World Craziness - Kenya, Pakistan, Syria, etc

catbarf on 1/10/2013 at 12:36

Quote Posted by faetal

I'm all for ground troops capturing individuals who are found to be planning an attack on the US, but drone strikes against anyone found to be engaged in "militant behaviour"? What's to differentiate that from political assassination?

Well, because the people in question are actively working to kill soldiers and civilians. I guess you could compare it to political assassination, but you could do the same with boots-on-the-ground raids just as easily. If you read into the numbers, the collateral damage rate on drones is much, much lower than people seem to think it is- and certainly better than the collateral incurred by conventional military action, which has amassed quite a death toll in Afghanistan and Iraq. Most of the time, when a school gets blown up accidentally by a drone strike, it's because the target is actively using civilians as human shields. In terms of precision a Hellfire guided by drone is more accurate and contained than anything else we have available, but that doesn't help if a target is hiding amongst children.

As for the 'we can't win because our attacks drive recruitment', I don't know where people are getting this idea. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban lost. Hard. They lost their leaders, their resources, their manpower, their political control. Not only are they not recruiting, but people no longer help them because they don't want to be associated with them (which in turn is cutting down on the collateral, because people know what drones do and don't want to be too close to high-value terrorists). In Afghanistan, entire towns have been rebelling against Taliban control.

I just don't see how you can deem attacks intended to kill civilians for ideological purposes as morally equivalent to military action against enemy combatants that sometimes has collateral.

CCCToad on 6/10/2013 at 02:32

[QUOTE=catbarf;2214520

As for the 'we can't win because our attacks drive recruitment', I don't know where people are getting this idea. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban lost. Hard. They lost their leaders, their resources, their manpower, their political control. Not only are they not recruiting, but people no longer help them because they don't want to be associated with them (which in turn is cutting down on the collateral, because people know what drones do and don't want to be too close to high-value terrorists). In Afghanistan, entire towns have been rebelling against Taliban control.

Your post is so wrong that I don't even know where to start....and is based largely in Propaganda rather than in any reality. When you assert that the Taliban "lost"..

YOU ARE COMPLETELY, UTTERLY, MORONICALLY WRONG.

Read this .PDF As the author mentions, the version that he linked is one compiled using only unclassified sources of information. He's got another version available over SIPRnet that uses classified sources and reaches largely the same conclusion.

My observations were largely in line with what this colonel describes. In most Pashtun areas of the country (meaning most of the SouthWest, South, and Eastern portions of the country) the Taliban has nearly uncontested control over the countryside and are weak only in in major GirOA strongholds like Kandahar. In most areas they operate with near complete freedom of movement and control the weapons, drugs, extortion, and all other criminal activities...but anyway, the author of this report sums it up better than I can:

Official line:

Quote:

Since the last Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan,International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and its Afghan partners have made tangible progress, arresting the insurgents' momentum in much of the country and reversing it in a number of important areas. The coalition's efforts have wrested major safe havens from the insurgents' control, disrupted their leadership networks, and removed many of the weapons caches and tactical supplies they left behind at the end of the previous fighting season. The Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) continued to increase in quantity, quality, and apability, and have taken an ever-increasing role in security operations.

The truth:

Quote:

The following pages quantitatively demonstrate that much of the two public statements above are either misleading, significantly skewed or completely inaccurate. Also I'll demonstrate how this pattern of overt and substantive deception has become a hallmark of many of America’s most senior military leaders in Afghanistan. As mentioned earlier in this report, were I able to share the classified reports the gulf between what some of our leaders have said in public and what they know behind the scenes would be dramatic. Nevertheless, even with what I’m about to provide from open source material the gulf will still be clearly evident.

Gryzemuis on 6/10/2013 at 11:30

The sad thing is: we knew already 12 years that this was going to be the outcome. When the USA was about to invade Afghanistan, the Russians offered their expertise. USA refused. The Russians said "you can't win". Even if the USA forces, USA strategy and USA politics were 10 times better than the old Russian ones, they could still not win. That was the opinion of the Russians. And many others agreed. But the Americans were stubborn. Somebody had to pay for 911. So they continued. It's no surprise.

In Iraq something similar happened. The USA went in with full military force. But they had no plans for what to do once they won the battle. Nothing, nada. I once saw a 2 hour documentary about the first weeks/months after the invasion of Iraq. The documentary pointed out all the things the Americans did wrong. It was unbelievable.

One of the things I remember was that in the first week after Iraq lost the war, Iraqi generals approached the USA. They said: "There is no control in Iraq right now. And you won't be able to control it (any time soon). But we still have our armed forces available to us. Hunderds of thousands trained military personnel, under strict command. We can use them as police forces. We can maintain order in Iraq. We can help you". The USA basically ignored them. They didn't even properly talk to them. The result: hundreds of thousands of military lost their jobs. They lost their income. Incomes that were often responsible for feeding many family members. All their weapons now went underground. There were no guards for weapon-depots. The weapon depots got plundered, and millions more of guns went into underground circulation.

Things could have gone so much different, if the USA had a plan for what to do after the initial battle. They didn't. They just wanted Saddam out of there. Satisfy their Saudi friends. And gain control over the oil fields. They didn't care about Iraq or its citizens at all. It's such a sad story.

demagogue on 6/10/2013 at 12:17

The US objectives in Afghanistan aren't as ambitious as the Soviets. The US doesn't really want to "win" the country like they did. I mean the USSR wanted a full-on puppet state. The US has misgivings about the Afghan govt, but fine... It's their govt. All the US wants is for the Afghan's own central government to have full control of its own territory and a military capable of keeping its own sworn enemy, the Taliban, at bay. But even that is proving futile. You could argue that the Russians could have told us that too though... You're just not going to change such a deeply set political culture into one ok with a democratic central govt & rule of law & all that by occupation alone; especially not one with only a 28% literacy rate. Afghanistan could really use serious state building and at the very least a semi-literate population, but it can't be us.

Iraq is a different situation IMO. The Iraq War was a clusterfuck through & through, particularly during the ridiculous reconstruction where the US did almost everything it could do wrong wrong, & you mention a big one. Another is the fact the US sent administrators that were loyal Republicans before experts that knew Arabic & Iraqi culture. Nobody misses Saddam, and it had a much better chance at reconstruction than Afghanistan considering it knows all about strong state institutions & how to rule a country--but we already knew from the 1991 War that if we opened Pandora's Box & released all the old sectarian rivalries, it'd be a near hopeless task putting all that back into the box & seeing a govt go in considered legitimate to everybody.

catbarf on 7/10/2013 at 15:27

Quote Posted by CCCToad

You seem to have left the PDF out of your post so there's not much I can debate here. That the Pashtun tribals continue to fight is no surprise to anybody, but that doesn't mean they're in the same position they were in at the start of the invasion. Earlier this year, there were anti-Taliban uprisings in Nangarhar and Uruzgan, which would never have happened in '03. After Moshtarak in '10, Helmand isn't their uncontested playground anymore. Given that you have access to SIPRNET, have a look at the data annex to Robert Ryder's paper on estimating insurgency strengths. Or just call me an idiot and flaunt your secret squirrel status again if you feel Internet arguments are worth getting worked up over.

The Taliban's sole objective during the invasion was to retain political control of the country, and regardless of how many insurgents are still out in the mountains they still lost that objective. The point is that although they're far from beaten, and we're never going to be able to oust them completely or change a culture that has existed for centuries, they don't own the country like they did before we intervened, and more importantly (and pursuant to the original point before we got off on this tangent) the notion that fighting terrorists only makes them stronger is still completely wrong.