US troops may stay in Afghanistan until 2024

High_Gravity

Belligerent Drunk
Nov 19, 2010
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US troops may stay in Afghanistan until 2024

US-troops-in-Afghanistan.jpg


The agreement would allow not only military trainers to stay to build up the Afghan army and police, but also American special forces soldiers and air power to remain.

The prospect of such a deal has already been met with anger among Afghanistan’s neighbours including, publicly, Iran and, privately, Pakistan.

It also risks being rejected by the Taliban and derailing any attempt to coax them to the negotiating table, according to one senior member of Hamid Karzai’s peace council.

A withdrawal of American troops has already begun following an agreement to hand over security for the country to Kabul by the end of 2014.

But Afghans wary of being abandoned are keen to lock America into a longer partnership after the deadline. Many analysts also believe the American military would like to retain a presence close to Pakistan, Iran and China.

Both Afghan and American officials said that they hoped to sign the pact before the Bonn Conference on Afghanistan in December. Barack Obama and Hamid Karzai agreed last week to escalate the negotiations and their national security advisers will meet in Washington in September.

Rangin Dadfar Spanta, Mr Karzai’s top security adviser, told The Daily Telegraph that “remarkable progress” had been made. US officials have said they would be disappointed if a deal could not be reached by December and that the majority of small print had been agreed.

Dr Spanta said a longer-term presence was crucial not only to build Afghan forces, but also to fight terrorism.

“If [the Americans] provide us weapons and equipment, they need facilities to bring that equipment,” he said. “If they train our police and soldiers, then those trainers will not be 10 or 20, they will be thousands.

“We know we will be confronted with international terrorists. 2014, is not the end of international terrorist networks and we have a common commitment to fight them. For this purpose also, the US needs facilities.”

Afghan forces would still need support from US fighter aircraft and helicopters, he predicted. In the past, Washington officials have estimated a total of 25,000 troops may be needed.

Dr Spanta added: “In the Afghan proposal we are talking about 10 years from 2014, but this is under discussion.” America would not be granted its own bases, and would be a guest on Afghan bases, he said. Pakistan and Iran were also deeply opposed to the deal.

Andrey Avetisyan, Russian ambassador to Kabul, said: “Afghanistan needs many other things apart from the permanent military presence of some countries. It needs economic help and it needs peace. Military bases are not a tool for peace.

US troops may stay in Afghanistan until 2024 - Telegraph
 
well, maybe Bush was right...

a war that will not end in our lifetime.
 
I'd say it is a price we must be prepared to pay in order to ensure that Afghanistan can stabilize and not become a breeding ground for terrorism again.
 
I'd say it is a price we must be prepared to pay in order to ensure that Afghanistan can stabilize and not become a breeding ground for terrorism again.

What you say makes sense and is more than likely the reason we are staying however it seems like alot of Americans no longer have the stomach for this war.
 
What a joke. A breeding ground for terrorists? The breeding ground is the wars we have initiated in the Middle East. The movie, The War We Don't See," made by independent Australian journalist, John Pilger, claims 900,000 civilians died in the Iraq war. If that isn't enough to create more terrorists, I don't know what is.

Certainly, the drug trade plays into it, as it did in Vietnam. That's how the CIA gets its play money, through drugs. Its budget is secret, so they do all sorts of black market stuff, like selling arms, which Sonny Bono was going to reveal before he was murdered -- at least one small operation that he was made privy to.
 
What a joke. A breeding ground for terrorists? The breeding ground is the wars we have initiated in the Middle East. The movie, The War We Don't See," made by independent Australian journalist, John Pilger, claims 900,000 civilians died in the Iraq war. If that isn't enough to create more terrorists, I don't know what is.

Certainly, the drug trade plays into it, as it did in Vietnam. That's how the CIA gets its play money, through drugs. Its budget is secret, so they do all sorts of black market stuff, like selling arms, which Sonny Bono was going to reveal before he was murdered -- at least one small operation that he was made privy to.

The same Sonny Bono who was "murdered" by a tree, skiing?
 
What a joke. A breeding ground for terrorists? The breeding ground is the wars we have initiated in the Middle East. The movie, The War We Don't See," made by independent Australian journalist, John Pilger, claims 900,000 civilians died in the Iraq war. If that isn't enough to create more terrorists, I don't know what is.

Certainly, the drug trade plays into it, as it did in Vietnam. That's how the CIA gets its play money, through drugs. Its budget is secret, so they do all sorts of black market stuff, like selling arms, which Sonny Bono was going to reveal before he was murdered -- at least one small operation that he was made privy to.

The same Sonny Bono who was "murdered" by a tree, skiing?

toomuchrep.jpg

:clap2::clap2:
 
What a joke. A breeding ground for terrorists? The breeding ground is the wars we have initiated in the Middle East. The movie, The War We Don't See," made by independent Australian journalist, John Pilger, claims 900,000 civilians died in the Iraq war. If that isn't enough to create more terrorists, I don't know what is.

Certainly, the drug trade plays into it, as it did in Vietnam. That's how the CIA gets its play money, through drugs. Its budget is secret, so they do all sorts of black market stuff, like selling arms, which Sonny Bono was going to reveal before he was murdered -- at least one small operation that he was made privy to.

