As a USAF Nam combat vet I can certainly appreciate your point of view. My generation knows first hand that war is never clean, honest, or black and white. I dig the aircraft theory. Have ships large enough to bring the fight to the enemies home turf. But not simple at all. When attacked we must defend ourselves. The question regarding radical Islam (and I mean radical not the mainstream Islam that some of my friends grew up with in Egypt and Syria) is this. Do you want to fight them over there or over here? Simple!
So what was the name of the last nation that attacked us?
If you don't these bad things to happen, don't go to war. Simple.
I wasn't planning any. Honest. A.k.a. the fog of war.
As a USAF Nam combat vet I can certainly appreciate your point of view. My generation knows first hand that war is never clean, honest, or black and white. I dig the aircraft theory. Have ships large enough to bring the fight to the enemies home turf. But not simple at all. When attacked we must defend ourselves. The question regarding radical Islam (and I mean radical not the mainstream Islam that some of my friends grew up with in Egypt and Syria) is this. Do you want to fight them over there or over here? Simple!
Senior Defense Department leaders have conceded that the driver of the car, Zemari Ahmadi, a longtime worker for a U.S. aid group, had nothing to do with the Islamic State, contrary to what military officials had previously asserted. Mr. Ahmadiâs only connection to the terrorist group appeared to be a fleeting and innocuous interaction with people in what the military believed was an ISIS safe house in Kabul.
But now Pentagon officials say that judgment was also mistaken, after an investigation by The New York Times that the safe houseâs location was actually the residence of Mr. Ahmadiâs boss, who American military officials also say has no ties to ISIS.
As long as we're at war, any war, things like this are going to happen. It's not reasonable to expect only Hollywood-perfect actions. If you don't these bad things to happen, don't go to war. Simple. Don't come back and say "oh, so-and-so was a Bad Actor, otherwise {the war} would have been justified and righteous. No. It wouldn't.
Senior Defense Department leaders have conceded that the driver of the car, Zemari Ahmadi, a longtime worker for a U.S. aid group, had nothing to do with the Islamic State, contrary to what military officials had previously asserted. Mr. Ahmadiâs only connection to the terrorist group appeared to be a fleeting and innocuous interaction with people in what the military believed was an ISIS safe house in Kabul.
But now Pentagon officials say that judgment was also mistaken, after an investigation by The New York Times that the safe houseâs location was actually the residence of Mr. Ahmadiâs boss, who American military officials also say has no ties to ISIS.
The poppy trade exploded after the US invasion. Is that good or bad? Hard to say. Heroin is clearly popular with some users so a more abundant less expensive supply is perhaps a good thing?
Never understood the war in Afghanistan. What was Al Qaeda? Bin Laden and a few hundred people in black jump suits hiding in desert caves? Was the Neocon motive to better control oil pipelines, and once that became not doable, morphed into some weird crusade? Why did we keep fighting after the killing of bin laden, 10 years ago? If there was any winner in this battle, it was Bin Laden, as he predicted 20 y.a.
Never understood the war in Afghanistan. What was Al Qaeda? Bin Laden and a few hundred people in black jump suits hiding in desert caves? Was the Neocon motive to better control oil pipelines, and once that became not doable, morphed into some weird crusade? Why did we keep fighting after the killing of bin laden, 10 years ago? If there was any winner in this battle, it was Bin Laden, as he predicted 20 y.a.
I believe it was a hyper-vigilant reaction stemming from the Sept. 11th attacks on NYC and Pentagon that drove the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. There were plenty of other options starting with a strategy to goad the Afghanis into handing over Bin Laden. But that would have taken simmering humility and patience both of which were lacking in the USA at the time. The mood within security agencies and outside was incapable of making rational decision that took into consideration long-term impacts.
Al Qaeda used Afghanistan not just because of the rugged terrain but because it is a very poor, developing country where the state has at best minimal control over much of the countryside. Afghanistan is a weak state.
In the post-war period, it safe to say that the cost of violently procuring natural resources renders the whole exercise unprofitable. Besides, Afghanistan never merits mention for key resources outside of dubious arguments to support the occupation.
