How could they not be stronger? We’re releasing the ones we’ve taken off the battlefield.
Comment by Justin Credible — May 7, 2012 @ 7:15 am
Other than SF hunting parties for selected targets, we’re wasting our time, money and lives in Afghanistan.
What ever happened to speak softly and carry a big stick, or in Arab parlance, being the strong horse? IOW, the hammer of Thor strikes savagely, not only the offender, but those who supply and otherwise support him.
I guess I’m naive or simplistic, but I cannot understand
– why after Iran’s 33 years of attacking us directly and indirectly, Teheran and other places in Iran aren’t smoking ruins,
- why after seeing Muslims cheering in the streets after 9-11, some muzzie holy sites aren’t smoking ruins,
- why after finding out that most of the 9-11 perps were Saudis, we maintain a relationship with those slimes,
- why after their proxies killed Americans, when Syria is a major supporter of terror and attacks on Israel, we haven’t struck them even once,
- why after their reneging on promise after promise after promise we even talk about the sham ‘Peace Process’ with the Palestinians,
- why we never snuffed Mookie al Sadr and his ilk in Iraq, knowing they would always foment hate against the West,
is all beyond me.
Islam is at war with the West. It’s about time a Western power acknowleges that fact and acts accordingly.
Comment by dick, not quite dead white guy — May 7, 2012 @ 7:44 am
If the Taliban succeeds, they’ll go back to 2001 mode and support/host anti-US/civilization terrorists, and we’re back to 9/11.
Worse, they will have “won” in their recruiting brochures.
There is no “wall.”
There is no internal security in a free society.
There is no deterrence against those who worship death and care nothing for protecting their Motherland from destruction, only from contamination by infidels.
There is only destroying the fanatics.
That means a long war, longer than Americans like.
Better to kill ‘em in the godawfullest places in the world rather than here.
That’s been the plan since 2001.
We can’t make ‘em like us.
Our only hope of avoiding the need to kill ‘em all is that Arab/Muslim society turns on its barbarian cults, a Reformation, if you will. If the Taliban survive, that will never, ever happen.
Besides, Feinstein is penciled into my “enemy of America” column for a long time.
Comment by DougM (jackassophobe) — May 7, 2012 @ 8:29 am
howcum ALL the female politicians from the *Golden State* are “iron pyrite” (…fool`s gold…) ?
Comment by Colonel Jerry USMC — May 7, 2012 @ 9:34 am
^
• Full scold
• Fools, cold
Comment by DougM (jackassophobe) — May 7, 2012 @ 11:00 am
Claire, you post deserves more time and thought than I can afford, so I’ll just post a few thoughts of my own, with the caveat that they are incomplete and not nearly good enough.
Under the circumstances, it makes little sense to stay in Afghanistan. A new administration might take a radically different approach and get better results, but I say that knowing that a new administration might be fully preoccupied with salvaging the mess that we have come to right here at home. Also, any approach there that has a prayer of success would involve severely politically incorrect policies, and might also embroil us in destroying Pakistan. (you will notice that I did not say “occupying” Pakistan) At the very least, we would have to extend the war zone to the “Pakistani tribal areas” and tell Pakistan that if it could either stand aside or piss up a rope. (And yes, I know that Pakistan is a “nuclear power.”)
It is not possible to successfully prosecute a war in which the enemy has a significant safe-haven. For examples, I offer both the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, and perhaps (since I haven’t studied it) the prior attempt by the Soviets in Afghanistan.
What Feinstein doesn’t understand is that the Pakistani government doesn’t want to solve this problem, and putting weak restrictions of financial aid to them doesn’t provide any significant motivation. Plus, it is generally the reaction of cultures and regimes that value strength, to have contempt for people who try to buy favor with money. It is an admission of weakness.
That said, this area of the world is a safe-haven and staging ground for a variety of problems that attack us in a variety of ways. How will we solve this problem? Also, no problem of Islamic attack on the West will be solved until Saudi Arabia is dealt with. How will we do that?
No culture clash in history has been won without actually winning a war, and no war has ever been won without massive casualties and loss by the other side. And the key here is: the massive casualties and loss have to be experienced by the general “civilian” population, not just the military. For example, Hitler was pretty popular in Germany until the general population suffered massive hardships and loss. And his generals didn’t even attempt to turn against him until he had obviously lost. Even then we had to carve our way to Berlin the hard way. It is the civilian population that supports whatever the government, terrorist organization, or whatever is doing. You have to make them eager to see this stop.
