How do we win in Afghanistan?

#278
#278
WE dont. This is a country that has never been successfully invaded . The UK tried and failed twice, then Russians once and some other country I cant remember. We are ruining our young men and womens lives , not to mention 1/2 a trillion dollars wasted in that rat hole. We are preventing terrorists from setting up bases to attack our homeland (maybe). That is the putative reason we r there. Being the cop of the world is tiresome and thankless. Maybe we are not the all -powerful , all-knowing entity we think? Come home America !
 
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#279
#279
Influence and money are one thing, winning in that **** hole is another . It's just never going to happen. They are willing to wear us out because they have nothing to lose, literally nothing . We will have this fight until I die and beyond.
 
#280
#280
JACK8254 said:
WE dont. This is a country that has never been successfully invaded . The UK tried and failed twice, then Russians once and some other country I cant remember. We are ruining our young men and womens lives , not to mention 1/2 a trillion dollars wasted in that rat hole. We are preventing terrorists from setting up bases to attack our homeland (maybe). That is the putative reason we r there. Being the cop of the world is tiresome and thankless. Maybe we are not the all -powerful , all-knowing entity we think? Come home America !
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Exactly. The closest you can come to winning in Afghanistan (other than being smart enough never to have gone) is cut your losses and just leave. It's hard to fathom with the history of failures why anyone thought we should go there. The only strategy that even makes sense is to bomb the place back to the stone age so that even opium can't be produced; of course, we have some three letter agencies that might object to that.
 
#281
#281
Rasputin_Vol said:
The sad thing is, the same people that say the football players can't even think of a reason for why they are taking a knee on Sundays are the same ones that can't come up with a reason why we are losing lives and treasure over in Afghanistan.

So which is worse, a group of people that are kneeling but can't explain why they are doing it, or a group of people that support sending teenagers halfway around the world to die for a reason they can't explain?
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Am I allowed to think both are ****ing stupid?
 
#284
#284
carlos86 said:
LOL our 1SG is 36 and deployed 6 times. Everything is crazy now.
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Yeah, I'm only 34. I've deployed a handful of times to various countries in the Middle East and even more in SE Asia. Boy do I have some stories about countries that we don't have a substantial presence in. Those countries are a lot more exciting than Afghanistan and Iraq.
 
#285
#285
To answer the overall question of the thread. We don't win. In over 100 cases of COIN campaigns internationally from 1898 to 2010, only 3 have been considered a success. Even those cases were not even considered a major victory but rather a draw.

COIN is a messy business. You have to be committed for the long run. A lot of troops, a lot of money, and a lot of time. Even with those success is less than 50% likely. My master's thesis revolved around COIN.
 
#297
#297
It looks like strategy in Afghanistan is taking a dramatic change. U.S. and NATO Forces are basically going to stop looking at the Taliban as a terror organization and look at it more as a drug cartel.

[twitter]https://twitter.com/USFOR_A/status/932638442365816833[/twitter]
 
#299
#299
carlos86 said:
It looks like strategy in Afghanistan is taking a dramatic change. U.S. and NATO Forces are basically going to stop looking at the Taliban as a terror organization and look at it more as a drug cartel.

[twitter]https://twitter.com/USFOR_A/status/932638442365816833[/twitter]
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They are both.
 
#300
#300
LouderVol said:
yay. War on Terror not working out for us? Switch it over to the wildly successful War on Drugs!
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I feel like some full bird Colonel was watching Narcos and the idea came into his head. Colombia had the Serch Bloc and Afghanistan has the Commandos.
 
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