McChrystal: More Forces or 'Mission Failure'

[nmap]

Originally Posted by Rangertab1

Although our country has turned upside down, culturally speaking, there are still a few million damb fine Americans that will govern the future.

I would contend that fully 90% - about 270,000,000 people - are, by and large, perfectly nice folks who want to lead a good life and have no desire to hurt anyone. And at least 50% - 150,000,000 or so - would, I think, qualify as "good people".

But you see, Rangertab1 - it isn't about their merit as people, nor mine, nor anyone else's. It is about the external forces which may drive their behavior - and that of billions of other perfectly nice people. Therein lies the problem.

If you're interested, perhaps we could start a new thread on the subject. Please PM me if you'd like to do that.

[The Reaper]

90% of the nice Americans are about 72 hours from reverting to savages.

Take away electricity, clean water, flush toilets, comms, wheels, a full cupboard, a universally accepted currency, and stores full of things to buy and watch what happens within days.

See Katrina for examples.

TR

[greenberetTFS]

Originally Posted by Dozer523

TOM this post is not meant to question or in anyway disrespect your nephew. But, I offer a little context having been assigned to Camp Eggers. Andd my money say this probably happened at the Green Bean down by the ClamShell next to the Internet cafe and the free weight gym and the library (provided they put it BACK where it was before some idiot moved it). Camp Eggers operates 24 hours a day. Lots of shift work. There are few places where staffers can sit and discuss (vs breif). The Green Bean is the only place with couches! And, at least when I was there, it was the Stamtische. I suspect more gets accomplished in the Green Bean then in the cramped offices.

Yes, I'm sure it was dramatic. I'll bet I might've taken my cafe'americano and Stars and Stripes (BTW I was the guy who left the LA Times lyin' around) and done the crossword, crypyogram and Suduko in my little bitty conex room. Nah. . .
Glad it didn't turn into a slapping incident.

The L.A. Times crossword is for sissy's....... Try doing the N.Y. Times crossword with a pen and not a pencil with an eraser..... Dozer,everytime I think your right up there with the BIG guys you let me down......

Big Teddy

[nmap]

Originally Posted by The Reaper

90% of the nice Americans are about 72 hours from reverting to savages.

Take away electricity, clean water, flush toilets, comms, wheels, a full cupboard, a universally accepted currency, and stores full of things to buy and watch what happens within days.

See Katrina for examples.

TR

Originally Posted by Rangertab1

Your numbers are high NMAP. Start the new thread fore I forget what I am thinking.

I'm eager to say any thoughts you have on the scenario at LINK

[frostfire]

Originally Posted by nmap

I would contend that fully 90% - about 270,000,000 people - are, by and large, perfectly nice folks who want to lead a good life and have no desire to hurt anyone. And at least 50% - 150,000,000 or so - would, I think, qualify as "good people".

But you see, Rangertab1 - it isn't about their merit as people, nor mine, nor anyone else's. It is about the external forces which may drive their behavior - and that of billions of other perfectly nice people. Therein lies the problem.

If you're interested, perhaps we could start a new thread on the subject. Please PM me if you'd like to do that.

Originally Posted by The Reaper

90% of the nice Americans are about 72 hours from reverting to savages.

Take away electricity, clean water, flush toilets, comms, wheels, a full cupboard, a universally accepted currency, and stores full of things to buy and watch what happens within days.

See Katrina for examples.

TR

As usual, TR beat me to it and go straight to the point.

As the saying goes, "the true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good." Most folks are good people when life is nice and gooey. Why woudn't they: Seek pleasure, avoid pain. Under duress (and extreme stress), true character shows up. This won't apply to QP's, but I think the rest of us should attempt to evaluate our character, and establish a baseline to improve upon by exposing ourselves to (hopefully controlled) stress, be it psychological, emotional, physiological, and so on. To toughen the mind, and developing intestinal fortitude, so to speak. When things really go south, not only you want to be around dependable/competent people, you want yourself first, to be dependable.

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do. Then you are able to say to yourself, 'I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.”
~Eleanor Roosevelt

Originally Posted by Pete

At the time of the first settlements they could "settle the area." Greenland was established during the Medieval warm period that lasted from about 800-1300. The last written record from Greenland was from 1408.

The Norse who settled on the Greenland Coast transplanted their agriculural society to the area. During the warm period that and trade with the east worked well.

With the coming cold the grazing was reduced and trade with the east slowed. The Greenlanders failed to change with the times, shrank into smaller communities and died out.

