Meanwhile in Iraq & Syria

[The Conservative]

Want to end this quick... glass the place and make it look like Russia did it...

[ssu]

The crazy thing is, the Afghanistan war is still going on, something like 8400 troops still there and now the Pentagon wants to send more, and it's not just the Taliban, ISIS has moved in there as well, guy's are still getting killed there, an Army SF soldier was killed today, and yet it's totally invisible, the media does not report on it, at all, it's kind of eerie how they've completely edited that war right out of the public consciousness, they just don't talk about it, ever.

And btw the situation in Afghanistan is rather hopeless. The fragile Afghan government simply cannot take control of the country, there are vast safe areas for Taleban and no political solution in sight. And the Taleban are rolling back the Afghan army with I think last to fall was Sangin in Helmand province. The actual casualties of the war, which nobody fucking cares, are up. The losses of the Afghan National Army have naturally increased after the pullout of Western combat troops.

Last year (2015) was a terrible one for Kabul, with an estimated 5,000 killed and another 15,000 wounded, primarily by the Taliban. But the death toll this year (2016) is already much worse: From 1 January through 19 August, a total of 5,523 Afghan service members were killed, according to a quarterly report from the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).An additional 9,665 members were wounded during the same period, the report found.

What is worth noticing are the ratios of KIA to WIA with the Afghan forces. No top-of-the-line medical support.

Y'all are talking like "oh no, they're going back in", as if they ever came out, in order to go back, you would have to have left, but you never left, Marge, the foreign intervention never sleeps, even when the media is ignoring it, you're still there, 24-7-365.

Decrease the number of troops and keep them from being killed. And presto! The media forgets the whole war. Especially if you are Obama.

Just goes to show, your real problem, is the media, if the media can make Afghanistan disappear, they could make it all disappear, if they didn't report on it, you'd all be relieved of the burden, and you wouldn't care, you only ever notice it if/when the media gets hysterical about it, if they don't get hysterical about it, it didn't happen.

It's normal operating procedure for the US to use military force to respond to media outburst. Yes, sometimes that media outburst is something the US is waiting for, but not always. The first Somalia operation was this kind of military operation with no realpolitik reasons.

Mortar attack on Sarajevo market => Bombing campaign against Serbian position in Bosnia
Attack on a village in Kosovo => The Kosovo / Yugoslavia bombing campaign
etc.

Actually this is so normal, that I guess some Trump simply couldn't fathom that he could do something else. And if the media does turn a blind eye to some conflict, it really is effective. The two Congo Wars went totally unnoticed, even if the million or so deaths and an involvement of a multitude of African countries might make you think that the media would be interested about it.

[BjornP]

TBF, its hard not to take them seriously. They are in a much more desperate situation than the west. I don't think you want to push the issue

We are going to take people more seriously if they're more desperate, more poor, more inclined to use violence than us?

Well, I guess we have to give in to the Islamic terrorists, then... Bye bye The West.

[Martin Hash]

The only way alliances work is if both sides are respected: firing missiles into Russia's airbase seems pretty disrespectful. If someone is not your ally then don't be surprised when they turn out to be your enemy. If I was Russia, I'd see how effective terrorism is and start supporting it.

p.s. I was in China recently for a month, in the Islamic western region. Twice we were stymied going forward or back because of terror attacks, but the news is censored so The West doesn't know China has it bad. My conclusion, terrorism only works if you let it terrorize you. Case-in-point, socialists think racism is worse than terrorism, so they censor the race of the terror attackers. The West does censor, just not terror.

[The Conservative]

The only way alliances work is if both sides are respected: firing missiles into Russia's airbase seems pretty disrespectful. If someone is not your ally then don't be surprised when they turn out to be your enemy. If I was Russia, I'd see how effective terrorism is and start supporting it.

p.s. I was in China recently for a month, in the Islamic western region. Twice we were stymied going forward or back because of terror attacks, but the news is censored so The West doesn't know China has it bad. My conclusion, terrorism only works if you let it terrorized you. Case-in-point, socialists think racism is worse than terrorism, so they censor the race of the terror attackers. The West does censor, just not terror.

