Taliban Now Winning; U.S. Commander in Afghanistan Warns of Rising Casualties

[laststeamtrain]

Source: WSJ

AUGUST 10, 2009

Taliban Now Winning
U.S. Commander in Afghanistan Warns of Rising Casualties

By YOCHI J. DREAZEN in Kabul and PETER SPIEGEL in Washington

The Taliban have gained the upper hand in Afghanistan, the top American commander there said, forcing the U.S. to change its strategy in the eight-year-old conflict by increasing the number of troops in heavily populated areas like the volatile southern city of Kandahar, the insurgency's spiritual home.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal warned that means U.S. casualties, already running at record levels, will remain high for months to come.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, the commander offered a preview of the strategic assessment he is to deliver to Washington later this month, saying the troop shifts are designed to better protect Afghan civilians from rising levels of Taliban violence and intimidation. The coming redeployments are the clearest manifestation to date of Gen. McChrystal's strategy for Afghanistan, which puts a premium on safeguarding the Afghan population rather than hunting down militants.

Gen. McChrystal said the Taliban are moving beyond their traditional strongholds in southern Afghanistan to threaten formerly stable areas in the north and west.

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124986154654218153.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

[daedalus_dude]

1. *Good bye my sweetheart, hello Vietnam*

[Amos Moses]

2. K&R

http://www.alternet.org/politics/140106/the_disease_of_permanent_war/?page=1

[Hubert Flottz]

3. This is the price we pay for the neocon's Iraqi war.

We could have finished off the Taliban several years ago, but Rumbo thought there were better things to bomb in Iraq.

Somebody should have been "Keeping America Safe" from the PNAC.

[No Elephants]

5. At some point, we Democrats own the wars we fight, not Dummya. I don't know if we have reached

that point yet. I guess it depends upon your perspective and worldview.

[Hubert Flottz]

6. Who lied us into Iraq and didn't finish off the Taliban?

[GliderGuider]

8. How would one "finish off" the Taliban?

Movements like that regenerate organically from the local population. Perhaps if we "finished" off" the local population that might help...

AS a Canadian, I am so angry that we are in Afghanistan I can barely speak about it.

[northernlights]

19. the Taliban are not local

they are from Pakistan and took over Afghanistan during the power vacuum left after the USSR attacked and lost Afghanistan. They generally are hated and feared by the Afghans.

Our initial attack on the al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan was absolutely the right thing to do. W should have followed his own advice and "stayed the course" there, driven the Taliban out of Afghanistan, occupied and rebuilt until they had their own government established, and then left.

In that situation, Afghanistan would long since have stabilized, rebuilt and been functioning without our help. Iran would have continued to be kept somewhat in check by fear of Saddam. Pakistan would still have its own problems with the Taliban, but without the brains and organizing power of al Qaeda, the Taliban are simply an uneducated bunch of thugs and would have been much easier for Pakistan to control.

[mbperrin]

21. Actually, they were all in the same country before the Brits divided it all

up during the so called Great Game with Russia.

Some game, loads of fun for war profiteers, not much else.

[Bragi]

26. Not so

The medevilists who are the Taliban have dominated the Pashtun areas (which include southern Afghanistan and Northern Pakistan) for about 200 years. They are central to the social and political fabric of the area. It is foolish to think they can be wiped out.

No good will come from this war. Obama should never have escalated it, but he has, and eventually he is going to have to figure out a realistic exit plan. The question is how many Afghanis, and how many NATO troops, need to die before he realizes his error.

[Hubert Flottz]

30. "Dead Or Alive"

That's what Bush promised the 75% that trusted him after 9/11. I never trusted Bush from day one.

[BOG PERSON]

27. Agreed

If Obama can accumulate political capital, he can also take on the last administration's political debts.

Obama now owns this war.

[tabasco]

11. That's right. The unjustified Iraq invasion meant the justified mission

in Afghanistan was abandoned.

Now, it's like we just started anew.

[mwb970]

12. Started anew to do what?

What is the goal in Afghanistan? Get bin Laden? Establish "democracy" (good luck with that)? Kill all the Taliban?

I have no idea whatsoever why we are in Afghanistan at all, and I can't think of a single thing we could accomplish there that would be of any importance to American security. And yet the deaths and spending go on. And on and on and on.

Why aren't some of these crazy townhall terrorists protesting the billions and billions the bush maladministration put into these futile, results-less wars instead of railing against attempts to improve their health care? Even Obama seems to have bought into the madness.

:shrug:

[TheLastMohican]

15. How can you finish off a Taliban?

They draw numerous recruits from the general crowd, including lots of youths.
Killing the whole population of Afganistan and Pakistan would probably finish off the Taliban. Are you advocating that?

The only solution is to pull out. The sooner the better. Alexander the Great figured it out long before first vikings appeared on the North American continent.

