How To Lose A Country In Ten Years

Frederick and Kimberly Kagan write about a lost decade in Afghanistan. And they mean the next decade, not the last one.

Especially given the reelection of Obama I stand by this 'Know When To Fold 'Em' post from the summer of 2010:

My official editorial position is that if we had Lincoln in the White House, the Afghani equivalent of George Washington in Kabul, and Generals Marshall and Eisenhower peering at maps of Kandahar, we might still lose in Afghanistan.  Gen. Petraeus is a great general and a great American, but he is not partnered with Lincoln and Washington.

Conversely, we might be lucky enough to win even without a President committed to victory, but I don't think it is worth the chance.  It's too late now, but it would have been better if Obama had never escalated the war.

 

Comments

[Jane: Mock the Media]

It's too late now, but it would have been better if Obama had never escalated the war.

I agree completely.

[Clarice]

How many voters remember that it was Obama who escalated the war there? That Kerry and crew kept pointing us to Afghanistan claiming it was where we should be rather than Iraq?

With an electorate this stupid, do facts matter at all?

[James D.]

He didn't really escalate it at all. He half-assedly, incompletely escalated it, in the full knowledge that the "surge" he was ordering was not sufficient to do the job he claimed he wanted to accomplish.

He deliberately threw away the lives of our soldiers solely so he could "look tough" on foreign policy. There was no other reason, no national security objective, no humanitarian value, no anything. It was all, 100%, for his image.

[Clarice]

http://www.irishexaminerusa.com/mt/2013/01/08/lowinfo_voters_just_not_intere.html

Alicia Colon thinks along the same lines and says conservatives need someone articulate to convey their views to the Honey Boo Boo voters.

[Peter]

Well, now we know Petraeus is not a great general, simply a hounddog self-promoter who paid off different factions in Iraq to stop them from fighting.

[NK]

Clarice-- you answered your own question-- with the mentally ill Left and TeamDem, facts matter not-- only the narrative matters.

TomM-- you are entitled to take a victory lap for knowing in 2010 that Barry I's escalation in Afghanistan was a terrible waste-- fools like me thought great soldiers, led by good generals would win the day against AQ in Kandahar and Helmand as they had done Anbar. You were right I was wrong, congrats. But please, never forget that about 1500 US military-- young men and women who were better than the rest of us-- died in service during Barry I's feckless escalation in Afghanistan. because of this monster's indifference to the loyalty and devotion of these young idealists, their lives were wasted as badly as Galipoli or any number of feckless military incompetence by craven politicians. I detest Barry I more than I can describe-- he hates and scorns everything good about America and works everyday to transform us into a failed and useless state like Greece.

[NK]

Peter@11:32-- just so wrong.

[James D.]

NK, it was not "incompetence."

It was a deliberate choice to do a half-assed surge combined with a declared withdrawl date, that Zero and his advisors knew perfectly well would accomplish nothing militarily, and would lead to the needless deaths of our soldiers. It wasn't a screw-up, or bad intelligence, or anything else. It was designed to fail. And it did, and 1,500 of our soldiers were killed, for one reason and one reason only: so that Zero could claim he fulfilled his campaign promise of "focising on the right war."

[Porchlight]

Agree with James D.

[NK]

JamesD@11:42-- can't disagree with any of that. A good number of Ct. yutes who I met as they grew up as soccer players went on to USNA, USMA, ROTC and became commissioned junior officers, almost all went to Afghan. ALL of them believed in the mission and trusted their senior officers and POTUS-- every one of them kept the faith. Unfortunately, there have been some injuries among these wonderful young men who I've known since they were children, and one or two will never run again, but thank God no KIAs. I detest Obama beyond description.

[Abadman]

The real problem is/was commitment. It takes generations to change how a society works. Believe me the Afgans were very sensitive to this. A fair weather friend is no friend at all. The day we started talking about leaving was the day we lost, surge or surge.

[fdcol63]

Think about all those Afghans who stuck their necks out to help us fight the Muslim barbarians, hoping for freedom and democracy, who naively believed that the US was actually committed to winning the war we started there.

After this and our betrayal of the South Vietnamese, the US will have no credibility.

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

Afghanistan was never winnable; moreover, even if it somehow magically became so, it wasn't worth the cost of trying.

Rubble = no trouble, is all the ME understands.

