US troops may stay in Afghanistan until 2024

Civilians don't have the stomach for the numbers. But our military still has the stomach for the war. Why is it that countries are inspecting the U. S. presence but the world is not asking why the Afghan and Iraqi governments are not capable of running a country themselves yet? We didn't stay in Iraq as long as we did for US interests. Every time we left an area they started killing each other and we had to come back. Barring the Kurds in the North.

The Kurds are the only ones in Iraq who really liked Americans and who have their shit together, the rest of the country will probably descend into chaos and a civil war pretty soon. As far as staying longer in Iraq, correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't one of the main reasons we left is because the Iraqis were going to waive immunity for our troops and try them in Iraqi courts if they made a mistake and killed some civilians? I don't know about you but I DEFINENTLY do not want any American troops being tried in Iraqi court rooms.
 
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I think if you are to argue against American intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan you really have to understand the circumstances of what it was like before America intervened in the first place.

Before I begin: I dislike the term 'soviet invasion', that's just as incorrect as 'American invasion' as it makes the assumption that people didn't want either there, that the nation was an ideal/stable place to live in the first place, and that the government wasn't invited there in some fashion by the government at the time.

First Afghanistan was not a stable nation for most of its history, eventually a semi-democratic government came to power in a popular revolution, this later resulted in a military coup that placed a communist government in power which encouraged America (under the auspices of the cold war) to fund/support terrorists and religious extremists like the Taliban. The Soviet government later entered the country with the support of the communist government, eventually taking military control of the country (but keep it mind it was ALREADY a military government).

However American intervention was not the sole reason for the Talibans victory, as religious extremists had been pouring in from Pakistan and developing internally as a result of the religious persecution of the government. So when the Soviets lost the war and left, the entire government system collapsed or was deliberated destroyed by the religious extremists (which would become the Taliban we know today) that took over the country.

So no matter how bad American intervention has been in Afghanistan, it is better having a nation run by relatively sane people, than people that believe that they are gods (the Taliban believed they were the divine Representatives of Allah and could do what they liked, that meant running a state that makes Iran look like paradise).

I doubt we even need to start on the human rights record of the Taliban. On that basis I would support American intervention in Afghanistan. As for Iraq that is another story, but similar justification could be established (genocide of the Kurds, Saddam's terror squads anyone?), and no matter how bad Iraq is, under Saddam and the sanctions it was far, far worse.
 
The breeding ground is the wars we have initiated in the Middle East.

Everyone knows that islime is a religion of peace :lol:

:clap2:
Iran Iraq War, 1 million dead
Lebanese Civil War, 250,000 dead
Algerian Civl War: 300,000 dead
Bangladesh Civil War: 500,000 dead
Black Sept., Jordan's King Hussein murders, expells 80,000 Palestinians
Syrian army kills 20,000 Syrians at Hama
Iraq gases hundreds of thousands of Kurds
1400 year conflict between Sunnis and Shiites
Fratricide between Hamas and Fatah
Syria/Hizballah assassinate Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri

Alexis de Toqueville...
I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. So far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself.
 
On the Ground in Afghanistan, a Taliban Whose Momentum Seems Anything but Broken

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The hundreds of bullets, mortar shells and rockets that slammed into the boulders behind which they were taking cover peppered the men of 1st Platoon with high-velocity rock shards and jagged bits of shrapnel. Just below Outpost (OP) Shal, a newly constructed mountaintop aerie in Afghanistan's violent Kunar province on the Pakistani border, insurgent fighters were moaning and screaming from wounds suffered over eight days of heavy fighting. That scene, just three months ago, of the outnumbered American platoon fighting to maintain its foothold offered a sobering contrast to President Barack Obama's statement, in last week's State of the Union address: "The Taliban's momentum has been broken."

Like the battle scene witnessed by TIME, the recent National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan reportedly also casts doubt on the confidence expressed by President Obama on the state of the Taliban's war effort. The top-secret assessment "takes a dim view of possible futures in Afghanistan," Reuters was told last week by a U.S. official speaking on condition of anonymity. The report, which represents the consensus view of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, warns that the Taliban has not given up on its aim of retaking full control of Afghanistan and concludes that the gains made by the troop surge ordered by President Obama two years ago may be unsustainable, according to McClatchy Newspapers.