[Hubert Flottz]

28. I never thought for a minute that we'd "WIN" anything there...

I thought it was about oil, natural gas and two 48" pipelines. The invasion of Afghanistan was sold to us as a have to case, in order to get the people who attacked the US on 9/11/2001. Back when a large chunk of America still thought that Bush and Cheney didn't lie every breath that they drew. I hoped before the invasion of Afghanistan that what our government "knew" about Bin Laden and his support people was solid enough to lead to his capture and punishment. I now believe that the PNAC never intended to kill or capture the real 9/11 killer's masterminds and benefactors in Afghanistan, or Saudi Arabia, or the United States, or anywhere else.

I also believe the invasion of Iraq and the brutality that was revealed at Abu Ghrib and other faith based torture centers has poured fuel on the fire all over the Middle East. The Instillation of an oil company puppet as the head of the government in Afghanistan fanned the flames too. The more killing we do in Afghanistan now the more hatred we will create. We find ourselves in much the same situation NOW, that we once found ourselves in in Viet Nam. The bad guys hit our guys and cross the border into another country to laugh about what they've done and done and done.

Like South East Asia, if we pull out now, will there be another bloodbath like the mass killings that followed the pull-out in the 1970s? Do we take a chance and let millions more die on a new series of "Killing Fields"?

I was against the invasion of both Afghanistan and Iraq from the get-go. I NEVER trusted Bush and Cheney and I was right about that! But that didn't stop the madness. We are in there now...you tell me how we get out, short of turning our backs on the ones who will probably be slaughtered once our troops are gone. Reality is a bitch...and that made up "Reality" like the neocons used, has us behind yet another eight ball. How long can we tread the quagmire tha broke the USSR's back?

[tocqueville]

4. McChrystal needs more men, that's all and whines a little

The Talibans don't stand a chance in the North, hold by different ethnic groups. Even when the Talibans controlled Kabul, they couldn't take the North, even with tanks.

The Allies have recently cleaned the South, the French cleaned the North-East.

So the Talibans move West, but they cannot get safe heavens in Iran.

We need more troops and I hope the Europeans will contribute more.

There is no other option.

[No Elephants]

7. Needs more men? I have it on the highest authority that women are dying and losing limbs there, too.

BTW, US Commanders do not tend to say they are losing, even when they are losing. So, I would not leap to the conclusion that McChrystal is saying he is losing when he is really winning, simply to get more troops. I am not sure why he is saying it, but I would not leap to any conclusions contrary to about 200 or more years worth of history.

Good luck with your theories on Afghanistan. So far, no nation has figured it out.

[tocqueville]

9. read the article

"Several officials who have taken part in Gen. McChrystal's 60-day review of the war effort said they expect him to ultimately request as many as 10,000 more troops -- a request many observers say will be a tough sell at the White House, where several senior administration officials have said publicly that they want to hold off on sending more troops until the impact of the initial influx of 21,000 reinforcements can be gauged."

besides I don't buy the "never conquered" theory. Read about Afghanistan history and it shows rather the contrary. We heard the same stuff about the Serbs, and they surrendered after 2 months.

We are not dealing with a national liberation insurgency, but with an insurgency with limited support in the population. Since the Pakistani woke up, they don't even have real safe heavens now. This war is winnable with the right strategy, except for defaitists of course.

[saigon68]

10. Its Gen Wastemoreland ReDux ---Kids

Trying to stamp out a religion, is like trying to create a hole, with your hand, in a bucket of water.

History is on the side of the "Infidels"

Infidels = an epithet created to describe the Islamic enemy in the "Great Crusades"

[eringer]

13. I DO NOT TRUST THIS GUY AND NEITHER SHOULD OBAMA

This is what happens when you let the sitting SecDef hang around after an election...

McChrystal was Cheney's chief assassin
Fri, 15 May 2009 23:38:39 GMT
Font size :

Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal
Seymour Hersh says that Dick Cheney headed a secret assassination wing and the head of the wing has just been named as the new commander in Afghanistan.

In an interview with GulfNews on May 12, 2009 Pulitzer prize-winning American investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, said that there is a special unit called the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) that does high-value targeting of men that are known to be involved in anti-American activities, or are believed to be planning such activities.

According to Hersh, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) was headed by former US vice president Dick Cheney and the former head of JSOC, Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal who has just been named the new commander in charge of the war in Afghanistan.

McChrystal, a West Pointer who became a Green Beret not long after graduation, following a stint as a platoon leader in the 82nd Airborne Division, is currently director of Staff at the Pentagon, the executive to Joint staff to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Most of what General McChrystal has done over a 33-year career remains classified, including service between 2003 and 2008 as commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, an elite unit so clandestine that the Pentagon for years refused to acknowledge its existence.

On July 22, 2006, Human Rights Watch issued a report titled "No blood, no foul" about American torture practices at three facilities in Iraq. One of them was Camp Nama, which was operated by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), under the direction of then Major General Stanley McChrystal.

McChrystal was officially based at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, but he was a frequent visitor to Camp Nama and other Special Forces bases in Iraq and Afghanistan where forces under his command were based.

