Just another Friedman Unit and then for sure we win:
An intense military campaign aimed at crippling the Taliban has so far failed to inflict more than fleeting setbacks on the insurgency or put meaningful pressure on its leaders to seek peace, according to U.S. military and intelligence officials citing the latest assessments of the war in Afghanistan.
Escalated airstrikes and special operations raids have disrupted Taliban movements and damaged local cells. But officials said that insurgents have been adept at absorbing the blows and that they appear confident that they can outlast an American troop buildup set to subside beginning next July.
“The insurgency seems to be maintaining its resilience,” said a senior Defense Department official involved in assessments of the war. Taliban elements have consistently shown an ability to “reestablish and rejuvenate,” often within days of routed by U.S. forces, the official said, adding that if there is a sign that momentum has shifted, “I don’t see it.”
My name is Yon Yonson, I come from Wisconsin. I work in a lumber yard there. Everyone that I meet when I walk down the street, says “Hello! What’s your name?” And I say: My name is Yon Yonson, I come from Wisconsin. I work in a lumber yard there. Everyone that I meet when I walk down the street, says “Hello! What’s your name?” And I say: My name is Yon Yonson, I come from Wisconsin. I work in a lumber yard there. Everyone that I meet when I walk down the street, says “Hello! What’s your name?” And I say: My name is Yon Yonson, I come from Wisconsin. I work in a lumber yard there. Everyone that I meet when I walk down the street, says “Hello! What’s your name?” And I say: My name is Yon Yonson, I come from Wisconsin. I work in a lumber yard there. Everyone that I meet when I walk down the street, says “Hello! What’s your name?” And I say: My name is Yon Yonson, I come from Wisconsin. I work in a lumber yard there. Everyone that I meet when I walk down the street, says “Hello! What’s your name?” And I say: My name is Yon Yonson, I come from Wisconsin. I work in a lumber yard there. Everyone that I meet when I walk down the street, says “Hello! What’s your name?” And I say: My name is Yon Yonson, I come from Wisconsin. I work in a lumber yard there. Everyone that I meet when I walk down the street, says “Hello! What’s your name?” And I say: My name is Yon Yonson, I come from Wisconsin. I work in a lumber yard there. Everyone that I meet when I walk down the street, says “Hello! What’s your name?” And I say: My name is Yon Yonson, I come from Wisconsin. I work in a lumber yard there. Everyone that I meet when I walk down the street, says “Hello! What’s your name?” And I say…
Culture of Truth
“My name is Yon Yonson and I approved this message”
“Paid for by Yon Yonson for the U.S. Senate”
meh
sometimes the internal dialogue going on in your head is a bit too inside baseball…
cleek
step right up, and play Whack a Mole, Taliban Edition! now at the low low price of one billion dollars per week!
but i’m going to have to ask to see your papers, Mr Yonson.
General Stuck
Somebody been sniffing glue again
Jamie
well if you keep up with fighting wars you can’t afford you also can destroy your very own economy.
Culture of Truth
Wanna buy some wood?
Wiesman
Hey I think the end of your post may have gotten truncated.
Rosalita
reading that hurt
ChrisS
I can’t wait til Iran gets the shit bombed out of them.
Daddy-O
I’m just now finishing up “The Sirens Of Titan”, for the tenth time at least…
Me and Mike, ve verk in de mine
Holy shit, ve have a good time
Vunce a veek ve get de pay
Holy shit, no verk next day
asiangrrlMN
@Rosalita: Ditto this. WTF you smoking, Cole, and at this time in the morning?
Kay Shawn
Brilliant, John!
celticdragonchick
I think this is dig at all around war reporter dude Michael Yon…but I am a bit confused myself.
c u n d gulag
“But ya doesn’t have to call me Yonson. You can call me Yon, you can call me YY, you can call me YY Jr., but ya doesn’t have to call me Yonson!”
Boy, am I showing my age with THAT old routine…
Punchy
Likely brain, nerve, and skin ones.
eemom
um, all work and no play makes John _____ ??
Josh
Wait, didn’t Slaughterhouse-5‘s Yonson work in a lumber mill? And gulag, isn’t Bill Seluga still doing that routine?
Capri Sun-Bagger
Yeah, but you can’t criticize Obama for doing what he said he would in the campaign, so fuck you, Firebagger. Enjoy a hot, steaming cuppa imperial overreach and decline.
