The Taliban staged an audacious prison break here early Monday, freeing at least 476 political prisoners through a long tunnel, according to the warden, Gen. Ghulam Dastagir Mayar.
He said that security authorities had discovered in the morning that the prisoners from the political wing of the building were gone, and that the authorities had just found the tunnel. “We do not know if the tunnel was dug from outside or inside the prison,” he said.
The Kandahar prison is the largest and most substantial prison in southern Afghanistan, and it houses Taliban who were captured in Zabul, Oruzgan and Kandahar, including some senior Taliban figures as well as many lower level Taliban, according to security officers working with the prison.
It was the second time there has been a major prison break at the Sariposa prison in Kandahar. The Taliban orchestrated the freeing of 1,200 prisoners, of whom 350 were Taliban members, on June 13, 2008, staging an attack on the prison that killed 15 guards.
The break comes at a critical moment in the Taliban’s fight in southern Afghanistan. Pushed out of their strongholds in the rural areas outside the city and under pressure from a large number of NATO troops who have fanned out into the villages, they have been able to maintain a presence, but nothing close to the dominant role they had even a year ago.
Bringing back a large cadre of experienced fighters, many of whom will have been able to refine their skills in prison, will give the Taliban leadership the flexibility and human resources to send fighters into new districts where there are fewer NATO troops and bolster their numbers in those closer to Kandahar.
The Soviets have to be laughing.
Zifnab
More like crying. Should we finally leave, the Taliban will be a few thousand miles away from US soil. Much closer to Mother Russia. We spent ten years kicking the anthill, but they’ll be the ones camped out next to it.
Omnes Omnibus
Soviets?
Ugh
What are we doing there again?
Nathan
Schuuuultzzzz!
soonergrunt
Shorter John Cole–
The opposition scored a relatively minor tactical victory! THE WAR IS LOST!1!!ELEVEN
Omnes Omnibus
@Nathan: I was thinking The Great Escape. I wonder who gets to play the Cooler King.
existential fish
COIN requires a domestic credible government to work with. We’ve never had that in Afghanistan. This is just another reason.
Zifnab
@soonergrunt: You know what else was a relatively minor tactical victory?
The Tet Offensive.
Chris
@Nathan:
Nathan FTW.
Woodrowfan
Soviets?? OK, I confess, I sometimes call Russians that still as well…
Omnes Omnibus
@Zifnab: Yeah, but the Tet Offensive was a US tactical victory.
Chris
You know, no matter how much the Tali suck and deserve destruction, which they do, that has got to be one of the most freaking epic jailbreaks in the history of jailbreaks. Seriously.
And how much do you want to bet the military didn’t even consider that the silly natives would have it in them to pull something like this off?
Nathan
In Soviet Union, wars lose you!
Zifnab
@Omnes Omnibus:
Not from a media standpoint.
Bob
If we leave Afghanistan we can invade Syria. America, fuck, yeah!
Froley
Look in Zihuatanejo!
Chris
@Zifnab:
Wonder if the Chinese might be the next to try their luck.
Alternatively, it might devolve into a proxy war battleground between regional powers, with Pakistan backing the Tali, Iran backing the Hazara and maybe Tadzhiks (who would probably also get helps from a couple Central Asian republics)… in other words, basically what was happening in the 1990s.
Dennis SGMM
No one could have anticipated that the Taliban would use shovels to dig an escape tunnel into the prison. I don’t know if the NYT mentions it (I won’t give them a click) but an article I cited in a previous thread mentions the fact that one of the escapees credited “friends” inside the prison with providing copies of the keys to the cells.
We’re waist-deep in the Big Muddy and the damned fool says to push on.
gypsy howell
This made me laugh.
loretta
@Chris:
Exactly what I was thinking! Tunneling was the number one way the Allied POWs escaped from German prison camps (and there were many escapes besides the Great one from Stalag Luft III), I think the guards/admin of Kandahar woefully underestimate their prison population.
The Moar You Know
Typical crybaby hippie sentiment. Put the bong down, Cole, and turn your collection of Dead bootlegs off and listen up for a second.
What is obviously needed here is a second surge. The first breakout over 1200 prisoners got out. Post-surge, only 500 prisoners got out. If we just put another 100,000 troops in the country, I’ll be we can knock the number that get out in the third jailbreak down to double-digits.
