A war that cannot be won or lost
An interesting article from the Pakistani paper 'The Dawn': http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/...on-or-lost-579
Quote:
We should be careful of what we wish for. For years now, there has been a chorus from the right as well as the left in Pakistan, calling for foreign troops to pull out of Afghanistan. There are indications that they might get their wish before too long.
Nothing maybe surprising, but from a Pakistani writer of interest, who comments on the Pakistani military stance and the consequences of a NATO / USA retreat on other nations nearby.
Here is the latest UK statement why: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8169454.stm
davidbfpo
Nobody 'wins' in any insurgency. That's a misleading term that shouldn't be used.
The words win, lose, victory and defeat have no place in any such operation (other than at a tactical level). The best one can achieve for the overall effort, lacking using the Roman or Mongol models of total annihilation (frowned upon today) is an acceptable outcome. That's been true of virtually all of them since the end of WW II. Except Viet Nam which was unique in several respects; the insurgency was pretty well curtailed but the North Viet Namese conventional offensive overturned the nominal outcome.
Comparing WW II to Viet Nam in almost any respect is fallacious; that's tantamount to comparing New York to Pili. They're both cities but that about as close as you're going to get. The COINistas will tell you that insurgencies average about ten years to 'resolve' as you note.
The issue of what that resolution will be is undetermined -- or at least so far as is made public. I think your comment:
Quote:
is the inability to achieve that objective a consequence of operational failure or was the objective unreasonable from the start? If we'd gone in with the assumption that achieving basic security and stability could easily take a decade and a functional government could need another, we'd be right on schedule.
is on the mark. The initial plan was to topple the Talibs and leave; rightly or wrongly and for reasons not fully known, that got changed and we, the USA in the form of the government of the day, told the Afghans we would stay and 'fix it.'
Error on our part IMO but they didn't ask me. So we said it. Now, we're honor bound to do it, I think. There is, I gather much back and forth in DC at this time on precisely what that means and I suspect that what the former Administration intended does not square with what the current Admin desires, however, the former Admin stacked some things that cannot be easily undone so the current Admin is trying to find acceptable to them solutions. That's about as clear as Afghan politics -- which are no better or worse than ours, just different...:wry:
Long way of agreeing with you, except I'd say that getting to a decent level of security will take much more than a decade and I doubt we'll stay long enough to do that. An acceptable level will have to suffice suffice...
Depends onwhat you mean by stable. If you mean UK or US
stable, not likely to ever happen. Nor, IMO, does it need to. Just needs to be stable enough to fulfill your condition of neutral or rhetorically anti-western but no bad guys. The government can change through mechanisms of other than elections as long as they do that...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Dayuhan
As of now, though, to whom would you offer the deal, and what are the chances that they can hold up their end?
Bad move to try to deal there -- they haggle and deceive for sport and we're not at all good at either. They can also be ruthless and we generally, unless really aroused, are not.
So they need to deal among themselves and we leave with a very powerful and focused threat in the 'Don't make me come back' vein.
Their country -- they need to work out among them selves what they will do and we need to support it. I believe we may be headed to that. We'll see...
In my personal view, all our attempts at military foreign internal development are ill advised. Better to increase the Intel and Diplomatic efforts, crank USAid (and USIA) up again and let the SF boys go in small numbers if necessary. Commitment of large forces is generally counterproductive. Plus, when you do those, you more often than not end up with a multi-year large foreign aid bill after departure. All that money can be better spent defusing things before it gets to crisis level. Only real problem with that approach is that our political system makes it difficult. Not impossible, just difficult.