Please explain Cut and Run criteria in light of Afghanistan

I have nothing to say except you are lost.Enjoy.

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Hard pressed on my right. My center is yielding. Impossible to maneuver. Situation excellent. I am attacking.
--Ferdinand Foch-- at the Battle of the Marne

First things first... Remember when responding to me that I am not a democrat, am not a pacifist idealogue, and in fact hold many traditionally conservative values (usually held by the reps) regarding the military. I firmly supported the invasion of Afghanistan, and while I totally disagreed with the invasion of Iraq, I agree that we should be keeping them in now.I'm reminding you of this so you do not respond to my points with standard proBush replies.Now lets deal with what you said. While that is true, Chiro's point remains. You are clearly not fighting for a democratic republic either. Your statements are in direct conflict with what the founding fathers expected from a gov't and set up.Bush has betrayed long held conservative values and is now centralizing power to the executive, removing rights the founding fathers stated were vital for his expediency, as well as wrapping gov't in a cloak of secrecy. The idea now seems to be that gov't is there as a higher class meant to protect everyone for their own good, no matter what. And people just need to accept that. You sound like you rooted for Big Brother while reading 1984. If you were actually a patriot and defending US values, you would not be encouraging complacency in the public. They should not be sticking their head in the sand and going to shop at Dillards, if in fact there are all sorts of plots.It is with a bit of irony that you condemn people for sticking their heads in the sand about the level of threat they face, then directly argue they should not be given information on the level of threat they face and should ignore everything. You can't have it both ways.While I get that there are reasons for secrecy with regard to national security, that is only with regard to ongoing operations and only to protect assets in play. There is no sense that the people should be protected from information they can't physically do something about. And it certainly is not in the best interest of the people to have a gov't deciding what people need to know, based on such criteria.The gov't is by, for, and of the people. Get with the program. You are with us or you are with them. There are enemies both foreign and domestic. The founding fathers warned that our rights would likely be taken away internally by people using the exact arguments you are.So much for those side issues...This is a thread on the concept of Cut n Run. Why don't you explain how US handing control of Afganistan over to NATO at a time when the Taliban is regrowing in power, the Afghan gov't is asking for more help, and we never completed our mission there is NOT cutting and running?Also, can you explain how handing control of US troops over to foreign military control is not a betrayal of longheld conservative (rep) policy?

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holmes {in temp decloak from lurker mode}
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

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Why don't you explain how US handing control of Afganistan over to NATO at a time when the Taliban is regrowing in power, the Afghan gov't is asking for more help, and we never completed our mission there is NOT cutting and running?

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Heh. Maybe it's not "cut and run" because once they go in and take care of Iran they won't need Afghanistan for that pipeline anymore.Edited by Chiroptera, : remove old subtitle

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"My country is the world, and my religion is to do good." -- Thomas Paine

Yeah, but I thought going into Iraq was going to stop our having to go into Iran or Syria or anyplace else in the ME forever.You know, using the domino theory.Note: not to be confused with the Domino's theory ("If you don't deliver what we ordered in 30 minutes, we invade").

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holmes {in temp decloak from lurker mode}
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

How does questioning the actions of one's country equate to being "lost"?Edited by RickJB, : No reason given.

don't you remember how "confused" and "lost" winston was when he questioned the policies of O'Brien?that's obviously what Tal means--you are lost if you don't agree, mind in lockstep, with the government. afterall, the gov't does know the directions to the closest disaster, right?I find it funny how this man, who swore to "protect the constitution" would willingly see it torn to shreds by his commander in chief's abuses of it. go figure.

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The main difference is that no amount of information, sourcing, facts, or logical conclusions will matter to someone like RAZD. Saying things like "FDR is responsible for all soldier's deaths is WWII..." isn't worth responding to. It is idiotic. Now take Holmes. Holmes and I disagree on alot of different issues, but if he posts facts, information, sourcing, and makes a logical conclusion, I will read that and say, "Hmmm, yeah that makes sense." And he does the same with me. Therefore, we are at least capable of having a good dialogue about a particular subject.RAZD isn't just in left field, he's not even playing the same game.As for the sub-title: Map of Islamic Terrorist attacks since 911Short list of Islamic terrorist attacks in the last 4 months.Edited by Tal, : No reason given.Edited by Tal, : No reason given.

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Hard pressed on my right. My center is yielding. Impossible to maneuver. Situation excellent. I am attacking.
--Ferdinand Foch-- at the Battle of the Marne

Thanks. I'd be interested in your take on the initial thread topic.Do you agree that the US's ceding control of the Afghanistan campaign not only weakens our position there, but also sends the wrong idea to BOTH the terrorists as well as Afghanis, just as much as it is claimed abandoning Iraq would?If not, why not?By the way, I do like your new sig.

