Twentieth century (and now 21st century) history shows
us American leadership has had difficulty in ending wars we participate in
without an end we experienced at the end of WWII – viz., complete utter
victory.
That difficulty us glaring in America’s longest war –
battling Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan. For me, that war should have been
drawn done after Osama (or Usama) bin Laden met his demise at the hands of Navy
SEALs in Pakistan.
Alas the nature of 21st century geopolitics and
Afghanistan’s proximity to crazy Muslim Mullahs in Iran, enigmatic yet still
threatening Russia and America’s new arch-rival in Communist China. Geopolitics
aside, there is nothing left worth fighting for in Afghanistan. UNLESS the USA
is willing to take the same step Islam took to spread across the planet from
its Arab origins like an unconquerable disease. Islam’s disease was spread by the
paradigm of submit, transform or be killed. Not a single Western nation –
including the USA – is willing to exact that kind of victory on people
brainwashed for centuries by Islam.
What’s left? Give the Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan a
spanking they’ll remember and leave with the threat another spanking can
return.
Justin Smith utilizes the Washington Post’s Afghanistan Papers to further
the need to depart Afghanistan.
JRH 2/1/20
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BLOG EDITOR: I’ve apparently been placed in restricted Facebook Jail! The restriction was relegated after criticizing Democrats for supporting abortion in one post and criticizing Virginia Dems for gun-grabbing legislation and levying protester restrictions. Rather than capitulate to Facebook censorship by abandoning the platform, I choose to post and share until the Leftist censors ban me completely. Conservatives are a huge portion of Facebook. If more or all Conservatives are banned, it will affect the Facebook advertising revenue paradigm. SO FIGHT CENSORSHIP BY SHARE – SHARE – SHARE!!! Facebook notified me in pop-up on 1/20/20: “You're temporarily restricted from joining and posting to groups that you do not manage until April 18 at 7:04 PM.”
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This Meat Grinder Called ‘Afghanistan’
America Rejects the Butcher's Bill
By Justin O. Smith
Sent 1/31/2020 9:51 PM
Afghanistan is an amazing country full of rich culture and
history that has mesmerized many a young man, but its own people today are
still unwilling to defend their country at such a level that nothing the United
States Armed Forces does will make a difference, in even twenty, forty or sixty
more years. They have forgotten their Buddhist past and long relinquished their
fates to Allah, the Koran and Islam; and so, no matter that many do not hold
with the harsher tenets of Islam, they still will submit, just as they have
always done, to the final wishes and commands of the terrible, murderous
Taliban mullahs and clerics, in the end, if the United States ever does finally
withdraw from this heaven on earth, that is also too often a living hell. And
regardless of any U.S. Command's decision that seeks to stand by those Afghanis
who have sacrificed much sweat and blood in the previous eighteen years
of war, alongside the fine young men and women of America, the paid out sheet
in the cost of American lives is not worth the gain, when the net return on our
efforts show them to be a dismal failure.
Americans must remember that our primary mission in
Afghanistan was to kill and destroy the Al Qaeda who were responsible for
planning and financing the September 11th 2001 attack on America that resulted
in the heinous murders of three-thousand of our countrymen. We didn't enter
Afghanistan to save the people from themselves or to fight their battle for
them, although that is exactly what we've done for the past eighteen years,
even though the majority of the group responsible for 9/11 has either been
captured or killed.
Noted by Michael Phillips for the Wall Street Journal (12-13-19)
[Reporting a story on Col. Randy Hoffman]:
"Over the course of the war, 775,000 U.S. troops have fought in
Afghanistan: 28,000 of them have served five or more tours. More than 2,300
Americans have died there, and 20,000 have suffered wounds, including amputated
limbs and brain injuries. ... more than 120,000 returned home with symptoms of
post-traumatic stress, the hidden wounds of America's longest war."
President Trump has largely opposed a U.S. presence in
Afghanistan, as far back as 2013, when a private citizen he tweeted [Do a page search to locate quotes]:
"We should leave Afghanistan immediately. No more wasted lives." And
in a later tweet he wrote: "Afghanistan is a complete waste. Time to come
home!"
