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Afghanistan: Why we should be there (or not), how to conduct the mission (or not) & when to leave

I happened to listen to Lowell Green's radio show yesterday and he blamed the high cas count on Cdns not having hy lift hel cap due tohe Liberals.
While it is true we would be sending F Ech off on msn using hel in lieu of vehs, we still have cbt sp convoys, CIMIC, all the other types of tpt and contactthat we need to have with the locals to win their hearts and minds....all susceptible to IEDs, unfortunately.  The US inIraq  had more hel lift cap than anyone in history but the fact remains there is a lot of veh tfc req.  If we are going to rebuild the country and win hearts and minds we have to be on the gd  with the locals. 
 
WarmAndVertical said:
I happened to listen to Lowell Green's radio show yesterday and he blamed the high cas count on Cdns not having hy lift hel cap due tohe Liberals.
While it is true we would be sending F Ech off on msn using hel in lieu of vehs, we still have cbt sp convoys, CIMIC, all the other types of tpt and contactthat we need to have with the locals to win their hearts and minds....all susceptible to IEDs, unfortunately.   The US inIraq  had more hel lift cap than anyone in history but the fact remains there is a lot of veh tfc req.  If we are going to rebuild the country and win hearts and minds we have to be on the gd  with the locals.   

Please, brother.  Some of your points are good, but for the love of God man, use real words and the spell checker (it's free, ya know)
Thanks, carry on.  :)
 
zipperhead_cop said:
Please, brother.  Some of your points are good, but for the love of God man, use real words and the spell checker (it's free, ya know)
Thanks, carry on.   :)

He's using standard military abbreviations which are immediately familiar to soldiers of my generation - good ol' Staff Duties in the Field!

But we should avoid most abbreviations, even the common everyday military ones, because there are so many civilians on Army.ca for whom msn, tfc and veh are are foreign as MSN speak is for me.

We soldiers should also spell out acronyms on first use.
 
Yeah, it really makes for hard reading if you have to decipher what everything should mean in the context of the sentence....
 
More importantly, and central to WaV's original post, who is Lowell Green and why does he feel qualified to comment on operational matters?  Worse, why does he feel it necessary to use casualties to take a partisan political shot?
 
Lowell Green is an extremely conservative talk show host in Ottawa. Like many media commentators, he rarely lets facts interfere with his arguments. Having said that, I heard part of the show in question, and he was not playing the casualty card as such, and certainly not to the extent that Taliban Jack was.

 
Lowell Green was a lefty 25 years ago. It made him popular. When public opinion changed he just followed the ratings. The man is the crassest of political opportunists. He makes the Liberals look like they have a backbone.

I vote that the war effort is undermanned/underequipped/underfunded. The public is not hearing this. We have to tell them step up and pay what it takes to succeed or we will fail. The fact is that we give a crap about the Afghani's and the public doesn't. The public cares about our image and isn't willing to pay the cost. Shame really, its such an important mission.

P.S. The 3$ "Support the Troops" magnet is NOT ENOUGH. I wish for a Marshall plan, all in, we really do 15000 on the ground, call up the Reserves, lets git er done commitment. The cost of a half assed mission is worse than not going at all, at least in my estimation. Sometimes I wonder if the public just wanted revenge. That deep down they really couldn't give a toss about reconstruction and now that we have our pound of flesh they just want to forget the whole thing ever happened.
 
If we must set an arbitrary end date, perhaps it should be after the next Afghani national elections.  Keep the fledgling democracy alive through its first round, and once its onto its second leg (hopefully with more widespread participation from all factions) let it go.

2009 for the sake of 2009 is silly.
 
"I vote that the war effort is undermanned/underequipped/underfunded. The public is not hearing this. We have to tell them step up and pay what it takes to succeed or we will fail. The fact is that we give a crap about the Afghani's and the public doesn't. "

Nemo  I  agree but I think it is the other NATO countries that need to step up to the table.  All NATO countries signed up to defend a country member when attacked so, if we can agree that Afgn has something to do with 9/11, then they should all be there in body or funding.  Also, the counrties there should be rotating through the differentsectors (South is the only real danger as it borders on the NW Pak territory.  I think the onus is on NATO to supply the equipment and money to support the tps willing (UK, CDA and Netherlands) to take on the hard part (left out US as they are there really on a non Nato msn, basically).  We need well equiped strength in numbers that will
1  Massively Overpower the en , dominate the ground and be capable of training the Afgn army ..lets face it...if we show ourselves to be a dominant and powerful force, then the Afgn army will realize that they are secure with us...if we are are a small, nucleus of instructors who are continually tettering on the brink of pulling out, the Agfn will never be comitted to our side).

