View Full Version : Fantasy And Reality In Afghanistan
This is a pretty good summary of something to be considered.
We need to come to terms with Afghanistan’s realities rather than attempting to impose our fantasies on it.
Richard :munchin
Fantasy And Reality In Afghanistan
WaPo, 29 Feb 2012
The controversy over the desecration of copies of the Koran in Afghanistan and the murder of Americans that followed is, on one level, one moment in a long war. But it also highlights the difficult and ultimately unsustainable aspect of America’s Afghan policy. President Obama wants to draw down troops, but his strategy remains to transition power and authority to an Afghan national army and police force as well as to the government in Kabul, which would run the country and its economy. This is a fantasy. We must recognize that and pursue a more realistic alternative.
The United States tends to enter wars in developing countries with a simple idea — modernize the country, and you will solve the national security problem. An articulation of that American approach came from none other than Newt Gingrich during a 2010 speech at the American Enterprise Institute. We are failing in Afghanistan, Gingrich argued, because “we have not flooded the country with highways, we haven’t guaranteed that every Afghan has a cellphone, we haven’t undertaken the logical steps towards fundamentally modernizing their society, we haven’t developed a program to help farmers get off of growing drugs.”
Now, assuming that every Afghan got a cellphone and could travel on great highways, here is what would not change: The Afghan national government does not have the support of a large segment of its population, the Pashtuns. The national army is regarded as an army of Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras — the old Northern Alliance that battled the Pashtuns throughout the 1990s.
And, simply put, Afghanistan’s economy cannot support a large national government with a huge army. (The budget for Afghan security forces is around $12 billion. That is eight times the amount of the government’s annual revenue.)
As America has discovered in countless places over the past five decades, there are problems with the nation-building approach.
First, it is extremely difficult to modernize a country in a few years.
Second, even if this were possible, the fundamental characteristics of that society — ethnicity, religion, and national and geopolitical orientation — would persist.
In Iraq, the United States believed it had an opportunity to remake the country into a model pro-Western democracy. It went in with grand ambitions and an unlimited budget. Today, Iraq has become a Shiite-dominated state that has systematically excluded Sunnis, driven out almost all of its Christians, and tilted its foreign policy toward Iran and Syria. The Kurds have effectively seceded, creating their own one-party statelets in the north. Iraq is much, much better off than it was under Saddam Hussein’s rule, but the country has developed along the lines of its history, ethnicity and geopolitics — not American ideological hopes.
We need to come to terms with Afghanistan’s realities rather than attempting to impose our fantasies on it. That means recognizing that the Afghan government will not magically become effective and legitimate — no matter how many cellphones we buy or power lines we install. Because they represent many Pashtuns, the Taliban will inevitably hold some sway in southern and eastern Afghanistan. More crucially, we will not be able to stop Pakistan’s government from maintaining sanctuaries for Taliban militants. And no guerrilla movement that has had a set of sanctuaries — let alone the active help of a powerful military like Pakistan’s — has ever been eliminated.
Accepting reality in Afghanistan would not leave America without options. Even with a smaller troop presence, we can pursue robust counterterrorism operations. We will be able to prevent the Taliban from again taking over the country. The north and east — populated by Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras — will stay staunchly opposed to the Taliban. We should support those groups and, more crucially, ally with the neighboring countries that support them. The natural, and historic, allies of the Northern Alliance are India, Iran and Russia; they have permanent interests that will keep them involved in the region. We should try to align our strategy with those countries’ strategies (obviously, the alignment will be tacit with Iran).
The United States could, of course, maintain its current approach, which is to bet on the success of not one but two large nation-building projects. We have to create an effective national government in Kabul that is loved and respected by all Afghans, whatever their ethnicity, and expand the Afghan economy so that a large national army and police force are sustainable for the long term. To succeed, we would also have to alter Pakistan’s character to create a civilian-dominated state that could shift the strategic orientation of the Islamabad government so that it shuts down the Taliban sanctuaries and starts fighting the very groups it has created and supported for at least three decades. Does anyone really think this will happen?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fantasy-and-reality-in-afghanistan/2012/02/29/gIQA3ABBjR_story.html
Interesting article that drives a similar point on our domestic front:
We need to come to terms with our government spending and energy realities rather than attempting to impose our fantasies on it.
