African militaries

[Bill Moore]

Bill, with due respect you started this post attempting to provide your view and then when you realised you were failing you resported to the age old tactic of shooting the messenger.

Years ago I (and a number of others outside SWC) warned the the war in Afghanistan in general and in Helmand in particular with the Brits was going terribly wrong and was met by the same sort of mindset you now display - go read the thread for yourself - The UK in Afghanistan. I was 95% correct without even having been to Afghanistan. Now as I sit in Kabul I see the US packing up and selling out and ready to leave and desperately trying to put a positive spin on another war loss. ISAF came here saying "this is what we do" did just that and got it wrong. In this case I am deeply sorry I got it right (and Lind is bang on the nail).

The final question is whether the yanks are going to be as dumb as the Bits were in 1842 and the Russians in 1989 and try to negotiate safe passage out of Afghanistan. My guess is that they will - on the basis that the Brits and the Russians are dumb and we are smart, right - and expect the Afghans to stand by the deal.

But back to Africa.

From TED here is a story by an Italian who arrived in Africa - like all the yanks, Canadians, Europeans and (yes) even the Chinese before him - believing he had all the answers and got it wrong (surprise, surprise). Now instead of hanging his head in shame he turns his cock-up in to a virtue.

Watch this and weep:

Want to help someone? Shut up and listen!

At least he learned something but despite a long string of cock-ups have the yanks?

JMA,

First off I don't believe I have disagreed with you regarding Afghanistan. Our nation building effort will be easily destroyed by the Taliban if we pull out in mass. On the other hand, what you call a military failure I call a political failure, and I don't think I'm being defensive. The military performed quite well in the early phases of Iraq and Afghanistan, and that is after projecting force halfway around the world. In Iraq our politicians had a vision that was disconnected from reality, and our politicians stopped the military from pursuing Al-Qaeda into Pakistan (for bad or good reasons depending on your point of view). Turning Iraq and Afghanistan into stable democracies was a pipe dream that military couldn't accomplish, and I don't think it reflects poorly on the military for being unable to create a world full of rainbows and unicorns.

For the countries in Africa, we haven't committed our forces to defeat an adversary decisively there. We have conducted some disruption operations against different terrorist groups, and engaged in a number of capacity building efforts, which probably will fail over time for a lot reasons. However, that isn't losing a war. I'm sure I'm not the only one that would be interested in your views on what we should do in Africa, and throwing up our hands and saying we don't care won't fly.

As to your comment on mercenaries being successful, I wasn't aware the mercenaries were successful in Angola, but I haven't read up on that conflict in years so I'll take a look. Executive Action was extremely successful in Sierra Leone with a small and lightly armed force, and they were punished by international opinion, which to this day amazes me. They turned the tide against a group of murderous thugs and they get criticized, much like Israel gets punished for their operations against Hamas. Want to know why we're not winning? Apparently there is no appetite for winning in the liberal West at this time, so we'll have to wait until more Westerners die before people wake up and depend decisive action. This is political, not a military issue. Since the military in the West is subordinate to the political we're simply stuck in a do loop where we're either given an impossible mission or denied the authorities and permissions to win what is winnable.