Brighton
Where are my anti-war peeps? The military lost 9 billion in cash over there. You realize how much child support that is? Support single moms, not troops: http://brighton-towne.blogspot.com/2010/09/i-support-single-moms-not-troops.html
liberal
Buh buh buh…Obama made a campaign promise! So he has to throw away blood and treasure! No choice in the matter!
Gravenstone
@Culture of Truth:
And of course the humorous part (to me at least) is the current WI Tea Party candidate for Senate is … Ron Johnson. Forver forward to be known as Yon Yonson!
kgc16
@Capri Sun-Bagger: God help us.
Cris
This post reminds me of this comment.
WyldPirate
@liberal:
Goddamned this is what pisses me off so much. I thought Obama was just talking shit during the campaign about Afghanistan to deflect the “weak on defense” bullshit from the Rethugs. I sucked it down and dealt with it, thinking the man had some goddamned sense.
Boy was I wrong.
I think he had the sense, but instead and even worse, he cravenly followed through to throw hundreds of billions down the shithole that is Afghanistan. He’s inflicting carnage and devastation needlessly on our own troops and a proportion of innocent Afghanis who have been caught up in this carnage for 30+ years.
Even worse are the Obamabots who defend him for this foolish horseshit. You know who you are. To them, I send out a hearty FUCK YOU. You’re no better than the lowdown sonsabitches that defended Bush over the same horseshit.
cleek
@Brighton:
meh. it’s only 4 days of DoD budget.
Capri Sun-Bagger
kgc16: Um, god called and asked me to tell you: “YOYO.”
cleek
@Cris:
void win()
{
win();
}
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@WyldPirate: Actually, I thought it was the right decision because we have the right and obligation to go after OBL, which Bush failed to adequately do. With this new information, though, it is time to pull out, and declare him Pakistan’s problem.
Imagine Obama doing that with a Republican Congress, though. Grounds for impeachment for not defending the country.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
A) Please tell me you cut and pasted that bit of brilliance several times rather than re-typing it again and again. I worry about you, John Cole.
B) I honestly think this is part of why Israel and the US get along so well. This approach to war as long characterized both of my countries — they understand each other on many levels that aren’t always obvious to the naked eye.
C) And look how well endless war is working out for Israel!
steve
@WyldPirate:
Let me get this straight: You voted for Obama because you assumed he was lying during the campaign, and now that you realize he was telling the truth, you’re pissed? Pissed at him for not lying?
I’ve heard some pretty wacky things from disgruntled lefties, but this wins the prize.
Bbo
Even better … or at least it makes sense … Pete and Repeat are on a bridge, Pete falls off, who is left? Repeat. Pete and Repeat are on a bridge …
Dennis SGMM
@steve:
I had hoped that Obama was smart enough and strong enough to figure a way out of Afghanistan. When he set a date to begin withdrawing troops only to have at least one of his generals qualify “withdrawal” to the point of meaninglessness I came to feel that we’ll always be at war with Eastasia – no matter how pointless and wasteful that turns out to be.
Capri Sun-Bagger
Where have all the Juicebaggers gone? I would have thought they would want to crow about the success of “the good war.”
General Stuck
deleted from misreading
kgc16
@Capri Sun-Bagger: What I meant to say was STFU. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
Jasper
@Dennis SGMM:
That’s just plain wrong. From time to time we’ll also be at war with Eurasia…..
Joe Beese
@WyldPirate:
This.
chopper
this is the song that never ends…it just goes on and on, my friends…
Mnemosyne
@Capri Sun-Bagger:
You must have been reading some other blog, because very few commenters here (including me) are supportive of continuing the folly in Afghanistan. Or maybe it was those Juicebagger voices in your head again.
I don’t think it was an objectively terrible idea to try to make one last push to try to turn things around, but that push has obviously failed now and we need to withdraw.
Just out of curiosity, what are the voices in your head telling you that I just said?
General Stuck
Just guessing, but maybe. Peter Piper Picked a Pot of Pickled Peckers. Repeated many times of course.
The Obot voices in my head though, are saying, go galt go galt go galt. .
So I think I will.
Oscar Leroy
@WyldPirate:
At least Obama has kept all of his campaign promises.