A little more reality and a little less fantasy would perhaps serve our leaders at home as well - our politicians fantasies and self delusions know few bounds.
greenberetTFS
03-01-2012, 10:49
A-stan as one of the QP's once stated is America's "Tar Baby",and I believe that's the best explanation we can give regarding our involvement there now.........:mad: We should get out ASAP before another American soldiers life is taken.......:mad:
Big Teddy :munchin
However, Afghanistan post-WWII thru the '70s was not at all jacked up like it is today. Was fairly modern, tolerant and a tourist destination.
I'm not saying that we're moving things in the right direction, doing things that we should be doing or that it is even possible to roll things back and get a historical "do over" on the backward slide into medieval islamo-land ... just that this article omits the fact that Afghan was not always as jacked up as it is now.
However, Afghanistan post-WWII thru the '70s was not at all jacked up like it is today. Was fairly modern, tolerant and a tourist destination.
I'm not saying that we're moving things in the right direction, doing things that we should be doing or that it is even possible to roll things back and get a historical "do over" on the backward slide into medieval islamo-land ... just that this article omits the fact that Afghan was not always as jacked up as it is now.
Not really...Kabul was fairly modern as it is today...alot like Istanbul is fairly modern in Turkey....the rest of the Country is in the 12-14th Century
Iraqgunz
03-01-2012, 14:10
I agree 100%. It's time to get out of here. Sooner than later.
tom kelly
03-01-2012, 14:42
I agree 100%. It's time to get out of here. Sooner than later.
A-Stan is an a political and economic disaster; Time for the USA to leave.Just my .02...TK
Did the armed forces accomplish the mission they were sent there to complete?
Did the armed forces accomplish the mission they were sent there to complete?
...good question.
Does anyone know exactly what that mission was?
Does anyone know exactly what that mission was?
Return SF to its frontier cavalry roots?
Richard :munchin
The Reaper
03-18-2012, 09:38
...good question.
Does anyone know exactly what that mission was?
My understanding was that it was to eliminate al-Qaeda and the conditions that permitted it to flourish, which meant the ending of Taliban control of Afghanistan.
Those conditions were probably met within the first six months of the campaign.
I believe that (right or wrong) the extension of the objective of preventing Taliban return and the continuing hunt for Bin Laden was interpreted as requiring a friendly, stable, pro-US, anti-Taliban Afghan government.
That lead to the nation building we have been involved in for the last ten years.
TR
Dozer523
03-18-2012, 10:03
A-Stan is an a political and economic disaster; Time for the USA to leave.Just my .02...TKDisater? well counting -- Deficit disaster, personal disater, marital disaster, medical disaster -- yeah. But definately NOT economic. Ask MPRI, Blackwater, KBR, SSSC, Tactical Tailor, The CAV Store, anyone who could produce and market anything "cool" . . . ad infinatum, ad nauseum. We should fund wars the WWII way; with war bonds.
I know what you mean , though, Tom.
The shooters should heve left in 2007. But the surge worked "So Well" in Iraq. We should have "surged" CA teams, farmer-advisors and irrigation and power engineers. oh well . . .
olhamada
03-18-2012, 12:25
A-Stan is an a political and economic disaster; Time for the USA to leave.Just my .02...TK
It was time to get out of there in 2003 - when we took our eyes off the ball, changed our mission, and removed assets to engage Iraq. All we've been doing since is spinning our wheels. Just my $0.02.
greenberetTFS
03-18-2012, 16:24
A-Stan is an a political and economic disaster; Time for the USA to leave.Just my .02...TK
I totally agree with Tom 100%,lets just leave........:( :( :(
Big Teddy :munchin
In your opinion, does simply leaving Afghanistan not do an injustice to the troops that left their lives there? I've always wondered about this perhaps somewhat philosophical question. I guess it depends on the paradigm one takes as to who the troops are ultimately fighting for, but since I have not served I don't feel comfortable opining on the subject.
Nevertheless, I have noticed the dichotomy of currently held positions, namely (1) "Our brothers shed blood for this purpose, now let us get the job done (in their honor)" and (2) "This is a cause not worth fighting for, and not one more American life should be lost. We need to get out" - I've also noticed that our current "strategy" falls somewhere between those two extremes, i.e. the US has neither committed fully, nor pulled out decisively.
