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Apparently it's over in Afghanistan.

By The Armorer on January 15, 2012 | | Comments (3)
 We just missed the memo.

The Taliban have declared victory.

Time to come home, boys and girls. Who are we to argue with the indigenes? Especially since... they are probably just being premature, vice wrong, in the final analysis of the Western Way of War in the Orient. So why not just short cut it and come home. We did in Iraq, what makes this different?

We've given the Iraqis and the Afghans a chance to choose a different future for themselves. It's up to them to actually *choose* it.   Of course, doing nothing is a choice, too - a choice for the status quo ante. 

But then, I was never *for* this whole "nation building" thing, because I didn't think we had the political stomach for it.  The Brits have done it before - and it takes decades, something we.just.don't.do.

Gah, it's frustrating to watch us do this... again.

I blame the education system of the elites.  They don't *really* teach history.  Not usefully, anyway.



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3 Comments

By Grumpy on January 15, 2012 3:50 PM
 We should *all* including, the Taliban, The Military, The US Civilians, *ALL of the Politicians* and  including your *beloved elite*, remember this one thing, *"All plans subject to change, without notice!"* 

About the elite, we should track the money. Is this a new idea? It was a great idea from the Bush Administration, there is one trick to it, *apply the dang thing, all of the time.*
 
By Oldloadr on January 15, 2012 8:45 PM
John - IMHO: The answer is in a book called Partners in Command by Mark Perry.  It's a history of the relationship between Generals Eisenhower and Marshall; with a lot about the relationshop between Generals Marshall and Pershing.  One of the premesis of the book (actually a doctrine developed by Gen. Pershing) is that Generals managing a war for a democracy have one election cycle to win.  Mr. Perry maintains that Eisenhower and Marshall pushed for the D-day invasion in 1944 in order to get into central Europe before America's 4th year of war. 

Now, we did Nation-building in Germany and Japan and stayed in both places to the present day.  The difference is, we had a concrete end to hostilities with both countries before the nation-building stage began.
 
By Grumpy on January 15, 2012 10:06 PM
 As I look at this and Oldloadr's excellent comment, I see 2 things that really stand out. We need to balance these two concepts with each other, they are “history” and “context”. We do not have the luxury of ignoring either one. “History” would raise some interesting questions. We don't like these areas, but they are historically important to the strategy. None of us wants to talk about it, but Eisenhower and Marshall carried with them, an important concept, there was a “Declaration of War”. This is much more than sounds,  the whole Nation went to war together, everybody was involved in some level. There was one other part. To this whole discussion, we had a draft.This does not mean, everybody goes into the military, but they do find their place to serve the Nation.

On the other hand, today, we have an all volunteer force. Enough with the rhetoric, if we don't have our own people in the dogfight, it changes our perception of the whole context of war. You don't have a presidential a candidate, saying that he wants to be a “war–time President”, this was prior to 9/11.. The other thing is you don't have  the opposing party applying the same principles of war, to a point.

But it is always a good sign to see a  historical view of warfare  within a contextual view of warfare. I've seen the impact of this logic that is being used now. But as they  trim the defense budget are they also going to trim their expectations? This is especially true in the region that we are now fighting, there was an old saying, “You decide when to start the war and  we'll decide when it's over.” Just my 2 cents.