Want to prevent future Afghanistans? Resolve the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and similar. Put a halt to the illegal settlers. That would put an end to westerners 'killing and taking' in the Mid-East. Two-state or similar, a solution would put an end to an absolutely iconic struggle as viewed from the Palestinian perspective by national liberation groups and activists around the world.
Then the USA could use new-found political capital to press for peace in Yemen. There is no doubt about the security interest in putting Yemen back together again. Or the popular appeal given the potential for the Yemen conflict to spill over and negatively impact global oil supply and thus gasoline prices at the pump.
In the fall of 2011, on the tenth anniversary of the war, former general Stanley McChrystal tells the Counsel on Foreign Relations that the war in Afghanistan is just "a little better than 50 percent" done.
Never understood the war in Afghanistan. What was Al Qaeda? Bin Laden and a few hundred people in black jump suits hiding in desert caves? Was the Neocon motive to better control oil pipelines, and once that became not doable, morphed into some weird crusade? Why did we keep fighting after the killing of bin laden, 10 years ago? If there was any winner in this battle, it was Bin Laden, as he predicted 20 y.a.
No doubt the usual suspects ... CFR Neocons and our other friends at the Chamber Of Commerce.
And others in the GOP swamp...
Who won the war on terror? American defense contractors, many of which were politically connected companies that had donated to George W. Bushâs presidential campaign, according to the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit that has been tracking spending in a series of reports called the Windfalls of War. One firm hired to help advise Iraqi ministries had a single employee â the husband of a deputy assistant secretary of defense.
For George W. Bush and his friends, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan achieved a great deal. President Bush got a chance to play a tough guy on TV. He became a wartime president, which helped him win re-election. By the time people figured out that the war in Iraq had been waged on false pretenses and the war in Afghanistan had no honorable exit plan, it was too late.
Just working with the headline, yeah, well duh ...
No doubt the usual suspects ... CFR Neocons and our other friends at the Chamber Of Commerce.
Having just watched the Soviet's picnic and knowing how that place works, any effort by anyone else to exploit Afghanistan was and still is doomed to failure and all the corruption that also leads to failure. The Chinese won't fair much better, but I won't be around to see how that ends.
This is why you have to accept dictators and terrible people and deal with them as long as they keep to themselves and within their borders. Nation building is rarely possible (it is way past time to learn this lesson) and just a cover for covert or underhanded activities. It is up to the people within these countries to rise up and determine their own future and fight for it.
Civil wars will continue in certain places likely forever. Have to get over that.
The war in Afghanistan wasnât a failure. It was a massive success â for those who made a fortune off it.
Consider the case of Hikmatullah Shadman, who was just a teenager when American Special Forces rolled into Kandahar on the heels of Sept. 11. They hired him as an interpreter, paying him up to $1,500 a month â 20 times the salary of a local police officer, according to a profile of him in The New Yorker. By his late 20s, he owned a trucking company that supplied U.S. military bases, earning him more than $160 million.
If a small fry like Shadman could get so rich off the war on terror, imagine how much Gul Agha Sherzai, a big-time warlord-turned-governor, has raked in since he helped the C.I.A. run the Taliban out of town. His large extended family supplied everything from gravel to furniture to the military base in Kandahar. His brother controlled the airport. Nobody knows how much he is worth, but it is clearly hundreds of millions â enough for him to talk about a $40,000 shopping spree in Germany as if he were spending pocket change.
Look under the hood of the âgood war,â and this is what you see. Afghanistan was supposed to be an honorable war to neutralize terrorists and rescue girls from the Taliban. It was supposed to be a war that we woulda coulda shoulda won, had it not been for the distraction of Iraq, and the hopeless corruption of the Afghan government. But letâs get real. Corruption wasnât a design flaw in the war. It was a design feature. We didnât topple the Taliban. We paid warlords bags of cash to do it.
As the nation-building project got underway, those same warlords were transformed into governors, generals and members of Parliament, and the cash payments kept flowing.
âWesterners often scratched their heads at the persistent lack of capacity in Afghan governing institutions,â Sarah Chayes, a former special assistant to U.S. military leaders in Kandahar, wrote recently in Foreign Affairs. âBut the sophisticated networks controlling those institutions never intended to govern. Their objective was self-enrichment. And at that task, they proved spectacularly successful.â(...)
A.k.a. the 