“Barack Obama and Joe Biden will allow
Americans to buy their medicines from other developed countries if the drugs are safe and prices are
lower outside the U.S.”
http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/issues/HealthCareFullPlan.pdf
“current Chapter 13 law prohibits bankruptcy judges from modifying the original terms of home mortgages for ordinary families—regardless of whether the loan was predatory or unfair or is otherwise unaffordable. Barack Obama will repeal this provision so that ordinary families can also get relief that bankruptcy laws were intended to provide. This change could prevent as many as 600,000 homeowners from being foreclosed upon.”
http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/issues/UrbanFactSheet.pdf
“Barack Obama and Joe Biden
will require that plans that participate in the new public plan, Medicare or the Federal Employee Health
Benefits Program (FEHBP) utilize proven disease management programs. This will improve quality of
care and lower costs, as well.”
http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/issues/HealthCareFullPlan.pdf
Oscar Leroy
Yeah, this is the last place you’ll find thoughtlessly pro-Obama groupthink!
Mnemosyne
@Oscar Leroy:
That’s right, Oscar, anyone who disagrees with you must be doing it because of groupthink and not because they think your conclusions are stupid and your rhetoric is boring. That would be unpossible!
Capri Sun-Bagger
Shorter Mnemosyne: The DFHs were right, but for the wrong reasons.
Mnemosyne
@Capri Sun-Bagger:
Ah, so the voices in your head are telling you I’m David Brooks in disguise. Interesting.
mm
I love the Yon Yonson reference.
I learned it from my dad 50 years ago. When my son was little I had him convinced that that was the only song that I knew.
Imagine my surprise when I ran into a similar text in Sinclair Lewis’s “Dodsworth”. So it dates at least to 1929 and most likely before.
soonergrunt
@Mnemosyne:
Actually, it’s because anyone who disagrees is objectively pro-baby-raping*. We disagree not because the things we’ve seen and taken part in lead us to honestly believe that there are things that are important enough to fight for, and that having seen that, knowing that the press gets it right about war even less often than they get it right about politics because you read news articles and see TV stories about battles you were in and think “what the fuck, that isn’t even remotely what happened” and that most important answer is to the question “what happens next?” because failing to ask that question got us into Iraq for one thing, and for the other thing allowed us to leave Afghanistan to the tender mercies of the Taliban the last time around and we all know how that worked out, and you see that all of the people caterwauling about Afghanistan refuse to even ask the question of what happens next because refusing to ask is what people do when they know they won’t like the answer, just like they refused to ask when the Russians left Afghanistan and just like they refused to ask when they planned the invasion but not the occupation of Iraq.
We disagree not because the world is a complex place where bad shit happens as a matter of course and that we’ll have to deal with the bad shit one way or another and all the pollyanna talk and self-hatred and morally shaky self-righteousness in the world won’t change the facts that we’ll have to deal with it, and that the first people screaming for us to do something are almost always the ones who engaged in the pollyanna talk and self-hatred and morally shaky self-righteousness to begin with.
No. We don’t disagree because of any of the above. We disagree because we are evil. We disagree because for us, the height of fun and excitement is raping brown skinned children and then setting them on fire, and it’s just not socially acceptable to do here.
*I’m not singling you out personally. I’m piggy-backing on what you said.
Alan in SF
Second verse, same as the first.
Or is it, All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Mnemosyne
@soonergrunt:
I think it’s completely rational at this point to decide that we’re doing more harm than good and everyone would be better served by our withdrawal than staying there, so I strongly support the US sticking to the withdrawal schedule and getting the hell out ASAP. But there seem to be quite a few people who are more interested in being publicly acknowledged for having been right all along during the Bush years rather than rationally looking at the policy and situation as it exists right now.
SRW1
@Cris:
Hey a Babushka link! Or is it an Euler’s stairs link?
General Stuck
@soonergrunt:
I agree with Mnem on the current state of things and the futility of continuing a formal ground war in Afghan. That time has passed for any semblance of a successful mission, imho, but also we cannot allow OBL to set up shop like before, nor completely ignore Pak. So there has to be less intrusive options for dealing with our legitimate interests of self defense. I don’t know exactly what that would be, but am certain there is a way. The rest of your comment is spot on concerning the shallow thinking that comes with pull out completely, go home, and hope for the best.
Calouste
@SRW1:
You mean Escher I assume?
Mnemosyne
@soonergrunt:
@General Stuck:
Oh noez! We haz groupthink!