The issue of whether and/or how we should export our culture is beyond the space here. In general, I think that cultural export is best achieved through admiration, economic possibilities, and (perhaps) ideals. Admiration is partly achieved through unassailable strength. Thanks in part to the Left, our ideals are in tatters. Frankly, we have done a very poor job of living out or ideals anyway. So I’m not especially sanguine about the export thing. Our best bet is to clean up our act at home. Nothing succeeds like success.
It also pays to remember that Afghanistan isn’t the only area where Al Qaeda and it’s like have safe-haven, train, stage, etc. Somali, Sudan, Yemen, etc. are almost equally useful, and efforts by local governments (where they exist at all) are completely laughable. The cultures in these places work against any hope of seriously eradicating Islamic terrorists, even if some of the locals wanted to, which they don’t.
On a tangent: the way we went about the Iraq war and occupation was idiotic. That isn’t particularly the fault of the Obama administration. For example, as Dick points out, we should have snuffed al Sadr and his ilk in Iraq. Early on, we could have gotten away with it, and the entire tone of things would have been different. We should have also completely closed all of Iraq’s borders for the duration, using air power or whatever. Anything that crosses the border dies. Many of Al Qaeda’s Iraq fighters came from Saudi Arabia; much of the IED material and expertise came, and still comes, from Iran.
I could not understand the Bush administration’s reasoning anyway. Iran has been the center of actual world wide Islamic terrorist efforts from the Carter years forward. Fighting anyone else is fighting expendable surrogates. In my view, the primary reason to attack Iraq in the first place would be to get some good staging for Iran and Syria. Failing to do so is like staging the D-Day invasion at Normandy and then never trying to get off the beach.
Our real difficulty now, in 2012 — or, realistically, in 2013, is that we are exhausted from fighting a 10-year-plus war with restrictions that guarantee lack of any real victory, while our economy, business and social environment at home is on the ropes. Our enemies are emboldened. We are weak.
Anybody noticed that in both Iraq and Afghanistan a conquering nation with the most powerful military the world has ever seen is, in effect, being first ordered around, and then ordered out by corrupt, incompetent, pissy little regimes that we put there in the first place? Why would anyone think we are weak? Or better, why would anyone think we weren’t? And who wants to emulate the culture of a looser?
Closing:
Just leaving Afghanistan doesn’t really solve anything, but the question is what can we do instead? If we stay, one thing we will have to do is provide some consistent, sharp, expensive lessons for both Afghanistan and Pakistan that we are no longer a weak, vacillating, has-been, and that they will respect us or die.
Anybody ready for the fallout from that? At the very least we are talking about goat-humper bodies everywhere, regime changes in both countries, and liberals screaming at the top of their lungs.
Claire, I’ve asked the same questions you have. We aren’t succeeding there, and the mortality question is up for grabs. After all, if a culture wants to fuck its goats and flog its women, what’s that to us?
Morally, I think what it comes to is that they are giving safe-haven to, and enabling, our enemies. We have every moral right to do something about that. And I personally am fine with it involving a lot of dead goblins and their goat humping hosts. And we have *no* moral duty to enable and preserve their pathetic, barbaric culture.
PS: I understand the ill-conceived social and economic arguments to the contrary, but I cannot comprehend how we have been there all these years and they have a single surviving poppy field. It’s not like we can’t find and destroy them from the air.
Comment by Ironic in Denver — May 7, 2012 @ 11:40 am
^I in D – clap clap clap! What I tried to say, much better expressed.
Comment by dick, not quite dead white guy — May 7, 2012 @ 12:45 pm
Actually, Dick, you covered some points that I did not, and did so succinctly.
While admitting that some of the problems confronting us are extremely difficult, and there are no certain solutions, I blame W Bush for this more than others. The current Occupy White House crowd is way too dumb to manage better than it is, and much of the current folly is built on a firm foundation in prior administrations.
Oh, and while I’m handing out blame from the sidelines here, H.W. Bush was a complete idiot to not finish the job he started in 1991 — it would have been so much easier then. I blame Colin Powell some for that one too, although the myth of “respecting Arab cultures and sovereignties,” was as the root of a lot of the failure then (and now). When are we going to learn that you don’t win by “respecting” your enemy?
You win by cutting off their fucking heads and sticking them on pikes. Burning their cities. Taking their goods. And hearing the lamentations of their women. (Who, if they are lucky, are being made to scrub the rest rooms at the new (and bigger) World Trade Center and our oil derricks that we have everywhere.)
I think the problem here is that we have developed a culture in which it is somehow wrong to win…..
… and It’s almost as though we can’t elect a president who doesn’t work hard to make us loose.