There were native cultures near the Norse folks but they failed to learn from them and switch to a sea related community or to suppliment their agricultural life with sea produce. A study of the later trash piles show very little ocean related bones compared to land animals.

That's a very interesting point. Could have the two cultures ultimately survived independently of other influences? Even with adapting to changing climate conditions, animal migration, diverse food sources, etc. I would think they could have if land was consistanly being made available to support an ever increasing population. Could they have remained a culture unique unto themselves, or is "inter-marriage" part of natural selection. Many have speculated why the Anasazi Indians "just" disappeared. I dare venture, they simply moved.

[Dozer523]

Originally Posted by greenberetTFS

The L.A. Times crossword is for sissy's....... Try doing the N.Y. Times crossword with a pen and not a pencil with an eraser..... Dozer,everytime I think your right up there with the BIG guys you let me down......

Big Teddy

I let you down, again. Oh Teddy it's worse then you imagine. I did the puzzles in the STARS AND STRIPES! (I DID do all three, though)

[charlietwo]

Originally Posted by TOMAHAWK9521

It turns out my nephew works with the detail that surrounds Gen McChrystal from time to time and informed me that Gen McChrystal has no love for the excessive and useless FOBBIT populations.

Tomahawk-- Thank you for that post... this is a problem that always got to me. Nice to see McChrystal is proactive and not solely a political creature.

Originally Posted by TOMAHAWK9521

...I hope the administration pays attention to the details in the general’s choice of troops to send over....

This has a familiar tone, from the movie "300", when the Senators asked the King/General where he was going. He simply said he was going for a "walk".

I tell ya, he'll turn the coffee shop into a shooting range because his wife won't let him have one at home.

[Richard]

I pulled this off the Small Wars Journal:

One brigade commander, Col. Michael Howard, is on his fourth tour in Afghanistan and understands it like few others. Still, there are pieces of this war that stop him cold. One of them is government corruption. "It's a cancer without a cure in Afghanistan, and if we don't come up with a cure, it will cause us to fail,'' Howard told me last month, biting off his words angrily.

This - to me - is a worrisome statement - as it was an issue which proved to be one of the major underlying problems of our entire Vietnam strategy - of the RVN not having a duly elected and functioning government, supported by and supportive of its people.

Richard

[Richard]

An oped piece from Jerry Hogan, a former SF Officer and retired LTC, who writes for local area papers - the LTs point-of-view is worth noting.

Richard

It’s Really Pretty Simple
Jerry Hogan, The Military View, 7 Oct 2009

And the argument goes on! Sitting on one side of the table are the President and his civilian advisors trying to understand military operations so they can make a decision on what the US should do about Afghanistan going forward. On the other side sit the military Generals and Admirals who have devoted their lives to studying and fighting wars. They think they know what should be done and they are arguing their case to convince the civilians of their proposed strategy.

So on one hand you have a group that really doesn’t understand the military ways of doing things but must face the political consequences if they decide wrong. On the other hand, you have a group that understands the military implications, but with the conservative nature of their profession, to insure against failure and to also consider the unknowns of war, they are arguing for a force and a strategy that probably has lots of safeguards and built in reserves if they are wrong.

So what do we the American people do to understand the issue?

It’s really pretty simple if you ask a grunt Lieutenant who has been living on the ground in Afghanistan for the last year, humping an 80-pound rucksack, carrying 60 pounds of body armor, drinking 30 bottles of water a day, and trying to survive and keep his men in one piece and alive until their tour is up. As he puts it, “there can only be one strategy that wins in Afghanistan: contain Pakistan, secure the population, the US Army and Marines need to get out of the Forward Operating Bases (FOB) and put small units no larger than Platoon size (about 40 men) out to mutually supporting positions among the population. Stop worrying about the MRPS (Mine Resistance Ambushed Protection vehicle) and other awful boondoggles that have no place in Afghanistan. Empower junior leaders by giving them battlespace (area of operations they will be responsible for with their forces) and holding them accountable for what happens in it. Right now there is no cohesive COIN (Counter Insurgency) strategy, no unity of command, no unity of effort and the focus is on the Taliban. This is backwards: secure the population and render the Taliban a moot point.”

He makes sense.

The big issue is Pakistan. It is a rogue Moslem nation with a new unsettled government. Their President was forced to resign from the Presidency after he first was forced to resign as head of the armed forces. The current President is the husband of a former Prime Minister who was thrown out of the country for corruption, allowed back in to run for PM, and then killed during the campaign less than two years ago. Her husband took her place in the race against another former PM who was also thrown out for corruption and allowed to come back into the country so he too could run for PM. The husband won the election and when the President resigned, he moved up.