It’s called “doubling down”, you stupid hippies. It’s how we won Iraq and Vietnam. Man up and let the grownups handle this.
Omnes Omnibus
@Zifnab: Not to be a pedant here or anything, but, in the context of the the series of comments, the fact that the US actually won the battle portions of Tet actually matters. But it’s not worth a long back and forth over it, so I’ll leave it here.
maye
But if we got out, what would happen to all the clients of The Carlyle Group? We can’t hurt our last surviving industry. Those Lockheed workers have to pay their kids’ college tuition.
Dave
It ain’t called the “Graveyard of Empires” for nothing…
gypsy howell
@Bob:
No no no no no. We don’t end wars anymore. We just start news ones. Thank god we have an unlimited budget for things like this, plus a segment of our population that we don’t need for any useful endeavor – might as well send ’em through the meat grinder there rather than being moochers and parasites here.
Chris
@loretta:
It’s been standard fare for the last ten years at least: Western armies being unable to admit the idea that a pitiful band of rebels (Palpatine quote intended) could possibly even begin to outthink them, or even think on the same level as them (even if it’s as basic as “dig a tunnel.”) See Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and the subsequent pounding it took from Hezbollah.
(Of course, a lot of those guys still think we would’ve won in Vietnam if we’d brought in more B-52s. It’s an old mindblock. We really don’t do counterinsurgency well at all, do we?)
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@soonergrunt: well….Cole is pretty spot on here. Now 30k Taliban plus 350 can more effectively deliver the asswhupping the 100k US troops plus 250k nato/un/karzai forces are already getting in A-stan.
Droning is snake-chopping. Trying to cut off the leadership at the top, the head of the snake.
This is a ginormous setback for the “mission”.
The exit strat is looking more and more like Operation Frequent Wind Redux.
;)
Bob
@gypsy howell: I’m hungover, too much wine celebrating the Resurrection. I forgot.
Dennis SGMM
I wonder how many Friedman Units this will add to our stay in Afghanistan.
ed
From a recent article in a very reliable news source:
patroclus
The prison break is bracing and moves the debate on Afghanistan to more earnest grounds.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@existential fish: lawl. you dont fucking know what COIN is. COIN is the uberstupid Bush Doctrine renamed and cut down to village size.
COIN is about MAKING a government. Clear and hold, pop-centric, girls school building armed social workers /missionaries with guns.
jheartney
@Dennis SGMM:
I’d be amazed if something on this scale didn’t involve some substantial inside help.
Afghanistan was never going to be anything other than a black hole for lives, equipment and money. I’m with Cole.
Morbo
Since I had the afternoon off on Friday, i was lucky enough to watch MSNBC and take a nap. While doing so, I heard Gates say we might turn the corner this year. Woohoo, another Friedman Unit and a half.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@ed:
exactly. But if Petraeus has miscalculated about the timeline because of social media, RT atrocity, and the unexpected Arab Spring, we might have to leave in a rout instead of a retreat.
Mark S.
With notably rare exceptions, the Afghan prison system has performed admirably.
Mark B
Why oh why did they let them have spoons?
gene108
The Soviets didn’t divert 90% of their armed forces to invade Iraq. They threw a lot of bombs at the Afghanis, who put up a fight.
Despite the mismanagement of the Bush Admin. and the fact we’ve been in Afghanistan longer, we still aren’t close the 30,000 fatalities the Soviets had during their occupation.
Yes we’ve lost a lot of people and I’m not against pulling out or scaling back operations, but I’m just trying bring a bit of perspective between Soviet losses versus what we are currently sustaining.
As badly as Bush & Co. bungled Afghanistan, we still have managed things better than the Soviets did in the 1980’s.
gene108
Why is my comment awaiting moderation? FYWP
loretta
@Chris: Upon further thought, not only do the US guards/admin underestimate their captives, they are ignorant of history. I would wager that fewer than 10% of the military troops in Afghanistan can name a single POW camp in Germany or Poland, much less one in the Pacific War.
The Allied escapes were much bolder, since the Germans had ferrets and were constantly searching for tunnels, tools, etc. The idiots at Kandahar probably never even looked for a tunnel.
So, while this is audacious, it was probably child’s play.
gene108
FYWP two comments in moderation and one was to ask why the first was in moderation.
Villago Delenda Est
Back in the 80’s, Americans were all laughing at those stupid Soviets who were getting into their own “Vietnam” in Afghanistan.
