Afghans order US out of Taliban-riven province

[Zevico]

Smart diplomacy.

http://m.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/troops-ordered-out-of-afghan-province/story-e6frg6so-1226585418933

Karzai's new strategy: appeasement. Perfectly in line with current American thinking. Who can blame him? Well, I do. But whom among the enlightened class of strategists calling the shots in the White House can?

[MRT144]

So the Taliban is beating us by playing Myst. Got it.

[Aeson]

Hopefully they will order us out of the rest of the provinces soon.

[regexcellent]

We already have to get Afghan approval for a lot of missions which either causes them to be delayed out of their time window or results in opsec being compromised. We'd be doing a lot better if we just said "**** you" to the Afghan "government" (and we should probably do the same to the Pakistanis as well).

[Sava]

Zevico is just another ******** chickenhawk.

If you lived in afghanistan you would be sucking so much taliban dick praying they didn't cut off your head

[Zevico]

Double post.

[Zevico]

My own view is that Karzai has looked defeat on the eye and welcomed it. He's hoping for an accommodation. If I were him I'd take the next flight of of there because I don't think the Taliban will prove very accommodating. They haven't proven accommodating at all so far. Even though the Americans were happy with them getting an office in Dubai, and peace talks aplenty.

Results? War and a feckless Administration that wants to get out without any semblance of an idea of what to do about the crisis.

Likely outcome? A Taliban take over once the Americans pull out.

If this is a necessary war per Obama, he has a funny way of showing it.

If he thinks it's not worth fighting, shouldn't he just come out and say why? Wouldn't an explanation help people understand what he's doing? Nothing else he's done has helped. Maybe a frank conversation on whether or not the Americans are failing and why would.

I guess that's just not newsworthy though. All this blood and treasure gone, and nothing to show for it. Not even an explanation.

[kentonio]

At the time of the Vietnam pullout you'd have been the guy shouting that the US should just invade the north, right?

[PLATO]

$88 billion a year for our forces in Afghanistan. $85 billion sequester looming. Anybody besides me see a solution to both issues here?

[Dis]

Afghanistan is a lost cause either way. The only option would be permanent occupation. I don't think anyone really wants that (because we'd have to overthrow their government who wants us out as well). The war is unwinnable. I can't blame Obama, other than the fact he doesn't have the balls to say it's unwinnable.

[Elok]

$88 billion a year for our forces in Afghanistan. $85 billion sequester looming. Anybody besides me see a solution to both issues here?

At last you say something I can agree with!

[Hauldren Collider]

So the Taliban is beating us by playing Myst. Got it.

[Elok]

Also:

Karzai's new strategy: appeasement.

Invoking the ghosts of WWII isn't so impressive once you've switched out the blitzkrieg-happy Nazi hordes of tanks and bombers, led by brilliant generals like Rommel, for a handful of dirty, barely-literate goatherds clutching Soviet-surplus Kalashnikovs. What are they going to do, occupy some other, equally-strategically-irrelevant country in the region that no doubt hates them as much as they hate us? Bearing in mind that their fierce tactical trucks can travel as much as twenty miles per day over the terrain, they may have a dozen of them in working order, and in another decade or so the birthrate may have provided enough people to go to war with...

[dannubis]

$88 billion a year for our forces in Afghanistan. $85 billion sequester looming. Anybody besides me see a solution to both issues here?

I... agree.... *faints*

[regexcellent]

At the time of the Vietnam pullout you'd have been the guy shouting that the US should just invade the north, right?

That would have made more sense than just dicking around in the south the whole time. If we had invaded the north at the start we could have ended the war, won it, and gone home.