An Undisclosed, Non-Transparent Goal In Afghanistan,
Barack’s only goal in Afghanistan is a Future Quick Exit,
Obama’s goal is an Afghanistan agreement with Taliban,
One Saving enough Face to Claim a U.S. Negotiated Win!
But Obama has Set A July 2011 Withdrawal Beginning!
So tribal wars will immediately break out after US Exit!
And Taliban will again take control of the Government!
As I Served My Tour in Vietnam It BECAME VERY Obvious
Our Motive Was Changing From Winning To Negotiating!
I believe this is now our goal in the land of Afghanistan
Official announcement is: “We are here to win the War”
The Truth is: We’re here to win a war by Negotiations!
July 5, 2010
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
Begin Excerpt 1 from Middle East Online News via ConsortiumNews
The Afghan ‘No Exit’ War
In Afghanistan, as in Vietnam, proper skepticism of an outright U.S. military victory abounds, leading to an escalation aimed at gaining military advantage for ultimate negotiations with the Taliban, says Ivan Eland.
July 1, 2010
In contrast to World War II and Desert Storm — which had clear goals, even though those of the latter were limited — the war in Afghanistan resembles the Spanish-American War and the Vietnam War.
In the former, the goal changed from defeating the Spanish in a conventional war to subduing Philippine guerrillas in order to imperially conquer the archipelago. In the latter, contrary to popular belief, Lyndon Johnson’s goal was never to win, but to alter the conditions on the battlefield to compel the enemy to negotiate.
In the Spanish-American War, America was able to take out
the adversarial regime relatively easy. The hard part came in getting rid of the guerrillas, who were sure they were promised by the McKinley administration that if they helped the Americans get rid of the Spanish, the Philippines would win its independence.
The latter didn’t happen, and it took several years of brutal American counterinsurgency tactics and torture to subdue the local Thomas Jefferson wannabes.
Similarly, in Afghanistan, taking down the Taliban only required 700 U.S. Special Forces and CIA personnel calling in American air strikes to support the ground fighters of the Afghan anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. The hard part has been battling a resurgent Taliban, which uses guerrilla tactics.
In Afghanistan, as in Vietnam, proper skepticism of an outright U.S. military victory abounds, leading to an escalation aimed at gaining military advantage for ultimate negotiations with the Taliban.
Yet President Obama has given the escalation only 18 months in which to reach this goal, as well as the equally unrealistic objectives of crippling al-Qaeda and training Afghan security forces to operate on their own.
To get the U.S. military to buy into the 18-month period prior to commencement of withdrawal, Obama had to consent to the escalation of an extra 30,000 troops.
The 18-month timetable to begin withdrawal was the standard naïve liberal dogma that this would jolt the Afghan government into becoming a clean, democratic governing force that could effectively battle the Taliban.
Instead, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has made clear he doesn’t think the United States can win, is trying to cut deals with the Taliban and their patrons in the Pakistani military (also ostensibly an American ally), and has even threatened to join the Taliban if the United States keeps killing Afghan civilians.
Almost as bad, the troop surge to win military advantage for negotiations with the Taliban has been a bust. Marja has not been tamed, and the offensive in Kandahar has been significantly delayed.
But the very premise that the zealous Taliban would negotiate instead of waiting for the Americans, historically with a limited attention span, to leave resembles the same flawed assumptions the United States made about the North Vietnamese during the war in Southeast Asia.
Like the North Vietnamese, the Afghan Taliban want their country back from the foreign occupier and have a longer time horizon than the Americans.
Furthermore, Afghans have been accustomed to continuous war for more than 30 years, hate foreigners, and know that their history indicates that would-be foreign rulers can be out-waited — as they have many times before.
These factors illustrate that U.S. neoconservatives are equally naïve to believe that without the 18-month deadline, the U.S. has a prayer of success in historically unforgiving Afghanistan — however that vague term is defined.
Eighteen months is not long enough to ramp up a comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy that could win “hearts and minds,” but the aforementioned underlying realities make it unlikely that even an 18-year counterinsurgency strategy would work (the U.S. government has already spent nine years without getting it right).
Finally, the Taliban may be violent and ruthless, but in the eyes of the Pashtun people, the dominant group in Afghanistan, they are the only hope for Pashtuns.
Even though Hamid Karzai is a Pashtun, he is regarded among them as a puppet of the United States and rival Uzbek and Tajik groups. Thus is explained the curious support of many Afghans for the brutal Taliban.
This major factor is often ignored in overly optimistic forecasts of the potential for U.S. pacification of Afghanistan.
The only solution is to cut the U.S. losses and leave Afghanistan for good.
The good news is that removal of U.S. occupation forces from a Muslim land might actually reduce blowback anti-U.S. terrorism around the world.
Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. Dr. Eland has spent 15 years working for Congress on national security issues, including stints as an investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. His books include The Empire Has No Clothes: US Foreign Policy Exposed, and Putting “Defense” Back into US Defense Policy.
Begin Excerpt 2 from Yahoo! News via AFP and Fox News
McCain slams US withdrawal date from Afghanistan
AFP
FOX NEWS
Sun Jul 4, 1:50 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – US Senator John McCain Sunday slammed the July 2011 target for beginning to pull US troops out of Afghanistan, saying setting a firm date for withdrawal would raise questions about US commitment there.
“I’m concerned about the perception of our friends and our enemies as well as the people in Afghanistan, as to the depth of our commitment,” McCain told ABC news in an interview from Kabul.
The Republican lawmaker and former prisoner of war said the policy of announcing a planned draw down date was a “bad idea,” and that the United States should only leave Afghan istan when the country
is stable enough to maintain a strong government.
“I’m all for dates of withdrawal, but that’ s after the
strategy succeeds, not before.
That’s a dramatic difference,” he said.
Afghanistan’s ambassador to the United States, Said Jawad, agreed on CNN. He said any deadline must be “based on the reality on the ground,” to send a clear message that “NATO and Afghans are there to finish the job.”
“If we had a fully functioning system in Afghanistan, there would be no need for the rest of the world to be there.
It will take some time,” he said. “The threat of terrorism is still imminent.”
McCain warned that the Taliban would fill any vacuum left by departing US troops.
“I know enough about warfare,” he said. “I know enough about what strategy and tactics are about.”
“If you tell the enemy that you’re leaving on a date certain, unequivocally, then that enemy will wait until you leave,” he said.
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