Octopus Overlords

Prince said he has long argued for the president to “appoint a viceroy,” by which he means not a ruler for Afghanistan, but a strong central figure to coordinate the implementation of U.S. policy.

“Today we have this multi-headed monster. You have the State Department, you have McMaster, you have the Pentagon with all their generals, and you have CIA station chiefs and all that infrastructure, not just in Afghanistan but in Pakistan as well,” he pointed out.

“The president needs, and he really missed an opportunity, to appoint one person that is in charge of all efforts, spending, organizational, and policy of the U.S. government for Afghanistan and Pakistan. You’ve got to do that to actually try to bring this thing to a close as well,” he urged. “Each of those governments, Afghanistan and Pakistan, have both been very effective at playing one part of the U.S. government against another, and to continue to suck money and resources out of the U.S. taxpayer.”

When Marlow gave Prince credit for keeping the size of the new troop deployment down, Prince said he knows National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster “originally asked for an additional 70,000 to 80,000 troops.”

“If past performance is an indicator of future performance, 16 years, I don’t see the Pentagon tacking sharply to turn this thing around. This is a management of conflict, not a termination of conflict. That’s the problem. We need to find a way to deliver a cheap, sustainable way to keep the Afghan upright and able to fight these battles, so that U.S. forces who have a very high cost in blood and treasure, so they don’t have to do that,” said Prince.

Rip wrote:

hepcat wrote:I would like to get the opinions of both Earth 616 Rip and Bizarro Rip before I draw any conclusions.

Future Rip says it didn't work and is unlikely to work out that well for DJT.

Still a half measure at best and this isn't the kind of fight you can win with half measures.

Rip wrote:http://www.breitbart.com/radio/2017/08/ ... ghanistan/

Prince said he has long argued for the president to “appoint a viceroy,” by which he means not a ruler for Afghanistan, but a strong central figure to coordinate the implementation of U.S. policy.

“Today we have this multi-headed monster. You have the State Department, you have McMaster, you have the Pentagon with all their generals, and you have CIA station chiefs and all that infrastructure, not just in Afghanistan but in Pakistan as well,” he pointed out.

“The president needs, and he really missed an opportunity, to appoint one person that is in charge of all efforts, spending, organizational, and policy of the U.S. government for Afghanistan and Pakistan. You’ve got to do that to actually try to bring this thing to a close as well,” he urged. “Each of those governments, Afghanistan and Pakistan, have both been very effective at playing one part of the U.S. government against another, and to continue to suck money and resources out of the U.S. taxpayer.”

When Marlow gave Prince credit for keeping the size of the new troop deployment down, Prince said he knows National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster “originally asked for an additional 70,000 to 80,000 troops.”

“If past performance is an indicator of future performance, 16 years, I don’t see the Pentagon tacking sharply to turn this thing around. This is a management of conflict, not a termination of conflict. That’s the problem. We need to find a way to deliver a cheap, sustainable way to keep the Afghan upright and able to fight these battles, so that U.S. forces who have a very high cost in blood and treasure, so they don’t have to do that,” said Prince.

Alefroth wrote:

Rip wrote:

hepcat wrote:I would like to get the opinions of both Earth 616 Rip and Bizarro Rip before I draw any conclusions.

Future Rip says it didn't work and is unlikely to work out that well for DJT.

Still a half measure at best and this isn't the kind of fight you can win with half measures.

What does a full measure look like in this fight?

Rip wrote:

Alefroth wrote:

Rip wrote:

hepcat wrote:I would like to get the opinions of both Earth 616 Rip and Bizarro Rip before I draw any conclusions.

Future Rip says it didn't work and is unlikely to work out that well for DJT.

Still a half measure at best and this isn't the kind of fight you can win with half measures.

What does a full measure look like in this fight?

McMaster's plane/ask would be a full measure. But even that isn't a guarantee of success but anything less is doomed. McMaster thinks the Afghans can still be "westernized". I have my doubts, but if you are going to stay then the full effort is needed.

Alefroth wrote:

Rip wrote:

Alefroth wrote:

Rip wrote:

hepcat wrote:I would like to get the opinions of both Earth 616 Rip and Bizarro Rip before I draw any conclusions.

Future Rip says it didn't work and is unlikely to work out that well for DJT.

Still a half measure at best and this isn't the kind of fight you can win with half measures.

What does a full measure look like in this fight?

McMaster's plane/ask would be a full measure. But even that isn't a guarantee of success but anything less is doomed. McMaster thinks the Afghans can still be "westernized". I have my doubts, but if you are going to stay then the full effort is needed.

That's what I'm asking. What is the full effort? Is it just more troops? What do they do that we haven't been doing? Take out infrastructure? Raze cities? Shock and awe?

