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Take this article for what it is worth...I am not sure this fight was ever winnable!
Our generals failed in Afghanistan
Posted from foreignpolicy.com
Taliban
Afghanistan
Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) - Afghanistan
Posted 8 y ago
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Nope... Wrong !!!... Our Politicians Did... They are the ones who issued the Rules of Engagement and Hamstrung the Generals and the troops...
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SSG Buddy Kemper
Amen, SFC George Smith . To say the same military that defeated all enemies since our Founding has failed is ridiculous. The issue is policy wonks (draft dodging/never served types usually) keep sending us in with no clear mission/OBJ, pull out too soon, because the going gets tough OR walks away after we fight the fight and bleed a lot, example Iraq/Syria and the rise of ISIS. If these f'tards who are in Washington now were there back in 1941 we'd still be fighting the Nazis& Imperial Japan. Or maybe the civilian leadership we have now would have surrendered long ago. AMERICA NEEDS A REVIVAL!!!!! Thank you for your Service, brother!
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I'm not surprised Ricks is on the by-line. I frequently agree with him. But I also think he tends to over simplify. Perhaps that's a best practice given FP's format.
To me if Afghanistan's a failure, and we're to blame our generals, it's at the highest levels of our general officer corps, e.g. theater.
I believe Afghanistan deteriorated very quickly for us because we failed to reasonably define early on what success would look like; a violation of the Powell Doctrine. Were we there to deny AQ sanctuary? Were we there to eliminate the Taliban (not an existential threat to the US, they only fight us because we're there)? If we thought GIRoA or the ANA could ever mirror us, it was culturally ignorant. The more we committed our conventional forces without a clear or practical end state, the more we couldn't accept leaving without trying to change some distasteful aspects of the culture.
Yes, some of our generals failed. But I also believe our political leadership from both parties failed to understand the implications of deploying divisions into such a mess. We only made it worse because we somehow convinced ourselves that just because we have it good, everyone else must want what we have.
https://www.rallypoint.com/answers/thomas-ricks-the-generals
To me if Afghanistan's a failure, and we're to blame our generals, it's at the highest levels of our general officer corps, e.g. theater.
I believe Afghanistan deteriorated very quickly for us because we failed to reasonably define early on what success would look like; a violation of the Powell Doctrine. Were we there to deny AQ sanctuary? Were we there to eliminate the Taliban (not an existential threat to the US, they only fight us because we're there)? If we thought GIRoA or the ANA could ever mirror us, it was culturally ignorant. The more we committed our conventional forces without a clear or practical end state, the more we couldn't accept leaving without trying to change some distasteful aspects of the culture.
Yes, some of our generals failed. But I also believe our political leadership from both parties failed to understand the implications of deploying divisions into such a mess. We only made it worse because we somehow convinced ourselves that just because we have it good, everyone else must want what we have.
https://www.rallypoint.com/answers/thomas-ricks-the-generals
Thomas Ricks' "The Generals" | RallyPoint
Any opinions on Thomas Ricks' "The Generals" published in 2012?"...a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war." - COL(R) Paul YinglingGeneral FailureLooking back on the troubled wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, many observers are content to lay blame on the Bush administration. But inept leadership by American generals was also responsible for the fa...
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The Generals didn't fail; the Politicians and their Commander-in-Chief (past and mostly present) failed. The Politicians in Washington gave away the Vietnamese War to the North and the current administration is doing the same in the Middle East. If the over paid and under worked political the military run the war, the outcome may be what we were after the first place.
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Sgt David Wyble
Not just the government. It was the will of the people. President Obama was following the will of the American public. However, the military is different. We wanted to finish the mission
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