Who’s laughing now, fucktards?
Omnes Omnibus
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:Actually, counterinsurgency and counterinsurgency doctrine has existed for a long time and much was written on it prior to Bush taking office. You might want to know something about military history, strategy, and doctrine before you spout off about it.
mk387
Besides the fact that the Soviet Union now exists, this is just such a silly setiment from Cole.
So, was NATO invovled in the Soviet’s occupation of Afghanastan as well? No comparison. Period.
GregB
Turning the corner doesn’t mean much when you are stuck in a box.
Chris
@loretta:
I wouldn’t be surprised, though a lot of them are probably in the self-proclaimed “students of history” crowd.
jrg
@Omnes Omnibus: Don’t bother. Herimone-Chan is batshit crazy. She makes Mclauren look positively sane by comparison.
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris:
That’s the thing about Palpatine, Chris…
If the rebellion is “insignificant”, as Palpatine claims, why is he personally involved in suppressing it? Why is his top lieutenant, Darth Vader, even bothering with it? Why is the bulk of the Imperial Fleet searching the galaxy for the “insignificant” band of rag-tag rebels?
So many questions one could ask him.
Amazing how the “dead enders” managed to create so much headache for the mighty US War Machine in Iraq, and how these ragtag primitives in Afghanistan are somehow thwarting that same high tech, superbly trained and equipped most powerful military on the planet.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Omnes Omnibus: oh, i should have SAID the American military’s current PRACTICE of counterinsurgency doctrine as documented in the 2003-2006 COIN manual.
Mybad.
Will you fuckers quit scolding me? I am right and i never bluff.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@jrg: crazy? moi? I think not.
El Tiburon
At this point the entire world is laughing. Direcctly at us. No, not with us, but AT us.
We have turned into the worse kind of joke: a superpower with the ability to attack and mortally wound just about any nation out there and the stupidity to do it. And to do it badly.
Remember those “Bullies who got beat up” videos that just made the Youtube? Well, we are about to be those bullies. And when it finally happens (and it will)the entire planet will be laughing and cheering our demise. Because it will be nobody’s fault except our own.
We really are a bunch of douchebags.
Hope and Change. Hope and Change. Hope and Change.
singfoom
Yes please, GTFO now. I see no goal we are working towards. I merely see dead US soliders dying to hold remote areas we don’t need to be in. (See Restrepo)
Funny how the Afghanistan war in the 80s helped to bankrupt the Soviets. We shouldn’t let the same happen to us.
Cermet
@Omnes Omnibus: Could you name me a SINGLE fucking battle in that war we ever lost? But the fact remains we LOST the fucking war! and we spent over 50,000 poor to middle class amerikan lives losing it. Try to learn something – winning battles does not matter when you are trying to win a people. That is the point the people here are making and that escape helps them to win in the long term.
El Tiburon
@gene108:
Wow, what a nice big fucking feather in our cap. Fire up the confetti machine and get the band back together. USA! USA! We didn’t fuck up as bad as the Ruskies!!!
After the lessons of Vietnam and the Soviests invading Afghanistan, you would think this would not be our longest war evah! No, we fucked this up worse than the Soviets could ever have imagined.
loretta
Other news stories indicate that the prison break was an inside job. I suspect it was both inside and outside, and that other intelligence agencies (ISI, maybe) helped plan the tunnel, provided supplies (wood, digging equipment, hoses, etc.) They wouldn’t need a forger or fake uniforms. ha!
Perhaps this was just designed to prolong our stay. There are a lot of military-industrial war profiteers with a big stake in our staying in Afghanistan. Judging by how corrupt this war is, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was an inside job involving US troops.
Uloborus
@Omnes Omnibus:
Why should today be different?
To the original post: Whether or not we should GTFO, ‘refine their skills in prison’? Eh? How exactly do they do that? We’re not talking petty burglars in an American jail spending all their time working out and being hardened by the more hardcore gang members.
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
Do not encourage the inner nerd… he WILL respond.
I’m just going to note that Lucas claimed the Ewoks vs Empire thing was intentionally taken from Vietnam, in which the greatest army in the world was undone by farmers and peasants. Yes, I know, everyone hates the Ewoks… still.
Corpsicle
“Funny how the Afghanistan war in the 80s helped to bankrupt the Soviets. We shouldn’t let the same happen to us.”
Too late. We could at least stop before it gets any worse though.
