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Marines Flood Afghan Villages
The military's new counter-insurgency plans for Afghanistan are being put to the test: Thousands of Marines arrived on Thursday in Afghanistan, reports the Washington Post, part of what will be a 4000-troop operation to combat Taliban insurgents. The new troops will deploy into regions NATO has yet to touch to "build and live in small outposts among the local population" of villages and towns. Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nelson explained, "We're doing this differently. We're going to be with the people. We're not going to drive to work. We're going to walk to work." The strategy of posting to small villages and towns has been used in the eastern region of the country; the scope and geography of the new operation is, however, unprecedented.
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Who knew the change Obama was talking about was changing the troops from Iraq to Afghanistan ?
Perhaps the same people who knew he is smart enough to quickly implement strategies conceived by commanders on the ground in Iraq; namely, "clear, hold, build"?
He seems to understand that military personnel living among the population and taking similar risks to them and protecting them from Taliban raids will make us look less like conquerors.
How'd the first two "SURGES" in Afghanistan (British and Soviets) work out ?
Are we sold bold to believe it will be different this time ?
What . . . The third time is the charm ?
The Third SURGE is the charm ?
The difference between the US "surge" and the Soviet "surge" is that this time our troops will try to live along side the villagers and gain their trust instead of hunkering down behind massive walls and treating the local villagers no better than your enemies. We also have the advantage of looking back at what the soviets did wrong and not do what they did. That's the difference.
Right ncc81707,
It should also have the advantage of cutting down on civilian casualties and deaths from airstrikes.
Gen McChrystal has ordered his Marines surround houses/ compounds and wait for reinforcements & surrender of hostiles rather than calling in an airstrike & flattening the whole joint with everyone inside.
It's What we should have done after 9/11; you know, instead of getting ourselves mixed up in a regime change in Iraq that has cost the US 4000 soldiers and over a trillion dollars we will not get back. We never really properly got to crush al-queida properly after they attacked us. This should cut down on the civilian deaths caused by drone-bombing.
Though I want this to end... I'd like this to be successful more. If Obama can come even remotely close, hats off to him.
Here's the whole reason the U.S. is in Afghanistan in the first place: It's all about building natural gas pipelines from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan and an L.N.G. port, in other words to get central Asian gas to western markets by a route that bypasses Russia and Iran. The project was originally a Unocal scheme, in competition against the Argentine firm Bridas. Unocal had to bow out of the idea in 1998 after Clinton had cruise missiles fired into Afghanistan and the idea was put on hold. Here's a timeline up to 1999.
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/51/119.html
http://www.worldpress.org/specials/pp/pipeline_timeline.htm
But the Bush (Cheney) regime re-started/intensified the pipeline negotiations:
"The Bush White House stepped up negotiations with the Taliban in 2001. When those talks stalled in July, a Bush administration representative threatened the Taliban with military reprisals if the government did not go along with American demands."
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2002/06/05/memo/index.html
And wouldn't you know it, Bush "just happened" to have warplans for the invasion of Afghanistan on his desk and ready to be signed two days before 9/11:
"President Bush was expected to sign detailed plans for a worldwide war against al-Qaida two days before Sept. 11 but did not have the chance before the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, U.S. and foreign sources told NBC News. The document, a formal National Security Presidential Directive, amounted to a "game plan to remove al-Qaida from the face of the earth," one of the sources told NBC News' Jim Miklaszewski. The plan dealt with all aspects of a war against al-Qaida, ranging from diplomatic initiatives to military operations in Afghanistan, the sources said on condition of anonymity. In many respects, the directive, as described to NBC News, outlined essentially the same war plan that the White House, the CIA and the Pentagon put into action after the Sept. 11 attacks. The administration most likely was able to respond so quickly to the attacks because it simply had to pull the plans "off the shelf," Miklaszewski said... Officials did not believe that Bush had had the opportunity to closely review the document in the two days between its submission and the Sept. 11 attacks. But it had been submitted to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, and the officials said Bush knew about it and had been expected to sign it. The couching of the plans as a formal security directive is significant, Miklaszewski reported, because it indicates that the United States intended a full-scale assault on al-Qaida even if the Sept. 11 attacks had not occurred."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4587368/
But bear in mind that as USA Today admits, without 9/11 an invasion of Afghanistan wouldn't have been politically possible:
"In retrospect, it seems obvious: President Clinton or President Bush could have gotten a head start in the war on terror and might even have averted the 9/11 attacks by acting sooner to invade Afghanistan, depose the Taliban regime and hunt down the al-Qaeda terrorists based there. But Democrats and Republicans alike told a bipartisan commission Tuesday that neither U.S. nor world opinion would have stood for such aggression before the fall of 2001. It was only after the Sept. 11 attacks that public opinion here and abroad changed enough to make an invasion politically possible."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-03-23-war-analysis_x.htm
Tony Blair: "To be truthful about it, there was no way we could have got the public consent to have suddenly launched a campaign on Afghanistan but for what happened on September 11"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/sep/06/september11.iraq
So we have Bush with warplans on his desk for an invasion two days BEFORE the event that would be needed to make such an invasion politically possible. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to put two and two together, even aside from the fact that the official myth of 9/11 is more full of holes than a colander including some physical impossibilities and a long string of "coincidences" too convenient and too numerous to be actual coincidences.
