Afghan surge was never meant for victory.

[Bubblehead1980]

This war CAN be won.I am so sick of people with defeatest attitudes.

Would require us to get a lot tougher and more aggressive in Afghanistan and then the everyone would whine and complain but we could win there.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Bubblehead1980

This war CAN be won.I am so sick of people with defeatest attitudes.

Would require us to get a lot tougher and more aggressive in Afghanistan and then the everyone would whine and complain but we could win there.

How tough? How many civilian casualties? How much damage to the US government?
Rest assured, you hit hard, the Taliban will hide itself in the civilian population even more, then what do you do? Bomb the civilians? Yes, you'll hit the Taliban, but you'll give them the biggest propaganda boost since 9/11 and even more martyrs will join the cause, even more terrorist attacks against the US will be plotted and the chance of one of them succeeding will rise.
Even if you nuke every single square mile of Afghanistan into a lake of glass, that will not stop the martyrs coming from Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, and every other Muslim country (including Muslims in the West already), if anything it will make them even more fanatical.
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Afghanistan is a catch-22, if you go too hard then you turn your people against you for being a warmonger but if you go too soft then you turn your people against you for being too soft. Finding the right balance is something that at least three invaders of Afghanistan have failed to do so far.

[Tchocky]

What is the definition of "winning" in Afghanistan?

Note - asking this question does not make you defeatist.

This war CAN be won.I am so sick of people with defeatest attitudes.

Isn't that the bunker rant?

Would require us to get a lot tougher and more aggressive in Afghanistan and then the everyone would whine and complain but we could win there.

Due to the nature of that country that is exactly the path to a very humiliating defeat.

[Skybird]

Bad attitude and easymindedness at the beginning, now bite back. If you go to war, make sure you fight in the way that is needed to kill all the enemy and all who help him inside and outside Afghanistan. That must start with Pakistan. If you do not like to do that, don't go to war.

This was not payed attention to, and so one is trapped in the Afghan maze. The war got lost many years ago. The Taliban will run the country again sooner or later - with official acceptance by the West and by Washington and London. Feel invited to take me by my word sometime in the forseeable future - it will not take another 9 years: promised.

At least as long as it is not decided to wipe Pakistan and Afghanistan off the map, forever.

[Happy Times]

Loosing in Afganistan will take all credibility from the west in the muslim world.
They will think we only bluff, dont have stomach for a fight and have feet of clay.
They will be right in thinking so.

Lot of the credibility will be lost allready when Israel will be left alone to deal with Iran.
The attack against Irans nuclear program is to be expected in the next 6-9 months. It will light up the region atleast in Afganistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza.
There will be a flow of new recruits for the jihad.

New fronts are opening allready in Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Chad, Niger, Mali, Mauritania, Algeria, Morocco etc..

Its only a matter of time when they get full control of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Egypt. We can call that the tipping point, after that others will fall in line.

It could very well be that the we need a nuclear attack on western cities before the gloves come off.
People are really so detached from reality that they dont have the stomach to deal with the use of force anymore.
If the battles resemble Omdurman we should be happy, not in angst over guilt.

[CCIP]

Originally Posted by Tchocky

What is the definition of "winning" in Afghanistan?

Note - asking this question does not make you defeatist.

I second this. What do you mean by winning? What will force be "used" for? Are we on our good old genocidal streak again? If so, that surely marks a fine confluence between the recent (anti-)Obama and (anti-/kill-all-)Muslims threads. Hey, the usual suspects for both are already here...

[antikristuseke]

I'm going to third the question as to how this war can supposedly be won?

[Happy Times]

Originally Posted by antikristuseke

I'm going to third the question as to how this war can supposedly be won?

By using all the power in disposal, how can you go to war with one hand behind your back?

[antikristuseke]

Specifics, man, I want more specifics.

Edit:

Originally Posted by Happy Times

Winning a war means that you are free to dictate your terms to the loosing side.

What other side, there is no real homogenous other side to speak of in this case, it is not a war between nation states.