Put down the bong, take a hot shower, shave, get dressed in your church suit, give your mother a hug and a kiss and go out there and seek the help you desperately need.
 
What a joke. A breeding ground for terrorists? The breeding ground is the wars we have initiated in the Middle East. The movie, The War We Don't See," made by independent Australian journalist, John Pilger, claims 900,000 civilians died in the Iraq war. If that isn't enough to create more terrorists, I don't know what is.

Certainly, the drug trade plays into it, as it did in Vietnam. That's how the CIA gets its play money, through drugs. Its budget is secret, so they do all sorts of black market stuff, like selling arms, which Sonny Bono was going to reveal before he was murdered -- at least one small operation that he was made privy to.

The same Sonny Bono who was "murdered" by a tree, skiing?

That tree was a CIA plant? :eek:
 
What a joke. A breeding ground for terrorists? The breeding ground is the wars we have initiated in the Middle East. The movie, The War We Don't See," made by independent Australian journalist, John Pilger, claims 900,000 civilians died in the Iraq war. If that isn't enough to create more terrorists, I don't know what is.

Certainly, the drug trade plays into it, as it did in Vietnam. That's how the CIA gets its play money, through drugs. Its budget is secret, so they do all sorts of black market stuff, like selling arms, which Sonny Bono was going to reveal before he was murdered -- at least one small operation that he was made privy to.

The same Sonny Bono who was "murdered" by a tree, skiing?

That tree was a CIA plant? :eek:

They're still rooting it out.... :razz:
 
McManus: A long goodbye to Afghanistan

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This week, the last convoy of U.S. troops in Iraq drove noisily across the border into Kuwait and shut the gate behind them. The next drawdown comes in Afghanistan, where American forces are scheduled to disengage from most combat by the end of 2014.

But the Afghanistan withdrawal won't be anywhere near as final as the one we just saw. U.S. military leaders are working on a new slimmed-down strategy that would keep some American troops in combat against the Taliban for years to come, long after 2014.

The heart of the new strategy is a shift in the U.S. mission from fighting the Taliban directly to serving mainly as advisors and support forces for the new Afghan army. But some Americans would still be in the combat business, not only as frontline advisors, but also as special operation units and a quick reaction force to rescue Afghan fighters who got into trouble.

The strategy is still being debated and designed, and officials said they haven't determined how many Americans would stay behind. "I'm not predicting tens of thousands," Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, told me and other reporters who accompanied him on a visit to U.S. bases in Afghanistan last week.

When I asked another senior official whether 15,000 was a plausible figure, he nodded and said: "I like that number."

The force now numbers about 94,000; that hypothetical 15,000 would be a smaller presence than the United States has maintained in Afghanistan since 2005. But it's still likely to come as a surprise to anyone who thought President Obama's promise to draw forces down by 2014 meant a complete end to the U.S. combat role.

"Our troops will continue coming home at a steady pace as Afghan security forces move into the lead," Obama said in June, when he outlined his withdrawal timetable. "Our mission will change from combat to support. By 2014, this process of transition will be complete, and the Afghan people will be responsible for their own security."

U.S. officials in Afghanistan have tried to stress the flip side of the message: One way or another, we're staying for a long time.

"We're not going to be done by the end of '14," the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Marine Gen. John Allen, told us last week. "The message that we will be here in some form … is a very important message for the Taliban."

If the two messages sound contradictory, that's because they reflect a continuing ambivalence at the heart of U.S. policy. Obama wants to prevent the Taliban from toppling the government in Kabul, so he ordered a surge in U.S. troops to a peak of more than 100,000 last year. But the president also wants to make sure that the surge is only temporary — and that American voters focus on the fact that the war, or at least our part of it, is winding down.

Those cross-pressures are driving the military's scramble to draw up a new strategy, even though many officers on the ground aren't convinced that the Afghans will be ready to take over on schedule. "The numbers are coming down, and we're reacting to that," an official explained.

Under the timetable Obama imposed on the surge, the U.S. force will decline to about 68,000 by next September and continue shrinking after that at a pace that's still undetermined.

As the numbers come down, it will quickly become impractical to rely on U.S. units as the main combat force in the war. The burden will have to shift to the Afghan armed forces, which already number about 180,000 troops and hope to grow to 240,000 by 2014.

That's how counterinsurgency warfare is supposed to work: a local government's forces take responsibility for security on the ground, even if they need foreign help with training, supplies, transportation and air support.

Some officers, including Allen, have argued for keeping as many U.S. combat troops in the field as long as possible — pointing to their success this year in quelling the Taliban in southern Afghanistan and to continued heavy fighting in the eastern provinces.

But others argue that moving slowly risks not getting there at all. As long as American units are doing the fighting, they argue, the Afghans won't get a chance to take the lead role as soon as they should.

When a U.S. officer leads American and Afghan forces into battle now, "he focuses on the success of his own [American] unit," said one official. "If you're an advisor, you have to focus on the success of the Afghan unit."

U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan will be a long process - latimes.com
 
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.
 

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