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I have no idea what all of this is about

So here's a random picture

SNICKERS-SUMO.jpg
 
and after all that, we fail to get any sort of meaningful intellectual exchange of ideas.

droning on and on into a megaphone isn't making an argument.

Exactly.

Sting, U2387, et al: I think it's high time you accepted that you're not going to change each others' minds, that you're not even willing to consider the merit in what the other says, and that really what you're doing is bickering back and forth with no chance of actually coming to a meaningful conclusion, or even stalemate. Save the rest of the members here from reading the pointless back and forth and move on.

When you have a member who has never conceded anything meaningful in debate, I don't understand why some of you feel the need to repeatedly engage. All you're doing is providing the perfect opportunity to further your frustration. It's not as if letting a statement go unchallenged means that person has won the argument and has suddenly swayed public opinion in their favor. Pretty much everyone here knows the history of the regulars and knows how much weight should be given to certain opinions.
 
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Headless bodies, believed to be killed by Taliban, found in Afghanistan during war's deadliest month

The U.S. military command isn't the only thing in Afghanistan undergoing turmoil.

The war has taken an increasingly violent turn: 11 bodies, some headless, have been found littered in the southern part of the country.

Mohammed Khan, deputy police chief in the Uruzgan Province, said a villager found the bodies in a field and called police.

“They were killed because the Taliban said they were spying for the government, working for the government,” Khan said.

Khudia Rahim, the acting Uruzgan governor, said five or six of the 11 victims were beheaded.

The deadly findings come during a dramatic time for President Obama, who on Wednesday sacked his top war boss in Afghanistan, Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and replaced him with Gen. David Petraeus.

Meanwhile, NATO said a U.S. service member was killed in an insurgent attack on Friday and another American died in a roadside bomb attack.

June was the deadliest month for western troops in the nearly nine-year-old war. With the latest attacks, the death toll for international service members in June is 83, and at least 49 were Americans.
 
yeah. :sigh: it's a lose-lose situation, i think. if we leave, people will be killed. if we stay, people (including our troops) will be killed.

It's war. You're either all in or nothing. There's no in betweens. The troops have to play by a clusterfuck of ROE that really hinder progress. War is not nice. You can't be humanitarian in it if you want to win. Remember, the last war America won? WWII. People don't want to talk about what Americans did to the military and the civilian populace. No, I'm not talking about dropping nukes on civilian cities in Japan. We did far worse in that war.

Take Dresden, Germany for example. We firebombed the city with incendiary bombs. Thousands of B-17's and B-24's (what we glorify today) dropped hundreds of thousands of bombs on this city. The whole city was ablaze. The fires created a hurricane force circulating winds, that sucked out the oxygen from women and children in bomb bunkers. The generals knew this. They wanted this to happen. It's war, and war is terrible. But once you're in it, you have to go all the way. There are more examples. Tokyo was firebombed by B-29s. Over 100,000 died, mainly women and children.

American Revolution. What do you think American troops were? An insurgency. The British thought they themselves were all powerful, so they didn't take Americans seriously and attempted to fight with rules and civility. American's fought dirty, by Brit standards at least. Well, we all know how that ended.

If you talk to troops who have come home, they know this war will not be won, and it will continue until we pull the troops out or go all out. They know the civilians know absolutely nothing on how to direct a war. The politicians run the show and the war is a whole PR campaign. Everything about the war will be criticized, but absolutely no one remembers that you can't be civil in a war. It's contradicting yourself. The generals know exactly what to do. They just don't have permission.

Now respect to the Brits. They are the craziest bastards out there in Afghanistan. They don't have nearly the same amount of ROE Americans do, and they absolutely kickass and get the job done. If a person looked suspicious, you wouldn't be surprised to see a British chopper rain 30mm rounds on the guy. Americans, you have to get permission, and go through a very large chain of command, just to start shooting. Hell, read Newsweek. They tell you the amount of evidence to collect and CSI: Middle East you have to play just to detain an enemy combatant. Because if you don't do this ridiculous amount of work, you might piss off a Senator, and actually get something done. There are some not so nice divisions of the military that do say fuck the rules, and play not so nice with the enemy, but I guarantee you that these divisions get the work done.

And for an afterthought: Somebody I know asked why we are even in Afghanistan. That strikes hard in the heart.

A) She is a dumbass.

B) It's also been nine years since America's civilian population was attacked by Al-Quaida that bred in Afghanistan. Nine fucking years. It's time to be mean, or get the fuck out.
 
i think it's a huge mistake to compare Afghanistan and Iraq to WW2.

the reasons we are in Afghanistan today are quite different than they were in October of 2001.

it's now the longest American war. they don't call Afghanistan the "graveyard of Empires" for nothing. no empire, ever, including ours, has endless blood and treasure. decisions will have to be made.
 
i think it's a mistake to think that we're not "winning" in Afghanistan because we're hamstrung by political correctness, if that was the point of your post.

