Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Is it time to leave Afghanistan?

I have three questions weighing on my mind about this issue, after reading the article below.

Why, after 8 years, is Taliban support grown so much? Are the non-Taliban Afghanis willing to stand up to the extremists within their own country? Should any war be continued with only 40% of the populace back home supporting it?

My own support, like many others - right now - is beginning to waver.



US: Taliban has grown fourfold!

Extra US troops are needed for combat and to train Afghan army units, McChrystal has said Taliban-led forces fighting US and Nato troops in Afghanistan have increased nearly fourfold since 2006, according to a US intelligence estimate presented to the US president.

The report says that the number of Taliban fighters has grown to 25,000, from 7,000 four years ago, the officials said on Friday as Barack Obama convened a fifth cabinet-level meeting on his country's military strategy in Afghanistan.

The US president is considering whether to agree to a request by the senior commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan for up to 40,000 extra troops to be deployed.

General Stanley McChrystal has warned that the US mission in Afghanistan risks failure unless more troops are sent to combat the Taliban and provide training and support to Afghan government forces.

Officials said on Friday that Obama - who agreed early in his presidency to send 21,000 extra troops to Afghanistan - has not made any firm decision in regard to McChrystal's request.

Support for the war is dwindling

Should Obama decide to send more troops, they would join a US military force that is already scheduled to reach 68,000 personnel by the end of the year. There are also about 39,000 troops serving in Afghanistan under Nato.


Obama is facing pressure from his own party over the rise in US military casualties [EPA] But the US president also has to consider a drop in US public support for the war, amid a dramatic rise in US military casualties this year.
Only 40 per cent of Americans support the presence of US troops in Afghanistan, a poll released on Wednesday by the Associated Press and GFK said.

Obama is also facing pressure from within his Democratic party, with several senior members understood to be in favour of pulling forces out of Afghanistan.

One of the options being looked at by the White House is to engage with the Taliban, while taking the war to al Qaeda, whose fighters are understood to be based around the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.

Peter Baker, a writer with the New York Times, said that Obama had to assess whether sending extra troops would be actually be conducive to improving US security.

"They are trying to eveluate the threat to the United States and in this evaluation al-Qaeda aspires to attack the American homeland, whereas the Taliban has generally not been vocal about attacking the US directly. So, to the extent that the Taliban is a threat to American interests, it is a threat in that it might provide safe haven for al-Qaeda," he told Al Jazeera.

"The question [the cabinet-level team] is grappling with is 'does it make sense to send 40,000 more troops and spend a lot more money to fight a radical group that may not even be the main threat to the US?'"

'Rough estimate'

The US intelligence estimate that 25,000 Taliban forces are ranged against the US and Nato presence in Afghanistan includes associates who are less committed to the fight, officials said.

A US counterterrorism official said the figure was a "rough" estimate because it is difficult to ascertain the size of armed opposition groups that tend to operate in small units.

"You're not talking about fixed formations that rely solely on full-time combatants. Numbers ebb and flow. Bands of fighters appear and vanish," the official said.

A US defence official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said that while the size of the Taliban force is far smaller than the combined US and Nato presence, the fighting methods they employ help overcome the asymmetry.

"By the very nature of insurgency, you do not need a lot of insurgents to inflict a lot of damage, because they are able to choose the time and the place to engage," the official said.

If you want to get rid of fire ants, you get rid of fire ants.

If you try and get rid of fire ants - and eight years later there is four times as many in your yard - a fellow might want to re-evaluate what he's doing. No?

We should have finished the job with enough troops when we started it. How many years after being liberated would you like to drive through checkpoints? We stay to long and become occupiers instead of liberators. Send enough troops from the start to get the job done and get out. We have a great military that can accomplish great things let them do it.

A military can't wipe out an enemy when politicians tie one hand behind their back and require them to get permission everytime they need to engage the enemy.

That and the Taliban knows all they have to do is keep the pressure on and eventually the infidels will leave.

