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Forums 1C:Maddox Games IL2 Off Topic What kind of message does this say to troops already deployed?|
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Oct 27, 2:33 PM EDT
Obama says he will not rush Afghanistan decision By CHARLES BABINGTON and ANNE GEARAN Associated Press Writers JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) -- Despite Republican pressure to act quickly, President Barack Obama says he won't rush his decision about whether to send more troops to Afghanistan where 14 Americans died in the deadliest day for U.S. forces in more than four years. "While I will never hesitate to use force to protect the American people or our vital interests, I also promise you this - and this is very important as we consider our next steps in Afghanistan: I will never rush the solemn decision of sending you into harm's way," Obama said Monday during a visit to Naval Air Station Jacksonville. "I won't risk your lives unless it is absolutely necessary." Obama spoke on a day when a U.S. military helicopter crashed while returning from the scene of a fire fight with suspected Taliban drug traffickers in western Afghanistan. Ten Americans, including three Drug Enforcement Administration agents, died in the crash. Four more troops were killed when two helicopters collided over southern Afghanistan. It was the heaviest single-day loss of life since June 28, 2005, when 19 U.S. troops died, 16 of them aboard a Special Forces MH-47 Chinook helicopter that was shot down by insurgents. Obama is nearing a decision on whether to commit large numbers of additional troops to the war next year. His top military commander in Afghanistan favors an increase of roughly 40,000, officials have told The Associated Press, which would allow the U.S. military to expand its reach in areas of the country's south and east now under Taliban sway. Obama's visit to the naval air station came after he convened another in a series of White House war council sessions with about a half-dozen Cabinet officials and other top advisers earlier Monday in Washington amid Republican criticism that he is taking too long to choose his next move. The White House Situation Room session focused on the cooperation between U.S. military and civilian efforts in Afghanistan, White House officials said. Another session may be held later this week. Obama did not tip his hand on how he might decide. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters that a decision was still expected in the coming weeks. A war plan that asks Obama to commit tens of thousands of additional U.S. forces to Afghanistan is too ambitious, a top Senate Democrat said in Washington on Monday. Sen. John Kerry, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman who was the White House's point man during last week's tense talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, praised commanding Gen. Stanley McChrystal but said his plan for adding troops in Afghanistan "goes too far, too fast." Kerry's stance would aim for a modest increase in American forces, treading middle ground between Republicans who have said Obama would put soldiers and the country at risk by rejecting McChrystal's larger request and anti-war Democrats who question whether the United States already has taken on too much in Afghanistan. "Under the right circumstances, if we can be confident that military efforts can be sustained and built upon, then I would support the president should he decide to send some additional troops to regain the initiative," Kerry, D-Mass., said. Fresh from several days of talks in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, Kerry warned that the United States also cannot risk a drastic shift in strategy that would focus narrowly on hunting terrorists. "We all see the appeal of a limited counterterrorism mission, and no doubt it is part of the endgame, but I don't think we're there yet," Kerry said during remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations. "A narrow mission that cedes half the country to the Taliban could lead to civil war" in Afghanistan and threaten the fragile civilian government in Pakistan, he said. Last week, former Vice President **** Cheney said Obama should stop "dithering while America's armed forces are in danger." "It's time for President Obama to do what it takes to win a war he has repeatedly and rightly called a war of necessity," Cheney said. --- Gearan reported from Washington. AP White House Correspondent Jennifer Loven contributed to this report. |
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Would you rather it read '...President Barack Obama says he WILL rush his decision about whether to send more troops to Afghanistan'? |
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IL2-Moderator |
I don't envy his position. The Allies continue to lose troops at an alarming rate. Whatever he does is bound to attract criticism.
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This sort of information as reported in this link doesn't make the decision making situation at the top any easier:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33...ews-washington_post/ "I'm not some peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love," Hoh said. Although he said his time in Zabul was the "second-best job I've ever had," his dominant experience is from the Marines, where many of his closest friends still serve. "There are plenty of dudes who need to be killed," he said of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. "I was never more happy than when our Iraq team whacked a bunch of guys." But many Afghans, he wrote in his resignation letter, are fighting the United States largely because its troops are there — a growing military presence in villages and valleys where outsiders, including other Afghans, are not welcome and where the corrupt, U.S.-backed national government is rejected. While the Taliban is a malign presence, and Pakistan-based al-Qaeda needs to be confronted, he said, the United States is asking its troops to die in Afghanistan for what is essentially a far-off civil war. On a side note, here is a Wiki link that provides some insight into the beliefs of the Pashtun People: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pashtunwali An interesting philosophy and way of life, provided that you have them on your side. If not, then it looks like they could be a real PITA if they think they got done some dirt to them. |
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Well, I am obviously not currently deployed, but if I were deployed again at this time I wouldn't really think anything of this to be honest.
Nothing really big that would affect me, as a deployed soldier, was being said. Not that I read anyway. -PC Performance Aficionado and proud forum member since 2001 |
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I don't think anyone has ever won a war in Afghanistan,just left after a few years with a huge casualty list.