[Danube of Thought]

I was opposed to putting troops on the ground from the very beginning. We deposed the Taliban with 200 men and air power, and at that point we should have defined our objective as merely ensuring that no terrorist training camps were re-established. I faulted Bush at the time and I fault Obama even more.

A terrible, hopeless waste of the lives of so many wonderful men.

[derwill]

Re Honey Boo Boo . . . I tuned into that show awhile back to see what the fuss was about. My opinion: the little kid (Alana, aka Honey Boo Boo) is smart, funny, genuine, and charismatic in a way that I can't quite put my finger on. I think she senses that she's the butt of the joke, but she knows exactly how and how far to milk it, and she can laugh at herself in the process--and that's pretty darn mature for a six year old kid. The family as a whole might pig out on junk food and fart in public, but they also really seem to love one another, and they know how to laugh and have a good time together. The matriarch of the family has a brilliant grasp of exactly what people are tuning in to see--both the show's disparagers and its fans, and so she guides the family into delivering it big time and they're laughing all the way to the bank.

Bottom line, I'm not sure who the real fools are in this whole Honey Boo Boo thing, but it isn't Honey Boo Boo.

[Clarice]

I agree, DoT. The Dept of state--i.e. Powell and Brenner--won out over rumsfeld and that was a tragedy.

The real fools are the taxpayers who apparently allow $20 million write offs for shows produced in the back country.

An then there's this===http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/nra-100k-new-members-after-sandy-hook-86001.html

[Cecil Turner (on a mini pad)]

Abadman nails it. Just as with Iraq, the only real question was whether or not the US would stay until the job was complete.

Announce a withdrawal date = defeat.

Also concur with those who say the surge was half-assed (and undermined by tightening up the ROE).

[narciso]

That's probably too optimistic;

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/01/loony-chuck-hagel-terrorists-attack-because-they-lack-hope-just-like-chained-palestinians-video/

[fdcol63]

Muslim terrorists have hope.

They hope to kill as many infidels as possible for Allah, and they hope to establish a Muslim caliphate that will dominate the world.

[cathyf]

The irony of that, narciso, is that a lot of terrorists DO appear to lack hope...

-- The young man who wanted to marry the girl he loved, but her father sold her off to a rich old guy as a fourth wife. The rich old guy was into rough sex and the girl died. The young man goes to Iraq and becomes a suicide bomber.

-- The girl beaten because her family imagined that she looked at a boy. She went to the Israeli check point and attacked a soldier with a knife so that they would put her in jail where she would be safe from her family.

-- The little boy, son of his unimaginably wealthy Saudi father and a temporary fourth "wife", whose mother has been divorced and sent packing. Leaving the tot at the mercy of the first 3 wives and their vicious children. Nobody calls him by his name, he is simply "the whore's son." We called him Osama bin Laden.

Yeah, the "social justice" crowd loves to talk about "lack of hope" and all that. But point out where it comes from, and they all shut up pretty quick!

[matt]

Afghanistan is "Obama's War" so I guess he owns it now, the bastard.

Bush won and then forgot about Afghanistan. It allowed the Taliban to rebuild in Pakistan, raise money through the drug trade, and surge themselves throughout the South with regular forays into uncontested areas. Nangahar in the North, Kipling's Kafiristan in "The Man Who Would be King", which is as rugged and remote as Kipling described, into their own piece of home, if you will.

The people hate Karzai and his government but are desperate to be left alone. Trillions of dollars have been spent and over 3,100 Coalition participants have come home in coffins with over 23,000 wounded and an estimated 30-60,000 Afghan casualties.

For what? So that Obama can now turn his pretty head and walk away.

This is his second time vanishing like smoke in the breeze and yet no one is calling him on it. Amazing. Disgusting.

[Frau Ekelhaft]

I'll leave it at disgusting, matt.

[maryrose]

matt:
History will call Obama what he truly. A feckless leader,whom the military did not respect.
Who lost Afghanistan? Ah that would be Obama. The blood is on his hands. He wouldn't last 2 minutes on an army base in basic training.

[narciso]

Which history, maryrose, the standard version that praised Halberstam, Arnett, Safer, et al,
McChrystal's memoir relies a great deal on the Times/ New Yorker/ Washington post view of the matter, even though he points out the story was more complicated then they presented,

[maryrose]

Jom members should write a true history.