El Tiburon
Also, I did not mention this: but I had my first child, a boy, back on Jan. 7. So congrats to me!!
I am thankful that when he turns 18 he will have a quite the menu of wars to choose from. My hope is by then we will have started some down in Central or South America so maybe he will get to visit home a bit more often. Plus, the climate is a bit nicer with the chance to see the ocean here and there.
I picture by then our wars will be like visiting a drive-through park.
Go USA.
Origuy
Is this prison run by Afghan or US military? I suspect that the warden, Gen. Ghulam Dastagir Mayar, is Afghan.
soonergrunt
@Omnes Omnibus:
This could be said to apply to many, many people here. It’s just more obvious with this one because she trumpets her ignorance loudly and repeatedly.
Joe Beese
@Nathan:
FTW
THE
@HG-W
I’m not convinced there is a real exit strategy.
Not yet anyway.
And I think you should wait and see how this summer’s campaign goes before you gloat too much.
The US begins its drawdown in July.
If the surge has been successful, then the numbers are going to show it pretty quickly.
We will know by fall IMHO.
Chris
@Uloborus:
Off-topic, but since you bring up gang members…
It’s been known for a while that MS-13 was taking lessons from the military (having members join the military, serve their time, then come out, go back to the gang and teach them everything they’ve learned from urban warfare tactics to combat training programs).
Well, I heard a story recently that in the process, a lot of those gang members were shipped to Iraq and ended up continuing gang activities there. And that some bases and Baghdad streets were now graced with MS-13 grafitti and presumably more than that. Looting’s a well-known consequence of occupation: imagine if professional looters started getting involved and running their own rackets.
Cheerful thought, innit?
maya
A Second Coming of the Great Surge is in order. Do we have enough parachute pallets of massive stacks of untracable $100 bills on hand?
Stefan
As badly as Bush & Co. bungled Afghanistan, we still have managed things better than the Soviets did in the 1980’s.
High praise indeed.
srv
Not that I would ever believe our people are this smart, but if you wanted to find more bad guys, a tag-and-release or tag-and-escape mechanism would probably be very effective.
(it worked in Red Dawn, didn’t it?)
Stefan
Also, I did not mention this: but I had my first child, a boy, back on Jan. 7. So congrats to me!! I am thankful that when he turns 18 he will have a quite the menu of wars to choose from.
It’s a sobering thought to realize that an 18 year old GI currently on patrol in Afghanistan was just beginning fourth grade in elementary school at the time of the World Trade Center attack.
Jamie
Historically, wars in Afghanistan don’t end well.
Corpsicle
Here is a nice simple exit strategy: Pack up our stuff and GTFO.
stuckinred
@Cermet: There’s an app for that. You don’t know what the fuck you are talking about.
j low
@mk387: No comparison. Exactly. No comparison to the British experience either. Those jack asses wore red coats. Dummies. We are America! Rules don’t apply to us bitchez!
John PM
What poster did they have covering the hole while they dug?
Omnes Omnibus
@Cermet: Not arguing that point. I know what happened in Vietnam. The fucking point i was making was a small and admittedly pedantic one, so don’t lecture me.
Omnes Omnibus
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
No.
Donald G
@Villago Delenda Est:
Being somebody’s Vietnam isn’t bad… if you’re Vietnamese.
Mandramas
@gene108: Taliban had USA backing them in this time. Now, they are alone.
Joe Beese
@John PM:
This.
Yutsano
@Mandramas:
Amended that for you. And the ISI have always been behind the Taliban as a counterweight to Indian influence.
singfoom
We cannot build a state for other people. We cannot build democratic institutions for other people. We cannot even guarantee security for those things to be built in.
Stop the drone attacks, withdraw all ground forces and tell Hamid Karzai that he’s in charge.
We cannot dictate the fate of the entire world and the harder we try, the more blowback we get.
GTFO now.
Bulworth
Wonderful.
Fuzz
The areas in Kunar province that we left, the Korengal and Pech, were the exact same places the Soviets first left, and they did so for the same reason, saying the strategic impact of the valleys was not worth the effort. Plus, their 1985 strategy is similar to our own 2010-2011 strategy, a new leader who was perceived as being somewhat weak on defense and who had promised a lot of change comes in and faces pleas from generals urging him to let them have a shot at going all in. Their wish is granted, troop levels rise, casualty levels rise, there are some accomplishments but nothing enough to turn the tide of the war, and the draw down begins shortly thereafter.
