Fmr. Marine Capt. & Foreign Service Worker in Afghanistan Resigns in Protest of War

[CunningStunts]

Re: Fmr. Marine Capt. & Foreign Service Worker in Afghanistan Resigns in Protest of W

We either need to go all in or pull all the way out... Did the politicians in Washington ever study the causes that lead to defeat in Vietnam?

 

[FlyingWallaby]

Re: Fmr. Marine Capt. & Foreign Service Worker in Afghanistan Resigns in Protest of W

A foreign service worker with a conscience....oh boy.

On any foreign service exam that I've seen, it is made explicitly clear that you may be asked to do things in the name of your government with which you don't agree, so I'm not quite sure what this guy thought his job description was. Much like any other job: if you can't do the work, don't apply for the job. That being said, he is well within his rights to not like his job or assignment and, therefore, resign or ask for another position elsewhere; however, I think the fact that he decided to publicize his story and turn it into some sort of political statement does nothing but weaken the resolve of those who continue to serve, undermine the reconstruction and reconciliation efforts, and serve to cheapen Mr. Hoh's government service record.

So what should the new mantra be?

"Semper Fi...most of the time" or "Almost all marines never run" or, to quote MacArthur, "Old soldiers don't die, they just resign when they're unhappy."

 

[Rattrap]

Re: Fmr. Marine Capt. & Foreign Service Worker in Afghanistan Resigns in Protest of W

This is an argument I've done before, so rather than simply repeat myself, here's the other two threads I've said similar things:
http://board.freeones.com/showpost.php?p=2620380&postcount=34
http://board.freeones.com/showpost.php?p=2888430&postcount=75

The quote by Osama Bin Laden in #34 above is especially telling.

It's nonsensical to think you can cow-tow to the whims of deranged, violent criminals to secure some modicum of "security".

Forget the so called "occupation" of Afghanistan...we're not there to "occupy" that state...we're there because the government which did control that country harbored the criminal syndicate which carried out attack after attack after attack on the US, her interests and her allies.

Here's the thing - it's not the whims of the made terrorist we need to be considering for prevention (too late, there), but the middle-of-the-road moderate Arab whose relative just got blown to pieces by a misfired (or hell, an accurately fired - it doesn't matter) American weapon who suddenly thinks that taking up arms against the occupation might be a worthy cause. I think you understand this.

...you better believe that these Arab patriots are not only going to swing back instead of turn the cheek because they have every right to fight back and defend themselves from foreign invaders by any means necessary.

Not that it's been mentioned, but this is a good point that it isn't religion nearly as much as nationalism that drives these terrorist attacks (especially suicide attacks...case in point, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka have committed more suicide attacks than any other terrorist organization and they're a non-religious group).

And again, whatever their gripe is...they have orchestrated the killing of thousands of Americans. At some point someone needs to make them pay, right?:dunno:

I guess that's the question - prevention, or vengeance? From the evidence I've seen, they are not one and the same - the more you pursue one, the weaker the other becomes. So what's more important? Their eye for ours, or saving the eye we have left?

Our past policies are what they are..we can't run away from that but I don't think a reasonable solution is to allow criminals to hold whatever policy we engage in hostage at the threat of killing innocent civilians.

They are hell bent on killing Americans and are at war with us and we're now at war with them.

There is only two ways to win a war with against an enemy bent on killing you, play zero sum and kill your enemy until they are no more or encircle them to force capitulation.

Short of genocide, I don't believe your solution is possible. It's true, the terrorists out there are hell bent on killing Americans. However, they are only able to succeed in that endeavor with public support. How else would they recruit? How else would they function without normal, law-abiding citizens tipping off authorities (yes yes, corruption may be everywhere...but even so, our intelligence might have an easier time if a few people were shouting about some terrorist bioweapon lab in a barn, don't you think?)? We give them that public support by being stationed on their lands. Well before the war, we were in their lands.

Public support is key. That is the most effective road to prevention. After all, what do these people want? Yes, the extremist here and there simply hate us to hate us - out of religious reasons, brainwashing, whatever. But by and large, those in the middle - the potential future terrorist - just want to be left alone.

We either need to go all in or pull all the way out... Did the politicians in Washington ever study the causes that lead to defeat in Vietnam?

We certainly can't keep on with what we're doing. The cost is too high (in all regards).

 

[Hot Mega]

Re: Fmr. Marine Capt. & Foreign Service Worker in Afghanistan Resigns in Protest of W

Is this your audition tape for a spot next to Hannity on Faux News?

I think Dumbya put "the people who orchastrated 9/11" in Gitmo, along with a bunch of possibly innocents who we certainly can't release now because they will try to retaliate against us.

Osama is either dead or severely restricted to what, filming a tape and sending it out on some camel somewhere to be uploaded from some coffeebar in Pakistan?

