I don't get what the alternative is. We have tried to kill our way out of this war through DA raids and tried COIN and neither has worked. We've been at it over a decade now.

What other card to we have left to play besides negotiation? (that we haven't tried already, that we can afford, that will take the amount of time the public is willing to wait)

I ask this with very little confidence that releasing these prisoners will lead to anything meaningful.

How about someone murders several of your family members or closest friends, and is let walk after a few months in jail because he promised not to do it again?

Are you okay with that?

We are 4th and 1 right now. Either finish the job right or get out.

TR

No sir I'm not..........:mad:

Big Teddy :munchin

I'm going to leave the first part alone because I don't think it makes the decision any clearer. There are lots of things that both parties have done in this conflict that I'm not 'okay with.'

When you say 'finish the job right', I'm not sure what you mean. More of what we've been doing, more DA raids and increased troops, more COIN projects and more outposts in more provinces? I think we've tried plenty of all that.

'Getting out' is going to require some kind of squirmy negotiation, with this looking like a painful bump in that process.

Based on history and Afghan culture, I think this war was headed for an end based on political accommodation from the minute it started. I see our negotiations as an avenue to get there even as they appear morally poisonous and doomed to hold little weight once we withdraw.

You can continue to study international affairs all you want. I have a Master's Degree in it. But that degree does me no good without reliable experience to back it up.

I believe when TR stated finishing it up right he means (TR correct me if I misinterpreted) we need to go in with the power of not just DoD, but every other department and clean house. Have you ever studied the Powell theory?

Either we go in with everything we got, and ensure there is a clear winner, much like WWI and WWII, or we go home. If we had done that from the start then things would be very different. Do you believe there would have been any way Europe or Japan for that matter would have turned out the way they did after the war if there hadn't been a clear unadulterated winner telling everyone what to do and how it would be done?

There is another theory out there called "give war a chance" that clearly highlights how not allowing one belligerent to win, and by stepping in with peacekeepers/peace enforcers only draws out the conflict and kills more people because one belligerent wasn't beaten into submission.

So in review, go in hard with all you have, decimate your enemy, or don't even bother.

I'm familiar with both and largely agree with their tenets. I'm not sure how the Powell Doctrine or Give War A Chance informs what we should do now that we're this far down the road, at a juncture where we're talking negotiations and releasing of prisoners, unless you're supporting invoking the Powell Doctrine starting now, 10+ years into the war.

I suppose we could send a Powell sized (540k troops) army to Afghanistan starting tomorrow but funding, public support and political capital would be in short supply. The last doubling of forces had little effect on the trajectory of the conflict. These are things we all know.

If your years of reliable experience tell you that that's a preferable option to negotiation with the enemy at this point then I guess we disagree.

Edit: I guess you could also mean that we should not negotiate and that the preferable option is to just leave, maybe I misunderstood you.

Question: How would the Powell doctrine apply to non/psuedo-state actors who pursue a campaign of terror and do not follow any sort of established "rules of war"? Especially in the case of Afghanistan, where the lines between civilian and combatant are so heavily blurred, aside from complete annihilation, how is a clear winner defined?

[QUOTE=The Reaper;447798

We are 4th and 1 right now. Either finish the job right or get out.

TR[/QUOTE]

As no one can define what the "finish", the "job", or "right" is suppose to look like, I'll take the latter option.

At least they're trying to get something out of releasing the detainees... because they would neeever just let them go for no reason, right?

I am a firm believer in given what has already transpired it is time for us to pull out and let the savages kill one another. If we would have gone in with overwhelming force in the beginning maybe I would think differently.

We have spilt too much blood over a people who has no need or want of a better way of life. But I also believe we need them to understand that if they attack us again they will become a glass parking lot.

Let the HMFIC who has had boots on the ground the longest make the decision. Too many political yahoos have their irons in the fire, as usual, going back to Korea.

I guarantee you he'd say the same thing The Reaper stated; shit or get off the pot.

Magnolia, how much overseas time do you have in the military or diplomatic corps?

Have you ever worked on a FID or COIN assignment?

TR

From the "Without Fear or Favor" outfit...
 

LINK to purported rationale
HAILEY, Idaho — The parents of the only American soldier held captive by Afghan insurgents have broken a yearlong silence about the status of their son, abruptly making public that he is a focus of secret negotiations between the Obama administration and the Taliban over a proposed prisoner exchange.

The negotiations, currently stalled, involved a trade of five Taliban prisoners held at the American military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl of the Army, who is believed to be held by the militant Haqqani network in the tribal area of Pakistan’s northwest frontier, on the Afghan border. Sergeant Bergdahl was captured in Paktika Province in Afghanistan on June 30, 2009. His family has not heard from him in a year, since they saw him in a Taliban video, although they and the Pentagon believe that he is alive and well.

(Extracts)
The two are Ron Paul supporters and have turned increasingly against the war in Afghanistan, although they support the president’s plan not to withdraw most American troops until 2014.

“He has never contacted us,” Jani Bergdahl said about Mr. Obama. “We haven’t gotten a Hallmark card, we haven’t gotten a note signed by an aide, nothing. Is it because he thinks we’re not Democrats?”

ooooooooooo...kay
Rest at the link above.