Montysano
All this talk of “exit strategy” is a joke. For example: the military spent $20B last year for air conditioning and heating of tents. For a military contractor, it’s the mother of all sugar tits.
Bex
@THE: Congrats on your Friedman Unit Award!
soonergrunt
@Joe Beese: Man, look at the ankle on her!!
mark
@gene108: so this is what American exceptionalism has been defined down to “yeah we’re doing a pretty shitty job…but we’re not as bad as the Soviets!”
USA #1!
Fred
So when exactly did you go out there and see what is going on for yourself John Galt…errr Cole?
You read headlines while sitting on your ass in front of the computer while petting your cat and you think you know what the fuck is going on? They are in the stone age out there and you think you have the slightest clue what the fuck that country is all about?
Do you think a “good war” is supposed to be neat and tidy where nobody get’s killed and nothing bad and disorganized ever happens and it always goes according to plan. Show me one war in the history of history that went that way! What the fuck do you know about it! Seriously. You read selective headlines and you think you know something. Did you go to westpoint and then serve?
This “get out now” bs is so old! Yea, we get it. All war is bad and we should never ever fight anyone. Full stop. Go ask Greenwald how to solve it! LOL! And you seem to think some insane Republitarian ex Gov from New Mexico is the answer? LOL!
Honestly, I just can’t figure out what your malfunction is. You can be so right in a lot of your posts but this whole Greenwald Libertarian worship is just so wrong.
Fred
@Ugh: It was called 911. Google it since you seem to have been in a coma for awhile I guess.
singfoom
@Fred: I think his question is what are we doing there now?
As a response to 9/11, invading Afghanistan and working with the Northern Alliance to defeat the Taliban to prevent AlQaeda from having a safe harbor made sense.
We helped the Northern Alliance defeat the Taliban, or at least removed them from primacy in terms of power.
Now that AlQaeda is no longer there, what’s the point?
We’re killing civillians with drones more often than we’re killing insurgents. And we’re just creating more insurgents.
So please tell me, what is the military objective in Afghanistan now? What strategic or national interest of the United States are we serving by spilling more of our soldier’s blood there?
It’s not a reflexive “War is bad” for me at least, it’s a “What are we trying to accomplish?”
HyperIon
@Fred ranted:
So, PLEASE SIR, tell us WTF is going on.
I’m sure we ALL want to know.
soonergrunt
@singfoom: Since you asked…
AQ and the Talibs are opposite sides of the same coin. AQ is still in the region, and still assisting/co-opting the Taliban.
As far as the claim that we’re killing more non-combatants than insurgents, I’ve never heard that from a credible source. It may in fact be the case, but I’ve never heard it, and neither has the UN.
It’s worth mentioning that the insurgents, like insurgents everywhere, are civilians at least part of the time. There are very few full-time guerrilla fighters. The pays sucks, the hours are horrible, and the benefits package leaves something to be desired. In fact, MOST people associated with an insurgency are part-timers.
Having said all of that, in answer to your question of “what are we trying to accomplish?” What we are trying to do is create local security that can be maintained and expanded upon by an Afghan government that will not sell their country to our enemies again.
There’s nothing in that mission statement about democracy, or women’s rights, or anything else that has nothing to do with the the security situation. If you’d like to leave it at something simple, I’d say leaving behind a country where this kind of thing doesn’t happen.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@THE: dude the “mini-surge” already failed. That was why McC fired himself. He saw there was no way he could meet the timetables. 30k Taliban are delivering an ass-whuppin to 350k combined American and NATO/Karzai troops.
The problem for leaving naow is that Maliki just told Mullen to fuck off, delivering a ginormous PUBLIC humiliation to the US.
The generals are going to fight like cats dipped in turpentine to stay and “finish the mission” in A-stan.
existential fish
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
Bullshit I don’t know. I’ve read the COIN field manual cover to cover.
singfoom
@soonergrunt: Fair enough. What’s the sourcing on Taliban/AQ being different sides of the same coin?
Because from what I’ve read, the Taliban is mainly ethnic Pashtuns and fight out of a tribal loyalty, while AQ was mostly arabic and the Pashtuns were fine with working with AQ back in the day, but didn’t really jive in terms of their long term goals. If I remember correctly, a lot of the Arabic members of AQ didn’t speak Farsi/Pashto and could barely get around….
