Taliban summer assault begins in Afghanistan by killing 18 ANA with large assaulting force

We kept forces in England, France, Germany, Japan, Korea and built strong ties and brought some countries into great prosperity. It wasn't done by blowing a country up and saying here's your chance.....you are on your own." Does that mean that I favor us staying for decades? Not a chance in Hades! We are trying to fix the world with our own national infrastructure crumbling around us. Take these trillions of dollars and fix our transportation systems, tunnels, bridges, aquifers, pipelines, sewers, and updating these massive civil engineering investments that turned our nation into a superpower in the first place. Put our unemployed and under-employed to work rebuilding our own nation, secure the borders, and find/create/develop alternate energy resources outside of the sandbox.

This is nothing different than what has been going on for the past 15 years. This is how the Taliban announces the start of the fighting season. Yes, there are not as many American combat troops on the ground anymore but that doesn't mean there are none.

The Afghans are as trained as they are going to get, just like the Iraqis were trained. We can only do so much to help them. Yes, it is horrible that we spent all that time and blood training the Iraqis and are now back to do it again. The Afghans are a little better than the Iraqis, the majority will stand and fight and the command is fairly capable and able to push reinforcements to locations throughout Afghanistan pretty quickly.

Is it time to leave, I say yes! My opinion does not matter because the Afghan President doesn't want us to leave. I think we will continue to drawdown but it will be a good while before we completely pull out of Afghanistan.

We will see how this fighting season goes and how well the Afghan forces defend the country. I am currently advising a Kandak fairly close to where this happened, looks like it's time to kick ass and chew bubble gum...the PX is all out of bubble gum.

Give the country "self-determination", 14 years of American occupation and what the people there want is for us to go home. Our continued presence is not a win for us. Leave and we can parlay with the guys who come out on top as the true leaders of the nation.

Ugh! I hate this. No it's not a surprise. It's literally like groundhog day, the movie. We are going to continue to go thru this over and over and over again until we finally do the right thing. (No I don't know what that is...) This is not surprising just happening 19 days after President Ghani addressed Congress and told the world that the American Troops were not engaging in Combat anymore.

I just can't get over the Dec 31st deadline. We are leaving them wide open. Afghans Pres. Ghani stated that the security transition was happening at the worst time. On the backdrop of the rise of Religious Extremism. But Obama is going to do what he said no matter the consequence.

YES, I believe that it is time for these countries to fight for their own, but when President Ghani states that they won't have a self sustaining Gov until the end of this decade, well, maybe we shouldn't have brought back our troops just yet. I HATE SAYING That because I know 2,350 soldiers killed over there is ENOUGH!! This is such a lose lose situation. Very Disappointing indeed.

The liberals have this skewed sense of reality. They will use the military for votes but when it comes to actually supporting us, they show their true colors. Just ask how many appreciate the large raises pushed by President Reagan and you either get deafening silence or vitriol.

As others have said.... CSM Michael J. Uhlig SFC Mark Merino CSM (Join to see)

Look at past wars, and our recent combat operations...

You have to be able to separate tactical, operational, and strategic aims/goals. We are very good (unbeatable) at the tactical level, and even the operational level. We falter at the strategic level, because we never have a defined "war aim" that we, the American People, and the Administration (the trinity), can agree upon. Then, that aim is often not what the supported nation wants...

I think the last time we did that (had everyone on the same page, to include the American public) was WWII. There are reasons we still have forces in Europe, Korea, Japan, etc.

Nation change requires our aim (assuming the 3 parts of trinity are in sync) to be in sync with the those we are supporting; many times what we want is not what they want... "They have to want it!" Change also takes time and requires a war aim and vision focused on the long haul, not the calendar. The calendar is normally our worst enemy when in comes to determining our exit strategy.

Exit strategy should be tied to one thing, and one thing only... Achieving our war aim(s), which should be decided before set foot on the ground.

Time should not be a screening criteria.

The one thing you can learn from history is that there is no finish in Afghanistan. The US, the Russians, the British...even Alexander the Great...was sucked into this quagmire. In truth, we were able to break up the terror nests that were able to grow there and make the rats scurry off to other places. We can support our tribes there...if we continue to arm and support our bad guys, they will continue to win over the other guys bad guys.

Also, the President already said we won.

There are a number of great comments on here as to what we should do and why...I'll go ahead and add one about what we AREN'T doing and why. What we aren't doing is something we will probably never be able to do....get the culture to value life....as an overwhelming majority, anyway.
It really seems to me that's the root of the problem. They don't seem to value their own lives. I'm not versed enough in the Muslim culture to say why...maybe it's the 72 virgins in paradise, maybe its just that life sucks so bad living the way they do that they're just looking to move to the other side....those are questions that I doubt any of us can answer to any meaningful degree.
The point of this really just comes down to more questions. How do you overcome that? I don't know if you do. Certainly not in less than a generation. Maybe not even in two. As someone mentioned, we haven't been able to accomplish in 10 years with the ANA what we accomplish in 13 weeks with a raw basic trainee here. I think that's because we build on an existing culture here, and don't have the mindset of dozens of generations to undo.

I don't think any of these answers really fit the exact situation.

The ANA needs to take ownership of the security within their Country and be prepared to react to violence and attacks. That said, they are not fully/adequately trained because of the recruits that are accepted and the lack of dedication.

I don't know what the best solution is, but they need further mentorship. Each unit, like our military, varies in capability, though obviously more radically.

I also wonder how many went through the training in order to get an understanding of how the forces would work against the extremists & then go to the extremists to inform them of tactics to be used?