We still have over 100k troops there, been there over a decade, and aside from a few snippets about our guys getting killed by ANA or ANP or some leader got killed what’s going on there? I have no clue what our strategy is, what the mission is, what the goals are, progress being made, ect. Presidential candidates don’t mention it.
deadliest August for troops this month, not even a whisper from the MSM:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/08/august-is-years-deadliest-month-for-western-us-troops-in-afghanistan.html
August is year’s deadliest month for foreign troops in Afghanistan
August 31, 2012 | 8:24 amKABUL, Afghanistan – More NATO troops, and more Americans, were killed in Afghanistan in August than in any other month this year.
Fifty-three Western troops had died in Afghanistan as of Aug. 31, according to the website icasualties.org. Of those, 38 were Americans. U.S. troops make up about two-thirds of the NATO force.
U.S. military fatalities, in particular, were driven by the phenomenon of “insider” attacks in which members of the Afghan security forces turn their weapons on Western troops. Of the 15 such deaths in August, 12 were of Americans.
Another nine coalition deaths, seven of them Americans, occurred in helicopter crashes.
However, military deaths in August were down significantly than the same month in 2011, when 82 members of the NATO force were killed, 71 of them Americans. That was the most lethal month of that year, too.
Western military officials generally say there is a correlation between the number of coalition troops in Afghanistan and the numbers who are killed and injured. American troop strength peaked last year at just over 100,000; by the end of September it will have dropped to 68,000.
That’s because BUSH isn’t the incumbent.
Can you imagine how much STAN news we’d be hearing if a Republican was incumbent???
And they won’t because there is no good resolution. Folks are “war weary” after over a decade of the GWOT so saber-rattling doesn’t play well but nobody wants to be hung with the “cut and run” label either.
So we just muddle along, continuing to squander blood and treasure, in a futile effort which has nothing to do with the security of the United States or the future of Afghanistan and everything to do with politicians saving face.
It’s a national shame that our men and women are deployed overseas, suffering losses daily, and the two candidates running for the office of commander-in-chief are silent on the issue.
It was not last night, but Romney mocked Obama’s announcement 2 years in advance of when the troops will come home and said Obama should just announce they are coming home tomorrow.
It is a disgrace that we are still deploying troops over there with no practical mission. And no politician wants to talk about and the press is strenuously ignoring it. If Romney wins I expect they return to weekly US body counts.
Our troops are amazing in their ability, duty and determination. But we shame ourselves to squander their blood because fat ass politicians don’t have the spine to admit we did as much as we could in the first three months and have wasted our efforts ever since.
Yup.
And apparently people have stopped dying in Iraq also.
The thought police is in full force.
Anything to make Barack Obama look good.
Not to mention Gitmo.
Or drone strikes, unemployment and slow growth
Neither does anyone else, apparently.
Don’t feel bad.
FWIW, I have a bunch of buddies over there right now, and a bunch that just got back. It’s mostly pretty quiet, though there are still places to find people that need a good killing.
I don’t pretend to imply that we are winning, or that there is anything to “win” (I still haven’t seen any clearly defined victory criteria), more that the issue as a whole has evolved into something very different than what we knew in Iraq or even Afghanistan a few years prior.
Please bring our warriors home.
I just got back in March. The whole time I was there I had no clue what our mission was, a vague idea of our goals and no confidence in our leadership at battalion and above. The only clearly stated goal we had came from my Platoon Sergeant. It was that he only cared about doing what he needed to bring everyone home in one piece.
Afghanistan will be just as it was after we leave. Only difference is that they will possess tons of our weapons and equipment and that an organized terror group based there will probably be more reluctant to attack us on a large scale for fear we’ll be right back.
Unless they all just become one, but either way it won’t be what we would hope for.
Now just why should we hear anything about US troops actively engaged in combat operations in a foreign nation, losing their lives on a daily basis…
Obama has a new beer recipe… who cares about umm… where was it we were talking about again?
That is because we have removed virtually all troops from Iraq effective 1 year ago. We retain some embassy personnel, defense contractors, etc., but nothing like our peak levels of 175K in 2007.
