Finding Clarity in Afghan Strategy
By Col. Tom Snodgrass
After describing and linking to the Obama administration's idiotic maundering Col. Snodgrass provides links to diverse sources of opinion before setting forth a list of critical issues.
Col. Snodgrass follows up with a list of doubts.1) Taliban re-conquest must be prevented so that Afghanistan will be denied to al Qaeda as a base of future operations;
2) to achieve such denial, tribally ruled Afghanistan must be built into a modern state with a democratically elected representative government;
3) this "nation building" will entail robust US counterinsurgency to protect the population from Taliban intimidation and control until the Afghan government can independently maintain civil law and order;
4) while conducting counterinsurgency guaranteeing representative government, US forces must also train and equip Afghani military and police to enforce law and order; and
5) simultaneously with pacifying Afghanistan, US forces must also assist the Pakistanis in subduing the Taliban and al Qaeda who are threatening both the Pak and Afghan governments from regions on the Pak border adjacent to Afghanistan.
The tactical objectives are obviously impossibilities. Those things which are necessary can not be accomplished. Col. Snodgrass adds that a successful counterinsurgency would require seven to ten years, which, in the current political climate, are not available.1) the religiously motivated Taliban can be effectively and indefinitely denied power in this 7th century Islamic culture;
2) that Afghanistan can be lifted from tribal warlordism to a representative democracy;
3) that corrupt Afghani warlords can honestly and successfully administer a regime of law and order that will ensure the loyalty of a very ethnically diverse population;
4) that any Afghani military and police forces we can develop will be sufficient to maintain law and order in a forbidding land consisting of 251,772 square miles of mountains and deserts (about the size of Texas) with a population of 33 million; and
5) that the geographically adjacent corrupt Pak government can prevail over the primal Islamic forces embodied in the Taliban and al Qaeda that are demanding Shariah "justice" for Pakistan.
Having opened that can of worms, Col. Snodgrass dives into the issue of our relationships with Islamic regimes. What he finds at the bottom is unpleasant indeed.
So how does this reality factor into the military strategic equation? Primarily it means that no Islamic government can ever be truly counted on to affirmatively eradicate Jihadist violence against US interests. This in and of itself suggests at the very least that the objective of nation-building in Afghanistan is a fool's errand simply or so remote as to make it foolish. It also means that the likelihood that any Islamic government would be prepared to reject Shariah and embrace Western values is suspect at best.It distills down to this.
Our emphasis must be on kinetic operations to destroy this generation of Jihadists and on psycho-social operations that intensify kinetic results.Unfortunately, HellFire launches from drones are becoming increasingly unpopular in the region. "Civilians" are being hurt and killed because the Mujahideen do not separate themselves from them, preferring to use them as human shields. Add th that the lack of will to confront Islam ideologically & psychologically.
The bottom line:
We are just going to have to "shoot the closest bear" one at a time and reconcile our thinking that Jihad will reappear periodically like Haley's Comet.Col. Snodgrass may be able to accept that, but I can't. One WTC attack was enough. Two were a million too many. One Beslan was enough. One London attack was enough. One Madrid attack was enough. One Mumbai attack was enough. Enough already! Lets put a permanent end to the Jihad. One year before I was born, the "greatest generation" showed Japan what we could do. Can we still do that? Do we have the SISU, the stuffing to tell the lilly livered misfits of the world who disapprove of a single, permanent solution that they can have a piece of the action if they don't like it?
Is there a divine right to wage war against us, rape our widows, enslave our orphans and seize our real and personal property ? Or do we have a divine right to live unmolested, free from the threat and actuality of attack, secure in our lives & property? The two can not coexist. Why the Hell do we maintain the Declaration of Independence if we are not willing to actualize it ? Do we really hold those truths to be self evident, or have we forgotten them? Did we waste the blood of thousands fighting Hitler & Tojo only to submit and surrender to Usama? Is there any desecration more terrible than wasting the blood of those heroes who fought and died to preserve our liberty?
Everything that Col. Snodgrass outlined for us in his excellent essay was entirely predictable eight years ago. We could have and should have nuked Afghanistan off the face of the earth. The invasion is a fool's errand. Allowing reversion to status quo anti is unacceptable.
If we are going to shoot the target of the moment, why are there still terrorist training camps and staging areas in Iran, Syria & Pakistan? Why does any sanctuary for terrorists exist? Why are the Iranian factories that manufacture EFPs still standing? The answer is that this nation has been and is governed by cowards & traitors, not statesman for too many decades.
It should be obvious to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear that either Islam will become extinct or liberty will. If we will not make Islam extinct, we will not maintain our liberty. The Kemalist experiment proves that no compromise is possible, Islam must be eliminated.
If we are not willing to nuke the enemy, then we must use our second best weapon: the fact bomb. We must bombard the Muslims with facts, beginning with the truth about their Prophet, who was a pederast, lecher, pirate and murderer. What God would select such a man as his ultimate messenger? What God promises victory and delivers five successive defeats from an outnumbered and out gunned adversary? Islam's canon of scripture & tradition contains the ammunition we need to shake the faith of any rational Muslim who retains even a scintilla of morality.
If we were led by statesmen instead of traitors, we would begin by creating and distributing a full length feature film documenting the doctrines & misadventures of Muhammad. If we were led by statesmen instead of traitors, we would hear the truth about Islam, that it is a vicious predatory war cult, not a "great religion of peace".
What's that, you say? Islam is a religion; Muslims have a right to believe and practice as they choose? Yeah, right. Muslims have a right to believe that we are rebels against their god who must be killed or enslaved at any cost, that we may be killed, our widows raped and our children sold on the slave market with full impunity. If you believe that, then you might as well commit suicide now rather than wait for them to come for you. We don't need your kind, we need rational people who can think straight.
It is time for the few remaining intelligent, clear thinking people to unite and rise up as one, demanding rational & effective action from the government we ordained to protect us. Begin by signing these petitions and sending them to your family, friends and associates with an exhortation to endorse and forward them. Then send them to your Representative & Senators.
Those petitions contain the minimal information required to understand the truth about Islam, with links to the source documents for further exploration. They offer a quick and easy means to spread accurate information about the enemy which attacked us eight years ago. If you need more, such as fliers you can print and distribute and Powerpoint presentations you can attach to emails, you can find them at http://www.crusadersarmory.co.cc/ .
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