He doth not seem to be the capable leader anymore...:dunno:

If we leave the middle east, the worst thing that will happen to Americans is that a few KFCs in Bagdad will go up in flames. I can live with that.

Besides, we can always monitor things from satellites and our Turkish base.

And we can always do what we're supposed to do according to the 9/11 Commission's report about securing the country. They gave what 23 things to do and Dumbya did 6 of them??

Leaving the Middle East does not mean running up the white flag against Terrorism. It means we consolidate our money, power and resources and come up with a new plan.....

Seems as if you're confusing different things; preventing attacks and meting out justice. It is absolutely essential that we roll up AQ this time as there will be no other time that were are this mobilized to do so. While we fight against the Taliban's support of AQ....defeating them isn't essential as far as I see it now.

With all due respect to your position on who we've captured, killed or render impotent....it is still but an opinion. Until there is proof the leaders of this criminal entity are capture of eliminated we must engage them. We haven't fought the kind of war necessary to defeat them so far and we need to give that a chance.

Except that your $64K question isn't a clear question.

Except for the anthrax attacks in DC, there hasn't been a sizeable terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11. So, if the War on Terror, and the various battles we're fighting in that war, "hasn't worked so far," what exactly would you consider to be "working"?

That's misleading. If you recall, it was 8 years between the first attack in the CONUS and the 2nd and we certainly weren't doing nearly what we're doing now. In fact, Clinton was accused of "overreacting" to terrorism by the same goobers who are now claiming 9/11 changed everything.

To the point though, if you want to weight it in terms of attacks against America since 9/11 that are not in the CONUS AQ has successfully orchestrated too many to count....they are still killing Americans. I don't say that to diminish the fact that we have boots on the ground engaging them but to demonstrate the fact that they are still very capable.

Also, what I talked about - using intelligence and prosecuting terrorists within the existing national and international criminal justice framework - was assuming that we wouldn't simultaneously be undermining our own efforts by invading and occupying predominantly Muslim countries and pissing people off and inspiring new batches of terrorists on a regular basis. So, saying that it hasn't worked, when really it hasn't been TRIED, isn't exactly fair.

:2 cents::2 cents:

When I say such things haven't worked so far I mean the notion we can simply sit back, spy and interdict their activities being less hands on. I mean, don't you think we're doing all of that now too...anyway. Yet we still haven't broken them enough to even stop OBL from making home videos.

What hasn't been tried is the kind of sustained, multi-fronted attacks necessary to route AQ. Until now we've pussy-footed around and focused almost exclusively on fighting in Iraq when some Iraqis are only interested in getting us out of their country and not terrorizing Americans.

AQ wants to terrorize America, her interests and her allies. Until we marginalize or eliminate them..we can expect that they will continue to try and accomplish that.

Nothing saddens me more than innocent loss of life and as long as there are things on earth that go pop or boom we can expect innocent people will die accidentally.

What we can try and do is lessen the chances of things going boom or pop. One way can be to use military force, decisively and quickly when necessary to bring a rapid end to conflict.

Our objective is the end of AQ (at least the AQ who seek to harm innocent Americans)....not occupy Afghanistan, kill all the Taliban or kill all Afgans.

 

[Facial_King]

Re: Fmr. Marine Capt. & Foreign Service Worker in Afghanistan Resigns in Protest of W

But AQ isn't an army. Practically any chump at all (even some bonehead kid from the U.S. or wherever, who didn't grow up as an Arab or a Muslim) can become a member of AQ, and the ones we need to worry about are the ones plotting in a basement or dark apartment somewhere, not the ones who jump out from a bush and fire a gun at an Army truck. Many of those people aren't even AQ to begin with, they're just pissed that the US is occupying their country.

 

[Hot Mega]

Re: Fmr. Marine Capt. & Foreign Service Worker in Afghanistan Resigns in Protest of W

But AQ isn't an army.

What difference does that make if there are enough of them with RPGs, bombs and assault rifles??:dunno:

Practically any chump at all (even some bonehead kid from the U.S. or wherever, who didn't grow up as an Arab or a Muslim) can become a member of AQ, and the ones we need to worry about are the ones plotting in a basement or dark apartment somewhere, not the ones who jump out from a bush and fire a gun at an Army truck. Many of those people aren't even AQ to begin with, they're just pissed that the US is occupying their country.

Many may not and frankly are not. Again, while we do fight against those types to get to the real enemy our goal is not to defeat them as they are no outward threat to the US, her interests nor her allies.

AQ is an organized, armed, violent force. Anyone can pick up a firearm and create terror. However, the sophisticated attacks AQ seeks to orchestrate require the planning and logistical support of an criminal syndicate. We are in Afghanistan to eliminated that threat. That's why the entire common sense world was with GWB when he decided to go after them in Afghanistan.

