Afghanistan debate (Hillier, new troops)

[afransen]

$80k is a bad salary, now? Although as an engineer, I'd expect you could make more.

 

[kEiThZ]

After 7 long years the Taliban is as powerful as ever.

Really? So you mean to say that they rule from Kabul and that they govern the entire country. Somebody should let that Karzai fellow, the Afghan government, and the rest of the international community know that we are talking to the wrong people. The Taliban are still in power!

Our military presence has not stemmed the tide of their religious zealotry.

So that's why girls are now allowed to go to school, women can work and be outside in public, men don't have to grow beards and why people have started watching movies and listening to music again. So I guess you are right we have not stemmed their religious influence at all.

Why would you find it odd that I am critical of a strategy that is not working to end the religious oppession there?

Because you either intentionally or otherwise misread the situation and reach a false conclusion like this:

The people are still living under the taliban rule while we waste lives and treasure.

They are not living under the taliban. There is a dysfunctional government in Afghanistan but it's not Taliban and it is led by democratically elected politicians. There's isn't even a single NGO that says the Taliban are still in power. It doesn't even say so in the article you posted. Please find one link that says the Afghans are living under Taliban rule today.

I am advocating for not more of the same tactics that aren't working. That is exactly why I am critical of the mission.

Let me guess, like training the police force and helping them build government ministries?

You are correct that a police force is a far better way to help people than an outside military force the people lost trust in. Thanks for sharing that effort. I forgot about it. I do find it sad that they are just in training after all these years.

Geez, what do you think we are doing there? A big part of the mission has been training the Afghan National Police (done by the RCMP, CF Military Police, and Corrections Canada). However, in the meanwhile while the ANP comes up to snuff, we have to provide security, hence the military presence. At the current pace, although the Afghan National Army (ANA) is about 60% functional (and slowly taking over security from us), the ANP lags behind significantly for a myriad of reasons (use of locals, lower quality of recruits, etc.). The ANP needs time to develop. How do you teach an illiterate Afghan to be a proper police officer? How do you teach him not to abuse prisoners, how to maintain radio and fire discipline and how to read a map (if he can't read period)? These things take time...time that NATO is buying them by keeping the Taliban at bay while we build them up.

Yet, you seem to be against this strategy. So what would you want us to do? You want the ANP trained. We are doing that. However, till they are up to snuff we have to provide security or the Afghans won't have any. This is why I have argued that the coming strategy is the right one.....keep the Taliban off balance, surge to displace them further, while accelerating the training process so that the Afghans can maintain security in the districts we capture. Do you have any ideas that the CF, RCMP, Corrections Canada, CBSA, CSIS, and all our other government agencies involved in the training effort have missed?

 

[kEiThZ]

$80k is a bad salary, now? Although as an engineer, I'd expect you could make more.

Money ain't everything after all. I'd much rather have a chance to make a difference than all the money in the world.

 

[jade_lee]

If you recall the huge cash infusion after WW2, money certainly has helped even damaged societies in the past.

This is my reference to WW2 and simply stated, money to repair damaged societies helps speed up the process, the more money the better as was the case in Europe and Japan after the war, but sadly not in Africa because it is always a case of too little too late when investment there is concerned. Where it has been said that we the western world keep exploiting Africa and then we give half of this exploited wealth back to them and call it charity.

 

[Hydrogen]

Do you know anything as to how this "cash infusion" was carried out in post-war Europe? Any simplistic comparison of apples and oranges can't operate in place or reality.

 

[Hydrogen]

I am going to give you the same response I have said all along. After 7 long years the Taliban is as powerful as ever. Our military presence has not stemmed the tide of their religious zealotry. Why would you find it odd that I am critical of a strategy that is not working to end the religious oppession there? The people are still living under the taliban rule while we waste lives and treasure. I am advocating for not more of the same tactics that aren't working. That is exactly why I am critical of the mission.

You are correct that a police force is a far better way to help people than an outside military force the people lost trust in. Thanks for sharing that effort. I forgot about it. I do find it sad that they are just in training after all these years.

Why would I confuse power hungry chieftans as humanitarian? I've said nothing in that regard.

The Taliban is not nearly as powerful in Afghanistan as they were before 2001. Their main efforts now revolve around invading and terrorizing village populations, setting off IED's, and receiving arms, aid and fighters from sympathetic supporters in such places as Pakistan.

It is doubtful that a civil police force can defeat the Taliban. Civil forces operate within the law (hence the necessity of creating such a force and generating a tradition in its operation). The Taliban and its supporters operate outside the law. Throwing acid in children's faces, bombing public markets and fear are their means of operation. Their aim is to destabilize.

