Obama, congressional leaders to meet on Afghan war

[rehab]

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/10/05/afghanistan.us/index.html

Obama is going to meet with top congressional leaders to discuss this Afghan war, while the Republicans are pushing for at least 40,000 more troops to be sent overseas.

It'll be interesting to see how this pans out.

[btstone]

they need to make this place a parking lot and call it a day. that has been the entire problem. they are trying to be nice and sensitive for the U.N. but fuck that. The president need to issue a warning saying " we are gonna bomb the hell out of your county in 24 hrs. anyone still there will die" simple as that. we do that and the shit would prob stop. our nation is known as a byunch of bullshitters who cant agree on anything and never get anything done. we need to handle this

[Total_Blender]

If bombing were a solution, we would have done that already.

I haven't been to Afghanistan myself, but from everything I've studied about it, the landscape isn't suited to bombing, its all mountain passes and caves and theres no way we could just bomb them out. If you read about the Khyber Pass and the Swat Valley, these are places where "Every stone is soaked in blood" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Anglo-Afghan_War).

Afghanistan exhausted Alexander the great, broke the British empire, broke the Russians, pretty much every empire that has been there has failed. I really don't think war is going to fix anything there, they're just used to it. Its what they do. The economy there has evolved to support war. There are blacksmiths there who hand-forge guns (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khyber_Pass_Copy) and make gunpowder from film (film contains nitrocellulose) for Christ's sake. Anyone who can make an AK47 and the ammo to go in it from an engine block and a few VHS tapes is a bad mo-fo :crazy:

[btstone]

If bombing were a solution, we would have done that already.

I haven't been to Afghanistan myself, but from everything I've studied about it, the landscape isn't suited to bombing, its all mountain passes and caves and theres no way we could just bomb them out. If you read about the Khyber Pass and the Swat Valley, these are places where "Every stone is soaked in blood" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Anglo-Afghan_War).

Afghanistan exhausted Alexander the great, broke the British empire, broke the Russians, pretty much every empire that has been there has failed. I really don't think war is going to fix anything there, they're just used to it. Its what they do. The economy there has evolved to support war. There are blacksmiths there who hand-forge guns (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khyber_Pass_Copy) and make gunpowder from film (film contains nitrocellulose) for Christ's sake. Anyone who can make an AK47 and the ammo to go in it from an engine block and a few VHS tapes is a bad mo-fo :crazy:


couple nukes will do it

[Total_Blender]

couple nukes will do it

Do you realize you are arguing for fucking genocide? God damn you're an asshole. I know that people throw Hitler comparisons around like hot potato nowadays, and I'm not going to do that because of the Reductio ad Hitlerum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum), but still.

Aside from the human rights / war crime issue killing so many non-combatants by using nukes would cause... I don't know if we want to encourage/legitimize the use of nukes. If we use nukes in any way, the Russians and Chinese won't be happy. We will probably get sanctions from the UN which is not good considering how much oil we import (don't even start with the "drill here drill now" because it would take 10 years before we even get oil and once we do we don't have enough refineries to meet demand).

Also, if we use nukes, we will probably end up in a war with Pakistan or Iran or both. Its a dumb strategy, nukes are pretty much useless in real tactical situations. They are really only useful as a deterrent to other countries getting nukes.

[bdydrpdmazda]

Im sure before its all said and done I will find myself in Afghanistan, a buddy of mine thats their right now says they get into firefights that last hours. A troop sure is really needed if we are looking to make any progress. The war in Iraq is over so its time now to turn all our efforts to ending the war in Afghanistan and be done with all this.

[BanginJimmy]

For the first time in his life, Blender is correct. The terrain there requires you to put troops on the ground. The maps Al Qaeda has of caves throughout the mountains on the border with Pakistan are more detailed than anything tomtom will get you. I think we need to go back to tactics that worked in Viet-Nam and the Pacific war during WWII. Flame throwers to clear caves and white phosphorus grenades to take care of those that try to avoid the flames.

BTW, the same people that are against a surge in Afghanistan, are the ones that were against it in Iraq and swore it would not and did not work.

[Total_Blender]

BTW, the same people that are against a surge in Afghanistan, are the ones that were against it in Iraq and swore it would not and did not work.

It depends on your definition of "work". A surge increases our commitment, ties up more of our resources, etc etc. It might bring the violence down, but at the same time it does little for the Afghanis taking their share of the responsibility, and its counterproductive for the goal of us getting out of there.

What worked in Vietnam was us getting the hell out of there. But thats kind of an apples to oranges comparison because Vietnam didn't harbor any terrorists (or rather any terrorists that were a threat to mainland US security).

What we need to do is try to bring some of Afghanistan's neighbors and maybe Russia into the process. Having some kind of sustained co-operative presence there other than just a unilateral US presence. Thats how we handled Germany after WWII, we divided it into a British Zone, American Zone, Russian Zone, etc.

[SmackedInATL]

Troops on the ground is the only way wars are won, and the only way this war will be won. If Obama is going to commit then he needs to raise troop levels to about 100,000. This is why we initially failed in Iraq because Bush didn't listen to Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki when he told Bush they would need a lot more troops than what Bush initially sent.(can't remember exact figures), and then he was forced to resign because he disagreed with Bush. Obama better listen to his Generals and give him what he wants.