It seems that as the war winds down questions along the lines of "What was achieved, and at what cost?" are raised more often, for example by the movie "Restrepo".
Can someone help me "get it"?
Streck-Fu
03-19-2012, 06:24
In your opinion, does simply leaving Afghanistan not do an injustice to the troops that left their lives there?
It would be a far greater injustice to continue sacrificing lives there.
Here's a little peice I was sent via email from a respectable retired Army Officer. I couldn't agree more with this summation. I'm sure this will ruffle some feathers! :lifter
SOLDIER MURDERS AFGHANS, GENERALS MURDER SOLDIERS
Ralph Peters
To The Point
Thursday, 15 march 2012
It was only a matter of time before one of our men broke down.
On Sunday, March 11, just before dawn, an American staff sergeant walked away from his post in the badlands of Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, went into a nearby village, and methodically murdered sixteen civilians, including women and children. This didn't happen in the confusion of a firefight amidst the "fog of war." It was the brutal act of a veteran who cracked. The deed cannot be excused. But I believe it can be explained.
For a final analysis we'll have to wait until all of the facts come in, but it appears that a soldier who had served honorably during multiple tours in Iraq broke down and went mad in Afghanistan. We should not be surprised that this happened. We should be surprised that it hasn't happened sooner and more often:
The shock of this incident after a decade of hopeless, meandering efforts that have thrown away the lives and limbs of our troops while ambitious generals lie about progress, seek promotion, and engage in military masturbation is actually a tribute to our men and women in uniform out on the front lines (to the extent that "front lines" exist).
That staff sergeant-who turned himself in after the killings-is guilty of murder in a degree yet to be determined, but the amazing thing is how disciplined, patient and tenacious our troops have been. Given the outrageous stresses of serving repeated tours in an environment a brand-new private could recognize as hopeless (while his generals fly back and forth congratulating themselves), it's remarkable that we have not seen more and even uglier incidents.
The problem in Afghanistan isn't our troops - although craven generals routinely insist that everything is the fault of "disrespectful" soldiers - it's a leadership in and out of uniform that is bankrupt of ideas, bankrupt of ethics, bankrupt of moral courage-and rich only in self-interest and ambition.
If there's a "battle cry" in Afghanistan, it's "Blame the troops!" Generals out of touch with the ugly, brute reality on the ground down in the Taliban-sympathizing villages respond to every seeming crisis in Afghan-American relations by telling our troops to "respect Afghan culture."
But generals don't have a clue about Afghan "culture." They interact with well-educated, privileged, English-speaking Afghans who know exactly which American buttons to press to keep the tens of billions of dollars in annual aid flowing.
The troops, on the other hand, daily encounter villagers who will not warn them about Taliban-planted booby traps or roadside bombs, who obviously want them to leave, who relish the abject squalor in which they live and who appear to value the lives of their animals above those of their women.
When our Soldiers and Marines hear, yet again, that they need to "respect Afghan culture," they must want to puke up their rations.
When I was a young officer in training, we mocked the European "chateaux generals" of the First World War who gave their orders from elegant headquarters without ever experiencing the reality faced by the troops in the trenches. We never thought that we'd have chateaux generals of our own, but now we do.
Flying down to visit an outpost and staying just long enough to pin on a medal or two, get a dog-and-pony-show briefing and have a well-scripted tea session with a carefully selected "good" tribal elder, then winging straight back to a well-protected headquarters where the electronics are more real than the troops is not the way to develop a "fingertips feel" for on-the-ground reality.
Add in the human capacity for self-delusion, and you have a surefire prescription for failure.
Right now, our troops are being used as props in a campaign year, as pawns by dull-witted generals who just don't know what else to do, and as cash cows by corrupt Afghan politicians, generals and warlords (all of whom agree that it's virtuous to rob the Americans blind).
What are our goals? What is our strategy? We're told, endlessly, that things are improving in Afghanistan, yet, ten years ago, a U.S. Army general, unarmed, could walk the streets of Kabul without risk. Today, there is no city in Afghanistan where a U.S. general could stroll the streets. We may not have a genius for war, but we sure do have a genius for kidding ourselves.
Now we're told that we have to stay to build the Afghan military and police. Jesus, Mary and Joseph! And Allah's knickers, too!
