"Colonel Imam" on why the U.S. is gonna lose to the Taliban

[Michael Tee]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/04/world/asia/04imam.html?hpw

Interview with retired Pakistani soldier with close ties to the Taliban on why the U.S. can't win.  Pretty much what I've been saying all along, the Taliban live there and have wide support among the people, the U.S. is a foreign invader.  They'll get tired of this bullshit in another four or five years when they see the talk of U.S. "progress" is mostly BS and the situation on the ground will look about the same then as it does now.

<<“The Taliban cannot be forced out, you cannot subjugate them,” he said. “But they can tire the Americans. In another three to four years, the Americans will be tired.” >>

Col. Imam doesn't really address here the U.S. claim that they are clearing the areas that the Afghans themselves will be holding.  But what legitimacy can the Afghan national government have, when its troops can only enter the land after the Americans have cleared it out, either single-handed or "fighting alongside" the Afghan army?  In name only, it will look like an Afghan army is occupying the cleared-out territories, but how could the Afghans who live there be fooled?  They know who those "Afghan" troops and their "Afghan" political masters are serving.

<<He criticized President Obama’s decision last year to send more American troops into Afghanistan. “They are doing what you should never do in military strategy, reinforcing the error,” he said.

<<“They will have more convoys, more planes, more supply convoys, and the insurgents will have a bigger target,” he added. “The insurgents are very happy.” >>

Again, seeming to make the point I made before.  They're sending more troops, etc., but not enough more.  It's not that they couldn't ever pacify and restructure Afghanistan, it's just that they're WAY below the levels of commitment in numbers, in money and in time, for them to have any permanent effect.  By increasing troop numbers but still at a pathetically inadequate level, they're just guaranteeing the Taliban a higher body count, which means that the Afghans will get to the Magic Number, whatever it happens to be, a lot faster than they normally could, and, on the other side of the coin, the number of Afghan civilian dead will rise faster than ever, escalating anti-American sentiment and recruiting even more locals into the struggle.

<<The plan by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the commander of American forces in Afghanistan, to win over the Afghan people while pressing the Taliban militarily could have worked in 2003 or 2004, when the Taliban were weak and had less support, but now the Taliban had a presence in virtually every province, he said. >>

Anyone wanna comment on this one?  I didn't think the plan could ever have worked, simply because the Afghans don't cotton to foreigners, especially infidels, coming in and telling them at gunpoint how to organize their own country.  But at this point, it seems moot, since the Colonel says the Taliban is now established nation-wide.

[Christians4LessGvt]

You, Murtha, and Harry Reid said the same thing about
Iraq and now even Newsweek proclaims VICTORY IN IRAQ!

[Kramer]

based on that article we should wave the white flag and get out now. But Obama is committed and will lose face if he surrenders. A person in their right mind would never want to be president.

[BT]

Apparently Iman thinks a Pakistani backed regime in Afghanistan is superior to a UN backed regime.

That's his right, I guess.

[Michael Tee]

<<You, Murtha, and Harry Reid said the same thing about
Iraq and now even Newsweek proclaims VICTORY IN IRAQ!>>

NEWSWEEK's behind the times.  Bush said pretty much the same thing years ago.

I don't buy it.  There are hundreds of thousands of foreign troops on Iraqi soil and as long as they're there, it's safe for the puppets to come out of the Green Zone and dance their little dance for NEWSWEEK and whatever other stooges are impressed by it.

When the foreign troops finally pull out, the shit will hit the fan again.  Same thing happened under the British, with the "Constitutional Monarchy" they established.  At the end of the day, TIME magazine carried photos of the puppet "Prime Minister's" and his "Cabinet's" corpses being dragged through the streets by mobs, their faces battered beyond recognition.  Those people won't accept rule by puppets any more than they'll accept rule by foreigners directly.

In this case, since the Americans backed the majority rather than the minority religion, the result might be a little different but not much.  The Shi'ites will need Iranian support to stay in power and the more secular Sunni, who were the backbone of the secular Ba'ath Arab Socialist Party, will probably need the support of their more religious Sunni neighbours, numerically dominant in the region, to effectively challenge them.

[Michael Tee]

<<based on that article we should wave the white flag and get out now. But Obama is committed and will lose face if he surrenders. A person in their right mind would never want to be president.>>

Well, in the first place that article is just an interview with one man who is obviously very well-disposed towards the Taliban.  I thought some of his judgments as set out in the article were kind of questionable.  Especially the "reinforcing the error" argument - - if the original error is not sending enough troops in to do the job, then escalating troop levels is not reinforcing the error, but moving towards the correct troop level, even if the movement does not go far enough.  If Obama's plan is really escalation in stages, then he may well be moving in the right direction, one eye on the battlefield and the other on U.S. public opinion and fiscal resources.  But he'd have to have a 500,000-man goal at the very minimum and an occupation of at least 15 years' duration.  IMHO, the U.S. can't afford to even come close to financing the kind of effort that would be required.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Most Afghanis do not want to live in the XV Century, so they are against Taliban rule. The issue is convincing them that the US can remove the Taliban long enough to allow less fanatical types to take charge.

[Michael Tee]

<<Most Afghanis do not want to live in the XV Century, so they are against Taliban rule. The issue is convincing them that the US can remove the Taliban long enough to allow less fanatical types to take charge.>>

I'm not sure what "most" Afghans want.  The ones in the countryside must be pretty conservative.  Those whose families were killed by U.S., British or Canadian forces must want revenge above all else, and that means killing the invaders because they know they can't reach the invaders' homelands.  I'm sure most of the city-dwellers probably have had their fill of the Taliban and want them out.  It's an insoluble mess, best left to the Afghans to sort out.

[Plane]

Did we ever have a choice to not invade Afganistan?

They attacked us on our homeland ,a president or congress that did not get on the offensive would soon be replaced by more agressive leadership.

[Michael Tee]

I think you had a right to invade Afghanistan in revenge for Sept. 11, but the attack should have been limited to a punitive expedition, with symbolic buildings and monuments destroyed and loss of life limited to a few thousand Afghans.  It did not even have to include ground troops, though there was nothing wrong with sending them in  to reinforce the message.