I don't understand how some who voted for Obama would be upset that he's escalating the war in Afghanistan when that's exactly what he campaigned on.

 

[titsrock]

Re: Fmr. Marine Capt. & Foreign Service Worker in Afghanistan Resigns in Protest of W

Seems as if you're confusing different things; preventing attacks and meting out justice. It is absolutely essential that we roll up AQ this time as there will be no other time that were are this mobilized to do so. While we fight against the Taliban's support of AQ....defeating them isn't essential as far as I see it now.

With all due respect to your position on who we've captured, killed or render impotent....it is still but an opinion. Until there is proof the leaders of this criminal entity are capture of eliminated we must engage them. We haven't fought the kind of war necessary to defeat them so far and we need to give that a chance.

AQ wants to terrorize America, her interests and her allies. Until we marginalize or eliminate them..we can expect that they will continue to try and accomplish that.

Nobody in Gov't today or on any street in Anywhere America can succinctly articulate what is "The War on Terror" today. What does that phrase mean? It means nothing. At first it meant that we would engage all terrorists and the nations that harbor them. Then we realized that was dumb and unrealistic because we aren't going to invade Ireland and take out the IRA, right? So we had to scale that back and create new "threats." Enter Saddam.

Nothing we have done thus far in "the War on Terror" has stabilized anything. Afghanistan is an ugly quagmire. Iraq is an unstable mess. And Pakistan has become the 3rd abyss.

As this Marine Capt basically wrote, we have been making up an "enemy" in order to sustain an occupation with no clear purpose. We are basically wasting our soldiers' lives, time, and our nation's money at this moment.

We can still work to eliminate AQ as a terrorist org. We just don't need to spend $180bil every 6 months or commit 140K troops to do so anymore.

We went to wars in the 50s-80s because we thought Communism was on the "march." It may have been at one time. It's not anymore.

Life will go on if we ever pull ourselves out of the Middle East. We're now the drunk party crasher who continues to wear the lampshade on his head and who won't go the fuck home....

 

[Hot Mega]

Re: Fmr. Marine Capt. & Foreign Service Worker in Afghanistan Resigns in Protest of W

Nobody in Gov't today or on any street in Anywhere America can succinctly articulate what is "The War on Terror" today. What does that phrase mean? It means nothing.

:dunno: I frankly don't care what it's called BUT we are in Afghanistan to bring an end to the organization which has been attacking us for nearly 2 decades. They are organized, heavily armed and entrenched in a very, very tough theater. Until now, I'm certain those who undertook the current mission to eliminate them underestimated their capacity and resiliency to the point where the effort is nearly lost.

Now we aren't in Afghanistan to run their country or blow up their civilians. We are there as a base of operations to attack and hopefully marginalize if not eliminate this particular criminal syndicate.

The effort previously has been (not surprisingly) unsuccessful because the previous administration treated it as an after thought. The current administration sees it as a primary focus.

Eliminating or marginalizing them will obviously involve some multi-pronged approach. I'm certain one of those prongs must involve shooting and blowing enough of them up. To do that they must be isolated and not allowed to move freely. There is no way to isolate this kind of enemy in this kind of theater without the necessary forces (in numbers) to effect those circumstances.

At some point if the strategy has the necessary support (which finally seems to be the case) of Pakistani involvement we will encircle them and either kill or capture the core of AQ.

Then we should come home because we will have accomplished what we went there for and and all the bloodshed will not have been in vain. But not a second sooner.

Nothing we have done thus far in "the War on Terror" has stabilized anything. Afghanistan is an ugly quagmire. Iraq is an unstable mess. And Pakistan has become the 3rd abyss.

I suppose there in lies the confusion....Our first goal wasn't stabilization per se. It was to bring to justice the criminal entity that has been killing Americans for nearly 2 decades. Ultimately we would want that region as stable as we would want any region but that is ultimately up to the people who live there. You're right about one thing, it has become a quagmire...one that hopefully isn't beyond rescue.

As this Marine Capt basically wrote, we have been making up an "enemy" in order to sustain an occupation with no clear purpose. We are basically wasting our soldiers' lives, time, and our nation's money at this moment.

We can still work to eliminate AQ as a terrorist org. We just don't need to spend $180bil every 6 months or commit 140K troops to do so anymore.

Okay....yours and his are two opinions.

We went to wars in the 50s-80s because we thought Communism was on the "march." It may have been at one time. It's not anymore.

Life will go on if we ever pull ourselves out of the Middle East. We're now the drunk party crasher who continues to wear the lampshade on his head and who won't go the fuck home....

No comparison. We don't perceive violent, Islamo-terrorism to be on the march, it HAS attacked us....