If western countries walk now, the zealots can then claim victory. They can claim the right to keep girls out of school, deny health care to females, expunge any ideas they dislike from schools and libraries, execute political (and religious) opposition and break the state down to a point where it ceases to function.

 

[urbandreamer]

An interesting read here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article5827879.ece

 

[Mot]

The Taliban is not nearly as powerful in Afghanistan as they were before 2001. .

What source are you using to make this statement. I would like to read it. I am using mainstream media and articles like Urbandreamer provided to determine they are just as powerful. Now it seems they are back in Kabul, which was our strong hold.

 

[Tewder]

What source are you using to make this statement. I would like to read it. I am using mainstream media and articles like Urbandreamer provided to determine they are just as powerful. Now it seems they are back in Kabul, which was our strong hold.

How about reading the article you yourself posted a few pages back? You are mischaracterizing the situation.

Mot, I don't disagree with the spirit of some of what you say. I think the Afghani people are looking for stabilization, who wouldn't be? Where we differ however is that I believe the people would firmly prefer stabilization without the Taliban than with them. Again, who wouldn't? The issue then is that of 'our' resolve. Are we going to commit the resources necessary in lives and money to make this happen or are we going to turn our back on any gains made - and there have been gains made no matter how tenuous they are being held - and simply pull out? That is the choice. It's not about civilian deaths or collateral damage or humanitarian issues or any of those distracting lines of argument. From our perspective in Canada and the West we must also consider what is 'best' for us and our long term objectives and not just Afghanistan, which is why we got into this conflict in the first place. Committing to change means sacrifice and loss and hardship but we cannot realistically expect otherwise.

 

[Mot]

How about reading the article you yourself posted a few pages back? You are mischaracterizing the situation.

Mot, I don't disagree with the spirit of some of what you say. I think the Afghani people are looking for stabilization, who wouldn't be? Where we differ however is that I believe the people would firmly prefer stabilization without the Taliban than with them. Again, who wouldn't? The issue then is that of 'our' resolve. Are we going to commit the resources necessary in lives and money to make this happen or are we going to turn our back on any gains made - and there have been gains made no matter how tenuous they are being held - and simply pull out? That is the choice. It's not about civilian deaths or collateral damage or humanitarian issues or any of those distracting lines of argument. From our perspective in Canada and the West we must also consider what is 'best' for us and our long term objectives and not just Afghanistan, which is why we got into this conflict in the first place. Committing to change means sacrifice and loss and hardship but we cannot realistically expect otherwise.

Not once have I advocated for pulling out, despite the efforts of a particular person to paint me as saying so, including making up a pacifist BS about me. Nor have I advocated for allowing the Taliban to rule, my point has been that the Taliban still rule despite 7 years of our efforts there. I believe allowing the military to set up the strategy is a method that is not working. Militaries are created to perform a specific task, which the do well, the nuance of nation building does not seem to be one of them.

The article I posted and I think you mean the one where they interviewed the military guy who showed the dire situation in dealing with the Taliban control, he also advocated for more of the same but with more troops. Which has been the military strategy all along.

I believe the best way to win is to seek what is best for all parties involved. I fear we lost the chance do so through 7 years of a poor job. Which can be partially blamed on allowing the US to set the Afghanistan policy.

I don't know how to fix it, we're going to have to wait and see if the surge will work, if it does not, I am sure we can expect more of the same failed strategy over and over until public support says no more. We're on that road already.

 

[Whoaccio]

I've never been able to shake the feeling with Afghanistan that it is a bit of a lost cause. Not a hell of a lot of planning went into the initial invasion, and it pretty soon got overshadowed by Iraq. It's only now, 7 years after we first went in, that there is a substantive public debate on what is to be done.

Its hard not to feel sympathy and a sense that we should "do something" when you hear about a girl's school being blown up for no reason or some such barbarism. Honestly though, how much can we do? We should consider whether or not the same effort could be better spent in Haiti or economic development in any number of potentially unstable countries (Pakistan comes to mind...).

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

stephen harper was on TV yesterday and he basically said that the war in afghanistan is a war that can't be won. i kinda agree with him since this war basically involves religious ideology mixed with politics which is harder to change VS political ideology alone.

Canada, allies will never defeat Taliban, PM says
But Harper doesn't rule out sending more troops or extending the Canadian combat commitment beyond 2011 deadline

PAUL KORING

March 2, 2009

WASHINGTON -- Canadian and other foreign armies can't defeat the Taliban, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in an interview broadcast yesterday.

"Frankly, we are not going to ever defeat the insurgency," Mr. Harper said, more than seven years after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan toppled the Taliban regime. Canadian troops have been fighting and dying in Afghanistan since 2002, but this is the first time the Prime Minister has explicitly said defeating the Islamic extremists can't be done.

