General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHas our government defined what it means to "win" in Afghanistan?
Is it leaving them with a viable government? Conquest? Destruction? I know we wanted to punish the Taliban after 911 for aiding Al Quaida. What are we doing now?
ProudLib72
(17,984 posts)Him posing in front of a banner that reads "Mission Accomplished".
guillaumeb
(42,641 posts)is what is intended. So if the "war President" can remove that focus and improve his ratings that counts as a win.
global1
(25,290 posts)Trump winning re-election in 2020.
doc03
(35,414 posts)Algernon Moncrieff
(5,794 posts)Locut0s
(6,154 posts)Algernon Moncrieff
(5,794 posts)7wo7rees
(5,128 posts)What again is the definition of insanity?
Algernon Moncrieff
(5,794 posts)Preserving the Saigon government and preventing dominoes from toppling. It was a bad goal, but a goal nonetheless. I have no idea what the end game is supposed to be.
bigtree
(86,013 posts)...as President Obama once declared there was, and as Trump asserted yesterday.
There has been, however, much to lose in this repeated flailing of our military forces against the Afghan people; against the remnants and ghosts of al-Qaeda. We have already been shown, repeatedly, that our government-building efforts behind the force of our military in the Middle East has produced more individuals inclined or resigned to violent expressions of resistance than it's succeeded in establishing any of the 'democracy' or 'stability' promised.
For an economically crippled superpower pushing up against the admitted limitations of our military, that's enough for the U.S. to declare 'success' and 'progress,' and leave when the president says he will -- if not ahead of time. Instead, these successive presidencies have been content to tolerate the self-escalated sacrifices of our our soldiers as our troops eventually hunker down in Afghanistan, tolerating the tragically wounded and killed and waiting for some moment to declare 'victory' out of their desperate defense of their own lives against the Afghans that the presidents and the Pentagon claim we've been liberating.
read more:
Perpetuating the Afghanistan Folly
7wo7rees
(5,128 posts)Forever and forever......
NutmegYankee
(16,204 posts)It's all about him.
Docreed2003
(16,889 posts)Any hope of a stabilized country in Afghanistan was killed when Massoud was assassinated in the days before 9/11. With him died the hope of a modernized Afghanistan, at least for now.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)where the people don't trust us. Unless something drastic happens, there is no reason to invade another country. It is possible we have to strike occasionally, but not often and it has to be done with a lot of support from other countries. No more george war bush Crusades.
Algernon Moncrieff
(5,794 posts)In WWII, we were greeted as liberators because we were liberators, and we were fighting nations that had declared war on the US. Once we got to Germany and Japan, we had an equally clear and compelling goal - conquest and destruction of the existing regime by any means necessary.
Since WWII, we have gotten involved in several types of invasion/war:
- "Banana Republic" invasions to effect regime change (Haiti, Panama, Grenada, the DR) - usually low risk/low reward affairs
- Anti-communist intervention (Korea, 'Nam) - the best we did was a stalemate in Korea. Generally, an unworkable strategy.
- Middle East invasion. Kuwait worked because it was a war of liberating one state from an aggressor, and we had a broad coalition of support. not so with the Iraq invasion.We have no idea what we are trying to accomplish in Afghanistan at this point, so we are accomplishing nothing. We are trying to support the Iraquis in their liberation of Islamic State -- with limited success.
- Intervention to prevent genocide. The invasion of the former Yugoslavia (with the support of NATO) to prevent the further slaughter of the Kosovar Muslims by the Serbs was largely successful.
NCjack
(10,279 posts)1. He is able to limp along and lose no more ground in Afghanistan during his presidency, and
2. A future president is forced to withdraw and be tagged as the guy who "lost Afghanistan to the Taliban." (Triple crowing points will be claimed by Trump if the the "loser" is a DEM.) [TRUMP: "My plan was working, then the DEMs wrecked everything!"]
It is bad enough to die there, but to die with no plan to win is also like killing their families.