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View Full Version : Did the surge work in Afghanistan??


MtnGoat
10-11-2012, 18:54
Seem like this is the talk in Stars and Stripes and other places.

The Afghan war: Do the numbers add up to success?

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/10/09/170994/the-afghan-war-do-the-numbers.html#storylink=cpy

There is zero question that the Surge in Iraq functioned well as to reducing violence and giving the nascent post-Saddam Iraq at least a chance to avoid a true civil war, like Baghdad as Beirut in the seventies.

That didn't happen in Iraq, and it may, or may not, be avoided in Kabul and Afghanistan in general, although it is clear that the Surge in Afghanistan didn't work as well as in Iraq, raising the question of why?

The bottom line is local and external conditions were different in ways unfavorable to Afghanistan compared to Iraq, if that doesn't mean the Surge didn't work, or that ultimately Afghanistan will fall back into civil war of the form that had artillery duels in Kabul in the early nineties.


Then you have this one here..

The Afghan war: Do the numbers add up to success?

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/10/09/170994/the-afghan-war-do-the-numbers.html#storylink=cpy

By Matthew Schofield | McClatchy Newspapers




WASHINGTON — The 33,000 U.S. troops ordered to Afghanistan two years ago to stop Taliban advances are back home, with military officials claiming that the surge accomplished its objectives.

But did it?

“In mid-2009 there was a real risk that the mission in Afghanistan might very well fail,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said recently. “Today the situation is very much different and improved.”

Violence is down, Panetta said, echoing a refrain heard around the Pentagon.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/10/09/170994/the-afghan-war-do-the-numbers.html#storylink=cpy

MtnGoat
10-11-2012, 19:01
Was it a failure?? Only the people that write book will say whether it was a success or it wasn’t.

Over the past two to three years, there has been a major effort to expand the Afghan Army, police and Internal Ministries for this Surge. But while there has been an increase in all their numbers, quality will take some time seem to be the latest hits. I really don’t care how many U.S. Trainers you put in Afghanistan , it is the people that make up Afghanistan. For 30 to 40 years they have been living with back stabbing and living on if I don’t do it no one will.

Then you have the relationship of The CIA-ISI which has been a disaster since the Soviet occupation in the 80’s and has been a major obstacle to the rise of secular, modernist Afghan leaders to positions of power which has lead to many of the problems we currently have in Afghanistan. Both in their Goverment and Military sides!!

If the surge didn’t work.. then why?? With the overall violence in Iraq declined steeply after the 2008 surge there. What attributes this to other factors besides the arrival of U.S. combat reinforcements? Oh you have ones that say it is the Sunni Awakening against al Qaeda in Anbar province, the erection of security barriers between neighborhoods in Baghdad, a unilateral cease-fire by some Shiite militias, ETC. These factors could all have occurred without the arrival of additional U.S. forces. Why did Iraq work?? Why has Afghanistan not?? The people and the two DIFFERENT Countries, that why you frickin reporter. Something that works in Southern United Sates doesn’t mean it will work in California or the PNW.

Then you have the views that the Surge was mainly just in the Southern Afghan areas or providences. IMO no matter how much you push the given the nature of what we’re trying to do here, we don’t expect to be going in one single, linear positive direction with positive results is just crazy talk. How about that with each new BSO and Change of Command here we are more like going up and down and backward a few steps any direction and then forward a few more weeks. Then what?? Progress even at the village level is never nested between elements. With each District within providence being different from the next due to its sub-tribal make up, drives so much in Afghanistan. Then you have the cultural issues, and I’ll pull out of the book that keeps getting used. No one has won the Hearts and Minds of the WHOLE Afghans. Not on ruler, Pashtun or external has won over this entire country called Afghanistan. This country will never be a melting pot.

So why is the Surge going the way it is.. Only thing I can say, it is the Afghans. What they want at all their different levels. The big cities, to the Provisional Levels, to the District Centers to the farmer in that Eastern Village to the Heroin Trafficker in the South or West.

mark46th
10-12-2012, 08:35
American thinking is problematic in dealing with a culture such as the the Afghans. Americans tend to put things in black and white- We went there we did this, it is over and done. The Taliban know Obama has said the U.S. is leaving, they will let the Americans believe whatever they want so long as they leave. I have said before that if the U.S. is really serious about making a difference in Afghanistan, it will be a multi-generational comittment.

We have witnessed what happens when the U.S. military is pulled out of a country. leaving monsters in charge. If anyone thinks the Taliban is less malevolent than Pol Pot, you are telling yourself a story.

I find it abhorrant to leave a country that allows grown men to throw acid in little girls faces because they attend school or shoot one in the head because she wants to be a doctor. MOO

JSMosby
10-12-2012, 19:45
No one will ever win in Afghanistan so long as the goal is to try and change them. I often use the analogy of trying to change ants from wanting to get the picnic basket.

Pericles
10-19-2012, 10:38
As a conventional guy, I'd say it did not achieve any strategic objective. It was a do something move using an arbitrary force addition not based on any tactical or strategic plan.