How about you answer the question, because I can only answer on the US side of it. I cannot answer on every coalition force that is there: UK, Germany, France, Italy, Canada, Spain, and 38 more countries.

 

El Casanova are you telling me the US military has lost that much ground and become that much more inefficient in 60+ years? The US trained MILLIONS of men in just the first few months prior to entering World War II, and you're telling me now we can't train 400,000 in more than a year and a half? I can't believe our military has sunk so low and its time for heads to roll.

Well if I'd have known you've got these kinds of psychic abilities El Casanova I would have been more respectful. But just in case you don't what did President Really say about the deadline he gave?

You know those don't seem like Geneva Convention things to me. They seem more like common sense and being civilized to me.

 

He disappoints the far left and pisses off the right.

I'd say he's pretty much doing "business as usual"

I mean, I hope he doesn't "change" his mind on bringing the troops home after 2011.



Oh politicians, they claim to be different but they're all the same.

 

And those men died. Because they were not trained right. Just read how it really worked when it came to training troops before WW II, it is not as easy as you put it.

http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwii/usarmy/manpower.aspx

Training a Soldier is a process that takes time. It cannot be rushed. Another example of rushing training would be the "90 day wonders", who were the officers who were rushed through Officer Candidate School to help out raise the amount of officers who were dying at a high rate during Vietnam. Which did more bad than good, because those officers were so poorly trained, that they got many Soldiers killed, sometimes themselves.

They are not psychic abilities, they are just plans that have been going on since I was there. And that is why the surge is very important.

He said he will start to bring US forces back in July 2011.

Well, those are things that are in the Geneva Convention as well as other things. Like I said there are many more things, but I cannot talk about them, or I would give away tactics. And I will not do that.

 

Didn't he just receive the Noble Peace Prize???? WHAT THE FUCK

 

I concur

 

Will the troop numbers in Iraq actually decrease?

OR

Are the numbers of troops surrounding Iran just increasing?

Thinskin

 

Do any of you see the problem here? Gates told obozo he needed 70,000 troops. Instead of listening to his advisers and sending enough troops over to protect the ones that are there obozo chose to cut that number in half. Once again we go half stepping; either send enough troops to get the job done or get our people out now!. This half-wit fool will get more killed then blame Gates because it failed. Come on, can't we get this lying fool out of office before he gets another few thousand killed? More troops on the ground means more targets on the ground and they are not being given the protection they need and deserve.

Someone please tell me how this son of a bitch is any better than we had before. He has lied, stolen, cheated and fucked this country, the only thing left is for obozo tu turn it into a muslim nation. Fuck, I hate him more every day with some hate reserved for the fools who voted for the piece of shit.

 

Whatever point your trying to make, had nothing to do with what I said.

 

The reaction here of people like TexasJammer and ElCasanova will serve to prove my point: Obama has nothing to gain by doing what he's doing. The right wing will continue to hate him, and they'll use the fact that he set a timeline, or the fact that he didn't send umpteen million (pick a number) troops to Afghanistan, to blame any failure on him and him alone. He'd have done better to pull the troops out. Sure, then they'd accuse him of cutting and running, or not listening to the generals on the ground, or being soft on terror, or some other bullshit Bush-era talking point, but the net affect is the same. The right wing will criticize and demonize Obama no matter what. But by pulling out, he'd save lives, and he'd save money. And he wouldn't have hitched his wagon to a cause he can't win.

 

Now you might have a point about officers but damn sure people drafted could be in Vietnam in less than four months.

Its all a matter how they set their priorities but it is certainly possible to train 400,000 Afghans in the amount of time allotted.

Plans have obviously changed since you've been there El Casanova.

And the problem with that is what?

Sounds mighty mysterious but I don't think adhering to the Geneva Convention means we can't win against the terrorists.

I don't ever think you can defeat a terrorist by becoming one.

 

You confuse a few things here, Kimi.

IMO, most of us on the right think that it is a mistake to engage in a battle, war, skirmish or any armed conflict, with no plan to win it. If you have no plan to win it, then don't engage our troops in it. If we are engaged in an armed conflict then either stay committed to win or get out pronto.

It's the wishy washy shit that gets our military killed and emboldens the enemy. Most of the politicians in Washington have no idea how to win at war, most of our military leaders have no idea how to be politicians. It is when we try to make our politicians into warriors and our soldiers into politicians that we get in trouble.