And if Al Queda are in Pakistan,shouldn't that country be invaded? |
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You forget, we don't invade countries that actually have nukes. ------------------------------------------------------------ "Of all lovers perhaps none is more unrequited than a liberal humanist. History makes fun of him. Misanthropes deride him." - Harper Magazine |
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IL2 Moderator  |
I think it sends the message that the commander in chief is a man who thinks before he acts regardless to what the political winds may dictate.
Waiting until after this run off election on Nov 7 will not endanger the troops any more than they already are. They are soldiers. They will do their duty. Waiting to see what happens in the election will give the president a better understanding of who his administration will be dealing with. Afghanistan is a very xenophobic society.. and if they think that the country is run by western puppets whatever we do will be that much harder. I think it is a wise decision to wait and see what the Afghan people will do. |
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Some smart man once said that on the most exalted throne we are seated on nothing but our own arse.
Indecision is a virus that can run through an army and destroy its will to win, or even to survive. |
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..... During the campaign 0bama argued that Bush and Cheney had it all wrong, that Afghanistan was the truly essential campaign, and that the effort there had to be dramatically reinforced. In March, 0bama replaced the existing commander with his own hand-picked guy (McChrystal) and announced that his appointment marked a change in the way of doing business in Afghanistan. Six months later, McChrystal is being painted as an officer who suddenly "just doesn't get it". What exactly suddenly happened to McChrystal's military acumen? Why did 0bama select him in the first place? Sorry, but it doesn't add up for me. I have the feeling that there is something else in play here. BLUTARSKI |
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IL2 Moderator |
From all the info I've been getting on what's actually going on in Afghanistan, I think we need to pull out entirely, and continue the drone program in cooperation with Pakistan.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Flying online as NORAD_Shinjiro  |
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Within 24 hours of the leak of the Afghanistan assessment to The Washington Post, General Stanley McChrystal's team fired its second shot across the bow of the Obama administration. According to McClatchy, military officers close to General McChrystal said he is prepared to resign if he isn't given sufficient resources (read "troops") to implement a change of direction in Afghanistan:
Adding to the frustration, according to officials in Kabul and Washington, are White House and Pentagon directives made over the last six weeks that Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, not submit his request for as many as 45,000 additional troops because the administration isn't ready for it. In the last two weeks, top administration leaders have suggested that more American troops will be sent to Afghanistan, and then called that suggestion "premature." Earlier this month, Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that "time is not on our side"; on Thursday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates urged the public "to take a deep breath." ... In Kabul, some members of McChrystal's staff said they don't understand why Obama called Afghanistan a "war of necessity" but still hasn't given them the resources they need to turn things around quickly. Three officers at the Pentagon and in Kabul told McClatchy that the McChrystal they know would resign before he'd stand behind a faltering policy that he thought would endanger his forces or the strategy. "Yes, he'll be a good soldier, but he will only go so far," a senior official in Kabul said. "He'll hold his ground. He's not going to bend to political pressure." On Thursday, Gates danced around the question of when the administration would be ready to receive McChrystal's request, which was completed in late August. "We're working through the process by which we want that submitted," he said. The entire process followed by the military in implementing a change of course in Afghanistan is far different, and bizarrely so, from the process it followed in changing strategy in Iraq. For Afghanistan, the process to decide on a course change began in March of this year, when Bruce Reidel was tasked to assess the situation. This produced the much-heralded yet vague "AfPak" assessment. Then, in May, General David McKiernan was fired and replaced by General McChrystal, who took command in June. General McChrystal's assessment hit President Obama's desk at the end of August, almost three months after he took command. And yet now in the last half of September, the decision on additional forces has yet to be submitted to the administration. Contrast this with Iraq in the fall of 2006. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was fired just one day after the elections in early November. The Keane-Kagan plan for Iraq was submitted to President Bush shortly afterward, and encompassed both the assessment of the situation and the recommended course of action, including the recommended number of troops to be deployed to deal with the situation. General David Petraeus replaced General George Casey in early February 2007, and hit the ground running; the surge strategy was in place, troops were being mustered to deploy to Iraq, and commanders on the ground were preparing for and executing the new orders. The first of the surge units began to arrive in Iraq only weeks later, in March. Today, the military is perceiving that the administration is punting the question of a troop increase in Afghanistan, and the military is even questioning the administration's commitment to succeed in Afghanistan. The leaking of the assessment and the report that McChrystal would resign if he is not given what is needed to succeed constitute some very public pushback against the administration's waffling on Afghanistan. http://www.longwarjournal.org/...resign_if_not_gi.php |
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Bingo!!! Well stated... |
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As in any scenario, the military wing is the last that you want to employ, and the first that you want to 'pull out'.
Pouring more troops in will continue 'your Vietnam', as I said many years ago when this started. Essentially you have 2 scenarios 1) You can remain there and prolong the 'agony' while more of your personel become 'calateral damage' 2) Immediately pull out and let them sort themselves out, without your personel taking the damage. Yeah! a lot of more people are going to die, but it will happen if you're there or not.  And NO.. 'Western Democracy' will never happen in the Middle East, so why bother enforcing it.   Forget the Garlic, Beetroot and Hardtack - Just gimme Gunz-n-Drugz |
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Forums 1C:Maddox Games IL2 Off Topic What kind of message does this say to troops already deployed?
