Attached is a good read on Afghanistan from General Barry R. McCaffrey USA

[kallend 2,184]

Attached.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[vortexring 0]

Indeed. An area (and there are many), worth highlighting is:

"Many of these troops and their leaders through general officer level are on their 4th or more combat deployments since
“911.” We have suffered 36,000 US killed and wounded. Their families are getting tired. The country is not at war. The
Armed Forces and the CIA are at war. We are at the point of breaking faith with our troops.
Much of our ground and air equipment is falling apart. The anemic US Air Force and Naval modernization programs will
place us in great risk in the Pacific in the coming decades. The Armed Forces are under-resourced and inadequately sized
for the national security strategy we have pursued.
There is a serious mismatch between ends and means. We are going to wreck the US Armed Forces unless Congress and
the next Administration address this situation of great strategic peril.

(How many NATO countries involved in Afghan. are saying literally the same thing?)

11. SUMMARY:

We cannot allow ourselves to fail in Afghanistan.

NATO is central to achieving our purpose.


This is a generational war to build an Afghan state and prevent the creation of a lawless, extremist region which will host
and sustain enduring threats to the vital national security interests of the United States and our key allies."



The subject of Pakistan, whilst covered, isn't covered in depth. Sure, he says:

"We must do no harm dealing with Pakistan. We clearly can strike directly and covertly across the border in self-defense. We must never publicly put the Pakistani
military in political peril with their own people."

But this; from another article, has more pertinent information regarding the two countries:


"In theory, the Pakistani government has signed up to the war on terror and is trying as best it can to help us. But in practice, it is playing a dangerous double game. The Pakistani government, army and intelligence services all have their own distinct reasons for keeping the Taleban in business. The Pakistan army effectively ceded Quetta to the Taleban six years ago, for example, hoping their brutal methods would deal with local Baluchistan separatists.

Inside the UK Ministry of Defence the name Quetta is spat out like a curse by British commanders who know they are fighting a lopsided war. ‘We have to start looking at this area as a whole battlefield, Pakistan included,’ one senior MoD source tells me. ‘Because that’s what the locals are doing. We have to think the same way.’ But they cannot admit as much in public. Handling an insurgency is one thing, but any war involving a nuclear-armed country like Pakistan is almost too frightening a prospect to consider.

Quietly, the problem of Pakistan’s terrorist-infested border areas has overtaken Iran to become the British government’s most acute foreign policy challenge. In fact, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) of Pakistan can lay good claim to be the most prolific terrorist zone anywhere in the world, thanks to its substantial al-Qa’eda camps. The London, Madrid, Bali and Islamabad bombings were all planned there. MI5 believe half the British terror suspects they are currently monitoring were originally trained in Fata camps.

The problem is becoming too big to ignore. There are an estimated 8,000 foreign militants in Fata, from Arabs to Chechens, operating sophisticated training camps with impunity.

The American failure to understand the complexity of the Pakistan problem is perhaps one of the biggest strategic errors of the war in Afghanistan. President Pervaiz Musharraf reluctantly agreed to join the war on terror, and Washington was keen to take him at his word. But as the Taleban fell, the Pakistani security establishment opened an escape hatch for the enemy by removing their troops from the border of the Fata, allowing the Taleban to relocate. The jihadis now have bases, broadcasting stations and the protection of being in a territory that is part of a nuclear-armed state. The West invaded Afghanistan to stop terrorism being given a state home. Yet al-Qa’eda is alive, well and living in Fata.

Just what to do about this is a source of deep division in Washington. Pakistan is deeply nervous about any American incursions into its territory — even if it is territory like Fata where the Pakistan army itself suffered heavy losses at the hands of the Taleban. Britain is pushing hard for a diplomatic solution, saying that no incursion can succeed without the backing of the Pakistani military, which is geared up to fight India, not to track down insurgents. And anyway, after years of failed policy, and being played like a fiddle by President Musharraf, America is losing patience. The Pentagon provided helicopter gunships to Musharraf that were intended for fighting the Taleban — only to see them used to mow down separatists in the Baluchistan province."

'for it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "chuck 'im out, the brute!" But it's "saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot.'

[Amazon 7]

Quote

Many of these troops and their leaders through general officer level are on their 4th or more combat deployments since
“911.” We have suffered 36,000 US killed and wounded. Their families are getting tired. The country is not at war. The
Armed Forces and the CIA are at war. We are at the point of breaking faith with our troops.
Much of our ground and air equipment is falling apart. The anemic US Air Force and Naval modernization programs will
place us in great risk in the Pacific in the coming decades. The Armed Forces are under-resourced and inadequately sized
for the national security strategy we have pursued.
There is a serious mismatch between ends and means. We are going to wreck the US Armed Forces unless Congress and
the next Administration address this situation of great strategic peril.
11. SUMMARY:

You have to wonder where all the money this administration has spent.. went to....oh thats right....into thier friends pockets....never mind.

[ErricoMalatesta 0]

It was a good read for an example of elite bullshit.

I'm sure Goebbels was saying the same stuff about a 'generation of state building' while Germany occupied France.