That’s what you resort to when you’re losing the debate – name-calling and ad hominem attacks.
- Michelle Malkin

Traitor? You sound so much like the worst, most hating, Olbermann “liberal”, maybe even obsessed stalker, with all that malarkey and slander.

I’ve asked you point blank whether you want full commitment or abandonment and evacuation, and you want evacuation. That’s defeatism and to choose to lose is giving “aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States” that they could not force out of us.

Caststeel on October 29, 2009 at 2:21 AM

You are not alone . There are a great many who covet our oath and are oath keepers.

March 2007 in DC sensed it when the Gathering of Eagles descended on DC to show them what power and numbers we possessed.

amr on October 29, 2009 at 9:25 AM

Thank you and your son for your service.

Was right there with you and the Gathering of Eagles counter protesting against the liberals and their twisted ideology in DC.

We need to hold Obama accountable for all the promises he made to win the war in Afghanistan and eliminate the threat of the Taliban/al-qaeda in that region.

We cannot allow him to sacrifice our Soldiers for political games and half-measures.

One thing democrats care about is their political power and legacies.

If they know that they will pay a steep price for failure in Afghanistan than maybe they will provide the military with the support and resources to win.

This will be Obama’s second “strategy” on Afghanistan since he took office.

The buck stops at the Presidents desk.

No Troops
No Freedom

Jalalabad is on the Afghanistan side of the Khyber Pass. Control that pathway through the mountains, and you control what enters from the markets of Peshawar and Pakistan in general.

Herat sits near the Iranian border and controls the flow of goods from places like Mashad, Iran.

Mazar-i-Sharif borders Uzbekistan near the choke-point of the Friendship Bridge that runs from the railhead/fuel depot at Termez, Uzbekistan into Afghanistan. It was the main supply route for the Russians.

Kunduz sits in the Tajik part of Afghanistan and in addition to rumors of natural gas in the area, it controls the flow of any supplies coming in from Tajikistan. It was the last stronghold of the Northern Alliance before the US intervened to overthrow the Taliban government in 2001.

Kandahar is the heart of Pashtun country. Control that and you control the southern border crossings from Pakistan into Afghanistan; from places like Quetta.

These places, together with Kabul, form the main populations centers of Afghanistan and are surrounded by the flat plains of the country where food can be grown. They also surround the mountains of the Hindu Kush. Those peaks take up the entire center of Afghanistan from China almost to Iran, dividing the country nearly in half. Those mountains rise up to 22,000 feet. There’s not much corn or wheat being grown up there.

Now picture a road that runs around the perimeter of the country linking these cities. That’s the Ring Road presently under construction. When finished it will provide a way to rapidly move men and, more important, food and supplies around the country. It will provide a better way of life to Afghanistan in a similar way the Interstate Highway System did for us.

Control those cities, control the road and you pretty much control what comes into the country. As for the guys hiding up in the mountains…remember the Ken Burns series about our Civil War? Remember the opening where the late historian Shelby Foote told the story about the captured Confederate trooper who, when asked by his Union guard, “Why you fighting so hard Johnny Reb?”, replied, “I’m fighting because you’re here.” The best thing might just be to leave them up in the mountains, alone.

And as far as Obama goes…I suspect this is more the vision of Generals Petraeus and McChrystal than him.

I can imagine Obama screaming in his sleep.
Memeorandum……

Hey, isn’t that what the Democrats in Congress finally did in Vietnam and Cambodia with a weak Republican president, Mr. Ford; we saw how well that worked. And of course the Democrats cut off aid from the “corrupt” government in Vietnam and allowed the peace loving North Vietnamese communists to take over and slaughter those who had trusted us. So 58,168 Americans died for what! And how did the forgotten war, the Korean War, ending work out under Republican President Eisenhower after 36,940 American deaths. Does government ever learn from history!

My son has served 15 months in Iraq and will return next year to either Iraq or Afghanistan, so If our weak kneed president is going to go down that road from the past, then let us pull out NOW. We veterans from the Vietnam Era have said that we will not allow our children to sacrifice and be sacrificed for a no win solution and an ungrateful nation; we mean it. Those anti-war folks demonstrating in March 2007 in DC sensed it when the Gathering of Eagles descended on DC to show them what power and numbers we possessed.