Winning a war means that you are free to dictate your terms to the loosing side.

So who are the people we are supposed to be dictating terms to?

By using all the power in disposal, how can you go to war with one hand behind your back?

You can have both hands free , you can have as many hand as you want, it won't matter, if you cannot hit the opposition it makes no difference.
Since the opposition is so diverse and ever changing its impossible to hit effectively.

[Happy Times]

Originally Posted by CCIP

I second this. What do you mean by winning? What will force be "used" for? Are we on our good old genocidal streak again? If so, that surely marks a fine confluence between the recent (anti-)Obama and (anti-/kill-all-)Muslims threads. Hey, the usual suspects for both are already here...

Winning a war means that you are free to dictate your terms to the loosing side.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Happy Times

Winning a war means that you are free to dictate your terms to the loosing side.

Which would necessarily mean a world war against all Islamic areas. While at the same time being dependent on their oil.

I'm just pointing it out.

Islamic terror (I forgot that I possibly can be sued in Europe over using the term "Islamic terror" over terms of committing a hate crime) has an advantage here. The idea of jihad is nothing else but the understanding of a global conflict indeed.

Becasue we are too civilised to understand this, we are fighting with our hands bound on our backs.

A recent Bundeswehr study from a thinktank of theirs has projected that Germany, and probably other states as well, in the future will reconsider their diplomatic ties with Israel, and losen them, closing ties with the Arab states instread (which already is the case if considering the Islmaophilias of the EU and the submissive behavior towards Islamic bully states like Lybia, Saudi Arabia, and others). I do not like it, but I think that projection is correct.

If Israel is clever, they will base more and more on ties with India, which also helps them against Iran, which for itself is massively supported by China. And since both China and India are rivals, and Iran and Israel are enemies, and since Israel and India have improved trade and diplomatic relations over quite some time now, I think that is the best option they have. The EU will betray them, and it already does - it fosters conditions that help and assist the terrorists, and wages a barely hidden propaganda offensive against Israel. There is a new kind of anti-semtiism rampaging thropughout Europe. Its now called anti-Zionism, but that is just an exchange of labels.

Oh, and the definition of victory. Well, it is a defensive war we need to fight, we are being attacked by violence, confronted by supremacist claims for power, and our homes get invaded both ideologically and demopgraphically - it all are just three different operations running in support of one and the same war objective. Victory in such a situation is achieved if the enemy cannot or does not dare to try that anymore, stays away, does not dare to attack you by terms of terror, and leaves you alone, leaving you to the way you want to live in in your own home countries.

This pointless talking of the often claimed diversity of Islam, is unimportant. Nobody must care wheter or not little Mustafa in that cow village behind the mountains on the other side of the planet thinks this or that way about the Quran, or a carricature in a Western newspaper, for that matter. What is relevant is that Islam speaks with one and the same political authority beyond all Islamic nations and peoples, and that barely ever you hear any complaint of the Islamic global Ummah about it'S own deeds or the deeds conducted in it's name /the name of Islam. There is only one Islam, and all this clever brainsqueezing of ours to invent all those many differences that would need us to always focus on them until we have become unable to act at all becasue our conclusioons are self-paralysing in their difference-rich diversity, is just masochistic pseudointellectual masturbation in order to make us believe in what a clever little Dick we are. In the political effect of it all, Islam is just one big, monolithic block, and that is what it is by understanding of Sharia, Quran and Hadith as well. And ideologically, it is more politics than relgion anyway, and always has been. Relgions are just a tool of motivating the streamlined masses and keep everybody in line. Islam is a political totalitarian ideology and movement before anything else.

[Happy Times]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Which would necessarily mean a world war against all Islamic areas. While at the same time being dependent on their oil.

I'm just pointing it out.

That would be the stage when all the despots have been replaced by theocrats and conventional war can be sold to the public, hope the west is still standing at that point.


I would like to hear how those not believing in these scenarios see things unfolding?
How will this negative development turn for the postive in the future?