Trump's instincts exhibited an awareness for what a
situation actually represents, the reality, and he was right, when he examined
the Afghanistan War and essentially asked, "Why in the hell are we still
there?"
In its nineteenth year, we're still fighting a war that
approximately two-thirds of Afghanistan War Veterans call "not worth
fighting". Why?
As Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, under President
Bush, stated so bluntly in one memo:
"We are never going to get the U.S. military out of Afghanistan unless we
take care to see that there is something going on that will provide the
stability that will be necessary for us to leave."
Afghanistan does represent an extremely strategic and
sensitive area for U.S. military considerations, due to its close proximity to
China and Iran, and despite all the incredible advances in our surveillance
technology, armed drones and missile delivery systems and our other strategic
bases in close proximity to this region, many intelligence service heads place
a premium on first hand contacts in country. The U.S. Armed Forces are most
reluctant to give up such a near perfect deployment area for operations all
across the Middle East, and for other considerations.
Here again, if America is as energy independent as our
leaders assert, there isn't any U.S. interests in Afghanistan, except to use
our presence there to keep stability and peace throughout the entire region,
while protecting the Straits of Hormuz for international commerce and
preventing Turkey's attempts to reconstitute the old Ottoman Empire. These are
matters that should fall to the entire Western world more so than just on the
shoulders of the United States; however, our leaders are also most likely
interested in Afghanistan's usefulness as a forward position to counter China's
rise in the area and to keep an eye on Pakistan too, both of which have aided
in helping Iran and North Korea develop their nuclear weapons armaments.
On December 9th 2019, the Washington Post released a bombshell report
on the reprehensible and egregious mishandling of the war in Afghanistan by
senior U.S. officials and those in the high command of Afghan operations.
Generated by leaked documents from the Special Investigator General's office for Afghanistan
Reconstruction (SIGAR) examining the root failures of
the Afghan War, the report revealed that over the course of eighteen years U.S.
officials outright lied about the campaign and made overly optimistic and false
assessments to hide the obvious evidence the war in Afghanistan had become
unwinnable.
In the current spending budget, as the United States
considers the possibility of a complete withdrawal, it allocates $133 billion
for Afghanistan in 2020 alone, even though everybody from the President's
office on down see major problems in the Afghan government's ability to provide
basic services and keep their military fully functional using U.S. provided
armaments and support equipment. Problems, or corruption, are also inhibiting
efforts to control the opium growers and the drug trade and to make full use of
Afghanistan's other natural resources. The American taxpayer has paid for many
failed efforts, in this troubled country, whether it was money spent for
soybeans that won't grow, weapons "lost" or stolen by Afghan military
forces and a $2.9 million dollar farming storage facility or a $456,000
training facility that actually started crumbling apart after only four months
due to substandard bricks. And let's not forget the Afghan power plant America
built that was operating at only about two percent of its capacity.
James Dobbins, a former special
envoy to Afghanistan under both President Bush and Obama, told SIGAR interviewers: "We
don't invade poor countries to make them rich. We don't invade authoritarian
countries to make them democratic. We invade violent countries to make them
peaceful and we clearly failed in Afghanistan."
Reported by WaPo, Colonel Bob Crowley, U.S. Army, a senior
counter-insurgency advisor in Afghanistan in 2013 and 2014, noted: "Every data point was
altered to present the best picture possible. Surveys, for instance, were
totally unreliable but reinforced that everything we were doing was right, and
we became a self-licking ice cream cone."
During a conference for Concerned Veterans for America,
former warrant officer and Green Beret, Nate Anderson stated: "We've now gone 18
years in this conflict and literally, a new generation not even born on 9/11 is
fighting the war that started then. And from a societal and cultural
standpoint, that's a very jarring reality to comprehend."
Three successive administrations refused to properly
confront terrible mistakes in Afghanistan, from pride or fear, and they failed
to admit failure. General
Douglas Lute, key Afghanistan strategist under Bush
and Obama, posed the following question:
"If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction ... 2400
lives lost ... Who will say this was in vain?"
America hasn't "won" only because we have not
destroyed all opposition, similar to the way we did in Germany after WWII,
however, America absolutely can win. Our people just can't summon up the
political will to do so at this juncture in time, and there are plenty of good
reasons to be reluctant to keep trying to pacify the violent, murderous natives
of this 7th century backwater, Third World hellhole, but America could if Her
people wished to make it so. America has the military might. America's people
do not have the will, and rightfully so.