The soldiers eventually won their battle at OP Shal, securing the Kunar River Valley from infiltration, eliminating insurgent roadblocks and opening it to civilian and military traffic. But the Taliban's weeklong attack highlighted the many military problems facing Afghanistan, and it made clear that the outcome of the conflict remains far from certain.

Throughout the intense fighting, the besieged defending force of 36 U.S. and Afghan army soldiers fought off multiple suicide bombers and at least four overrun attempts by between 400 and 500 heavily armed insurgents, who had been trucked in from Pakistan and who managed to advance to within 5 m of U.S. positions. Afterward, the soldiers said they confirmed 115 kills but estimated at least 200 deaths. "It was the most coordinated thing any of us had ever seen, but just the sheer number of forces they had massing on that position was ridiculous," Staff Sergeant Everett Bracey, of 1st Platoon, Bravo Company, 2-27 Infantry Battalion, told TIME.

The attackers were reinforced and resupplied throughout the fight from bases and depots in the safe haven provided by Pakistan. "We saw 60 vehicles come out of Pakistan — just drive in," said Staff Sergeant Anthony Fuentes, looking at a topographical map a few days after the battle. "This whole route, it goes all the way up into Pakistan. It's a two-hour trafficable route from the border." Added company commander Captain Michael Kolton: "It was Pashtuns and Arabs and Chechens and Punjabis — everyone and their sister joined in on this one."

Read more: Afghanistan: The Taliban's Momentum Seems Not Broken - TIME
 
The Hard Way Out of Afghanistan

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For years, in the village of Juz Ghoray, at the remote fringes of the Musa Qala District in northern Helmand Province, the Taliban enjoyed free rein, collecting taxes from local poppy farmers and staging attacks on any foreign patrol that moved within shooting range of an abrupt desert prominence called Ugly Hill. After a Marine unit found nine I.E.D.’s hidden beneath Ugly Hill’s scarred and caverned faces last year, coalition forces seldom ventured near it. Until one night this October, when members of Echo Company, from the Second Battalion, Fourth Marines — known since Vietnam as the Magnificent Bastards — quietly sneaked into Juz Ghoray and posted signs on people’s doors and windows. Their idea was to co-opt the infamous Taliban practice of intimidating government sympathizers with night letters threatening execution. The Marines’ signs were bordered with the nation’s colors, and in Pashto and Dari they announced: “The Afghan National Security Forces are coming.” Two weeks later, about 60 members of Echo Company, along with 30 Afghan National Army soldiers, traveled on foot through the night and took Ugly Hill without a shot. At dawn, as villagers emerged from their homes, they found laborers stacking bastions to fortify a new Afghan police post. And something else, which many residents of Juz Ghoray had never seen before: an Afghan flag raised on a wooden pole.

For the government, the new post represents a palpable extension of its reach, a triumph however modest. But not one without some cost. Before the Afghans could claim Ugly Hill, two marines had to sweep it for mines. Joshua Lee, a 26-year-old sergeant from Arkansas, located the first I.E.D. using a metal detector. As he set to work on the device, Lee identified a second bomb, and while readjusting he stepped on a third. The blast shattered his right leg, cocking it sideways below the knee and leaving mangled pieces of foot hanging loosely from flesh and bone.

In the morning, while searching a compound at the base of Ugly Hill, the marines discovered three more fully assembled I.E.D.’s, containing 100 pounds of explosives. When technicians set charges around the bombs, detonating them in place, a six-foot crater was left where one of the compound’s buildings had stood. The following evening Echo Company continued south, making camp on a plateau of hard-packed gravel; as the desert night grew frigid, a small convoy arrived to resupply the men with food and water. Turning to climb the steep escarpment, the lead vehicle hit yet another bomb. Its mine-roller — an extended axle of weighted wheels that tests the ground ahead — absorbed the brunt of the blast. Walking nearby, a young platoon sergeant, Jacob Maxwell, was knocked off his feet as rocks and wreckage from the obliterated roller struck his legs and back.

