30,000 new soldiers to Afghanistan? What the heck for?

[Questor]

?

 

[rio grande]

You know, when the old Romans or Huns or Persians or Israelites fought wars they got something out of them. Land or slaves or gold or women or SOMETHING.
What do we get from these overseas adventures except deaths and anger and poverty and ruination?

[Questor]

They did until late in the Empire before the Byzantine era, for a long time it was one civil war after another.

From what I've seen, this should put the number of US soldiers at about 100,000 in Afghanistan.

[jimster]

Because our President painted himself into a corner with all his previous retoric.

 

[Questor]

I thought he campaigned on anti-war promises. All I've seen is escalation for no good reason. At least I could understand the original Afghan attacks under Bush: It was to hound Al Quaeda. And despite the laughable WMD argument about Iraq, it did have a very sensible effect of striking terror into the hearts of the Arab dictatorships by demonstrating how quickly they could be taken out of power if they were engaging in activities that supported terror attacks on the US. This current Afghan thing is a mystery to me.

[SHOOTALL]

if your military was stressed out and spread thin a dandy new police force might be just the ticket to protect back home 

[highwayman]

when was the last time you heard anything about iraq on cnn ?

[ms]

You know, when the old Romans or Huns or Persians or Israelites fought wars they got something out of them. Land or slaves or gold or women or SOMETHING.
What do we get from these overseas adventures except deaths and anger and poverty and ruination?

Drugs!

[teamnelson]

We're so fat in the military right now, recruiting is full, reenlistment bonuses are turned off, and promotions are tightening up. The 30k just reflects putting OEF on the rotation cycle for units whose deployment cycle used to be OIF. Even with that we're still going to have a bunch more troops home with the OIF draw down. Hopefully that's reserve and NG units. As an active duty officer, I think those guys have given more than their share and deserve a break.

What I'd like for those 30,000 troops is an accelerated exit strategy.

[Questor]

I'll bet they'd like it too.

By the way, not to nitpick, but the use of acronyms made your first paragraph largely incomprehensible to me.

[Oldshooter]

obama has to send troops so he dont look like a looser. then he can blame bush cause he(obama) tried but bush had already screwd up so bad that his (obama) attempt was not able to win there.


what is winning there anyway?


obama is walking a tight rope here to not look like a coward failure and not make his base(libs)to mad that he is sending troops in the first palce!

[Oldshooter]

I'll bet they'd like it too.

By the way, not to nitpick, but the use of acronyms made your first paragraph largely incomprehensible to me.

Thanks Questor,   

[RaySendero]

I thought he campaigned on anti-war promises. All I've seen is escalation for no good reason. At least I could understand the original Afghan attacks under Bush: It was to hound Al Quaeda. And despite the laughable WMD argument about Iraq, it did have a very sensible effect of striking terror into the hearts of the Arab dictatorships by demonstrating how quickly they could be taken out of power if they were engaging in activities that supported terror attacks on the US. This current Afghan thing is a mystery to me.

Questor, you are right - Obama did campaign on stopping the "war"!

BUT Iraq and Afganistan have turned into more of Police actions than War.  This "peace-keeping" has probably lead to more US casualities than the original fighting ever did!

Seems Obama likes the police action cause he sure don't know how to lead our troops in a war!

[teamnelson]

I'll bet they'd like it too.

By the way, not to nitpick, but the use of acronyms made your first paragraph largely incomprehensible to me.

Thanks Questor,  

Sorry gents, take it for granted and apologize.

OIF = Operation Iraqi Freedom, refers to all activity in support of the war in Iraq which includes other countries outside of Iraq.

OEF = Operation Enduring Freedom, refers to all activity in support of the war in Afghanistan, which includes other countries outside of Afghanistan. These 30,000 (30K) troops will go to support this, but not necessarily all on the ground in Afghanistan.

NG = National Guard. National Guardsman have been serving long 12 to 15 month tours, often several times, in support of both Iraq and Afghanistan. That should not be the expectation of our Guardsmen, so I hope with the draw down in Iraq, the burden will shift back solely on Active Duty troops.

Seems Obama likes the police action cause he sure don't know how to lead our troops in a war!

Democratic Presidents seem to prefer sending us to police actions. Allows them to avoid being seen as a hawk, allows them ambiguity which creates so much confusion on the ground that it allows them scapegoats to blame failure on later. Republicans like it for campaign purposes, they can blame the Democrats, and it gives them a cause to clean up in their administration. Its cyclical.

[torpedoman]

 From the words and logic i was hearing he sounded just like bubba. Maybe he should apologize to him

[Graybeard]

Any time you make war (and make no mistake any time you have troops on the ground being injured and killed you are making war) you need a clearly defined objective, a clearly defined definition of what constitutes a win and clear well defined exit strategy.

We have none of those in any of the actions underway at present. Top that off with the fact our own borders are as pourous as a sponge and we are being invaded by millions of hostile foreign nationals who's goals are directly opposite of those of American citizens.

Make no mistake the folks who are behind all this do have a clear strategy and a goal and they are making great progress toward it. Those people are not Americans and I suspect for the most part do not even live in this country. They are super rich and they control our politicians we don't. They are at war with us and the American dream and they are winning. Just as the mighty Roman empire fell so are we about to fall.

[bearmgc]

Indeed. When I was in the Army, we trained in 1985-87 in desert exercises, collectively known as "Desert Shield." Was this for a war in 1991 named "Desert Storm"? I often wondered, how could "They" plan for a military response 6 years before the event? Bigger bubbas at work here....

[Questor]

Thanks for the explanation of the acronyms. Now it all makes sense!

[Questor]

I guess the next question that comes to mind is whether the rules of engagement are going to be so restrictive that our soldiers are like sitting ducks. Do you think that might happen?

[teamnelson]

Since he said the strategy is population security, as opposed to seek and destroy, then yes they are restricted. And that's why we need 40k over a year and 3-5 years, not 30k in 6 mos and 18mos to make it work. Population security is many times over more expensive .

[Questor]

I thought the strategy, as articulated last night, was to throw bodies at an undefined problem until 2011 and then bring the soldiers home in large numbers in time so that this fact can be used in the 2012 presidential campaign.

[teamnelson]

Yes, that's the one euphemistically referred to as population security.

[billy_56081]

The only problem I have with this and W sending troops to war. Is that they are not letting the soldiers do their job, which is to kill people and wreck things. Putting them there to be targets of opportunity is what I do not agree with. Death to the front and a scortched earth to the rear of our army.