Afghanistan will not be "won" by conventional means, because "winning" cannot be understood in conventional terms.
 
It's war. You're either all in or nothing. There's no in betweens. The troops have to play by a clusterfuck of ROE that really hinder progress. War is not nice. You can't be humanitarian in it if you want to win. Remember, the last war America won? WWII. People don't want to talk about what Americans did to the military and the civilian populace. No, I'm not talking about dropping nukes on civilian cities in Japan. We did far worse in that war.

Take Dresden, Germany for example. We firebombed the city with incendiary bombs. Thousands of B-17's and B-24's (what we glorify today) dropped hundreds of thousands of bombs on this city. The whole city was ablaze. The fires created a hurricane force circulating winds, that sucked out the oxygen from women and children in bomb bunkers. The generals knew this. They wanted this to happen. It's war, and war is terrible. But once you're in it, you have to go all the way. There are more examples. Tokyo was firebombed by B-29s. Over 100,000 died, mainly women and children.

American Revolution. What do you think American troops were? An insurgency. The British thought they themselves were all powerful, so they didn't take Americans seriously and attempted to fight with rules and civility. American's fought dirty, by Brit standards at least. Well, we all know how that ended.

If you talk to troops who have come home, they know this war will not be won, and it will continue until we pull the troops out or go all out. They know the civilians know absolutely nothing on how to direct a war. The politicians run the show and the war is a whole PR campaign. Everything about the war will be criticized, but absolutely no one remembers that you can't be civil in a war. It's contradicting yourself. The generals know exactly what to do. They just don't have permission.

Now respect to the Brits. They are the craziest bastards out there in Afghanistan. They don't have nearly the same amount of ROE Americans do, and they absolutely kickass and get the job done. If a person looked suspicious, you wouldn't be surprised to see a British chopper rain 30mm rounds on the guy. Americans, you have to get permission, and go through a very large chain of command, just to start shooting. Hell, read Newsweek. They tell you the amount of evidence to collect and CSI: Middle East you have to play just to detain an enemy combatant. Because if you don't do this ridiculous amount of work, you might piss off a Senator, and actually get something done. There are some not so nice divisions of the military that do say fuck the rules, and play not so nice with the enemy, but I guarantee you that these divisions get the work done.

And for an afterthought: Somebody I know asked why we are even in Afghanistan. That strikes hard in the heart.

A) She is a dumbass.

B) It's also been nine years since America's civilian population was attacked by Al-Quaida that bred in Afghanistan. Nine fucking years. It's time to be mean, or get the fuck out.

Hold on to your seats everybody. . .

I think I agree with everything you just said.
 
I know, right? Trying to hold ourselves to a higher moral and ethical code than our enemies is so damned inconvenient!


One gross oversimplification deserves another...

War is an awful, awful thing. That's what really resonated with me about what Moser said.
Let me elaborate a little.

I agree that if you're going to fight a war, you need to be able to fight a war. If there are enemy combatants hiding in a house, you need to be able to shoot at that house.

To me the higher moral code is the difference between mowing down a bunch of civilians just because they are there on the one hand, and accepting that there will be civilian casualties in the process of going after the combatants. When you reach the point where you'll let the enemy go free to prevent civilian casualties, you've stopped accepting the reality of the ugliness of war. Until nations agree to set aside some place on earth's surface that will be reserved strictly for warfare, the reality is that civilians will be caught in the crossfire--the undeserving victims of other men's fights.

Which is why I have a problem with wars on ideologies (like the war on terror or drugs). It is also why I think that going to war as a way of nation building is a bad idea. As any one whose been following my posts in this thread knows, I've been uncertain about where I stand regarding what should be done in Afghanistan. My views have been in flux as I weigh the information I'm gleaning. What Moser said makes practical sense. We either need to fight a proper war or get out. And unfortunately, I don't know that fighting a proper war will result in newly built nation of Afghanistan. The kinds of goals we have in Afghanistan don't fit with what fighting a proper war can accomplish. So perhaps it is time to go.

What about Al-Quaeda? I think rather than fighting a conventional war, we're simply going to have work at staying one step ahead of the terrorists.
 
I appreciate the elaboration, Sean. I pretty much agree with you. But as it pertains to Afghanistan and Al-Qaeda, I think this:

What about Al-Quaeda? I think rather than fighting a conventional war, we're simply going to have work at staying one step ahead of the terrorists.

Is what Moser is missing. We can't expect to be able to go in with a formal military operation, no matter how down-and-dirty or "mean" we're willing to get, and expect to eradicate Al-Qaeda and solve terrorism once and for all. So I don't view it as a question of how mean we're willing to be to get results, I view it as a question of whether we're approaching the fight in the right way. You can't solve terrorism with military force.
 
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