iraq?? What are you talking about--do you know??

 

[einmensch]

You do this every time you get out of your depth, and are drowning in your own ignorance. You do when we discuss political structure, history and firearms.....the three subjects on earth I actually know something about. It never fails.

If you have a point, argue it.

If you don't, STFU.

You are wrong, and therefore unable to defend your comparison of Vietnam and Afghanistan.

So, you resort to insult, and climb up on a pedestal of self-important righteousness, pretending you know something nobody else does, pretending you've won, when you have clearly lost.

Are you a member of the NDP?:lol:

Describing yourself and projecting that on others--typical for your type--

 

[ironsides]

Canada in Iraq?? What are you talking about--do you know??

Read #135

 

[ironsides]

Go get them.

 

[ironsides]

And no WMD's found either for all that effort.

Who said there were WMD's in Afghanistan?

 

[ironsides]

Lt-Gen Andrew Leslie reported to the Senate Committee on Afghanistan that the Canadian military is stretched to the limit after seven years in a war with no well-defined outcome!
Military will need break when Afghan mission ends: Canadian army chief

Roughly 2000 troops and your stretched to the limit?? Give them the equipment and training they need to do the job right. You can be the greatest soldier in the world, but you will lose unless you have the best equipment in order to accomplish your mission in the fastest and safest way.

Poor and Rustic: Canada's Army vs. the Screaming Eagles

 

[petros]

but you will lose unless you have the best equipment in order to accomplish your mission in the fastest and safest way.

So why has it been an 8 year battle against peasants if hi-tech is everything?

 

[ironsides]

So why has it been an 8 year battle against peasants if hi-tech is everything?

They are not fighting "peasants" as you say, but hardened guerilla fighters who know the land like the back of their hand. That is the mistake a lot have made. It could have been over in 3 years or less only IF.

 

[einmensch]

They are not fighting "peasants" as you say, but hardened guerilla fighters who know the land like the back of their hand. That is the mistake a lot have made. It could have been over in 3 years or less only IF.

The Afghans are peasants. Hardened -yes-Determined yes--the Peasants know the land like the back of theur hand but the Afghan soldiers that come from the peasants don't, where's your brain?

Here is what you support Iron--
1) Obviously no one is looking for Osama bin Laden-so lie # 1
*****> this one is not stated>>>to coerce compliance to corporate demands

2) Afghanistan provides more than 90% of the world's opium — permeates everything. A former governor, Sher Mohammed Akhundzada, was caught with nine tons of opium, enough to force him out of office, but not enough to put him in jail, since he enjoys — according to U.S. military sources — a close relationship with the Karzai government.
3) the Northern Alliance are bad people--just as bad as the Taliban just different tribes

 

[Machjo]

Who said there were WMD's in Afghanistan?

I was referring to the US in Iraq.

 

[Machjo]

They are not fighting "peasants" as you say, but hardened guerilla fighters who know the land like the back of their hand. That is the mistake a lot have made. It could have been over in 3 years or less only IF.

Only IF what? Only if we nuked them? But if we're there to supposedly help them, that would defeat the objective of the mission, and thus amount to a defeat in our objective, a lost war. So then what would be the point of being there if the only way to win is to nuke 'em?

 

[Machjo]

And that's the other thin. When we'd entered Afghanistan, it was on the objective of capturing Osama Bin Laden. We lost that war (or are we still fighting it 8 years later?), but instead of admitting defeat, we redefine the objective, which was to 'give the people democracy', nation building. Only now that we're losing this second war (seeing that the objectives are different, we do need to consider the change in objectives as the end of one war and the beginning of another, as the military must re-adjust all its objectives and strategies for a different purpose) are we finally starting to admit defeat... or are we just going to redefine the objectives again and start a third war?