We've been training and equipping the Afghan army and the Afghan cops (and robbers) for ten years. In World War II, we turned out a mass military of our own in a year or so. The problem in Afghanistan isn't that we haven't tried, but that the Afghans are not interested in fighting for the exuberantly corrupt Karzai regime.
Right now, our troops are dying to preserve a filthy Kabul government whose president blatantly stole the last election and which has no hope of gaining the support of its own people. Meanwhile, despite repeated claims that the Taliban is on its last legs, the religious fanatics remain the home team backed by Afghanistan's Pashtun majority. (If the people didn't back them, the Taliban would, indeed, have been long gone-we need to face reality.)
Recently, another friend, who clings to (now-retired) General Petraeus's counterinsurgency notion that, if we just hang on and give the Afghans enough free stuff, they'll come around to the American way of life, told me, yet again, "You should hear the intercepts we get from the low-level Taliban fighters...they're in a panic..."
That's the old Vietnam line: "We win every firefight!" Sure, we whip the Taliban every time we catch them with their weapons (if they're not holding weapons, we can't engage, even if they just killed Americans). But we dare not attack the Taliban leadership in Pakistan, where it's protected by our "allies." And no matter how many Taliban we kill, they still attract volunteers willing to die for their cause. The Afghans we train turn their guns on us.
It appears that the staff sergeant who murdered those Afghan villagers had cracked under the stresses of a war we won't allow our troops to fight. But the real madness is at the top, in the White House, where President Obama can't see past the November election; in Congress, where Republicans cling to whatever war they've got; and in uniform, where our generals have run out of ideas and moral courage.
That staff sergeant murdered sixteen Afghans. Our own leaders have murdered thousands and maimed tens of thousands of our own troops out of vanity, ambition and inertia. Who deserves our sympathy?
In war, soldiers die. But they shouldn't die for bull manure.
US Army LtCol (ret) Ralph Peters' latest book is Cain at Gettysburg.
1stindoor
03-19-2012, 07:59
Thanks for that article. Here's another, by another retired Officer, this one a retired MG.
Consumed by wars without end
By robert h. scales
First Published Mar 14 2012 07:00 pm • Last Updated Mar 14 2012 11:34 pm
I guess I knew it would eventually come down to this: Blame the Army’s institutions in some way for the horrific and senseless slaughter of 16 innocent Afghan civilians in Kandahar, allegedly by a U.S. infantry noncommissioned officer.
In their search for a villain, the media seem to be focusing now on Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state, where the accused soldier was stationed before his fourth deployment to a combat zone.
Before we get too involved in attacking institutions, perhaps it may be right and proper to suggest that the underlying issue here is not the failure of our Army. Could the issue perhaps be that no institutional effort can make up for trying over the past 10 years to fight too many wars with too few soldiers?
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/opinion/53717260-82/combat-army-infantry-soldiers.html.csp
Geenie - I don't think you'll be able to find anyone to clue you in as we are ALL in the dark. NOBODY knows what we are trying to do over there. Is there anyone - with a straight face - who can say in one sentence what it is we are trying to accomplish....????
We met our strategic goals in about three weeks. We screwed up in our arrogance to think that we can bring these savages out of the 4th century. We screwed up by THINKING they wanted what WE had to offer them.
The Reaper
03-19-2012, 16:33
Thanks for that article. Here's another, by another retired Officer, this one a retired MG.
Great ideas, cutting troop strength, weapons, pay, benefits, and retirement.
I wonder who will be around to fight the next war?
Might be time to pull out the draft again, if we do not want to pay for a professional force any more.
TR
Geenie - I don't think you'll be able to find anyone to clue you in as we are ALL in the dark. NOBODY knows what we are trying to do over there. Is there anyone - with a straight face - who can say in one sentence what it is we are trying to accomplish....
Hey I'll throw this out there.... We kepted people there and continuing to build up there monies in peoples and corporations pockets. L3, MPRI, Blackwater, KBR, Dyocorps, BHA, General Dynamics, and Politicians and there cronies.
We have been playing darts and poker for 8 years. Our neighborhood legend resolutions sucks. We can play games but our overall game plans suck.
I'm one to say it is a injustice to stay. Most don't die from a straight on fist fight. They (Talib) can't hang. It's those frinkin IEDs.
For all there.. be safe and see you soon enough. :munchin
Old Dog New Trick
03-19-2012, 18:27
Can someone help me "get it"?
