My take on the Afghanistan Withdrawal Strategy

It's doable, but I still think he should have sent more troops. The more the better. I still think 80,000 is the right number, but 30,000 might get us out by mid-2012.

I think 80,000 could get us out by the end of the second quarter, 2011.

:crazy: :wtf:

That's precisely what this is.

Very doable.

They are MACHINES after all.

:freak:

Seriously dude, you need to buy a clue. The idea is to speed up the capability for withdraw. Send no troops and it never ends. That's where we are right now. You cannot pull out all troops right now, that would be a debacle. Your only choice is to increase troop levels in order to set the stage for a draw down.

I have a clue. You need to start paying attention.

Because they are not happy AT ALL with the constant deployments. Nor are their families who love them and miss them.

what branch of the service are you in or planning to join?

Left as a Sergeant (E-5) at the end of my enlistment period in 1984.

Tried to re-up in 2001, but I was too old and they wouldn't take me.

The combat veterans I've known all tend to be pacifists - especially as they've gotten older.

and instead of finishing in Iraq, they finish it in Afghanistan, how does that change their deployments other than where they are?

With another 1.2 million in reserve, just in case.

If we can't bring the troops home, lets bring home to the troops.

30k is going to be tough, especially with the given time line.

If they think they are there to establish some geo-political advantage then fucking do that and be done! Cause they are the ones that are there and trillions will be spent to see that McChrystal has somewhere to jog or we may as well plant mail boxes next to that pooch they've been screwing for 8++ years so we can send their cigars, checks and whiskey directly to where they are spending too much time already

Adjacent to this Herculean waste of blood time & money; Cheney has to be establishing a new level of malady if he thinks he is justified by accusing *anyone* of "dithering" - he dithered his deathly little culture-of-death exercise into the coma it is today

Many of our soldiers are going to die for nothing. If we pulled out tomorrow or three years from now it will have the same result. As soon as we're gone whatever government is propped up there will eventually fall or lose control of a large area of the country, just like it has always been there and will continue to be.

They may genuinely not want to be responsible when the current government there collapses after we pull out, it will be a larger human tragedy than the current war. I'm sure we'll see the reports of genocide, rape, etc when the hardcore Islamic faction reclaims the country and I'm sure the administration doesn't want that on their head either, at least not until a second term is won anyway. They don't want a military failure on the resume for fear of looking weak.

This whole thing is like me deciding I need to max out my $5,000 credit card in order to payoff the current $2,000 balance, just doesn't make any sense.

...will still be there at the end of the second quarter of 2011, and long after.

"We would come and they would leave. Then we leave, and they would return." - Gen. Igor Rodionov, Red Army 40th Army commander.

That's the way insurgencies work, and why counterinsurgencies fail.