Afghan Public Health Ministry says death toll in suicide car bomb attack in Kabul has risen to 95, with 158 wounded in the deadliest insurgent attack in the country so far this year.

Wahid Majroh, a spokesman for the public health ministry, said that the toll might still rise, because reports from the hospital show many of the wounded appear to be in critical condition.

Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, claimed responsibility for the attack, which sent thick, dark smoke into the sky from the site of the explosion near the government’s former Interior Ministry building.

Jaymann wrote: ↑Sat Jan 27, 2018 5:20 pm Can anyone else remember when Russia was fighting the forever war in Afghanistan? What the hell happened?

Holman wrote: ↑Sat Jan 27, 2018 8:10 pm

Jaymann wrote: ↑Sat Jan 27, 2018 5:20 pm Can anyone else remember when Russia was fighting the forever war in Afghanistan? What the hell happened?

Afghanistan, Graveyard of Empires.

The linked article is from 2001.

Register to read one free article a month.

Taliban fighters, whom US-led forces spent billions of dollars trying to defeat, are now openly active in 70% of Afghanistan, a BBC study has found.

Months of research across the country show how areas the Taliban threaten or control have surged since foreign combat troops left in 2014.

The Afghan government played down the report, saying it controls most areas.

But recent attacks claimed by Taliban and Islamic State militants have killed scores in Kabul and elsewhere.
...

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2018 10:51 pm Hey, how are things over there?

Taliban fighters, whom US-led forces spent billions of dollars trying to defeat, are now openly active in 70% of Afghanistan, a BBC study has found.

Months of research across the country show how areas the Taliban threaten or control have surged since foreign combat troops left in 2014.

The Afghan government played down the report, saying it controls most areas.

But recent attacks claimed by Taliban and Islamic State militants have killed scores in Kabul and elsewhere.
...

U.S. and Afghan special operations troops in one of their largest joint operations captured a stronghold that Islamic State fighters claimed as their local capital, military officials said Saturday.

No Americans or Afghan troops were killed in the offensive, which the U.S. military said killed 167 fighters from the Islamic State group – also known as ISIS or Daesh – and involved a complex multipronged attack on Gurgoray, a town purported to be the group’s capital in Deh Bala district in Nangarhar province.
...
The U.S. and Afghan offensive involved five Special Forces teams and three Afghan commando companies. In total, 600 members of the U.S. Army Special Forces, also known as Green Berets, participated in the mission, which began in April and continued into June, a U.S. military officer said.
...
Nangarhar province is one of the few places Americans continue to fight alongside Afghan forces in battle, and it has also been the deadliest spot for U.S. servicemembers, with a third of American combat deaths occurring there last year.
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The district’s center lies 21 miles south of Jalalabad, the provincial capital where ISIS claimed recent deadly suicide attacks, and 11 miles west of Aachin, where the U.S. military in April 2017 dropped the largest bomb in its arsenal, “the mother of all bombs,” on an ISIS cave network.

Due to its location on the border with Pakistan, Deh Bala served as a key supply route for ISIS.

More than 2,200 Americans have been killed in the Afghan conflict, and the United States has spent more than $840 billion fighting the Taliban insurgency and paying for relief and reconstruction. The war has become more expensive, in current dollars, than the Marshall Plan, which helped to rebuild Europe after World War II. That investment has created intense pressure for Americans to show the Taliban are losing and the country is improving.

But since 2017, the Taliban have held more Afghan territory than at any time since the American invasion. In just one week last month, the insurgents killed 200 Afghan police officers and soldiers, overrunning two major Afghan bases and the city of Ghazni.

The American military says the Afghan government effectively “controls or influences” 56 percent of the country. But that assessment relies on statistical sleight of hand. In many districts, the Afghan government controls only the district headquarters and military barracks, while the Taliban control the rest.

BAGHLAN-E-MARKAZI, Afghanistan — In a chaotic day of violence throughout Afghanistan, scores of police officers, soldiers, and civilians were killed by insurgents who, in four separate attacks, overran a major military base, killed a police chief, destroyed a police post, and bombed a memorial event.

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan — Taliban insurgents killed at least 57 Afghan police officers and soldiers in four attacks in northern Afghanistan on Monday, a day after more than 60 people were killed in a separate barrage, Afghan officials said.

President Trump dressed down Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and top military leaders last summer about the stalemate in Afghanistan and told them “you don’t need a strategy to kill people,” according to Bob Woodward’s new book.

The president also criticized the former U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Nicholson, and questioned whether he was a “winner” during the July 20, 2017 classified meeting in the Pentagon’s secure briefing room called the Tank.

“When are we going to start winning some wars? We've got these charts. When are we going to win some wars? Why are you jamming this down my throat?” Trump reportedly said. “You should be killing guys. You don't need a strategy to kill people.”