2. Massively commit to CIMIC and rebuilding under the security umbrella of the force in 1.

It has been said that no one has ever won a counter insurgency...I think it is because no one hasever treated a counter insurgency with th same determination of a WW2.  We need to do that in the West.

Havng said that, I don't believe it will ever happen...too many ppl are getting immensely wealthy with their Defence Industries investments the way things are going right now.
 
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/233617

Why military might does not always win
TheStar.com - News - Why military might does not always win

A new study suggests that involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan might be doomed from the outset

July 08, 2007
Andrew Chung
staff reporter

Does this sound familiar? "A war with no visible payoff against an opponent who poses no direct threat will come under increasing criticism as battle casualties rise and economic costs escalate .... "

It was written more than 30 years ago, after the end of the ill-fated Vietnam War, in one of the first analyses of battles between states and insurgents or guerrillas who are weak in military might but pumped up on resolve. Experts call them asymmetrical wars.

But, of course, it could very well have been written today, about Iraq – or about Afghanistan, where Canadian soldiers keep dying along dusty roadsides, blown up in their armoured vehicles by improvised yet powerful bombs. Six on Easter Sunday. Three more on June 20. Another six last Wednesday.

The total number of casualties since Canada joined the Afghan mission in 2001: 66 soldiers, plus one diplomat.

Criticism is increasing. Public sentiment about the war is primarily negative, polls show. Politicians are ratcheting up their opposition. "It's the wrong mission," NDP Leader Jack Layton argued last week, insisting troops leave the war-ravaged country now. "It's not working; it's not going to accomplish the goals."

What's happening in this country is familiar among nations that carry out military interventions – and, new research shows, a prime factor in why they fail.

Since World War II, the world's most powerful nations have failed 39 per cent of the time, according to a study by Patricia Sullivan, a professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia. Despite overwhelming military superiority, mounting human and material costs compel them to pull out their troops without achieving their political aims.

Since Vietnam, researchers in the complex field of conflict studies have focused on the outcome of wars, and have looked at how even low-budget insurgents can defeat the world's greatest powers by taxing their political will to fight.

More at link.
 
one of the most telling sentences is

Does it mean a mission like Afghanistan has so little chance of success in the first place that we shouldn't try?

"There's nothing in a study like this that says: `Oh, well, we shouldn't engage in these things,'" says military historian Delaney. "It's: `How important is it to you? How much does it contribute to your security?'"
 
If this is WW3 (or 4)  then we should treat it like a world war.  The US shouldn't have 150K in Iraq, they should have 1 million and 150K!  The Principles of War and the Powell Doctrine and any professional military person will tell you about the criticality of overwhelming force.  This current madness is going to be a slow drip drip of casualties, likely 1 a week on avg for us, 3 a day for US in Iraq.  It will go up if the IEDs keep getting more sophisticated....But, if we were there in massively overwhelming force, capable of occupying towns and roads and denying all movement at night we could likely avoid most casualties.
Of course there is no political will anywhere in the West for this so the status quo will go on until the politicians get weak.  I find it odd that the people who are treated like the villains here are the ordinary Canadians who are truly saddened by our soldiers being killed and want it stopped.  The ones who are the real enemy are the ones who have the power to mobilize a truly effective military solution.  They keep spouting that this is a true clash of civilization but they would rather take a tax cut and keep sending the sons of others to do their fighting.
 
MCG said:
I also think that Foreign Affairs is failing in its communications duties.  It should be that minister who is spreading the message to Canadians about why we are there, what we aim to achieve.  There is plenty of communications on how we intend to fight the enemy, but the silence related to reconstruction is deafening.  This silence is not because we are doing nothing.  This silence is not because reconstruction is unimportant (quite the  opposite; reconstruction is the most important).  The silence is because DFAIT has failed in its communication strategy.
I wonder, if DFAIT & CIDA were to take more of the lead in the governments communication efforts, would those organizations also do a better job of executing thier part of the pie?

New initiatives needed, Afghanistan experts say
Updated Sun. Jul. 8 2007 2:19 PM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

The Senlis Council policy group says the work of Canadian soldiers is being undermined in southern Afghanistan because development funds aren't making it to ground level in Kandahar.