This was Maxwell’s fifth deployment. During a single tour in Iraq in 2006, he survived four I.E.D. explosions. When the dust settled, he was sitting beside the road, cut and bruised, but otherwise unscathed. The corpsman who treated him judged his luck to border on the freakish. Nonetheless, after the attack, Maxwell assured me he’d be leading his platoon on its coming operations. Those will take the company even deeper into Taliban country, to farther-flung villages than Juz Ghoray, among Afghans who, more than 10 years after the government’s creation, still lack any meaningful contact with it. “The Marines are going out into the hinterlands,” Maj. Frank Diorio, the battalion’s executive officer, told me. “They’re not tied to any posts. It’ll be ongoing until we leave. It’s just going to be continuous operations.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/magazine/afghanistan.html?_r=1&hp
 
U.S. Plans Shift to Elite Units as It Winds Down in Afghanistan

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WASHINGTON — The United States’ plan to wind down its combat role in Afghanistan a year earlier than expected relies on shifting responsibility to Special Operations forces that hunt insurgent leaders and train local troops, according to senior Pentagon officials and military officers. These forces could remain in the country well after the NATO mission ends in late 2014.

The plan, if approved by President Obama, would amount to the most significant evolution in the military campaign since Mr. Obama sent in 32,000 more troops to wage an intensive and costly counterinsurgency effort.

Under the emerging plan, American conventional forces, focused on policing large parts of Afghanistan, will be the first to leave, while thousands of American Special Operations forces remain, making up an increasing percentage of the troops on the ground; their number may even grow.

The evolving strategy is far different from the withdrawal plan for Iraq, where almost all American forces, conventional or otherwise, have left. Iraq has devolved into sectarian violence ever since the withdrawal in December, which threatens to undo the political and security gains there.

Pentagon officials and military planners say the new plan for Afghanistan is not a direct response to the deteriorating conditions in Iraq. Even so, the shift could give Mr. Obama a political shield against attacks from his Republican rivals in the presidential race who have already begun criticizing him for moving too swiftly to extract troops from Afghanistan.

Unlike in Iraq, where domestic political pressure gave Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki reason to resist a continued American military presence into 2012, in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai and his senior aides have expressed an initial willingness to continue a partnership with the United States that includes counterterrorism missions and training.

Senior American officials have also expressed a desire to keep some training and counterterrorism troops in Afghanistan past 2014. The transition plan for the next three years in Afghanistan could be a model for such a continued military relationship.

The new focus builds on a desire to use the nation’s most elite troops to counter any residual terrorist threat over the coming months as well as to devote the military’s best trainers to the difficult task of preparing Afghan security forces to take over responsibilities in their country.

The plan would put a particularly heavy focus on Army Special Forces, also known as the Green Berets. They would be in charge of training a variety of Afghan security forces. At the same time, the elite commando teams within Special Operations forces would continue their raids to hunt down, capture or kill insurgent commanders and terrorist leaders and keep pressure on cells of fighters to prevent them from mounting attacks.

Created by President John F. Kennedy in the 1960s, the Green Berets have as one of their core missions what is called “foreign internal defense” — using combat, mentoring, language and cross-cultural skills to train local forces in rugged environments, as they are today in missions conducted quietly in dozens of nations around the world.

Just as significant would be what the American military’s conventional forces stop doing.

Americans would no longer be carrying out large numbers of patrols to clear vast areas of Afghanistan of insurgents, or holding villages and towns vulnerable to militant attacks while local forces and government agencies rebuilt the local economy and empowered local governments.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/w...n-afghanistan.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all?src=tp
 
The Afghan people have endured and resisted countless centuries of occupiers and invaders.

Whether we pull out in 2024 or 3024 makes no difference.

After we are gone from their country.

The people of Afghanistan will just return to their time honored way of life and culture.

And wait for the next Empire stupid enough to once again invade their home. :doubt:
 

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