While the military has always been the stabilizing force in the country, with the removal of the military president, there is uncertainty if this stabilization will remain. The country is one of nine countries of the world that has nuclear weapons. While they have been under the control and supervision of the military, because of the influence of the extremist Moslem groups in Pakistan, there is question as to the ability of the military to continue to safeguard the weapons if the government were to fall. More and more of the strict Sharia Law is becoming part of the everyday Pakistan life and continued pressure is being put on the government to adopt even more of this life style. The fear is that migrating extremists coming from Afghanistan into Pakistan to avoid the American and NATO forces will take control of the country turning it into a sanctuary for displaced Afghanistan Taliban and Al Queda terrorist fighters. With this occupation comes control of the government and then control of the nuclear weapons. And that is the West’s worst nightmare…Nuclear Weapons in the hands of terrorists.

So that’s the BIG problem when you debate a strategy for Afghanistan. All of the rest is how do you keep this from happening.

Our efforts over the last eight years have produced poor results. We have been able to oversee a free election, but now the world, and the Afghans, recognizes the winner of that election as being corrupt so that he cannot gain the respect and control of his country. We have been able to drive the Taliban into the hills and caves and across the border into Pakistan, but we have not been able to stop the movement back and forth between Afghanistan and Pakistan. For a long time the Taliban would only have limited engagements with the US and NATO forces, but now we are seeing more and larger scale attacks from the Taliban. Bombings are becoming more common in the cities and the Talban are growing in both strength and scope of action against US and NATO forces.

While Iraq has a very centralized governmental structure, Afghanistan has a very decentralized culture, life style, and physical structure. What worked in Iraq may not work in Afghanistan. But for any strategy to work, it must be one that involves the civilian population…you simply cannot kill all the bad guys; you must have the support of the people.

And that is what they are saying in Washington and that is what the grunt Lieutenant that spent the last year in Afghanistan is saying…”You have to protect the people, get them involved and make the victory their victory.”

How many additional US forces will it take to do this? I don’t know, but the choices are clear…either put sufficient forces in-country to insure TOTAL victory, or get out now. There will be no half-victory in Afghanistan and Pakistan!

[kgoerz]

Originally Posted by Richard

I pulled this off the Small Wars Journal:


This - to me - is a worrisome statement - as it was an issue which proved to be one of the major underlying problems of our entire Vietnam strategy - of the RVN not having a duly elected and functioning government, supported by and supportive of its people.

Richard

Very disturbing is an understatement. What bothers me, I truly believe there is no one person who is advising the President on this. With enough, if any Military experience. I heard CNN talking about VP Bidens recommendation. Excuse me, but WTF over.....Biden!.

[Pete]

American troops in Afghanistan losing heart, say army chaplains

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...le6865359.ece#

Look for this drum beat to pick up.

[bravo22b]

Originally Posted by Pete

American troops in Afghanistan losing heart, say army chaplains

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...le6865359.ece#

Look for this drum beat to pick up.

My old company commander, who I have a great deal of respect for, is the Brigade CDR for the unit in this article. I wonder what he would have to say about this.

If (and I do mean IF) this is an accurate representation of how these soldiers feel, one has to wonder where the feeling like there is no clear mission flows from, the unit leadership or the CINC?

[afchic]

Originally Posted by Richard

I pulled this off the Small Wars Journal:


This - to me - is a worrisome statement - as it was an issue which proved to be one of the major underlying problems of our entire Vietnam strategy - of the RVN not having a duly elected and functioning government, supported by and supportive of its people.

Richard

One of my coworkers is deployed to Kabul right now as a Logisitcs Mentor for one of the Afghan Generals. She stated he is a very good guy, but tired of pounding his head against the wall. They are trying to revamp their supply system so that it is more transparent. But there are so many people that don't want the transparnecy because then they can't steal, graft, etc... The General knows he is swimming up stream and will never make any inroads and is just frustrated. So you have a small group fighting an entire culture of corruption, because they know their country can't move ahead without doing it, but the true powers that be, support the corruption.

Last week I got a follow on email from her stating that her mentoree, and all the other Afghan GOs that showed any thought to ending the corruption were summarily dismissed, and replacements were there by that afternoon. I haven't heard how the new batch is working out......