Slightly hopeful aside: is there a chance that Mormons still believe in winning? Even just a little? :-S
Comment by Ironic in Denver — May 7, 2012 @ 2:09 pm
I liked Gen. Mattis’ take on things:
“Demonstrate to the world there is ‘No Better Friend — No Worse Enemy’ than a US Marine.”
“Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.”
“I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all.”
“Speak softly and carry a big stick” has become “Apologize and offer valuable stuff.” Wrong, wrong. There’s no respect in that.
I might add don’t be afraid to use that big stick once committed. There is no substitute for victory.
Comment by dick, not quite dead white guy — May 7, 2012 @ 3:10 pm
Good points above. We have not been aggressive enough; we need to make these fools fear us. Some more miscellaneous thoughts:
- There are parts of the world that should still be listed on maps as colonies. They are not mature enough to stand on their own. (The push post-WW2 to “free” all the colonies was initiated by the Left, to decouple the West from sources of raw materials.)
- Some folks (Spengler, et. al.) have suggested a policy of containment of the Middle East. That has some merit, but to implement that, we first have to get our forces out of there. In fact, if we want to properly thank Pakistan for their help (i.e., ka-boom), we need to first get out of A-stan.
- If we leave A-stan, we should firmly tell them that, this first time, we came as liberators. If we have to come back, we come back as crusaders.
- We ought to remind Karzai that we have previously removed uncooperative leaders (Diem in Vietnam in ’63), and point out that we’re getting tired of his shit.
^ Fat, personally, I’d like to explain that to Karzai whist he was hanging at the end of a rope, then ask the next guy if he understood what I’d said, but I guess that would make me unpolitic.
I’m remembering here a scene in Firefly were Mal tries to reason with the guy leading a band of thugs for the thug-in-chief back at the space station. When it becomes evident that #1 thug isn’t listening, Mal kicks him into the jet intake, turns to the #2 thug and starts over with the exact same line of reasoning…
…which thug #2 immediately understands. And very agreeably too.
Comment by Ironic in Denver — May 7, 2012 @ 6:28 pm
How could they not be stronger? We’re releasing the ones we’ve taken off the battlefield.
Comment by Justin Credible — May 7, 2012 @ 7:15 am
Other than SF hunting parties for selected targets, we’re wasting our time, money and lives in Afghanistan.
What ever happened to speak softly and carry a big stick, or in Arab parlance, being the strong horse? IOW, the hammer of Thor strikes savagely, not only the offender, but those who supply and otherwise support him.
I guess I’m naive or simplistic, but I cannot understand
– why after Iran’s 33 years of attacking us directly and indirectly, Teheran and other places in Iran aren’t smoking ruins,
- why after seeing Muslims cheering in the streets after 9-11, some muzzie holy sites aren’t smoking ruins,
- why after finding out that most of the 9-11 perps were Saudis, we maintain a relationship with those slimes,
- why after their proxies killed Americans, when Syria is a major supporter of terror and attacks on Israel, we haven’t struck them even once,
- why after their reneging on promise after promise after promise we even talk about the sham ‘Peace Process’ with the Palestinians,
- why we never snuffed Mookie al Sadr and his ilk in Iraq, knowing they would always foment hate against the West,
is all beyond me.
Islam is at war with the West. It’s about time a Western power acknowleges that fact and acts accordingly.
Comment by dick, not quite dead white guy — May 7, 2012 @ 7:44 am
You lost me at “Feinstein said…”
Comment by snap-e-tom — May 7, 2012 @ 7:47 am
If the Taliban succeeds, they’ll go back to 2001 mode and support/host anti-US/civilization terrorists, and we’re back to 9/11.
Worse, they will have “won” in their recruiting brochures.
There is no “wall.”
There is no internal security in a free society.
There is no deterrence against those who worship death and care nothing for protecting their Motherland from destruction, only from contamination by infidels.
There is only destroying the fanatics.
That means a long war, longer than Americans like.
Better to kill ‘em in the godawfullest places in the world rather than here.
That’s been the plan since 2001.
We can’t make ‘em like us.
Our only hope of avoiding the need to kill ‘em all is that Arab/Muslim society turns on its barbarian cults, a Reformation, if you will. If the Taliban survive, that will never, ever happen.
Besides, Feinstein is penciled into my “enemy of America” column for a long time.
Comment by DougM (jackassophobe) — May 7, 2012 @ 8:29 am
howcum ALL the female politicians from the *Golden State* are “iron pyrite” (…fool`s gold…) ?