Very true! But what if every insect in the yard metastisizes into a fire ant? Kill all the insects?

I have to agree with all the above posts. I believe that the Taliban has grown because we are there. Like the Soviets before us, we give them a common enemy to hate. They were killing themselves before the Soviets and the U.S. troops occupied their lands, and will do so again after we are gone.

We all know the old saying: "Go big, or go home". We seem to be unwilling to do just that. The place was a Vietnam for the Soviets, and IMHO will be for us as well. Let 'em go back to their tribal wars, and just kill themselves off.

Too bad that they won't use all that herion they manufacture for themselves. It's a suck ass situation for us to be in.

YES, because Afghanistan never posed a serious threat anyway.

If they had posed a threat we would have fought a war instead of a police action. In a war you kill people and break things until the threat is no longer there. It was all part of the ongoing empire building of setting up a puppet government loyal to the US. That kind of a strategy is what police actions are all about.

Afgahanistan is looking more and more like another was we wasted time,money and lives in. You can not fight an unconventional war with conventional methods.

No one has conquered the Afgahans, starting with Alexander, because there's nothing to conquer. There's no real government. Just family tribes each one doing whateverinhell it is they want to do. In order to win, you gotta kill'em all and the US isn't willing to do that, so it's time to get out.

O

Why were we there in the first place? If we suddenly stopped needing their oil, they would no longer pose a threat. We fund our own doom. Besides, right now what else have we got going economically? Besides war, I mean? Where are all the troops going to get jobs?

It was time to leave when we let Bin Laden escape. We should have gone in with the full military power necessary to do the job right, killed or captured Bin Laden, toppled the Taliban government, bombed their nation's infrastructure (whatever there was of it), generally wreaked havoc to the degree possible with conventional bombing, declared victory, and gone home. Militaries are for killing people and breaking things, not nation building or policing.

But we were too focused on Iraq.....

How does Pakistan figure into the question of whether or not we should stay or go?

Wars only help the economy when alot of tanks,planes ships ect are being destroyed. These wars wont do that because the enemy doesnt have the means to destroy them. Oil is an evil but they dont hate us for that. They hate us for backing Israel mostly and walking away after they fought the Russians.

Obama is waffling on this "New Strategy" intentionally.

He wants to do nothing, just buying time to let the situation degenerate to a level where there is no option left but to leave.

Having said that, I am disheartened by friends I've talked to that have served there lately.

The people seem to be ambivilent about who runs their country. They just sit around watching US patrols walk into ambushes they knew were there.

You can't introduce Democracy to people who:

a.) Won't stand up and fight for it themselves.

b.) Against it on cultural and religious grounds.

JM

When you cut off the tail of a snake it can still bite you. You have to go after the real problem.

you canucks can cut and run any time you want Brian.

First, having done some time in the military, I've always felt we should totaly back our troops regardless of their assignment. Some the decisions of our leaders though are a bit more difficult to support.

I can see and understand us going specifically after Sadam (for his gasing of the Kurds) or Osama (for 911), but attempting to install a democratic government among tribes that have hated and fought one another for centuries is beating a dead horse. In that part of the world, might makes right. Just wall them in and see who comes out after 10 years. Likely the survivors will be a less complex mix. We can not and should not try to save those that did not ask to be saved in the first place.

I too am beginning to feel that if we left the middle east, they could get back to hating and fighting among themselves. We may call it a war, but we are not at war with any specific country. With a possible exception of China, a country would be insane to take on the US in a face to face war. We're trying to shake out a few folks that may smile, wash our clothes, sell us sheep and goats all week, and then try to take us out on Sunday.

Mannlicher - I think it's more than likely you Americans will cut and run - at about the same time we Canucks do.

In ever intended this thread to turn into an American/Canadian sh*t disturbance.

I won't add to that direction.

I have always and will always support our troopsand God bless each of them. I have always been against sending our finest to fight and die for a people who will not fight for themselves. Find Barak Binladin or Osama Obama or whoever the hell he is and cut his head off and get our kids home!