That’s not to say there’s no AQ presence in Afghanistan, especially the border regions, but to say Taliban =/= Al Qaeda by and large seems false to me.
Pardon my hyperbole, I wasn’t saying that more civilians have been killed by drones than insurgents, it’s more of a news thing. I hear several times a week that a drone has killed a wedding party, or some young boys gathering firewood, or some such thing.
So I get the big objective. Give the Afghan govt. room to create their own institutions. How long are we willing to give them? How much blood? How much treasure?
To me, it seems like we’ve already hit the wall of diminishing returns, and we’re actively shooting ourselves in the foot by killing civilians with drones, breeding more resentment and more insurgents.
It just doesn’t seem like the goal posts will ever stop moving….
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@soonergrunt:
but that doesn’t matter. KInship saturation is so high in Af-Pak that every kill, hostile or civilian, results in AT LEAST two more hostiles, because negative influence propagates along both social and consanguineous network connections.
That also is impossible since everyone from Petreaus on down admits the Taliban will be part of whatever government we leave behind.
We have been spending 100 million day to deligitimize/wipe out the Taliban and there are more of them than ever. They are increasing at 20% per year.
And they will not be our friends.
Fred
@singfoom:
If you go out and search…actually make the effort to find out what is REALLY happening in Afghanistan you will find we are making progress. Like so much other BS now a days the only headlines that bubble up to the surface are when things go wrong and they ALWAYS do in war! A lot of soldiers on the ground say there is REAL progress. Remember, it was ONLY last year that the commanders got the troops they have been saying they needed since DAY ONE! The 8 years before that were a total write off because G Dubya the texas dummy never gave the commanders the troops they were asking for. He was too busy trying to clean up his OTHER mess in Iraq. Why are people so uninformed about this stuff?
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@singfoom: the talibs and al-Q are both sunni, but the talibs are deobandi and al-Q are wahabbi.
Think of it as the difference between Af-Pak independence and Arab independence, a sort of local vs. global model.
al-Q wants the crusaders out of MENA.
The Taliban and Jamaat-e-Ismali (Pakistani islamists) just want the crusaders out of A-stan and Pak, respectively.
Sometimes their interests align, sometimes they don’t.
The deobandi have a loooong history of repelling invaders. They built madrassas for the express purpose of training young men to fight the British.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Fred: jaysus read my comment you dumbass.
Fred
@HyperIon: Maybe you heard in between whining how we should get out. The commanders got the troops they were asking for last year. After 8 years of not having enough boots on the ground to get the job done.
But you don’t care about facts do you?!
soonergrunt
@singfoom: I didn’t say it would be easy. Hell, it may not even be doable on more than a local level, or for longer than a short period of time.
Just because it’s hard, doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing. WWII and the Civil War were both rather difficult in their days. If you’re saying that you don’t think its worth the blood and treasure, that’s a valid position. It’s not one I agree with at this point in time, but that doesn’t mean we won’t reach a point where I change my mind.
What are the alternatives? What are the most likely and/or most dangerous outcomes of various courses of action?
I don’t know, and thankfully it’s not my job to know, but from what I do know of the area, the most likely course of events, should we leave, is also the most dangerous, which is that the government in Kabul falls and Afghanistan becomes the safe haven from which the Taliban (which is a transnational movement, btw) begins to act more freely in Pakistan from their safe havens over the border. In other words, it looks a lot like today, except with the primary kinetic force moving eastward instead of westward, and with an unstable, nuclear-armed, hyper-paranoid government fighting for it’s life.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@existential fish: haha, relly?
what is the mission again?
Fred
@singfoom: So you saw all these civilians killed in Pakistan?
So you are trying to say that all the reports are wrong and the CIA is INTENTIONALLY trying to kills civilians and/or they are just so incompetent that they cannot help but kill more civilians than actual fighters. So how many more.
You apparently know so how about filling in the rest of us. I guess you know a bunch of people in Pakistan that are keeping count and the CIA has it all wrong.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@soonergrunt: meh. the Taliban are not transnational. They only care about Af-Pak.
@Fred: the mini-surge was the exit strategy and it has failed.
Mandramas
@Yutsano: Hmm. I don’t have the information to openly disagree, but you are saying that US is financing both sides? Sounds like a big business opportunity in weapon dealing.
singfoom
@Fred: Can you read? I acknowledged that as hyperbole in response to Soonergrunt.
