Thursday, November 28, 2013

Taunting
     If the negotiations between the US and Afgan president Karzi over US troop levels after 2014 were being conducted under NFL rules, Karzi would be flagged for taunting.  The US has spent billions of dollars and more than 2,200 US service members lives to prop up a corrupt, ineffective, and unreliable Afgan government led by Karzi for the past decade.  To have the US pander to his changing terms of agreement on a world stage is an embarrassment and yet another reason to leave Afghanistan as quickly as possible.

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Training vs. learning
     If the United States can negotiate acceptable terms under which American forces can remain in Afghanistan after 2014 the mission of those forces would be to engage high value terrorist targets, gather intelligence, and train the Afhan military.  The first two have merit but training Afghan forces gives me pause for two reasons.  First, the Afghan government is fighting an insurgency.  The US has never defeated an insurgent force....Viet Nam and Iraq being examples.  Second, we have been training Afghan forces for twelve years at great expense.  We train American recruits in four to six months.  Are the Afghans hopeless students or are we ineffective trainers?