I don't know if this analogy will help, but
"If a dog chases its own tail long enough and hard enough, eventually he will catch it and bite down hard. Some dogs repeat this painful exercise never learning from each time before."
:rolleyes:
tom kelly
03-19-2012, 19:32
Here's a little peice I was sent via email from a respectable retired Army Officer. I couldn't agree more with this summation. I'm sure this will ruffle some feathers! :lifter
SOLDIER MURDERS AFGHANS, GENERALS MURDER SOLDIERS
Ralph Peters
To The Point
Thursday, 15 march 2012
It was only a matter of time before one of our men broke down.
On Sunday, March 11, just before dawn, an American staff sergeant walked away from his post in the badlands of Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, went into a nearby village, and methodically murdered sixteen civilians, including women and children. This didn't happen in the confusion of a firefight amidst the "fog of war." It was the brutal act of a veteran who cracked. The deed cannot be excused. But I believe it can be explained.
For a final analysis we'll have to wait until all of the facts come in, but it appears that a soldier who had served honorably during multiple tours in Iraq broke down and went mad in Afghanistan. We should not be surprised that this happened. We should be surprised that it hasn't happened sooner and more often:
The shock of this incident after a decade of hopeless, meandering efforts that have thrown away the lives and limbs of our troops while ambitious generals lie about progress, seek promotion, and engage in military masturbation is actually a tribute to our men and women in uniform out on the front lines (to the extent that "front lines" exist).
That staff sergeant-who turned himself in after the killings-is guilty of murder in a degree yet to be determined, but the amazing thing is how disciplined, patient and tenacious our troops have been. Given the outrageous stresses of serving repeated tours in an environment a brand-new private could recognize as hopeless (while his generals fly back and forth congratulating themselves), it's remarkable that we have not seen more and even uglier incidents.
The problem in Afghanistan isn't our troops - although craven generals routinely insist that everything is the fault of "disrespectful" soldiers - it's a leadership in and out of uniform that is bankrupt of ideas, bankrupt of ethics, bankrupt of moral courage-and rich only in self-interest and ambition.
If there's a "battle cry" in Afghanistan, it's "Blame the troops!" Generals out of touch with the ugly, brute reality on the ground down in the Taliban-sympathizing villages respond to every seeming crisis in Afghan-American relations by telling our troops to "respect Afghan culture."
But generals don't have a clue about Afghan "culture." They interact with well-educated, privileged, English-speaking Afghans who know exactly which American buttons to press to keep the tens of billions of dollars in annual aid flowing.
The troops, on the other hand, daily encounter villagers who will not warn them about Taliban-planted booby traps or roadside bombs, who obviously want them to leave, who relish the abject squalor in which they live and who appear to value the lives of their animals above those of their women.
When our Soldiers and Marines hear, yet again, that they need to "respect Afghan culture," they must want to puke up their rations.
When I was a young officer in training, we mocked the European "chateaux generals" of the First World War who gave their orders from elegant headquarters without ever experiencing the reality faced by the troops in the trenches. We never thought that we'd have chateaux generals of our own, but now we do.
Flying down to visit an outpost and staying just long enough to pin on a medal or two, get a dog-and-pony-show briefing and have a well-scripted tea session with a carefully selected "good" tribal elder, then winging straight back to a well-protected headquarters where the electronics are more real than the troops is not the way to develop a "fingertips feel" for on-the-ground reality.
Add in the human capacity for self-delusion, and you have a surefire prescription for failure.
Right now, our troops are being used as props in a campaign year, as pawns by dull-witted generals who just don't know what else to do, and as cash cows by corrupt Afghan politicians, generals and warlords (all of whom agree that it's virtuous to rob the Americans blind).
What are our goals? What is our strategy? We're told, endlessly, that things are improving in Afghanistan, yet, ten years ago, a U.S. Army general, unarmed, could walk the streets of Kabul without risk. Today, there is no city in Afghanistan where a U.S. general could stroll the streets. We may not have a genius for war, but we sure do have a genius for kidding ourselves.
Now we're told that we have to stay to build the Afghan military and police. Jesus, Mary and Joseph! And Allah's knickers, too!
We've been training and equipping the Afghan army and the Afghan cops (and robbers) for ten years. In World War II, we turned out a mass military of our own in a year or so. The problem in Afghanistan isn't that we haven't tried, but that the Afghans are not interested in fighting for the exuberantly corrupt Karzai regime.