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holmes {in temp decloak from lurker mode}
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

A lesson we (should have) learned from Vietnam is that politicians should not run a war. Otherwise we would have 536 different views on how to run a given operation. This is the opposite of the principle of war known as "unity of command." There is 1 man that is Commander in Chief of the armed forces. Congress authorizes and funds the war, but should not have say in how it is run. Which brings me to this point. The plan from MNFI (General Casey, the Commanding General) has been the same since the insurgency started. Timetables and troops have been moved around as needed, but the plan hasn't changed. We are going to lower US troop levels when the CG has met certain objectives. Period. Any congress person that says, "Pull all of our troops out now" is advocating retreat. If they are talking about a phased withdrawl of troops, well that has been the plan all along. Making a come back is an overstatement. They want to make a come back would be more accurate. I don't know what information you are using to come up with this, but US troop levels are staying at around 20,000. We are not extricating ourselves. We are simply trying to share the burden with our allies, which is what allies generally do.I think you may have mis-read something somewhere.

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Hard pressed on my right. My center is yielding. Impossible to maneuver. Situation excellent. I am attacking.
--Ferdinand Foch-- at the Battle of the Marne

While I wholly disagreed with the invasion of Iraq, as well as how we have managed it, I agree that we cannot pull troops out. I think people like Sheehan and many dems are making a mistake in this regard. It is oversimplistic.Thus we can drop that side of the argument, and assume agreement on it.With respect to Afghanistan...Correct me if I am wrong, but we just handed control of that mission to NATO, as well as direct control of our troops. I did not say we are pulling more troops out now. We (from what I understood) reduced them in order to have foreign replacements come in, will not be improving strength (despite the fact that commanders on the ground have asked for such), most importantly are removing our direct oversight of military operations.The number of remaining troops seems irrelevant as calls to turn Iraq over to mainly foreign control and oversight (such as NATO) were also considered cut n run and against general US military policy. Right... so how does handing Afghanistan over to NATO fit into the above model? Haven't we just allowed Bush to remove himself from CIC and replaced him with the PMs of NATO nations? Well I'm not going to say I've seen military intelligence on it, but I have seen discussions on this by journalists in the area as well as by Afghan gov't leaders. They say the Taliban is regaining strength. I think Musharaf has noted the same. Is there a reason I should doubt them?

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holmes {in temp decloak from lurker mode}
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

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A lesson we (should have) learned from Vietnam is that politicians should not run a war.

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A rather hopelessly idealistic position. What we should have learned from Vietnam, and every other war, is that wars are fought to achieve political objectives. And it is the politicians who set the political agenda. It is the politicians who decide what the political objectives are; then they identify the "enemies" based on how much of an obstacle they pose to the objectives; and then they are the ones who decide how to deal with these obstacles, including whether to use military force against them.In reality, war will serve the political motives of the politicians, otherwise there would have been no reason to go to war to begin with. And the politicians, in real life, will oversee the war in order to ensure that as much of the political goals are met as possible. Wars cannot be fought in a way that jeopardizes the political goals; otherwise war becomes a useless tool of statecraft and no one would engage in it.

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"My country is the world, and my religion is to do good." -- Thomas Paine

The NATO commander now reports to SACEUR (Supreme Allied Commander Europe) who will always be a US 4 star officer (either General or Admiral). That person reports to SECDEF. So instead of reporting to the CENTCOM 4 star, the new CG reports a different 4 star, but its still a US officer. Unity of command is intact.If the commander thinks they need more troops, I'm sure they'll get more troops. You should doubt journalists though, unless they are covering a press conference.

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Hard pressed on my right. My center is yielding. Impossible to maneuver. Situation excellent. I am attacking.
--Ferdinand Foch-- at the Battle of the Marne

No, it is what is happening right now in the GWOT. The Commander-in-Chief asks what his generals need, and they get it. He sets the policy, but he lets the generals do their thing and he lets the soldiers fight the war. Senator Kerry or Senator Santorum (sp?) have no say, although they would like to. That is not a lesson to learn, that is a fact of life. Military might is brought to bear when political and diplomatic means do not find a resolution to a given problem.I should have rephrased my initial sentence to say Congress should not try to run a war.Edited by Tal, : No reason given.

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Hard pressed on my right. My center is yielding. Impossible to maneuver. Situation excellent. I am attacking.
--Ferdinand Foch-- at the Battle of the Marne

Oh, so when Shinseki asked for 300 000 troops, he got them?Edited by DrJones*, : No reason given.

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Just a monkey in a long line of kings.
If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist!
*not an actual doctor

almost true. In the words of Clausewitz, war is but an extension of diplomacy. Pray tell me, did diplomacy fail in WWII? Or, go further back, did it fail in the case of the three german wars of unification in the 1870s? Did it fail in the case of the Napoleonic Wars? Did it fail in the case of the thirty years war? Out of order, did it fail in the American revolution?In all of these cases, war is an extension of specific foreign policies, and as such, an extension of diplomacy. War is a very handy diplomatic tool--if you can't coerce someone peacefully, hold a gun to their head.just a tiny nitpick.

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