BF2S Forums Why haven't we shifted focus back to Afghanistan?

CameronPoe wrote:

Kmarion wrote:

Aren't we?

52,700 NATO troops in a country almost 1.5 times the size of Iraq. Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri are somewhere either in Afghanistan or Northwest Frontier province in Pakistan. Instead of trying to get them, there are instead 177,000 coalition troops stationed in Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and had not sponsored terrorism against the US, the UK or any of the other protagonists. Something doesn't make sense here. Why doesn't Afghanistan get 60 or 70 thousand of the Iraq-based troops so that Osama can be finished off?

Operationally Osama isn't important. The desire to capture him I've felt has been to bring him to justice. There are bigger fish to pursue when it comes to actually disrupting the network. The OP asked the question "why the focus isn't shifting back to Afghanistan". Reducing the number of forces in Iraq while at the same time increasing numbers in Afghanistan shows that there is a shift in progress. No matter how disproportionate the numbers are currently. The amount of troops needed to patrol a certain area varies depending on a number of different factors. It is not limited to land mass.

We have had more than 10x's the Casualties in Iraq as opposed to Afghanistan. Simple logic could give you the reasoning for a higher troop level. Completely dismantling a dominant military power in the region was a fundamental flaw and created greater resistance.

Part of the reason behind the drop in violence has been the proposed reconcilation.

As well as outlawing armed groups and calling for the independence of the judiciary to be respected, the pact calls for member of the dissolved army - from the time of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader ousted in the US invasion in 2003 - to be integrated into Iraq's new institutions.

Mek-Stizzle wrote:

m3thod wrote:

Mek-Stizzle wrote:

Why did they attack the Indian embassy of all places?

Ain't gotta white to be an infidel.

Mahmud Ghazni fanboys

Nah, i worship Muhammad Ghori and Muhammad bin Qasim.

Last edited by m3thod (2008-07-07 10:37:32)

CameronPoe wrote:

Kmarion wrote:

Operationally Osama isn't important. The desire to capture him I've felt has been to bring him to justice. There are bigger fish to pursue when it comes to actually disrupting the network. The OP asked the question "why the focus isn't shifting back to Afghanistan". Reducing the number of forces in Iraq while at the same time increasing numbers in Afghanistan shows that there is a shift in progress. No matter how disproportionate the numbers are currently. The amount of troops needed to patrol a certain area varies depending on a number of different factors. It is not limited to land mass.

We have had more than 10x's the Casualties in Iraq as opposed to Afghanistan. Simple logic could give you the reasoning for a higher troop level. Completely dismantling a dominant military power in the region was a fundamental flaw and created greater resistance.

Part of the reason behind the drop in violence has been the proposed reconcilation.

As well as outlawing armed groups and calling for the independence of the judiciary to be respected, the pact calls for member of the dissolved army - from the time of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader ousted in the US invasion in 2003 - to be integrated into Iraq's new institutions.

I agree that Osama is pretty much irrelevant but as a propaganda coup it would be solid gold.

Well, in all fairness, considering the odds of drowning in bathtub are four times greater than dying in a terrorist attack the entire relevance of nation building could be called into question.

IRONCHEF wrote:

Let the baddies blow up the pipeline (unocal) going through it, and we'll refocus efforts there.

What pipeline?

You mean the one that never got built

Unocal has not been involved in it since 1998, old conspiracy theory is old, and false

Vax wrote:

Maybe, but it remains in our best interest to not allow Afghanistan to become a neglected pit of chaos like it did in the late 90's.

It was "in our best interest" then ('90s) to support the Taliban.  It was "in our best interest" in the late '80s to provide aid to Osama and the Mujahadeen.

Perhaps we need to reconsider what the collective "best interests" of the U.S. are, instead of letting Corporatocracy and the military-industrial complex decide for us.

FEOS wrote:

The problem is that decisions made today, in our best interests today may certainly have unintended, negative, unforeseeable, consequences decades later.

Excellent point. If the geopolitical climate never changed we'd still be at ends with the British ffs.

FEOS wrote:

KEN-JENNINGS wrote:

Vax wrote:

Maybe, but it remains in our best interest to not allow Afghanistan to become a neglected pit of chaos like it did in the late 90's.