Whenever U.S. forces made security gains in Afghanistan,
they inevitably threw them away with too many abrupt changes in military
strategy. However, there was a fairly unprecedented security gain between 2010
and the end of 2013, that resulted from operations focused on bottom-up
operations and working with local populations in rural areas, to press the
Taliban and place it more on defense, decreasing its reach in communities and
its time and opportunity for terrorist strikes.
The Taliban controls as much of Afghanistan as it ever did,
from the moment American forces first set foot in country, including the heart
of Kabul, the Afghan Capitol, as they continue operations across the country.
The drug lords and our corrupt "allies" are laughing at America, as
they rake in obscene profits at the expense of the U.S. government and by way
of the blood streaming from the bodies of our U.S. Armed Forces members, those
good and decent young men and women, placing their all on the line for God,
Family and Country and dying a few here and a few there each day, each week,
each month, in this meat grinder called "Afghanistan".
Afghanistan nearly cost Marine Colonel Randy Hoffman his sanity, after serving seven combat
tours there, six of which were highly classified, along with one tour in Iraq
and a bronze star for valor, burying many friends in the course of that time.
It changed his personality in such a manner, that it placed a strain on his
marriage, with his wife Dawn, and frightened his children, to the point that
the family began calling itself "Hoffmanistan", joking darkly on the
steep cost exacted on their daily lives by the terrible memories carried home
from Afghanistan.
In one two and a half year period, Randy lost 100 men,
seeing one decapitated by a broken helicopter blade. And after returning
stateside for a bit, home in Indiana, he drew the unfortunate duty of burying
nine more Marines and making dozens of phone calls to the grieving families of
other Marines.
The United States Armed Forces, all branches, has performed
courageously in Afghanistan and performed their duty to the best of their
ability, however, at this point, the filling of hospital beds and body bags is
no longer justified, by any stretch of one's imagination. Without the will to
win and a strategy set on that purpose, the only alternative left is to
leave.
If President Trump should withdraw our troops from
Afghanistan anytime soon, we can leave knowing we did not lose this war,
because we succeeded in the primary mission to kill thousands of Al Qaeda.
We're never going to end the evil of Islam in this country, or even remotely
reform it, to the point that we could actually pacify Afghanistan in any way
that would amount to a moral victory. If the Afghans want to fight for their
country, it's their choice, and they better get to it, and if they don't,
that's their choice too, but after nearly twenty years, and all the blood and
treasure America has spent, Afghanistan is no longer our problem. We are not
morally obligated to wreak vengeance on the Taliban and the various terrorists
of their country forever, and our forces would be leaving of their own accord,
called home by the President, not forced out.
America owes it to those who serve so courageously and
sacrifice so much, under incredibly harsh and dangerous conditions, to finally
end this war. We can proudly and righteously honor all who served in this Asian
misadventure, as the heroes they are and for a mission completed successfully
above and beyond the call of duty, regardless of how far their leaders strayed
or how confused they became on our ultimate goal for Afghanistan. Each
American's service, both the good men and women, was not in vain.
America has looked at the butcher's bill, and She rejects
it.
By Justin O. Smith
+++++++++++++++++++
BLOG EDITOR: I’ve apparently been placed in restricted Facebook
Jail! The restriction was relegated after criticizing Democrats for supporting
abortion in one post and criticizing Virginia Dems for gun-grabbing legislation
and levying protester restrictions. Rather than capitulate to Facebook
censorship by abandoning the platform, I choose to post and share until the
Leftist censors ban me completely. Conservatives are a huge portion of
Facebook. If more or all Conservatives are banned, it will affect the Facebook advertising revenue paradigm. SO FIGHT CENSORSHIP BY SHARE – SHARE – SHARE!!! Facebook notified me in pop-up on 1/20/20: “You're temporarily
restricted from joining and posting to groups that you do not manage until April 18 at 7:04 PM.”
________________________
Edited by John R. Houk
Text enclosed by brackets and
source links are by the Editor.
© Justin O. Smith
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