The Other Chuck
It was a dark and stormy night, and the captain said to his crew, “Crew, gather ye round, I’ll tell ye a story!” And this is the story he told: “It was a dark and stormy night, and the captain said to his crew, “Crew, gather ye round, I’ll tell ye a story!” And this is the story he told: “It was a dark and stormy night …
soonergrunt
@Mnemosyne:
While I agree that a rational mind could come to that conclusion after careful consideration, I do believe that it is the wrong conclusion. I still don’t have a realistic answer to what happens next. Having said that, thanks for the careful consideration. That’s the beginning of smart policy.
As for your second part:
I agree 100% and add that such people are remarkably resistant to logic and information, and behave today very much like the people they spent so many years despising.
Dollared
I’m a cheesehead and I approved this use of a folklore allusion!
For you wanting to sing out loud, remember, “work” is pronounced “verk,” “the” is pronounced “da,” and “there” is prounounced “dere.”
soonergrunt
@Mnemosyne: Muhahahahahaha!
Svensker
Sully has a link to Scott Horton talking with Nir Rosen about what’s going on in Afghanistan. We should get out.
tkogrumpy
@General Stuck: I don’t think so.As a model airplane fanatic I have been enthusiastically sniffing glue for 60 years and I still don’t understand a word of it.
Barb (formerly gex)
@Mnemosyne: All original thinkers think like me.
P.S. much thanks you all for the recursive comment posts above. nerd joy.
Egilsson
I used to sneer at dirty hippies. Eventually I realized that the dirty hippies are always right and the hippy punchers are always wrong.
Now I’m debating becoming a dirty hippy outright.
Is “free love” still the style in hippy circles?
Inquiring minds want to know….
The variation on John’s post that I always use is:
Ouch, that oven is hot
Ouch, that oven is hot
Ouch, that oven is hot
while mimicking leaning over and touching the oven over and over.
YonforPres
Yon Yonson for President!
Oh, wait…
TMLutas
The Yon Yonson stuff is hilarious, just not very accurate.
Getting rid of the Taliban was always going to be like grinding down the mafia, an exercise in knocking the leadership and cadre down faster than they can be trained up until their local opponents can handle them.
You tell when your winning because the bodies have less ammunition, the IEDs are smaller and lower quality, and they have so few trained teams to rig IEDs that they start sending out bomb makers to also rig them. At this point all this is happening but you don’t read much about it outside specialist sources like strategypage.com.
Ultimately, the ideology of the Taliban is an overlay on top of the ancient afghan game of blood feud and revenge. As we pivot out of Iraq and intelligence assets move to Afghanistan, our ability to identify and make use of this feud system has improved and we’re getting much better at steering non-Taliban clans against the Taliban ones that they already hate.
Silver
@steve:
That’s what I was hoping, actually.
And remember, it’s not like we had a candidate to vote for that was pro-peace or anything…the alternative was McCain. So yes, I’m happy that Obama doesn’t seem stupid enough to invade Iran, which I’m sure McCain would have. Damning with faint praise, I know.
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, but at the same time, just because you’re not quite as bad as the guy before you, it’s doesn’t make you a saint.
Anyone else wonder if the Nobel committee wants a do-over?
Xenos
@Joe Beese: (raises hand meekly)
I did not really care whether Obama was going into Afghanistan. It looked like a good excuse to get the fuck out of Iraq, and thank god it seems to be working.
Now we have a bigger mess in Afghanistan, which I don’t expect to get better before it gets over, but I won’t rule out the possibility of being pleasantly surprised. The latest negotiations with the Taliban are just the latest roast beef and shit sandwich. Maybe we turn them against al Qaeda, maybe that leaves the terrorism threat contained, but what a fucking thing to do to the women and shia of Afghanistan.
No matter what happens, we won’t like what Obama does. That comes with the territory – so foolish to run and win election when the Repubs have turned DC, broad swathes of the country, and some distant and strategically important parts of the planet into toxic waste dumps. So fuck him – I get to vent and I get all my moral vanity satisfied to. And that is what matters, right Beese?
WyldPirate
@steve:
C’mon, steve, there’s no need to be fucking willfully obtuse.
All politicians fucking lie, every goddamned one of them. And they have loads of opportunity to wiggle out of shit unless they are simply rhetorical fuck-ups.
Obama had plenty of other options. He had a lot of “study time” before he announced what he was going to do. It seems like many of his own military people didn’t even support it.