Right now, our troops are dying to preserve a filthy Kabul government whose president blatantly stole the last election and which has no hope of gaining the support of its own people. Meanwhile, despite repeated claims that the Taliban is on its last legs, the religious fanatics remain the home team backed by Afghanistan's Pashtun majority. (If the people didn't back them, the Taliban would, indeed, have been long gone-we need to face reality.)
Recently, another friend, who clings to (now-retired) General Petraeus's counterinsurgency notion that, if we just hang on and give the Afghans enough free stuff, they'll come around to the American way of life, told me, yet again, "You should hear the intercepts we get from the low-level Taliban fighters...they're in a panic..."
That's the old Vietnam line: "We win every firefight!" Sure, we whip the Taliban every time we catch them with their weapons (if they're not holding weapons, we can't engage, even if they just killed Americans). But we dare not attack the Taliban leadership in Pakistan, where it's protected by our "allies." And no matter how many Taliban we kill, they still attract volunteers willing to die for their cause. The Afghans we train turn their guns on us.
It appears that the staff sergeant who murdered those Afghan villagers had cracked under the stresses of a war we won't allow our troops to fight. But the real madness is at the top, in the White House, where President Obama can't see past the November election; in Congress, where Republicans cling to whatever war they've got; and in uniform, where our generals have run out of ideas and moral courage.
That staff sergeant murdered sixteen Afghans. Our own leaders have murdered thousands and maimed tens of thousands of our own troops out of vanity, ambition and inertia. Who deserves our sympathy?
In war, soldiers die. But they shouldn't die for bull manure.
US Army LtCol (ret) Ralph Peters' latest book is Cain at Gettysburg.
"Not every solder who lost his life in Vietnam...Died There;
and not every soldier who came home from Vietnam...Ever left there"
It is only going to get worse with multiple deployments for the same front line soldier, spending more time away from home & family with no end in sight the stress goes up untill depression sets in and everybody back home will read what the MSM (main stream media) reports as a horrible,unforseen, & isolated incident...The American people need to wake up & vote for sanity in Wash. D C. Our time is coming Tues. Nov.6, 2012 VOTE for sanity & not the 30 second sound bite....TK
Fantasy - A'stan will be anything but what it is.
Reality - A'stan is what it is.
Richard :munchin
LTC Peters is on target.......
The 'Afghan" culture is a larcenous patriarchal system based upon violence, graft, and personal greed....if a young man steals and it benefits the clan he is awarded for being 'crafty, a good business man'.
If you marry your 11 year old daughter to a 55 year old warlord you've done right by her and the clan...another crafty deal.
We should respect their culture by treating them as they treat themselves....violently and without mercy.
Again, leave asap with the note on the door saying "If you do anything to threaten us again we will return and kill everyone"
p.s. and your goats too.
LTC Peters is on target.......
The 'Afghan" culture is a larcenous patriarchal system based upon violence, graft, and personal greed....if a young man steals and it benefits the clan he is awarded for being 'crafty, a good business man'.
If you marry your 11 year old daughter to a 55 year old warlord you've done right by her and the clan...another crafty deal.
We should respect their culture by treating them as they treat themselves....violently and without mercy.
Again, leave asap with the note on the door saying "If you do anything to threaten us again we will return and kill everyone"
p.s. and your goats too.
I would add that we kill everyone and distroy your poppies .. gahans care as much for a goat as a little girl. A milk cow now that's different brother.
Well said too.
I still talk to old terps from Kandahar, Helmond, Oruzgan to Kabul. Most seem they can't believe what is going on now a days.
LTC Peters is on target.......
The 'Afghan" culture is a larcenous patriarchal system based upon violence, graft, and personal greed....if a young man steals and it benefits the clan he is awarded for being 'crafty, a good business man'.
If you marry your 11 year old daughter to a 55 year old warlord you've done right by her and the clan...another crafty deal.
We should respect their culture by treating them as they treat themselves....violently and without mercy.
Again, leave asap with the note on the door saying "If you do anything to threaten us again we will return and kill everyone"
p.s. and your goats too.
My sentiments exactly. If any of theirs threaten us we turn A'stan into a bright shiny mirror. Fuel air works well, and without the fallout! Just saying.