It was "in our best interest" then ('90s) to support the Taliban.  It was "in our best interest" in the late '80s to provide aid to Osama and the Mujahadeen.

Perhaps we need to reconsider what the collective "best interests" of the U.S. are, instead of letting Corporatocracy and the military-industrial complex decide for us.

1. We didn't support the Taliban in the '90s.

2. We did support the Mujahedeen in the 80s during their fight against the Soviet Union. The problem there was that we stopped support as soon as the Soviets withdrew, leaving a power vacuum that the Taliban took advantage of.

The problem is that decisions made today, in our best interests today may certainly have unintended, negative, unforeseeable, consequences decades later.

When you develop precognition for the masses, let us know.

1.  Yes we did.  Give me some time to find some sources to back that up, but I know I can for a fact.  After 2000 as well.

2. The problems I see are that those decisions based on the "best interests" aren't actually in the best interests of Americans, today or when they took place.  I have a major problem with much of the foreign policy the U.S. enacts because I don't see most as beneficial to much anyone, most of all the citizens in America and the far off lands we "help".

It's not precognition, it's implementing a sound and just foreign policy.  When the US enacts this type of policy (help the enemy of the enemy), as it consistently does, and gets burned on it, which it consistently has, I see it as obvious that we have a broken foreign policy system.

Last edited by KEN-JENNINGS (2008-07-07 18:32:07)

Kmarion wrote:

You sound like most real conservatives. The ones who read the constitution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism

jsnipy wrote:

CameronPoe wrote:

Because there's no oil in Afghanistan. Obviously. Afghanistan is a larger country than Iraq yet it contains a fraction of the troops and a fraction of the drive to rebuild. Like I said: oil.

/thread

or......................

we drove them out of afghan, so they scattered.  then they went to iraq.  Now, we are driving them out of Iraq, back to afghan.  now its time to open the net.

We may be leaving whether or not we want to.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/iraq_dc;_ylt … vLYo9X6GMA

Plus Nato needs to step up and help the heavy hitters in Afgahnistan. (USA, UK, Canada).

Last edited by CC-Marley (2008-07-07 20:21:07)

KEN-JENNINGS wrote:

FEOS wrote:

KEN-JENNINGS wrote:

It was "in our best interest" then ('90s) to support the Taliban.  It was "in our best interest" in the late '80s to provide aid to Osama and the Mujahadeen.

Perhaps we need to reconsider what the collective "best interests" of the U.S. are, instead of letting Corporatocracy and the military-industrial complex decide for us.

1. We didn't support the Taliban in the '90s.

2. We did support the Mujahedeen in the 80s during their fight against the Soviet Union. The problem there was that we stopped support as soon as the Soviets withdrew, leaving a power vacuum that the Taliban took advantage of.

The problem is that decisions made today, in our best interests today may certainly have unintended, negative, unforeseeable, consequences decades later.

When you develop precognition for the masses, let us know.

1.  Yes we did.  Give me some time to find some sources to back that up, but I know I can for a fact.  After 2000 as well.

2. The problems I see are that those decisions based on the "best interests" aren't actually in the best interests of Americans, today or when they took place.  I have a major problem with much of the foreign policy the U.S. enacts because I don't see most as beneficial to much anyone, most of all the citizens in America and the far off lands we "help".

It's not precognition, it's implementing a sound and just foreign policy.  When the US enacts this type of policy (help the enemy of the enemy), as it consistently does, and gets burned on it, which it consistently has, I see it as obvious that we have a broken foreign policy system.

The problem is that all foreign policy decisions seem sound and just when they are made, otherwise they wouldn't be implemented. Do you really expect that the government should have been able to predict after the Soviets left Afghanistan that the country would have imploded, a little-known religious nutjob sect would have seized power, supporting a nondescript foreign fighter who would have decided that the people who helped him fight the Soviets needed to remove the forces requested by his home country from his home country or else he was going to build a world-wide terrorist group and start attacking US interests, culminating in flying two jets into the WTC, sparking a years-long conflict?

Really?

God Save the Queen wrote:

Kmarion wrote:

You sound like most real conservatives. The ones who read the constitution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism

Odd, that's always how I imagined liberalism...