Joe Galloway on McCaffery?
Galloway had to have loosely paraphrased GEN McCaffery, a man I respect and admire.
Two combat brigades will make a huge difference in Afghanistan if skillfully employed. A combat brigade can do more than kill Taliban. And combat brigades bring with them leaders; creative, intelligent, and motivated leaders.
Our leaders can figure out how to solve problems that involve more than kinetic options.
Not trying to in any way deny
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Originally Posted by
MSG Proctor
None of Eden's rebuttals deal with these facts:
1. Islam is the only hope for a unifying principle/theme in COIN ops there;
2. The enemy is co-opting the religious leaders not due to superiority but due to our exposing them to the coercive power of the insurgency.
No one is offering a silver bullet - but I am submitting that we aim the pistol at the enemy instead of at our own heads.
that this is a very important aspect to focus on, that said
consider the rule of the Taliban over the years and how much "control" they actually had over many of these very areas we are talking about. For the most part aside from occasional visits to remind the locals who was in charge, or simply to take advantage of ones position in order to get what they would want. Even during that time how much was local security handled by anything other than locals.
In otherwords that part was pre-existing and would be a focus for change simply in how its done and what the tie-ins to the central govt are. As mentioned before the religious leaders/tribal leaders are almost interchangeable if not the same in many cases and along those lines this differs greatly from Iraq where although the power structures existed they seemed fairly often to be in seperate hierarchies
In order to bring change in those outlying areas they will have to develop a desire to tie in to the larger cities/ govt and that wont happen until the (Whats in it for me) aspects of their leaders are peaked in possibilities for differences. Long story short although those leaders of the faith will have a large part to play the factors which would draw them into the larger govt seem to be outside their faith base and more in the lines of normal human characterisitics.
I don't think that's what anyone said.
You have a bad tendency to try to apparently misquote or misunderstand others...
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Originally Posted by
Fuchs
So in other words most here agree that the war is lost because its objective of a stable, power monopoly central state that keeps AQ out won't happen?
No one said that; what was said was that it would not accord to the western 'democratic' vision.
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A victory (using unaspiring definitions of victory that I usually don't share)
I believe that...
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...would then only be possible
First place, there's no such thing as 'victory' in a COIN operation, all one can do is achieve an acceptable outcome, I see no difficulty in obtaining that in Afghanistan
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...if the very goals of the war were changed by our governments (especially deleting the "secular" and allow sharia - you know that won't happen).
Since our governments are adapting on a daily basis to realities on the ground, I think that's quite incorrect. Since Sharia is already in effect in Afghanistan, I'm curious as to on what you base that statement.
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It's not like all warlords had disappeared, after all. Afaik they're just saving their forces for the final fights after the Westerners left, just like most militias in Iraq do afaik.
Probably true; they have long memories over there. However, the answer to your question is generational change and hopefully improvement in attitude. We're there to antagonize and thus accelerate that change from five or more to about two generations-- your kids will see the result. Be patient.. :D.