Posted on Oct 26, 2015
Can We Even Try and Change Policy in the Totally failed GWOT?
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I'll just leave this here.
"Korb, who now is with the Center for American Progress, says rank and file Afghani and Iraqi troops “view these governments as inefficient and sectarian” and the regimes not “worth sacrificing their lives for.” So, what are we continuing to prop up there?
In the case of Iraq, Korb says that when ISIS threatened Mosul and Ramadi, the Iraqi military melted away, noting that just 800 to 1,000 committed ISIS fighters sent 30,000 Iraqi troops into full retreat. In the case of Kunduz in Afghanistan, 7,000 U.S.-trained and -equipped Afghani soldiers were routed by “a far smaller Taliban force.”
The time has long come for the U.S. to start living in the world that is, as opposed to the one we wish existed. We saw the results in Libya of what happens when we fail to anticipate the consequences of letting the missiles and drones fly with naive reckless abandon.
Clearly the American people, nor their current President, want to commit the U.S. military into a massive land war to take out ISIS. And even as we continue our grand Iraq delusion, the world is moving on. Canada, our neighbor to the north, under the new leadership of Justin Trudeau, has committed to ending his air force’s role in the bombing campaign aimed at challenging ISIS in Syria and Iraq opting to instead “engage in a responsible way” with more humanitarian aid.
So far, the U.S. and its partners have conducted 7,000 air strikes on ISIS. What we are seeing is what we already knew: You can use all the drones in the world, but if you don’t have living breathing human beings (boots on the ground) willing to make the final sacrifice, you can’t hold the land."
http://www.salon.com/2015/10/25/americas_sad_delusional_foreign_policy_the_real_reason_why_things_are_falling_apart/
"Korb, who now is with the Center for American Progress, says rank and file Afghani and Iraqi troops “view these governments as inefficient and sectarian” and the regimes not “worth sacrificing their lives for.” So, what are we continuing to prop up there?
In the case of Iraq, Korb says that when ISIS threatened Mosul and Ramadi, the Iraqi military melted away, noting that just 800 to 1,000 committed ISIS fighters sent 30,000 Iraqi troops into full retreat. In the case of Kunduz in Afghanistan, 7,000 U.S.-trained and -equipped Afghani soldiers were routed by “a far smaller Taliban force.”
The time has long come for the U.S. to start living in the world that is, as opposed to the one we wish existed. We saw the results in Libya of what happens when we fail to anticipate the consequences of letting the missiles and drones fly with naive reckless abandon.
Clearly the American people, nor their current President, want to commit the U.S. military into a massive land war to take out ISIS. And even as we continue our grand Iraq delusion, the world is moving on. Canada, our neighbor to the north, under the new leadership of Justin Trudeau, has committed to ending his air force’s role in the bombing campaign aimed at challenging ISIS in Syria and Iraq opting to instead “engage in a responsible way” with more humanitarian aid.
So far, the U.S. and its partners have conducted 7,000 air strikes on ISIS. What we are seeing is what we already knew: You can use all the drones in the world, but if you don’t have living breathing human beings (boots on the ground) willing to make the final sacrifice, you can’t hold the land."
http://www.salon.com/2015/10/25/americas_sad_delusional_foreign_policy_the_real_reason_why_things_are_falling_apart/
GWOT
Policy
Posted 9 y ago
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Capt Walter Miller
Oh, partly this article reinforces what I have said over and over.
There is no Iraq. All those people on RP saying we should get boots back on the ground in the region need to be applauding the president for resisting the call to get our guys killed for nothing.
Also, it is a difficult and seemingly intractable problem.
Walt
There is no Iraq. All those people on RP saying we should get boots back on the ground in the region need to be applauding the president for resisting the call to get our guys killed for nothing.
Also, it is a difficult and seemingly intractable problem.
Walt
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"Naylor notes that JSOC’s failure to completely destroy al-Qaeda in Iraq allowed IS to grow and eventually sweep “across northern Iraq in 2014, seizing town after town from which JSOC and other U.S. forces had evicted al-Qaeda in Iraq at great cost several years earlier.” This, in turn, led to the rushing of special ops advisers back into the country to aid the fight against the Islamic State, as well as to that program to train anti-Islamic State Syrian fighters that foundered and then imploded. By this spring, JSOC operators were not only back in Iraq and also on the ground in Syria, but they were soon conducting drone campaigns in both of those tottering nations."
http://www.salon.com/2015/10/27/the_planet_is_one_special_op_partner/
More than worth a look and not likely to be covered this way on many outlets -- I mean those lying idiots at Fox.
Walt
http://www.salon.com/2015/10/27/the_planet_is_one_special_op_partner/
More than worth a look and not likely to be covered this way on many outlets -- I mean those lying idiots at Fox.
Walt
America’s not-so-special ops: The spectacular fall of our most elite soldiers
Over and over again, in regions across the globe, the U.S. military is proving useless in training foreign armies
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The only question that matters is what will happen if we pull out, how many more 9-11 attacks will we have to endure if we leave locations that enable terrorism. Everyone's wish is that we can revert to an isolationist mentality again but with Iran developing Nuke's, Putin's clear attempts to supplant OPEC, I think we may regret our decision to pull out before too long.
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MAJ (Join to see)
I agree they won't stop, but the will be reduced, I'd just be happy with serious attempts to stop Iran from developing Nuke's, stop the flow of weapons into Yemen, and take a firm stance on supporting Israel. Too many nations are questioning the willingness of the United States to uphold our treaties and defend their nations.
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