Quote:
Originally Posted by alfromcolorado
What we are doing in Afghanistan is a good thing. I think some of the policies are a bit misguided. Specifically the DOS perspective.
You cannot build a house from the roof down. Thinking that one can build a country starting in Kabul, especially in a country like Afghanistan is naive at best and god damn stupid at worst. Engagement at the local level, security at the local level, is what these people understand. Something along the model of the CIDG or CAP programs in Vietnam. Then help them with what they need. (This does NOT include girl's schools.) Like any house, Afghanistan needs to be built from the foundation UP. DOS has to quit thinking they can make little Americas out of places that DON'T WANT to be Americas.
We also need to get troops out of the mindset that if one is an Afghani they must be the enemy. Making insurgents is counter productive.
If we act like the enemy, smell like the enemy... Well, we are ducks.
If we work with them, fight with them and live with them... Take a stake in their security instead of heading back to the FOB, we might just screw this goat. They respect that.
Hopefully we haven't lost that ability in our "whack them all" crazed world.
I honestly don't believe that the people of Afghanistan want the Taliban to return to power. We should, LOCALLY, help them to think they are safe from the Taliban and that we sincerely respect them and their society and are there to help them. Locally, the SF way...
Not the idiotic DOS way.
|
Good thoughts.
How, in God's name, are you going to do that when the CINC has announced that we are leaving in a year?
If you were a local Afghan leader, would you sign on with the US, knowing that they are going to start pulling out in 12 months, regardless of progress or not?
TR
__________________
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - President Theodore Roosevelt, 1910
De Oppresso Liber 01/20/2025
|