Remember this: In 1975 the former Cambodia Prime Minister Sirik Matak, to whom the U.S. ambassador offered asylum as his country was being over run by the Communist Khmer Rouge, said, “I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion. I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty … . I have committed this mistake of believing in you, the Americans.” So Sirik Matak stayed in Phnom Penh and a month later was killed by the Khmer Rouge, along with about 2 million other people.

Enough said.

Barry is preparing us for retreat and he’s rehearsing the Blame Bush Doctrine already.

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. – George Santayana

It is tragic we can’t learn from Russian experience in Afghanistan and our own in Vietnam. Russia conducted the same strategy – Secure towns and leave the country side. We know how that worked out. We lost Vietnam in congress. To contrast look at Iraq.

There is no alternate to “fight it out”.

PS: Mullah Omar and Bin Laden are probably laughing and can’t believe their luck. They are on the verge of a win due to election in US. Similarly Putin and Ahmadinejad are feeling luck.

And it didn’t work against the Vietcong, either.

At least American liberals in coastal cities have big corporations to provide their organic foods from all over the world, what do you think the Afghanis have while they’re under assault by jihadist extremists?

what kind of bullshit is this? we coastal liberals are subsidizing the American farmer so that in developing countries people can’t sell their stuff to us. hey let’s have free trade and let the American farmers go bankrupt which they deserve.

The person who posts comments as MB4 claims military experience. IF that is true, there is something in his history that has so poisoned his world view that his judgment can no longer be trusted. Trusting laimed military experience without verification is foolish in the extreme, especially on internet discussion boards.

He is a troll. Very good at what he does, but a trouble maker none the less.
Skandia Recluse on October 29, 2009 at 12:52 AM

MB4 is not a troll and he has a right to comment on this blog like me and you and I will continue to read his comments as well as yours when I see your name.

There is a problem with the ‘Oil Drop’ in that it requires a coherent National government that can execute it locally, that realizes it is in a struggle for the hearts and minds of the entire population, that such a government can execute a full scale COIN from local policing to army attacks, that such a government is viewed as legitimate, and that the government can properly put in place the means necessary to remove insurgents and replace them with local based solutions and infrastructure to offer something better than the insurgency.

We have none of those. Iraq was more than just 2007, and 2003-06 witnessed the movement to secure the countryside, the small towns, and remove the supply lines of insurgents (both al Qaeda and Iranian sourced). This put the cities as the ‘last refuge of the insurgents’ where they had to kill civilians, lots of civilians, because the military was effective against them. ‘The Surge’ was the effort to remove the remaining strongholds, push the insurgency out of them and then deplete them in a secured countryside. That insurgency is now stuck with high profile attacks that does not garner it friends nor power, just blood on its hands… unless we cede unsecured space to them.

Afghanistan does not have a widely acceptable government that is competent in matters of military and policing, so it cannot self-secure the countryside. Retreating to the cities is the prescription for failure that has happened so often in Africa, SE Asia and S. America that it isn’t funny. Of all the ‘Oil Drop’ attempts only Colombia has had some success with that and its struggle against FARC isn’t over more than a decade later. Philippine governments have worked very hard at removing countryside support against the al Qaeda backed insurgents in the form of the Moros, but that had much in the way of pre-existing secured countryside to start with and a coordinated effort on the part of the Philippine government.

The reason you read about Algeria with the French is that it was a temporary ‘success’ but long term failure that still, to this day, provides havens for insurgents and transnational terrorists. Unable to cement the victory in the countryside, Algeria was left on its own and fell into disassociation once more.

We do not have the preconditions for a ‘Surge’ style campaign. To get to that is a major kinetic effort sweeping along Talibe and al Qaeda supply lines, interdicting and uprooting them and removing their sources which are, unfortunately, in Pakistan. Pakistan cannot do this alone. Afghanistan cannot do this alone. The US cannot do this sitting in the cities as targets. You do not win COIN campaigns by sitting in cities: you get out and fight and establish security and re-inforce it at the local level. You can, however, lose them that way.