And sure enough, once the U.S. toppled the Taliban and got its puppet government in place under Hamid Karzai, answering at the time to U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad (a Unocal consultant),
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4736394.stm
the "Afghan" government accepted the U.S. terms for the pipeline project.
"Afghanistan hopes to strike a deal later this month to build a $2bn pipeline through the country to take gas from energy-rich Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India." May 2002
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1984459.stm
"Central Asian pipeline deal signed" December 2002
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2608713.stm
Unfortunately for the Cheneyites their Afghanistan scheme hasn't worked out in the long run nearly as they had wanted as their puppet Hamid Karzai's government has little authority outside of the capital city and is propped up by U.S. and N.A.T.O. military forces occupying his country or at least occupying PARTS of his country. The Taliban controls vast swathes of territory in the south and east of Afghanistan and over across the border into Pakistan in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. As Petraeus noted, the Taliban has been gaining significantly these last couple years and regardless the U.S. has never been able to pacify anywhere near enough of the country to be able to begin construction of its pipeline project. It would have to run right through territory controlled by the Taliban and even if they decided to build the entire length of it underground so as to make it harder for them to locate and blow up, like I said the security situation has been far too unstable to be able to begin building it. So every day that Karzai sits in his compound in Kabul guarded by the U.S. military but with no pipeline construction is another day wasted and more money wasted for no return on the U.S. government's investment. What Obama is doing is he's just trying to salvage the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan pipeline project, hence the deployment by dribs and drabs (because that's the best the U.S. can do at this point) of 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan.
The so-called "War on Terror" is just a thinly-veiled series of wars for energy resource dominance. It's just couched in terms of being a "War on Terror" because the American public wouldn't really get behind the idea of launching wars for the real purposes they are launched so it's put in neat little "War on Terror" packaging and sold to the unsuspecting public as something that's for their collective safety.
Good old SlaveRevolt, coming at 'em with both barrels!
I had forgotten about that Jim Miklezewski report, he's a pretty credible MSM reporter.
The fact that USA today would reveal anything potentially critical about neo-conservatism is remarkable. The fact that they used the word "aggression" rather than than "preventative action" is quite telling (though perhaps it says more about the writer's vocabulary).
And I reckon you're right to say that a 17,000 surge (since upped to 21,000 w/ trainers, see WaPo link above) is scanty. it is, however, almost a doubling of the numbers there in 2007.
Plus, they have been trained under the new field manual and given mission specific directives (like to call in fewer airstrikes to avoid tragedies like the one from the Spring, after which Gen. McKiernan was removed). Of course, McChrystal has his own issues and history, including the connection to the Pat Tillman coverup.
Obviously we will not be "welcomed as liberators" at this point since the Afghans believe the same as you have stated, regarding our motives. But smarter use of greater force will a) kill more hostiles and b) kill fewer civilians, reducing the number of people hostile to the occupation and allowing said occupation to be scaled back (not to be ended) sooner.
whip those Taliban's ass and send them packing for the virgins!
The Taliban leadership is funded not only by prosperous benefactors in the East, but also has a untold fortune in heroin profits. First the Good News:
They are true fundamentalist facists.
They are brutal. Public executions for whatever reason are normal. (Its a long list. Ex: women wearing fingernail polish will lose their fingertips. Flirting means death)
They are cold-blooded murderers.
Next, the bad news:
They want badly,very badly, to have a nuclear weapon.
Believe me, they are trying to buy or steal one.
Now.
When they get a hydrogen bomb, where will they detonate it? You tell me.
This is why we have to be in Afghanistan.
I do not say this lightly. It will be very expensive, in funding and in the lives of the men and women we send there.
President Obama talked about the Mujahideen (of which the Taliban are a part) in Afghanistan and Pakistan during the campaign and the possibility of US troop deployment there.
In my opinion the Taliban has to be confronted and destroyed.
Good. This is decades behind schedule.
Don't be so enthusiastic. My nephew, Matthew who was a Marine, was killed by a WMD in Afghanistan last June, and the family hasn't been the same since. I can't say this operation is right or not. All I know is that last Thanksgiving and Christmas, Matt, was not with us and that this coming Thanksgiving and Christmas he will not be with us. And that he will never be with us. I hope none of you ever has to endure what his parents and the rest of the family have gone through. God bless our troops.
Thank you.
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