A senior US commander has narrowly escaped a gun attack in which top Afghan security officials were killed.

The gunman, reported to be acting as a bodyguard, opened fire as officials left a meeting in Kandahar province.

Provincial police chief Gen Abdul Raziq died, as did the head of the NDS intelligence service. The Kandahar governor was critically injured.

US commander Gen Scott Miller escaped unhurt but three other US citizens were also severely injured, Nato said.

Unconfirmed reports from local officials suggest that Gen Miller appeared to have been saved by his body armour.

Initial reports say the attacker was killed.

At least two hand grenade explosions were also reported by officials.

The Taliban said they carried out the attack - one of the most devastating targeted attacks since the war in Afghanistan began in 2001 - and that Gen Miller and Gen Raziq were the targets. In a statement, the group referred to Gen Raziq as a "brutal police chief".

A US mayor has been killed in an apparent insider attack while serving with the military in Afghanistan.

Brent Taylor, 39, died in Kabul on Saturday while serving in the US Army National Guard helping to train members of the Afghan security forces.

The mayor of North Ogden, Utah, leaves behind a wife and seven young children.

Another service member was wounded during the shooting, the second insider attack against US forces in Afghanistan in the past two weeks.

The attacker appeared to have been a member of the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces, according to the Utah National Guard.

He was shot by other Afghan forces after opening fire.

As the USA gets ready to vote in our own election next week, I hope everyone back home exercises their precious right to vote, and that whether the Republicans or the Democrats win, that we all remember that we have far more as Americans that unites us than divides us.

A suicide bomb attack on a gathering of religious scholars in the Afghan capital, Kabul, has killed at least 50 people.

At least 83 people were also wounded as the clerics met at the Uranus wedding hall, a large banqueting complex near the airport, to mark the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad.

It is one of the deadliest attacks in Kabul in recent months.

No-one has yet claimed it was behind the blast.

So-called Islamic State and the Taliban have carried out a string of attacks in recent years.

But the Taliban has denied involvement and condemned the attack.

Jaymann wrote: ↑Thu Dec 20, 2018 11:38 pm Unless you consider bringing troops home safely to be a win.

Kraken wrote: ↑Thu Dec 20, 2018 11:25 pm Can we keep the Afghanistan news here, now that it's looking like "Lose" is imminent?

The New York Times wrote:American and Taliban officials have agreed in principle to the framework of a deal in which the insurgents would guarantee to prevent Afghan territory from being used by terrorists, and that could lead to a full pullout of American troops in return for larger concessions from the Taliban, the chief United States negotiator said Monday.

Ryan Crocker is diplomat in residence at Princeton University and a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Kuwait and Lebanon.

January 2002. I arrive in Kabul to reopen the U.S. Embassy. Destruction is everywhere. Kabul airport is closed, its runways cratered and littered with destroyed aircraft. The drive south from the military base at Bagram is through a wasteland. Nothing grows. No structures stand. In the city itself, entire blocks have been reduced to rubble, recalling images of Berlin in 1945.

More than two decades of almost constant war left a terrible legacy. The damage was not only to the physical infrastructure. The Afghan people had suffered enormously through the civil war that began in the late 1970s and the tyranny of the Taliban that followed. None had suffered more than Afghan women and girls.

After the U.S. invasion in October 2001 ousted the Taliban for harboring the al-Qaeda planners of the 9/11 terrorist attack, the human toll from the Taliban rule is why the United States’ initial assistance efforts focused on people rather than things.

I remember taking our first congressional visitor, Joe Biden (D-Del.), who was then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to visit a girls school that we had helped to open. A first-grade class that Biden visited had students in a range of ages, from 6 to 12. The older girls had reached school age when the Taliban was in power, so they had been denied an education. They weren’t embarrassed now to be in a class with children half their age — they were just happy to be learning.

At the end of Taliban rule, roughly 900,000 children were in school, all of them boys. When I left Afghanistan as ambassador in 2012, there were 8 million students, 40 percent of them girls.

We also encouraged Afghan women to play their rightful roles in business, in the legislature, elsewhere in government and in the military, and they did. The implicit message was that if you step forward, we’ve got your back. It was a time when American interests and American values were in harmony. I hosted receptions to recognize Afghan women of courage. Through the U.S. Agency for International Development, we funded efforts to establish shelters for women fleeing spousal or other familial abuse — a reminder that in Afghanistan’s male-dominated society, it wasn’t only the Taliban who threatened women’s safety.

Now the United States is negotiating directly with the Taliban. A framework agreement was announced on Monday calling for a cease-fire that could lead to the full withdrawal of U.S. troops. The Taliban would commit to not harboring terrorist organizations that could threaten U.S. security. In other words, the Taliban promised no 9/11 replay.