Edward McCormick, the country director in Afghanistan for the Senlis Council, told CTV's Question Period that Canada needs to do more to ensure that projects are carried out in the region.


McCormick, who lives in Kandahar, said despite what is being said in the House of Commons, he is seeing few CIDA development projects carried out in southern Afghanistan.

"There may be something going on in the north where areas are more secure, where it has been possible to have schools set up for girls, but it's not happening in the south."

"Instead when I walk into the villages and refugee camps, which I do daily, I'm seeing children dying of starvation."

That kind of desperation leads to unrest.


"When we don't enhance the excellent work that the military is doing by providing a positive environment through a variety of initiatives, we are further endangering the troops there. We are undermining their efforts," McCormick said Sunday.

From the military perspective, Retired Maj.-Gen. Lewis MacKenzie said the number of NATO troops in Afghanistan needs to be doubled in order to enhance the security of Canada's soldiers and to guarantee the projects that do come about aren't destroyed by the Taliban.

"Any success we have, when we are able to secure an area, when there is another problem and we have to abandon that area and go to another area, than naturally the insurgents move in behind us. You have to keep boots on the ground," MacKenzie said.

MacKenzie said countries such as Spain and Italy need to abandon their "tokenism" efforts and start securing the country.

Increasing the number of troops is not only important in aiding development, but will also decrease the amount of civilian casualties.

"When you don't have enough troops on the ground and you can't secure an area, with what you have, often times what you're seeing are the troops that are there are backing out and calling for air strikes," McCormick explained.

"Then what we're seeing is innocent civilians being injured or killed by the bombs."

The Senlis Council is calling on a complete overhaul of the mission so that it is managed to properly complement the Canadian military's efforts in Afghanistan.

International Co-operation Minister Josee Verner maintains evidence of redevelopment is abundant in southern Afghanistan.

"Since last year, we have increased a lot of development projects in Kandahar. I went there in April and I could see the results at that time," Verner told CTV's Question Period on Sunday.

"Of course it's difficult; of course we face challenges in Kandahar, but what I can say is we have increased a lot of our funding in Kandahar this year. As an example, last year only $5 million was spent in Kandahar, but this year it is close to $39 million."

MacKenzie contends that despite the increase in funding, Afghan civilians can't see the progress on the ground and are becoming frustrated.

"CIDA's strategy in the past doesn't play necessarily well in Afghanistan in the hearts and minds direction in that they are funding long term efforts through other large international organizations like the UN for example. So, when the money shows up in the UN, the Canadian flag disappears from it and it becomes a project of someone else," MacKenzie said.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070708/afghanistan_mission_070708/20070708?hub=TopStories
 
A post at The Torch:

Afstan: Beyond wobbly
http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2007/07/afstan-beyond-wobbly.html

Mark
Ottawa

 
That seems like a smart play, though.  Everyone knows that province will be a total cluster *bleep* without some NATO country there, and since no one wants to take it over (and why would they) that is some fairly strong leverage to get some help going.  Hopefully our NATO penance for being a bit of an anchor over the last couple of decades has been paid. 

Maybe we should start an Army.ca "Name that New Operation" contest?  I'm going to put in OPERATION ARCHON in keeping with the Greek op names theme we seem to have going. 
And it starts with "A"! 
 
Good article here on Brit Generals warning on Afgh and the repercussions of losing.....Pakistan could be lost to terrorists (and their nukes).

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2126817,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=12

Nato needs to get serious about Aghn
 
If the news and media would show more of what is actually done and educate the public a little more on our involvement there would be much more support :army:
 
I don't think you are ever going to see strong support from the major, old-line EU countries. As has been stated by others in many threads, they are too busy pandering to Arab factions/countries within and outside their countries. They are standing there making noise, but not really doing anything.
 
I don't think you are ever going to see strong support from the major, old-line EU countries. As has been stated by others in many threads, they are too busy pandering to Arab factions/countries within and outside their countries. They are standing there making noise, but not really doing anything



Then NATO is effectively dead.  The EU countries are the ones with the most critical danger of Islamic terrorites...so if they don't care, why should we?  Or are they hoping for us to lure the terrorists to Canada, UK and Ne as we are taking the lion's share in Afgh?
 
I just think they are thinking that nothing will happen to them if they don't stir the hornets' nest....essentially our NDP position.
 
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