This is where most people make a mistake. We don't have allies, we have countries with common interests. When those interests change, so do our "alliances".

[Ex-California]

The only way alliances work is if both sides are respected: firing missiles into Russia's airbase seems pretty disrespectful. If someone is not your ally then don't be surprised when they turn out to be your enemy. If I was Russia, I'd see how effective terrorism is and start supporting it.

p.s. I was in China recently for a month, in the Islamic western region. Twice we were stymied going forward or back because of terror attacks, but the news is censored so The West doesn't know China has it bad. My conclusion, terrorism only works if you let it terrorized you. Case-in-point, socialists think racism is worse than terrorism, so they censor the race of the terror attackers. The West does censor, just not terror.

This is where most people make a mistake. We don't have allies, we have countries with common interests. When those interests change, so do our "alliances".

We don't have allies, we have client states. We're in charge here

[SilverEagle]

It was this president finally doing something resembling presidential. If he's going to be commander in chief instead of toddler in chief, I'll get behind him when he's doing things right. I always said I would. Nothing has changed.

Fuck that. I would prefer we did not bomb them. Stay out of foreign entanglements! I mean our meddling in the middle east since the early 90's has went SOOOOOOOO well for us and all. Now we hit Russia's ally. Not a great move IMO. Cold War 2.0 incoming and all because of a damn pipeline that S.A. wants run through Syria but the media will never talk about that little nugget.

this guy must have been paying attention for the past ten years. others.......

Wait a minute.....Okee is agreeing with me?

[Smitty-48]

And btw the situation in Afghanistan is rather hopeless.

Yeah, fuckin' Obama, had to say "Iraq bad, Afghanistan good", couldn't go all the way, one war had to be "good", pulling out of two wars at once would be a bridge too far, had to throw them a bone. Except now they're stuck with Afghanistan, which could ramp back up again, now that IS has moved in there as well.

[ssu]

The only way alliances work is if both sides are respected: firing missiles into Russia's airbase seems pretty disrespectful. If someone is not your ally then don't be surprised when they turn out to be your enemy. If I was Russia, I'd see how effective terrorism is and start supporting it.

Normalizing relations or easing the tension with Russia would be good. Yet one has to have quite a lot of hubris to think that Russia would be your ally, ...or easily gotten to be your ally. After all, in their military doctrine you are their biggest threat.

Btw. about your last sentence:

The top U.S. general in Europe said on Thursday that he had seen Russian influence on Afghan Taliban insurgents growing and raised the possibility that Moscow was helping supply the militants, whose reach is expanding in southern Afghanistan

See Russia May Be Supplying Taliban in Afghanistan: U.S. General

Wonder if Russo-Pakistani relations will warm up as Russo-Turkish relations have? Putin is already doing that. Hence no wonder that Russia is seeking to form some cooperation, perhaps even alliance with Pakistan and China especially when it comes to Afghanistan.

Pakistan Today puts it well how these things look from the Pakistani side:

The warmth with Moscow began showing in ’14, when we agreed to buy some of their Hind helicopters to use in the tribal area. Since then not only has the bilateral equation improved, but the overlap between the Russia-China arrangement and Pakistan-China embrace is fast resulting in a new security/trade pact in the region. One that might also wrap up the Afghan endgame to everybody’s benefit; in the right way this time.

This opportunity has not just helped Pakistan escape the isolation that India tried so desperately to impose upon it but, more importantly, it allows it to become relevant again; especially in Afghanistan. All three countries have suffered from terrorism, and all eye increased, mutually beneficial commerce. Hopefully everybody has learnt enough from the mistakes of the past not to repeat any of them.

See https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2017/0 ... th-love-2/

Seems that again the US is moved into a position of disadvantage, and likely they don't even notice it in the Whitehouse.

[Martin Hash]

It's noticed on this forum. Are we so much smarter than the people leading the U.S.? (In fact, that could be. Find the smartest U.S. leader, I want to talk to them for 10 minutes.) Probably there's something else going on: conservatism, nest-lining, job-padding, empire-building & palm-slicking. Unfortunately, even though all of those things are understandable, they aren't admirable. What happened to the admirable, trustworthy people?