The framework was reached without the involvement of the Afghan government. The Taliban has said all along that it refuses to negotiate with the government, considering the government the illegitimate puppet of the U.S. occupation. By acceding to this Taliban demand, we have ourselves delegitimized the government we claim to support.

This current process bears an unfortunate resemblance to the Paris peace talks during the Vietnam War. Then, as now, it was clear that by going to the table we were surrendering; we were just negotiating the terms of our surrender. The Taliban will offer any number of commitments, knowing that when we are gone and the Taliban is back, we will have no means of enforcing any of them.

It does not have to go like this. The United States could announce that talks won’t proceed beyond the framework, to matters of substance, without the full inclusion of the Afghan government. Right now, the inclusion of the Afghans is only theoretical. We could also note that unless some other solution is found, U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan as long as the current government wants them, protecting the United States’ national security interests and defending core values, such as women’s rights, that we have fostered there since 2001.

President Barack Obama proved in Iraq that the United States cannot end a war by withdrawing its forces — the battle space is simply left to our adversaries. In Afghanistan, President Trump has a choice. He can follow Obama’s example and leave the country to the Taliban, or he can make clear that the United States has interests, values and allies, and will stand behind them.

Holman wrote: ↑Wed Jan 30, 2019 11:05 amPresident Barack Obama proved in Iraq that the United States cannot end a war by withdrawing its forces — the battle space is simply left to our adversaries. In Afghanistan, President Trump has a choice. He can follow Obama’s example and leave the country to the Taliban, or he can make clear that the United States has interests, values and allies, and will stand behind them.

malchior wrote: ↑Wed Jan 30, 2019 11:38 am

Holman wrote: ↑Wed Jan 30, 2019 11:05 amPresident Barack Obama proved in Iraq that the United States cannot end a war by withdrawing its forces — the battle space is simply left to our adversaries. In Afghanistan, President Trump has a choice. He can follow Obama’s example and leave the country to the Taliban, or he can make clear that the United States has interests, values and allies, and will stand behind them.

I mostly agree but the first sentence above is bullshit. Obama had little room to maneuver on withdrawal. Bush set the timetable. 75% of Americans wanted the withdrawal. The Iraqi parliament would have had to agree and they absolutely wouldn't have. Everyone wanted us out. That Obama caused ISIS narrative is nearly 100% bullshit GOP warping of history.

Holman wrote: ↑Wed Jan 30, 2019 11:49 am

malchior wrote: ↑Wed Jan 30, 2019 11:38 am

Holman wrote: ↑Wed Jan 30, 2019 11:05 amPresident Barack Obama proved in Iraq that the United States cannot end a war by withdrawing its forces — the battle space is simply left to our adversaries. In Afghanistan, President Trump has a choice. He can follow Obama’s example and leave the country to the Taliban, or he can make clear that the United States has interests, values and allies, and will stand behind them.

I mostly agree but the first sentence above is bullshit. Obama had little room to maneuver on withdrawal. Bush set the timetable. 75% of Americans wanted the withdrawal. The Iraqi parliament would have had to agree and they absolutely wouldn't have. Everyone wanted us out. That Obama caused ISIS narrative is nearly 100% bullshit GOP warping of history.

Yeah, that might even be Crocker attempting to reach Trump. ("You don't want to be Obama, do you??")

But the main point--that the negotiations themselves delegitimize the Kabul government both domestically and internationally--is the problem he's right to make clear.

John Walker Lindh, the first person to be convicted of a crime in the “War on Terror,” left prison a free man Thursday after 17 years behind bars, his lawyer confirmed.
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Lindh pleaded guilty in 2002 to aiding the Taliban and carrying weapons. Prosecutors were unable to prove, however, that he went beyond fighting the Taliban’s Afghan enemies by aiding terrorists or trying to kill Americans.
...
“I did not go to fight against America, and I never did,” Lindh told U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III in Alexandria at the time. “I have never supported terrorism in any form, and I never will. . . . I made a mistake by joining the Taliban. Had I realized then what I know now, I would never have joined them.”

Lindh’s plea agreement capped his sentence at 20 years; he was released early for good behavior. Although that credit is built into the law for all federal prisoners, Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) has called for Lindh to be kept in prison and said he had President Trump’s support.

The family of CIA operative Johnny “Mike” Spann, who was killed in a riot at the Afghan prison where Lindh was held, has been vocal in denouncing his release, although prosecutors and Ellis have said there was no evidence Lindh was involved in Spann’s death.
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Lindh has served his time in a unit of Terre Haute Federal Correctional Institution in Indiana, where interactions are highly restricted and monitored.
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Lindh now must serve three years of supervised release, during which he cannot hold a passport, use the Internet without monitoring, view extremist or terroristic material, communicate with known extremists or converse online in any language other than English without prior approval. He must undergo mental health treatment.