Mr. Harper, in an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria, said that despite sending thousands of soldiers to Afghanistan and suffering more than 100 troop deaths, the "success has been modest" and any gains made could be lost.

"We're not going to win this war just by staying," Mr. Harper said, and pointed to the long history of Afghan insurgencies successfully driving out foreign invaders - including the Soviet army in the 1980s and the British a century earlier.


"[From] my reading of Afghanistan history, it's probably had an insurgency forever, of some kind," Mr. Harper said.

But Mr. Harper didn't rule out sending more troops or extending the Canadian combat commitment beyond the current 2011 deadline.

Despite unambiguous and repeated assertions - as recently as last week by Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon - that Canada won't extend its combat role in Afghanistan, Mr. Harper seemed to leave a little wiggle room yesterday.

Asked if he would reject such a request from America's new president, Barack Obama, who has just ordered more than 17,000 additional U.S. soldiers to Afghanistan and has vowed to defeat the insurgency, Mr. Harper ducked the question, responding instead by saying: "If President Obama were to ask me that question, I would have a question back for him. And that question would be: 'What is your plan to leave Afghanistan to the Afghans.' " Mr. Harper said the paramount issue for Canadians was not "whether we stay or whether we go," but rather "are we being successful?" He suggested that after more than three years of deploying the biggest battle group Canada has sent overseas since the Korean War, "we have made gains. Those gains are not irreversible, so the success has been modest."

Although Mr. Obama has made clear that he regards military success as only one dimension of eventual success in Afghanistan, he has never suggested defeating the insurgency can't be done.

Rather, he has exhorted allies to do more militarily.

"We must renew our resolve to rout the terrorists who threaten our security in Afghanistan," Mr. Obama said during his major foreign-policy speech in Berlin during the election campaign. "The Afghan people need our troops and your troops, our support and your support to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda."

And just before his trip to Ottawa and the announcement he was sending 17,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan, Mr. Obama said the war in "Afghanistan is still winnable," although he made clear that solving "the problem of Afghanistan, the Taliban, the spread of extremism" cannot be accomplished "solely through military means."

However, with a NATO summit next month and Mr. Obama keen to secure more military commitments from increasingly reluctant European allies, Mr. Harper's assessment that defeating the insurgency is impossible may reinforce the split in the alliance.

Canada is one of the very few allies so far willing to send soldiers to southern Afghanistan, heartland of the Taliban where the insurgency has been growing. For Ottawa to be taking the position that foreign troops can't deliver victory may make Mr. Obama's task harder.

Mr. Harper said he welcomed the President's decision to send U.S. troops to relieve the embattled Canadian contingent. "We're delighted to have them, especially in Kandahar," he said. But, he added, he wants to know Mr. Obama's strategy "for success and for an eventual departure."

source

 

[Mot]

stephen harper was on TV yesterday and he basically said that the war in afghanistan is a war that can't be won. i kinda agree with him since this war basically involves religious ideology mixed with politics which is harder to change VS political ideology alone.

I think Harper sees the writing on the political wall. I am actually proud of him for stating the reality and that there really is no plan to leave Afghanistan to the Afghans. Obama would be eviscerated in the US by the right and the media for making a similar statement.

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

I think Harper sees the writing on the political wall. I am actually proud of him for stating the reality and that there really is no plan to leave Afghanistan to the Afghans. Obama would be eviscerated in the US by the right and the media for making a similar statement.

i have to complement his honesty. even though i don't agree with him on all issues, harper is no dummy.

there is a real need to protect innocent people over there from acid attacks and other insanity but that country is one Fu<ked up place that's not gonna be fixed for a long time. it's a tragedy. just look how long it took our western societies to get to the point where they are today. and the change didn't come from the outside, it came from within.

 

[Hydrogen]

What source are you using to make this statement. I would like to read it. I am using mainstream media and articles like Urbandreamer provided to determine they are just as powerful. Now it seems they are back in Kabul, which was our strong hold.

My reference is the fact that they are not the government of Afghanistan any more, nor are they operating in the open any more. The Taliban operate from Pakistan and when in Afghanistan must hide among the people. That means they are not as strong as you claim them to be.


As for references, please back your points first before you demand others do so (and something other than speculative or sensational newspaper articles).


So far, you've stated that you don't want troops to be pulled out, but you don't want to see them operating there, either. You claim that the Taliban is as strong as ever, but fail to recognize that the Taliban's aim is to kill those troops and to be the government of the country. You imagine that nation-building can proceed when such an effort would be under direct attack from the Taliban. You messaging is extremely confused. Maybe you should offer an actual idea (not an idealistic theory) as to what should be done, and why.