Mission: Restore a freely elected, stable, Islamic Republic government by eliminating violent portions of Taliban influence. This largely involves training an Afghan security force that will gradually assume greater responsibility for security operations. Secondary mission is to serve a platform for missions into neighboring Pakistan to eliminate elements of Taliban and Al Qaeda influence.
Strategy: COIN largely according to FM 3-24
Goals: On a theater level include: 1) Protecting the population from violence, coercion, intimidation and predatory groups. 2) Neutralizing insurgents networks and degrading their capability to a level that the Afghan national security forces can manage, and to deny sanctuary in Afghanistan to the extremists. 3) Building a professional, independent and sustainable Afghan National Army and Police, so that they are able to provide security and law enforcement to the Afghan people throughout the country. 4) Promoting effective governance: helping the Afghan Government to become inclusive, accountable and acceptable to the people.
Progress: Most objective analysts would say fair to poor.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/05/01/six-month-progress-report-on-afghanistan-war-claims-decline-in-violence/
Sensei, good recap of the official missions and objectives. The problem is they are not achievable in a country that prefers to stay the way it is. Changing the govt or culture is a no win. We should have missions, if any, that are achievable and within our control. This us the whole problem with nation building. Often the natives don’t want change and they have no cultural history to support what we want to impose.
By “some embassy personnel”, are you referrring to the 15K troops we have in Iraq presently?
I think our mission in war should be “kill the enemy and destroy their stuff”. At the conclusion of hostilities I think the mission should be: “GTFO, and bring back cool stuff you find along the way.”
That worked in the past. Nation building only worked with Japan and Germany.
My posting was a direct answer to a question. I did not intend to voice any support or disagreement with the mission, goals, or progress. Off the record, I agree with everything that you said. In other words, we could withdrawal tomorrow or in 4 years and Afghanistan (long with our security situation) would look the same in 2020.
Could you please provide a source for those troop levels in Iraq. I’m aware of roughly 15,000 uniformed services members in Kuwait, but to my knowledge the numbers of actual troops in Iraq is less than 1000. FWIW, the numbers in Kuwait will swell to 40,000 in 2014 as we begin the A-stan drawdown.
Also, your vision of the mission regarding the “cool stuff” would likely make you war criminal.
That is an idiotic thing to post. If taking cool stuff back is policy, as I suggested in my post, then it would not be illegal would it??
Are you being willfully deficient in your understanding of a counterinsurgency or do you really think the current conflict is analogous to force-on-force conflict between nation-states? “Key terrain” no longer wholly consists of hilltops, LDA’s, and other strategic positions. The “key terrain” of greatest importance is the human mind. Understand this, or fail to grasp even the simplest parts of this issue.
Do you not realize that becoming more barbaric and more like our enemies destroys the very basis of our position and exposes us to even greater danger?
Advocating a scorched-earth, kill 'em all strategy may seem tough, brave, stoic, and heroic, but it’s cowardice of the most dangerous kind.
Our nation’s citizens, including our warfighters, are better, more ethical, and more moral men and women than that.
Further, radical Islam is like water flowing down a hillside. It takes the path of least resistance: where people are poor, disenfranchised, suffering, uneducated, or credulous.
DON’T rebuild the nation, and you’ve only added to a cesspool of the above states of existence. Now tell me, if the goal is national security, what is the point of that? Doing so undermines the reason for killing your enemy in the first place.
Look, the last 10 years happened. We invaded and occupied Afghanistan and now we have to deal with the results. We have to do whatever we can to leave the Afghan Gov’t and ANSF in as favorable a position possible. Governance, corrupt and incompetent as it may be, is favorable to a power vacuum where theocratic-fascists like the Taliban can run roughshod.
Killing indiscriminately, overusing force, taking the Afghan people’s stuff, disrespecting their culture, etc, ALL serve to undermine the Afghan government due to the support they receive from the US. Doing these things would be irrational and come back to hurt is in the long run even more than our past actions already have.