Read the words. They’re important. I didn’t say shit about the CIA, but rant away sir.
Rant away…
Mandramas
@soonergrunt:
So, the plan is to kill people to teach survivors that to kill is bad?
Pococurante
My guess is whichever side has the highest piles of dirt…
HyperIon
@Fred wrote:
And exactly WTF has changed?
Are we winning now?
Or about to win?
Or will be winning in another couple of FUs?
There will never be “enough boots on the ground to get the job done”. We create new adversaries faster than we kill them.
singfoom
@soonergrunt:
Just like you, I don’t know. Here’s the thing…I just don’t see the end state. So we stay there and bleed until the Afghan government is strong enough to stand on it’s own, and then we leave.
Pakistan is always going to be playing a covert game in Afghanistan, as they consider it within their sphere of influence. They are our stated allies, although they don’t always act like it.
To me it seems like the longer we stay, the worse we make it. The more accidental civilian deaths we cause. The more money we pump into the country, the more corruption spreads.
I’m not saying that I don’t think we should do things just because it’s hard, but from my read here our negatives are outweighing the positives and I don’t see that changing.
I’m against an open-ended commitment. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe we could do better than where we’re at right now. But I don’t think given our domestic situation, that we can handle this monetarily and I don’t think our military can keep up with the pace of recruitment and wounded from Afghanistan.
If they’re going to stand on their own, better they do it now than later.
Fred
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: What failure? The surge is still happening. Do you think you just fly in a bunch of troops then put up a big “Mission Accomplished” banner? You and G Dubya the texas dummy think a lot alike apparently.
The surge is just one part of it. They are still training Afghan troops to take over and are saying that will take years, as they have ALWAYS been saying…..but you are not listening…apparently.
THE
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
It’s more complicated than that.
The US will withdraw from Iraq pretty much as scheduled IMHO.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@THE: lawl. The US has been publically begging for an invite to stay.
Maliki just said fuck off.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Fred: you retard. The mini-surge was EXACTLY what the “surge” in Iraq was–cover to start a drawdown while saving some scraps of face.
McC was the mini-surge field commander and he pitched a hissy fit and fired himself when he saw he couldn’t make the timelines.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
Cole is right. The smartest thing we can do is LEAVE NAOW, before the humiliating spectacle of the US leaving Iraq without a damn thing to show for OIF.
The instability is increasing, not decreasing, fed by the Arab Spring, American atrocities, retards burning Qurans, social media and Wikileaks.
time to go.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@singfoom:
we are not getting an open-ended committment…..we are not getting anything out of OEF, just like we got nothing out of OIF.
We spent a trillion dollars, killed seven thou of our own, and caused the deaths about a million muslim civilians for nothing.
If we are lucky we wont see the Taliban flying captured drones from “permanent airbases” built with american taxpayer dollars into Islamabad to kill American CIA agents.
THE
@HG-W
Sadly, I believe it could be more like the start of 20 years of nuclear winter. But I agree it’s time to withdraw from MENA.
You will recall I have always opposed the Libyan intervention.
THE
@HG-W:
I believe most of the higher-tech drones are flown from Creech AFB in Nevada.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@THE: /shrug
Since we are undergoing forced withdrawal this year from two nations that will hate us for a long fucking time, praps Obama is just looking to make an ally where he can.
THE
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
I have no doubt the Sunnis in Iraq will hate you. I don’t know why the Shia would, since the USA gave them a country.
I don’t see USA leaving Afghanistan this decade.
Draw down will be drawn out.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@THE: Shamsi is closed for droning now.
There is only one other droning base in Pak.
Panetta said the US would drone Pak tribal areas from A-stan bases if necessary.
I dont think the generals are gettin it.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@THE: the Taliban are deobandi sunnis.
like i said.
Maliki’s gov will get into bed with Iran. The new Virtual Caliphate, when Qom and Karbala are united as one.
;)
THE
@HG-W:
The drones fly physically from Pakistan.
But they are controlled by satlink from Nevada is what I thought.
THE
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
I hope they both speak Mandarin well. ;)
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@THE: doesnt matter. the chinese oiltraders are fluent in farsi.
THE
@HG-W:
That’s not all Chinese are fluent in.
Click on the graphic to enlarge it.
TooManyPaulWs
At that prison, someone should have noticed that super-huge poster of Rita Hayworth on the wall…