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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (181535)	12/2/2009 6:22:46 PM
From: T L Comiskey	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 362425

no man should support/order boots on the ground.. unless he has skin in the game

To: stockman_scott who wrote (181535)	12/2/2009 7:32:53 PM
From: altair19	Read Replies (8) \| Respond to of 362425

S2, I listened to Obama's speech carefully. His point debating the fact that it's not a Vietnam "where thousands of the indigenous population were involved in the insurgency" (I'm paraphrasing)....I thought yes, he's right...and then I thought....so what!? His speech was eloguent, but lacked a visceral reality that acknowledges what is going on there. The comparison he should have made, and didn't, was neither war had a rationale that made any sense - and both wars got a lot of people killed and wounded on both sides. Intellectually, I understand WHAT he is trying to do, what I don't understand in WHY. If it does eliminate the small outposts out in the hill country, I'm for it. Consolidating in large population areas brings other types of problems and is only a short term strategy because a large standing garrison is an easy target if you keep it there too long. I think he's trying to get Pakistan to ante up and Afganistan to do the same - training that many troops will be very difficult and there are no guarantees who they will work for after they are trained. I don't agree with his approach - having said that,he will absolutely have to have the discipline to hold to a time line. And finally, the other huge difference in Vietnam was the draft. There were new guys coming in (and going out) every day, and the tour was one year. And, everyone knew someone that was there...that's not true today, so the pressure to get out is not as great(sad but true).Therefore, Obama knows the outcry against the war will have a built in governor on it and allow him time to withdraw. Altair19

To: stockman_scott who wrote (181535)	12/3/2009 11:18:14 AM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 362425

In other words, I don’t see the end game in Obama’s strategy. What strategy? Rather than compare this to Viet Nam, I believe our occupation of Afghanistan mirrors Russia's: How Afghanistan became the graveyard of the Russian empire When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 they thought they were in for an easy victory. But they underestimated the power of the resistance, writes Dave Crouch In the early 1990s a common sight in the Moscow metro was young men in military uniform begging for money. They had no legs. These were some of the victims of Russia’s disastrous occupation of Afghanistan. It began on Christmas Eve 1979 and finished when the last Soviet troops retreated into Uzbekistan just over nine years later. At a conservative estimate more than 15,000 Soviet troops died in the war. They killed half a million Afghans, maimed many more, and turned millions into refugees. The Soviet Union threw its bombers, napalm, tanks, landmines and helicopters at the Afghan guerilla army, the Mujahadeen, but was still forced out. Its defeat marked the beginning of the end of the USSR’s military power and allowed mass national movements to pull the empire apart. The Russian defeat in Afghanistan has haunted US and British military leaders. As a US army major wrote in 2005, “Whatever we decide to do, we must not follow the bear into those woods.” But 20 years after the Soviet pullout, the size of the Nato contingent in Afghanistan has grown to equal the number of Russian troops. Does the same fate await them? Western leaders argue that their war is different to that of the Russians – that US and Nato forces have significant local support among those opposed to the Taliban. But the Russians also had a puppet government that gave a civilian face to their brutal invasion. And just like the US, Russia first entered Afghanistan with a small force and limited aims, and became embroiled in a conflict that spiralled beyond their control. The Russians stepped in to prop up an unpopular Communist government that had seized power 18 months before. The government was on the verge of collapse – a situation that threatened to bring a wave of Islamic resistance in the southern republics of the USSR. Russian special forces installed their puppet Babrak Karmal as president. They occupied the main cities and set about training an Afghan army to keep control. The Russians already had a presence in Afghanistan – which they thought gave them an advantage. They had enjoyed extensive trade with the country since the 1930s, while Soviet military and economic advisers had been a constant feature since the 1950s. They had built most of the country’s roads. Yet resistance to the Soviet invasion flared immediately. On the night of 23 February 1980, almost the entire population of Kabul protested against the arrival of Soviet troops by climbing onto the rooftops and chanting, “God is great”. Soon the Soviets found themselves facing a people in revolt. Soviet generals pleaded for more troops. The head of the army, Nikolai Ogarkov, said the planned ceiling on troops numbers of 115,000 was “reckless” – he wanted five times as many. But he was denied. Instead the Russians believed massive firepower would win the war. They brought the entire terrifying repertoire of an industrial superpower’s military technology to bear on the resistance. But it didn’t work. Outside the cities the Soviet troops were in constant danger and exposed to effective attacks by the highly mobile guerrilla resistance fighters.