Besides, sometimes one has to choose the lesser of two evils. that’s what I fucking did. Im pissed because historically it seemed clear that even if we put 10xs the troops there it wouldn’t have mattered.
Thoughtcrime
This is the war that never ends,
Yes, it goes on and on, my friends.
Some people started fighting it, not knowing what it was,
and they’ll continue fighting it forever just because
This is the war that never ends,
Yes, it goes on and on, my friends.
Some people started fighting it, not knowing what it was,
and they’ll continue fighting it forever just because
This is the war that never ends,
Yes, it goes on and on, my friends.
Some people started fighting it, not knowing what it was,
and they’ll continue fighting it forever just because
This is the war that never ends,
Yes, it goes on and on, my friends.
Some people started fighting it, not knowing what it was,
and they’ll continue fighting it forever just because
This is the war that never ends,
Yes, it goes on and on, my friends.
Some people started fighting it, not knowing what it was,
and they’ll continue fighting it forever just because
This is the war that never ends,
Yes, it goes on and on, my friends.
Some people started fighting it, not knowing what it was,
and they’ll continue fighting it forever just because
This is the war that never ends,
Yes, it goes on and on, my friends.
Some people started fighting it, not knowing what it was,
and they’ll continue fighting it forever just because
This is the war that never ends,
Yes, it goes on and on, my friends.
Some people started fighting it, not knowing what it was,
and they’ll continue fighting it forever just because
This is the war that never ends,
Yes, it goes on and on, my friends.
Some people started fighting it, not knowing what it was,
and they’ll continue fighting it forever just because
This is the war that never ends,
Yes, it goes on and on, my friends.
Some people started fighting it, not knowing what it was,
and they’ll continue fighting it forever just because…
SRW1
@Calouste:
You’re assumption is absolutely correct, Escher it is.
WyldPirate
: @Belafon (formerly anonevent):
This is part of the problem. Yes, we do have the “right” to go after OBL. And yes, Bush failed to do this adequately. However, all the information–and there has been tons of it that has leaked out–was that Obama slipped out of Afghanistan into Pakistan in late ’01 early ’02 Moreover, he was likely helped by the very goddamned Afghanis that we paid to help us while we had a brigade of the fucking 10th Mountain Division sittiing on their goddamned keisters at Bagram airbase.
So explain to me why the fuck we need to send 90K extra troops to Afghanistan eight fucking years latter to find someone in Pakistan?
You are right about one thing, though. Pakistan is a much bigger problem than Afghanistan. They’re the ones that fomented much of this shit in Afghanistan in the first place.
What in the hell does this even mean? He didn’t have a fucking Republican Congress, for cris-frigging-sakes!. That’s another part of the problem, he’s been pretty fucking ineffectual herding the MAJORITY he had and he spent too much time kowtowing to the fucking repukes with the bipartisan pipe dream.
Look, i have no problem with going after OBL, but there are ways to do it without such a big, gargantuan military footprint. That big footprint is pretty useless in preventing terrorist training for attacks in open societies. That shit can be done anywhere in the world. On top of that, that big military footprint–despite the best efforts of the soldiers to win “hearts and minds” is going to piss a lot of fucking people off in the process of winning “hearts and minds”.
Soldiers aren’t social workers or the goddamned Peace Corps. Their main function in life is to close with and kill the enemy and to seize and occupy terrain. They are used–or should be used–only when all other means of diplomacy have been exhausted.
Svensker
@TMLutas:
Can you back any of that up?
PWL
Look, I ‘ll say it again:
VietnamVietnamVietnamVietnamVietnamVietnamVietnamVietnamVietnamVietnamVietnamVietnamVietnamVietnamVietnamVIetnam.
We just don’t learn.
Mnemosyne
@PWL:
What, it’s not like we took over a country after another major power tried and failed to …
Oh, wait.
DPirate
Nice. Why isnt this frontpage NYT?!?
frosty
@Egilsson: Congratulations and welcome to the DFH club. But first you need to learn the secret spelling.
The singular of hippies is hippie.
That is all.
El Cid
I think that you’re questioning whether or not THE SURGE and OUR NEW COUNTER-INSURGENCY STRATEGY will lead to victory.
That is not allowed.
mclaren
@WyldPirate:
If you actually enforced that, half the Balloon-juice commentariat would disappear in puffs of character assassination. Including soonergrunt, General crackpot fake name, mnemosyne, et al.