Why The U.S. Should Accept Defeat And Start Withdrawing From Afghanistan

Foreign Policy:

The conventional wisdom among most Republicans is that while the United States had serious difficulty in Vietnam during the early years, by the early 1970s things were turning around, and victory was on the verge. Unfortunately, the craven Democrats in Congress bowed to widespread anti-war sentiment and forced the Ford administration to end almost all support to South Vietnam, allowing the North Vietnamese to win the war in 1975. In the GOP version of the story, this decision was a disastrous mistake.

Read the whole story: Foreign Policy

Comments

[mullah]

It takes a democrat to love the word "Defeat"

[mullah]

and surrender. Its like honey to their ears. They get a rise out of it.

[mullah]

Yes..Please surrender.. and we Pakistanies would come and finsh y'all off! Thankyou for your support.

[Gasparilla]

The North Vietnamese were going to keep fighting no matter what. They fought the Japanese and the French before us. The smartest thing we ever did in Asia was walk away from the Philippines in 1946. If there ever was a reason for Afghanistan, capturing Bin Laden, Bush blew it at Tora Bora.

[BorisPutinov]

Tovarich.
Please do not dissapoint us.
Stay a few more years in the Cave Kingdom.
Break our record.

Boris

[jamiso]

Part I

Part I:

Why are we even discussing it like it is an actual war with battles and defeats and stuff? It's an occupation (a temporary one regardless, with an insurgency).
In 8 years the US has taken apx. 844 casualties.
NATO as a whole has taken around 1500, over an eight year period.

I bring this up for two reasons (and please forgive my cold heartedness when talking about it...If it makes you feel any better I am a combat vet myself, and do understand...I'm just giving a cold straight analysis)
1) We lose more soldiers every year in car accidents than we do in Afghanistan. I only mention this, because it is worth noting that NATO is hardly about to be overrun and crushed.
2) *This is important*, look where the majority of casualties occur.
here is a map: http://icasualties.org/oef/ByProvince.aspx
Almost half of them are concentrated into several provinces in the South East (af-pak boarder area).
Especially the provinces of Kandahar (206) and Helmand (333), this is also where the grand majority of combat operations are taking place.
Here is another thing to consider along with that.....compare with a map showing what is actually in Afghanistan (towns, villages, resources, ect)....The area to to south and east of HWY 1 (where of casualties and fighting is occuring, and the region where combat actions are actually increasing) is dirt farms, and Its rather sparsely populated.

[jamiso]

Part II

Currently, we are sinking resources into the South and South East, because that is where the Taliban's power base is...basically trying to fight a gorilla war with the taliban on their home turf, at the expense of the rest of the country. You have major provinces in the North, Central, and West were casualties and combat operations has been very minimal.
Instead of fighting for control of dirt farms, secure the other side of HWY 1.

The best option, if we are serious about long term solutions would be a ‘strategic redeployment’ to enhance / maintain security in the less volatile areas and help the Afghans create the infrastructure and institutions there that they desire, and working in the areas they desire it. Aid workers, PRTs, engineers, and IOs are a lot cheaper than and will be more effective than chasing Taliban hillbillies around the mountains on the af-pak boarder, and building roads and highways will do more to unite the country and create a functional government than Afghan Army units. Roads lead to trade, trade leads to development. Future economic and security ties with Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, even China and India (which share borders with these provinces) will do more to promote stability than anything. The rising expectation of Pashtuns in the southeast , driven by the awareness of their neighbors’ growing prosperity in the west, central, and North, will become an existential threat to the Taliban itself.

[jamiso]

Part III:

And by doing so, the ISAF would be able to actually secure the population centers, thus making those goals possible.

That, in my opinion is the biggest problem with our current operations, by neglecting the population centers in much of the country, we also make them less secure, and therefor open to Taliban infiltration, as well as undermine our overall mission

[SamKnause]

There is no defeat. Just get out. We never should have been in Afghanistan to begin with. Why can't this government just admit it was a huge mistake and get out.

[duxguts]

Peace with honor. Just like Vietnam. Maybe we will have more luck when we attack Iran.

[Balzac]

Accept defeat? That's ridiculous. Strategic retreat is not the defeat of our military or our nation. It's the defeat of a misguided goal, a digression into "Nation Building" by the Bush administration. It's a defeat for the Bush administration and a recovery of the every day victory of real American freedom. Bush didn't love freedom enough to represent America to the world. It is not a general "defeat", it is a strategic retreat back to basics, back to regional bases.

[MilwaukeeDan]

The question most Americans should ask themselves; what is "winning" in Afghanistan? You are dealing with a society that's been blown back to the stone age. Bill gates ain't opening up a new factory in Kabul and neither is GM. 9/11 was mostly planned in Europe and the United States and you can't fight "terrorism" with conventional weapons(no matter how much the MIC wants you to believe otherwise), you fight it with good police work. America needs to look itself in a mirror and ask, do we need to be deployed all over the world? Do we need to try and spread our empire all over the globe? What is the point of NATO? We lost over 50 thousand men in Vietnam and killed millions of Vietnamese for what? So they can make Nike shoes for us? Crazy.

[HamletsMill]

Fanned.

[SamKnause]

Most Americans have already asked this question. What Americans need now is for the government and military to listen to them. We don't want this war, or the Iraq war to continue. Only the government of the U.S., private contractors, and the military want these wars. The citizens of the U.S. do not.

[RRK70]

It's not about winning or losing, it's about profit. Remove the profit and we would not be there. We should declare "victory" and then leave. Or we could hold a referendum wherein we ask the Afghani citizens if they want our assistance; and THEN leave. We can rebuild infrastructure but we can't rebuild civilizations or nations.

[Beelzebul]

we can not run away like loosers. we can not forgot nine elevan.

[holeybuybull]

We can't even adequately investigate 9/11. Some of the steel form the towers currently resides in a new Marine deployment ship, and any evidence that it may have exhibited is now gone.

[MaxPowerXP]

if only we could make ships from molten truthers instead

[tuberider]

Listen. I design weapons of awesome destruction. What the heck am I supposed to do? Have you seen my mortgage?!

[vascopyjama]

I designed a fighter plane that costs $40,000 and hour to fly. What am I supposed to do?

[missgeorge]

since we have someone in charge without a clue, it is probably safer for our troops to leave..don't need to hear anymore "shout outs" the next time our service men are killed

[allwrite]

"Obama and his fellow Democrats know full well that if the United States walks away from Afghanistan now, the Republicans will accuse them of capitulating to terrorism and undermining our security. And this charge will be leveled at them for decades to come, harming Democrats at the polls come election time. The Democrats have no intention of letting that happen."

Except that we are not doing so well on the home economic front, and if we lose on that front, the consequences will really be scary. Time to redeploy resources to the home front.

[davidwayneosedach]

Aghanistan is in Europes back yard. Let them handle it.

[mravka]

Are you kidding? In 2011 the Dutch are leaving, as are the Canadians, and the Germans and Brits are having second thoughts. The U.S. will be alone there soon enough.