 

It's a mistake to believe that (a) the military knows how to win a war, and (b) the "war" in Afghanistan can be "won" by military means.

For proof of (a), I can run down a long list of generals whose advice, when taken, led to disaster. McClellan and Westmoreland leap to mind, but you could pretty much pick anyone in charge from Korea to the present.

This mythology about "listening the the generals on the ground" has its roots in George Bush's efforts to pretend that it really wasn't Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, and certainly not George Bush, making these egregiously stupid decisions. But does anyone believe that?

 

By way of finishing the above thought, I would also point out that some military leaders make it their business to tell the Commander-in-Chief exactly what he wants to hear, since to do otherwise runs the risk of putting oneself in a whole new line of work.

Furthermore, I would point out that military leaders have an obvious vested interest in asking for more and more and more and more troops, because then, when they don't get all that they ask for, they have a perfect excuse for failure.

“If he had a million men he would swear the enemy had two millions, and then he would sit down in the mud and yell for three!”

Lincoln Secretary of War Edwin Stanton

 

So if you think that the war is not winnable, why are you not clamoring for Obama to get the hell out?

What I said was a military conflict/war needs to have a goal of winning, i. e.: getting bin Laden, that is certainly doable. Since the war in Afghanistan is more of a military conflict designed to keep the Taliban from running free in the country, that too is certainly winnable.

Like Iraq, winning does not necessarily include taking over the country permanently. Just to get rid of a regime and allow the people to install a new government.

But to think that politicians know more about winning a battle than the military does, is naive. Politicians should set the objectives, the military should then strive to meet those goals.

 

And that would be with people who were drafted, and did not have a choice in going to serve or not, another additional aspect as to the reason deaths were high. Because by forcing people to go, instead of allowing them to choose, people who did not want to fight or be there were forced to train and ship out. And it is very well documents how many Soldiers would injure themselves be it shooting themselves, applying cream or ointments to their feet, etc to be sent back home.

The 1500 security forces members a month creation is a very good speed for Afghanistan.


To give you an idea, in the US, it is about 1 drill sergeant per 200 recruits. So that means that it would be needed at least 8 instructors to train the 1500 security forces in Afghanistan. But then you have to add the language barrier and the custom barrier and the religious barrier. So now you need more instructors to control less recruits so that the information can be disseminated properly to the recruits, and that the lessons are learned. And because of the customs and religion of Afghanistan barely using watches, and believing that if something happens it is the will of Allah that it does, then it is a much less disciplined group of people. And then add on top of that the 5 times a day that the Muslims need to pray. You are looking at much more constraints than it takes to train a Soldier in the US.

The mission we were executing while I was there, was a plan that was made 2 years before we arrived. That is how long it takes to make a plan take action. When I was there, they were speaking about this new plan, they were still ironing out the details. So yes, plans change over time, but it takes time for the plans to be executed. And it has only been 9 months since I have been there.

Coming from a third world country, and having to be raised while the terrorist groups were alive and working, and creating fear in Peru, I can tell you that the more constraints you have to fight against the terrorists, the harder it is to defeat them.

I never said we cannot beat the terrorists by following the Geneva Convention. I just stated that by being able to cut through the red tape created by the Geneva Convention, then the amount of time to make the mission complete would be shortened.

 

Obama is in a position of damn if he does, damn if he doesn't by being President right now during this war. So, my points are legitimate and I have shown how they are legitimate. I am not just criticizing for no reason, I actually have points behind my arguments.

 

You're not paying attention. I AM clamoring for him to get the hell out.

Who says so? Just because you can imagine winning doesn't mean that you're capable of winning. You probably thought Vietnam was winnable too.

Oh...well, don't look now, but WE'RE the ones propping up a corrupt regime now. But Karzai said today, in essence, that he'll try to be a little less corrupt in the future, so I guess we should be grateful.

We're not talking about a battle. We're talking about a war, we're talking about nation-building. We're talking about international diplomacy.

 

You know what El Casanova? In defense of my dad, my wife's dad, and several guys, alive and dead, that I've known myself; fuck you and your draftees don't make as good a soldier as volunteers, or I guess you just think you're that much better than anyone else who ever put on a uniform in this country. Draftees won World War II El Casanova.

What was the mission supposed to be; fighting the Taliban?

And then there would be no difference between us and the terrorists.

 

Interesting stuff going on in here. Hmmmmmm