An interrogator at Camp Nama known as Jeff described locking prisoners in shipping containers for 24 hours at a time in extreme heat; exposing them to extreme cold with periodic soaking in cold water; bombardment with bright lights and loud music; sleep deprivation; and severe beatings.

When he and other interrogators went to the colonel in charge and expressed concern that this kind of treatment was not legal, and that they might be investigated by the military's Criminal Investigation Division or the International Committee of the Red Cross, the colonel told them he had "this directly from General McChrystal and the Pentagon that there's no way that the Red Cross could get in."

In the July 2, 2006 report, When Human Rights Watch asked whether the interrogator knew whether the colonel was receiving orders or pressures to use the abusive tactics, Jeff said that his understanding was that there was some form of pressure to use aggressive techniques coming from higher up the chain of command; however neither he nor other interrogators were briefed on the particular source.

"We really didn't know too much about it. We knew that we were only like a few steps away in the chain of command from the Pentagon, but it was a little unclear, especially to the interrogators who weren't really part of that task force."

The interrogator said that he did see Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of US Joint Special Operations forces in Iraq, visiting the Nama facility on several occasions. "I saw him a couple of times. I know what he looks like."

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is the international body charged under international law with monitoring compliance with the Geneva Conventions, and it, therefore, has the right to inspect all facilities where people are detained in a country that is at war or under military occupation.

To hide prisoners or facilities from the ICRC or to deny access to them is a serious war crime. But many US prisons in Iraq have held "ghost" prisoners whose imprisonment has not been reported to the ICRC, and these "ghosts" have usually been precisely the ones subjected to the worst torture. Camp Nama, run by McChrystal's JSOC, was an entire "ghost" facility.

The decision by Obama's administration to appoint General McChrystal as the new commander in charge of the war in Afghanistan and retaining the military commission for the US war-on-terror detainees held in the Guantanamo Bay prison are the latest examples of the new US administration walking in Bush's foot steps with regards to torture and denial of habeas corpus.

SG/SME/HAR

[eringer]

14. MsChrystal Unmasked

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_NtgXlrcvXZA/ShAv5ynUx5I/AAAAAAAAeWI/c1Dic5jxiYE/s400/CHUCKMAN+-+MCCHRYSTAL+-+OBAMA%27S+CHOICE+-+HORROR+FACE.jpg

[Vidar]

16. 1-2-3-4 What are we fighting for? , , .

[LynnTheDem]

17. Ask the Russians how this ends.

Coz the ending's gonna be the same.

[timo]

18. get out now

we need top get out now, pull our horns in, quit trying to police the world and buy friendships everywhere we go!!!!
lets concentrate on making home a better place while we can!!!

[mbperrin]

20. "Graveyard of empires." Hello, Is this thing on? Does this phrase mean

anything to anyone in the chain of command?

Hello?

[bemildred]

22. It's like watching the monkey with his hand full of rice inside the coconut,

and he can't figure out how to pull his hand out and keep the rice ...

These are supposed to be smart people?

[laststeamtrain]

23. McCrystal: Taliban AREN'T winning (MSNBC)

A spokesman for the commanding general in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, tells NBC News that the Wall Street Journal's headline and lead "go too far."

Today, under the headline "Taliban Now Winning," the Journal writes: "The Taliban have gained the upper hand in Afghanistan, the top American commander there said, forcing the U.S. to change its strategy in the eight-year-old conflict by increasing the number of troops in heavily populated areas like the volatile southern city of Kandahar, the insurgency's spiritual home."

But McChrystal's spokesman categorically DENIES that the general said the Taliban is winning.

"The general did NOT say the Taliban is gaining the upper hand," he said.

The spokesman said the general did say there is an aggressive enemy -- and that they are launching complex attacks. But he does not agree that the "Taliban are winning." ... http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/08/10/2025293.aspx
*

"Let me make myself perfectly clear..."

[laststeamtrain]

24. Taliban move to within an hour of Kabul as U.S considers sending new troops to Afghanistan

Taliban move to within an hour of Kabul as U.S considers sending new troops to Afghanistan

By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 3:54 PM on 10th August 2009

The Taliban are advancing out of traditional strongholds in the south and east of Afghanistan, and into the north and west of the country, the commander of U.S. and NATO troops in the country said today.

U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal said the resurgent Taliban would force a change of tactics on foreign forces and warned that casualty figures would remain high for months to come.

'It's a very aggressive enemy right now,' General McChrystal said. 'We've got to stop their momentum, stop their initiative. It's hard work.' ... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1205549/Taliban-hour-Kabul-U-S-considers-sending-new-troops-Afghanistan.html
*

Oh no. He said "It's hard work." Where have I heard that before?

[flyarm]

25. and all that with an increase of 30,000 boots on the ground???????

good morning vietnam!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9_mED99cdk

[BOG PERSON]

29. 30,000 boots = 15,000 military people?

For some reason I thought it was more than that.

[Vidar]

31. We obviously need more troops & new benchmarks to reinterpret

this dismal failure as a success.