Quote: Originally Posted by
Bootneck 
Quote: Originally Posted by
Sunni Man
Quote: Originally Posted by
Bootneck
Sunni Man, please get your facts right. The Afghan government, the Afghan National Army and the Afghan Security Forces are fighting WITH US and NATO forces...not against them.
Makes your post null and void.
When the British Empire was in Afghanistan. They also set up a puppet Afghan government and army.
What happened?
Disaster!!
The Soviet Union also set up a puppet government and and Afghan army that fought along side them.
Results?
Another disaster.
The U.S. and members have now set up a puppet Afghan government and Army.
Afghan history says this will just be a long and costly failure.
That's your opinion. One not shared by many Afghans.
Back to the problem?
As U.S. MARINES launched a major offensive in Afghanistan's Taliban-infested Helmand province yesterday, one problem was already apparent:
There are not enough troops to properly carry out the Pentagon's new counterinsurgency strategy. The force is "a little light," Marine Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson, its commander, told national security adviser James L. Jones in a meeting reported by The Post's Bob Woodward. "We don't have enough force to go everywhere."
Those comments will come as no surprise to anyone who has been following the attempts by U.S. commanders to turn around the Afghan war.
The idea is to replicate the strategy that finally reversed American fortunes in Iraq: protecting the population rather than seeking out insurgents, while building the economy and political institutions. Though the Bush and Obama administrations approved new troop deployments that will double the U.S. force,
the ratio of American and allied Afghan soldiers to the population is still well below that mandated by the Army's new counterinsurgency doctrine. Gen. Nicholson said his greatest need is for more Afghan troops -- only 500 are joining the new Marine operation, when thousands are needed. But the Afghan army is still relatively small, and, despite a major effort to accelerate training,
it is years away from reaching a size that would allow it to operate across the country. That's one reason the recently departed top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David D. McKiernan, requested that a further deployment of 10,000 U.S. troops be scheduled for next year -- and that the present effort to double the size of the Afghan army and police by 2011 be followed by another doubling by 2016.
Mr. Woodward quoted one senior commander as saying privately that 100,000 U.S. troops might be needed, compared with the 68,000 currently authorized. washingtonpost.com Now, Obama said he was going to "focus on Afghanistan" and "get us out of Iraq". I see no real hurry to get out of Iraq, and Afghanistan is looking like a repeat of Iraq if you ask me. Where is he going to get the troops from?