‘We Should Just Leave:’ Trump Takes A Look At Pulling Troops Out Of Afghanistan

I feel you there... But the problem is that when we trained the last group, they dropped EVERYTHING and tucked tail as soon as ISIS showed up. Now ISIS has our Humvee's and all other sorts of vehicles and weapons.

 

Well he's not telling us about his plan to defeat ISIS, just as he said he wouldn't tell, and you're complaining so which is it that you want from the man?

 

And when it does yield results, I'm sure you'll be the first Republican here giving thanks to obama.

 

Talk all you want, the situation America is in now is because of secrets, lies and deceptions. Your opinion of me matters not. Nice try though!

 

I hear Erik Prince and whatever bland corporate identity he gives his crusading Christian terror org today has plans to step in when US troops are cut back. They like killing for God.

 

you do that, in the mean time, when i was a dod contractor working for retired full bird cols, they discussed the 2nd gulf war and deploying to iraq a full division.

stop thinking those tom clancey novels are true

 

Colonels run, and I mean run, down the halls of the Pentagon, I'm not impressed on face.

 

Hopefully, that means you thought that about Bush and Iraq. Trump is threatening war with NK....thoughts?

 

I cannot channel Trump but I feel that any response to NK'S nuclear threat will be one time catastrophic. No one wants a long term war in Asia.

 

Yes, our Syrian "allies" beheading a child resulted in Trump ending the CIA assistance to them:

CULTURAL DIFFERENCES: Pentagon Should Declassify Report on Afghan Military Sex Abuse.

The U.S. government’s Afghanistan watchdog has asked the Pentagon to declassify a report about alleged sexual abuse of children by members of the Afghan security forces.
…
“At the request of a bipartisan, bicameral group of 93 members of Congress, SIGAR this quarter issued a report to Congress on DOD and State’s implementation of the Leahy Laws in Afghanistan,” says SIGAR’s quarterly report. “Because DOD has classified much of the information on which the SIGAR report is based, the report is classified. SIGAR has requested that DOD declassify the report so that it can be released to the public.”

A Defense Department official said the report is undergoing a security review and the information may be declassified. The official could not say why the information was classified in the first place.

At a guess, because going public raises issues about our mission in Afghanistan which few people are comfortable talking about.

Maybe Trump not only objects to our allies beheading children, but raping them too?

New Sheriff!

 

In Korea our political class decided to let the Chinese to invade Korea without bombing every bridge - on both sides and the Chinese troop concentrations in China. Our strategy became one of human sacrifice - 10s of thousands of our own troops.

In Vietnam we needed to force a N. Vietnamese surrender to win. Since we were not about to do that the entire exercise was doomed to eventual failure.

Vietnam is probably the world's first and only war of attrition super power - it's their thing.

We probably could have aligned with Ho against China before we selected Diem. Note that Vietnam was at war with China shortly after kicking the US out.

 

The US gave NK its nukes. Now we are going to preemptively strike them for doing exactly what we made it possible for them to do and risk a full out nuke war with China and Russia?

At this point it would be better to absorb the first strike before massively retaliating. If they only take out DC, NYC, SF and LA we should let the CBO do a careful cost benefit analysis before doing anything too rash.

 

Good post. Allowing Saddam to destroy the Sunni fanatics in the KSA and the Gulf states would have been an alternative. Perhaps a better one.

 

Gastly funny. I'm, in Vermont, not in fallout territory so let it roll.

 

I always wondered why we could not just get along with Saddam - or just kill him and work with the next tyrant.

See my comments on NK from a few mins ago.

 

WE FLOODED AFGHANISTAN WITH HIPPIES IN THE 1970S, and then we got the Taliban. Makes sense.

 

And when we have no classified information and all of our military secrets are known to our enemies, what's to stop them from neutralizing us?

 

Well fine, then read this. Depending on the type of division, infanty has more troops than mechanized, determines the amount. Most important in the article, those first arriving ground troops, will only have air cover, it takes time to move heavy equipment.

Again, stop thinking Tom Clancey novels are true.

https://warontherocks.com/2013/12/rapid-deployment-the-army-and-american-strategy/
When the U.S. deployed forces to Saudi Arabia in August 1990 after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the first troops to arrive, a brigade of the 82nd Airborne, got there in less than three days after the decision to go was made. Within a week, a the combat elements of a full division were on the ground, complete with air-landed light armor. In three weeks, combat-loaded M1 tanks of the Army’s 24th Mech Division began rolling out of fast sealift ships at Dhahran. And in two months the entire XVIII Airborne Corps, to include an airborne, an air assault and a mechanized infantry division, plus Corps troops and a Special Forces group, were on the ground. It was a triumph of rapid deployment.

 

Hardly.

 

You're talking heavy mechanized assets. Their weight alone demands time, mostly sea borne. Don't need them!

How many tanks do we currently have in Afghanistan? A companies worth. Got that?

Leave your heavy tanks out of the equation. I don't need them. I just need high mobility assets that can aid me in killing the comand and control structure, people. I don't need to capture or hold ground, and I don't want to be slowed by tanks.

 

Mcrobster dude.

On September the 11th 2001 we were attacked.

On December the 6th 2001 we engaged and defeated the taliban in tora bora.

3 months.

Please, again, argue our limitations.

 

Yes, all I am saying is it's never too late to give peace a chance.

 

Sounds like a bar pickup line. Give a piece a chance.

 

As we encircled Kuwait during Desert Storm, if we had wanted we easily could have turned north and marched straight into Baghdad. No Saddam forces between the encirclement going on and Baghdad. But that wasn't our objective. Bush the first knew if he went onto Baghdad and took out Saddam, the the U.S. would be basically responsible for governing Iraq, nation building. Better to free Kuwait and leave a couple of thousand troops in Kuwait than take over the entire country of Iraq and all its problems that would arise from that.

 

Yes, wisdom for foreign policy wizards who can still multitask.