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Stalins Organ

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Posts posted by Stalins Organ

  1. Small groups of special forces??? Really?? so that would be NOT withdrawing all COMBAT support then? And in fact tha wold be an admission of failure of course.........an entirely perdictable one IMO...one which fully accords with what I believe the situation is - that the ANA and Govt cannot survive without foreign COMBAT support.

    Those Pashtun areas that were not controlled by the Taliban amounted to how much of Afghanistan in 2001??

    Air strikes aer useless unless the Taliban decides to engage in some vaguely conventional warfare. It is entirely possible that they may make het mistake of doing so again.........but they do not need to IMO - as they did through the 1990's I see them as infiltrating the cities, subverting the Govt, and generally turning Afghanistan into a hell hole of intrigue, death, poverty and ignorance again.

    How does this war end? - 5 mb pdf from CSIS, which says, in part exec summary:

    This "transition" is already underway, but no one can yet predict how the withdrawal of US and other NATO/ISAF combat forces from Afghanistan in 2014 will play out over time. It is not clear how the US and its NATO/ISAF allies will actually manage the withdrawal of their forces. It is not clear how much continuing support aid donors will provide to Afghanistan through 2014 and beyond, or whether the coming massive cuts in military spending and aid will trigger a major recession or depression during a period when outside troops will leave and Afghanistan’s weak government and forces must go through another election.

    The fact is that the problems I have outlined are well known, and no-one actually knows how they will be solved. Airstrikes and small elite forces do not sound like a real solution to me.

    As an aside and completely unrelated, the "this is not a solution reminds me of someone saying that 22mm armour was not a solution to getting a medium velocity 45mm gun into a suitable position to kill enemy tanks in 1941!

  2. International support isn't going to dry up after 2014. I don't know where the assumption that it will comes from. In fact NATO hasn't even said it will be out by 2014, only that they intend to transition from a combat role to a support role.

    And the difference is what?? Do you REALLY think the ANA will be capable of resisting the Taliban on its own without ISAF combat forces?

    South Vietnam was invaded and conquered by the North Vietnamese Army, not the Viet Cong.

    The VC had been wiped out - the Taliban have not.

    You use IEDs and suicide bombers to destroy the government infrastructure and the willingness of people to be part of it and/or obey it. If the govt can't function then the Taliban can take over quite easily - as has been demonstrated in places like Waziristan.

    Assymetric warfare again.

  3. I think that the Taliban are going to "win" - the current Afghan Govt (from this distance) seems corrupt and incapable of obtaining the "moral support" of hte population.

    the Taliban, OTOH, seem to be able to use terror and violence and religion to secure motivated support from enough of the population to matter.

    so to me it seems completely analagous to vietnam, where the Govt exists solely while it has vast amounts of support from overseas - and once that is gone (end of 2014??) it is just a matter of time until it falls.

    whethe or not AQ then end up basing themselves in Afghanistan again, and, if so to what extent, is another question entirely.

    but IMO the west should not have bothered trying to set up democracy there - "we" should "just" have smashed the Taliban, put in a minimal effort to set up another Govt, and gotten out. then if hte Taliban go the AQ way again they get smashed again - as often as required until they get the message, or the population gets sick enough of it to be motivated to not let it happen, or every 10-20 years otherwise.

  4. Cool - i've not actually kept up with te CM family - so "Touch" looks exactly the ticket. along with a bunch of other games that "you might also like" such as Rommel in Africa, Korean War, Quatre Bras, and others!!

    It strikes me that the old SSG "Battlefront" series would be the right size for apps too....hopefully.....

    thanks :):):)

  5. That’s right. Obama is so cool that he would never blunder, gaffe or return a bust of Churchill to our greatest ally for ill or ignorant reasons. He just simply has different tastes. Perhaps a bust of Che or Moa is more along his cool tastes?

    Abraham Lincoln actually - which is mentioned right there in the article that it seems you did not bothe to read.

    You got a problem with that?:cool:

  6. Yet...I hail from an ancient era when a higher education was intended (or at least was said to be intended) to produce well-rounded individuals who could be trusted to fill leadership positions in society.

    BCE doesn't count.

    Once upon a time teachers had diplomas, electricians and accountants had certificates, as did most engineers.

    Back in those days (somewhat after BCE) - like the 1960's - degrees here were for the academic elite. whether they went on to beome "leaders of society" was another question. Indeed in many cases people were selected to go to university because they were ALREADY leaders of society who were deemed to need a bit more academic background.

    and of course soon everyone confused cause and effect.

  7. Which is entirely understandable in an age where there are a llot of demands on time.

    Why do you think it is strange?? IMO the vast majority of people have always only been interested in "getting by" at some level or other - it has only ever been a small minority who want to learn for the sake of learning and go on to do something more remarkable than "getting by".

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