Comment by Colonel Jerry USMC — May 7, 2012 @ 9:34 am
^
• Full scold
• Fools, cold
Comment by DougM (jackassophobe) — May 7, 2012 @ 11:00 am
Claire, you post deserves more time and thought than I can afford, so I’ll just post a few thoughts of my own, with the caveat that they are incomplete and not nearly good enough.
Under the circumstances, it makes little sense to stay in Afghanistan. A new administration might take a radically different approach and get better results, but I say that knowing that a new administration might be fully preoccupied with salvaging the mess that we have come to right here at home. Also, any approach there that has a prayer of success would involve severely politically incorrect policies, and might also embroil us in destroying Pakistan. (you will notice that I did not say “occupying” Pakistan) At the very least, we would have to extend the war zone to the “Pakistani tribal areas” and tell Pakistan that if it could either stand aside or piss up a rope. (And yes, I know that Pakistan is a “nuclear power.”)
It is not possible to successfully prosecute a war in which the enemy has a significant safe-haven. For examples, I offer both the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, and perhaps (since I haven’t studied it) the prior attempt by the Soviets in Afghanistan.
What Feinstein doesn’t understand is that the Pakistani government doesn’t want to solve this problem, and putting weak restrictions of financial aid to them doesn’t provide any significant motivation. Plus, it is generally the reaction of cultures and regimes that value strength, to have contempt for people who try to buy favor with money. It is an admission of weakness.
That said, this area of the world is a safe-haven and staging ground for a variety of problems that attack us in a variety of ways. How will we solve this problem? Also, no problem of Islamic attack on the West will be solved until Saudi Arabia is dealt with. How will we do that?
No culture clash in history has been won without actually winning a war, and no war has ever been won without massive casualties and loss by the other side. And the key here is: the massive casualties and loss have to be experienced by the general “civilian” population, not just the military. For example, Hitler was pretty popular in Germany until the general population suffered massive hardships and loss. And his generals didn’t even attempt to turn against him until he had obviously lost. Even then we had to carve our way to Berlin the hard way. It is the civilian population that supports whatever the government, terrorist organization, or whatever is doing. You have to make them eager to see this stop.
The issue of whether and/or how we should export our culture is beyond the space here. In general, I think that cultural export is best achieved through admiration, economic possibilities, and (perhaps) ideals. Admiration is partly achieved through unassailable strength. Thanks in part to the Left, our ideals are in tatters. Frankly, we have done a very poor job of living out or ideals anyway. So I’m not especially sanguine about the export thing. Our best bet is to clean up our act at home. Nothing succeeds like success.
It also pays to remember that Afghanistan isn’t the only area where Al Qaeda and it’s like have safe-haven, train, stage, etc. Somali, Sudan, Yemen, etc. are almost equally useful, and efforts by local governments (where they exist at all) are completely laughable. The cultures in these places work against any hope of seriously eradicating Islamic terrorists, even if some of the locals wanted to, which they don’t.
On a tangent: the way we went about the Iraq war and occupation was idiotic. That isn’t particularly the fault of the Obama administration. For example, as Dick points out, we should have snuffed al Sadr and his ilk in Iraq. Early on, we could have gotten away with it, and the entire tone of things would have been different. We should have also completely closed all of Iraq’s borders for the duration, using air power or whatever. Anything that crosses the border dies. Many of Al Qaeda’s Iraq fighters came from Saudi Arabia; much of the IED material and expertise came, and still comes, from Iran.
I could not understand the Bush administration’s reasoning anyway. Iran has been the center of actual world wide Islamic terrorist efforts from the Carter years forward. Fighting anyone else is fighting expendable surrogates. In my view, the primary reason to attack Iraq in the first place would be to get some good staging for Iran and Syria. Failing to do so is like staging the D-Day invasion at Normandy and then never trying to get off the beach.
Our real difficulty now, in 2012 — or, realistically, in 2013, is that we are exhausted from fighting a 10-year-plus war with restrictions that guarantee lack of any real victory, while our economy, business and social environment at home is on the ropes. Our enemies are emboldened. We are weak.
Anybody noticed that in both Iraq and Afghanistan a conquering nation with the most powerful military the world has ever seen is, in effect, being first ordered around, and then ordered out by corrupt, incompetent, pissy little regimes that we put there in the first place? Why would anyone think we are weak? Or better, why would anyone think we weren’t? And who wants to emulate the culture of a looser?
Closing:
Just leaving Afghanistan doesn’t really solve anything, but the question is what can we do instead? If we stay, one thing we will have to do is provide some consistent, sharp, expensive lessons for both Afghanistan and Pakistan that we are no longer a weak, vacillating, has-been, and that they will respect us or die.
Anybody ready for the fallout from that? At the very least we are talking about goat-humper bodies everywhere, regime changes in both countries, and liberals screaming at the top of their lungs.
Claire, I’ve asked the same questions you have. We aren’t succeeding there, and the mortality question is up for grabs. After all, if a culture wants to fuck its goats and flog its women, what’s that to us?
Morally, I think what it comes to is that they are giving safe-haven to, and enabling, our enemies. We have every moral right to do something about that. And I personally am fine with it involving a lot of dead goblins and their goat humping hosts. And we have *no* moral duty to enable and preserve their pathetic, barbaric culture.
PS: I understand the ill-conceived social and economic arguments to the contrary, but I cannot comprehend how we have been there all these years and they have a single surviving poppy field. It’s not like we can’t find and destroy them from the air.
Comment by Ironic in Denver — May 7, 2012 @ 11:40 am
^I in D – clap clap clap! What I tried to say, much better expressed.
Comment by dick, not quite dead white guy — May 7, 2012 @ 12:45 pm
Actually, Dick, you covered some points that I did not, and did so succinctly.
While admitting that some of the problems confronting us are extremely difficult, and there are no certain solutions, I blame W Bush for this more than others. The current Occupy White House crowd is way too dumb to manage better than it is, and much of the current folly is built on a firm foundation in prior administrations.
Oh, and while I’m handing out blame from the sidelines here, H.W. Bush was a complete idiot to not finish the job he started in 1991 — it would have been so much easier then. I blame Colin Powell some for that one too, although the myth of “respecting Arab cultures and sovereignties,” was as the root of a lot of the failure then (and now). When are we going to learn that you don’t win by “respecting” your enemy?
You win by cutting off their fucking heads and sticking them on pikes. Burning their cities. Taking their goods. And hearing the lamentations of their women. (Who, if they are lucky, are being made to scrub the rest rooms at the new (and bigger) World Trade Center and our oil derricks that we have everywhere.)
I think the problem here is that we have developed a culture in which it is somehow wrong to win…..
… and It’s almost as though we can’t elect a president who doesn’t work hard to make us loose.
Slightly hopeful aside: is there a chance that Mormons still believe in winning? Even just a little? :-S
Comment by Ironic in Denver — May 7, 2012 @ 2:09 pm
I liked Gen. Mattis’ take on things:
“Demonstrate to the world there is ‘No Better Friend — No Worse Enemy’ than a US Marine.”
“Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.”
“I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all.”
“Speak softly and carry a big stick” has become “Apologize and offer valuable stuff.” Wrong, wrong. There’s no respect in that.
I might add don’t be afraid to use that big stick once committed. There is no substitute for victory.
Comment by dick, not quite dead white guy — May 7, 2012 @ 3:10 pm
Which do you suppose would really work better…
Stay away from us or else BOOM!
……………….or…………………
BOOM! Now, stay away from us.
Comment by Brad — May 7, 2012 @ 3:11 pm
Good points above. We have not been aggressive enough; we need to make these fools fear us. Some more miscellaneous thoughts:
- There are parts of the world that should still be listed on maps as colonies. They are not mature enough to stand on their own. (The push post-WW2 to “free” all the colonies was initiated by the Left, to decouple the West from sources of raw materials.)
- Some folks (Spengler, et. al.) have suggested a policy of containment of the Middle East. That has some merit, but to implement that, we first have to get our forces out of there. In fact, if we want to properly thank Pakistan for their help (i.e., ka-boom), we need to first get out of A-stan.
- If we leave A-stan, we should firmly tell them that, this first time, we came as liberators. If we have to come back, we come back as crusaders.
- We ought to remind Karzai that we have previously removed uncooperative leaders (Diem in Vietnam in ’63), and point out that we’re getting tired of his shit.
Comment by Fat Baxter — May 7, 2012 @ 3:43 pm
^ Fat, personally, I’d like to explain that to Karzai whist he was hanging at the end of a rope, then ask the next guy if he understood what I’d said, but I guess that would make me unpolitic.
I’m remembering here a scene in Firefly were Mal tries to reason with the guy leading a band of thugs for the thug-in-chief back at the space station. When it becomes evident that #1 thug isn’t listening, Mal kicks him into the jet intake, turns to the #2 thug and starts over with the exact same line of reasoning…
…which thug #2 immediately understands. And very agreeably too.
Comment by Ironic in Denver — May 7, 2012 @ 6:28 pm