[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Obama orders as many as 17,500 troops to Afghanistan



WASHINGTON — In his first troop deployment to a war zone as commander in chief, President Barack Obama on Tuesday authorized sending as many as 17,500 additional troops to Afghanistan beginning this spring, a move that appears to mark the formal U.S. troop shift from Iraq to Afghanistan.
"There is no more solemn duty as president than the decision to deploy our armed forces into harm's way," Obama said in a statement. "I do it today mindful that the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan demands urgent attention and swift action. The Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan, and al Qaida supports the insurgency and threatens America from its safe-haven along the Pakistani border."
Defense Secretary Robert Gates ordered the deployment of 8,000 Marines from Camp Lejeune, N.C., and 4,000 Army soldiers from Fort Lewis, Wash., defense department officials said. Approximately another 5,000 support troops are expected to receive deployment orders "at a later date," a Defense Department statement said.
The first Marines could arrive in Afghanistan by May. The Army brigade is expected to arrive by mid-summer.
There are 38,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan and 146,000 in Iraq.
The magnitude of the deployments will force the military to pull troops from Iraq or give soldiers longer deployments or shorter breaks. In his statement, Obama said that he understood the deployments will place an "extraordinary strain" on the troops, but it will be possible because "we are going to responsibly drawdown our forces in Iraq."
The decision comes amid a broad review of U.S. policy in Afghanistan that isn't due for completion until just before a NATO summit in early April. Obama said the troop decision "does not pre-determine the outcome of that strategic review."
He had to make a decision before then, said a senior administration official — who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak on the record — because of the looming onset of the fighting season in Afghanistan with warmer weather, and preparations for national elections there later this year.
If the president had not acted now, "the options start to slip away," the official said.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a former prisoner of war and Obama's Republican opponent last year, said that sending more troops was long overdue but that "I believe the president must spell out for the American people what he believes victory in Afghanistan will look like and articulate a coherent strategy for achieving it."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he supported Obama's decision.
Roughly 8,000 troops will be from the II Marine Expeditionary Brigade, nearly all based out of Camp Lejeune.
Because of Afghanistan's rugged terrain, the Marines will come with their own air support. In addition, the 5th brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division, a Stryker brigade of about 4,000 soldiers out of Fort Lewis also are being deployed.
The Marines and soldiers will be deployed to southern Afghanistan, where U.S. forces are expanding to take on the poppy trade there, which the Taliban use to fund it forces and obtain its weapons. Since the Taliban fell in 2001, British and Canadian forces have been in charge of that area, but recently violence there has increased, as has poppy production.
Afghanistan produces two-thirds of the world's heroin from poppies. More than 90 percent of it comes out of Helmand province where the Marines are headed. Currently, the 3rd battalion 8th Marine brigade, also from Camp Lejeune, is in that area.
Several months ago, Army Gen. David McKiernan, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, requested up to 30,000 additional troops — three combat brigades more and an aviation brigade and support troops. What many in the Pentagon had expected to be a routine deployment became a part of the administration's effort to shift the approach taken under President George W. Bush.
Some critics felt it was inappropriate for the military to deploy troops without a clear strategy. Others said that Obama wasn't giving troops, many who'd been preparing for Iraq, the time to train for a different mission.
The Defense Department defended the timing, however.
"This is the first time that this president has been asked to deploy large numbers of troops overseas, and it seems to me a thoughtful and deliberative approach to that decision is entirely appropriate," Gates said last week.
On the ground, troops said the shifting strategy often forced them to make decisions within their own communities on how to balance training the Afghan army and police, which Gates called the U.S. "exit ticket out of there," and securing the population.
Tom Andrews, a former Maine congressman who directs the organization Win Without War, said in a statement Tuesday that "the first principle for someone who finds himself in a hole is to stop digging.
"The U.S. policy 'hole' in Afghanistan is not of the new administration's making. But it is important for the president to consider if adding new U.S. combat forces in Afghanistan, without a new and comprehensive plan for U.S. policy there, might be digging an even bigger hole."

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

we don't need..... no more trouble..

what we need is love,
to guide and protect us on..
If you hope good down from above
Help the weak if you are strong now.

we don't need... no more trouble..
what we need is love sweet love..

but we don't need... no more trouble..

we don't need, no more trouble

 

[demonrail666]

"The first Marines could arrive in Afghanistan by May. The Army brigade is expected to arrive by mid-summer."

May?!? Mid-summer?!?! How the fuck are they getting there? By golf kart?

[pbradley]

Fucking kill those poppy-growing misogynist fucks!

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by pbradley

Fucking kill those poppy-growing misogynist fucks!

some how I don't think that is quite the best solution..

you know, we have been busy killing each other for, tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, and yet it has accomplished nothing..

maybe one day we will get smart and try something else for a change.

[floatingslowly]

next stop: tehran!

[pbradley]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

some how I don't think that is quite the best solution..

you know, we have been busy killing each other for, tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, and yet it has accomplished nothing..

maybe one day we will get smart and try something else for a change.

You mean sit around, smoke pot, and pray that "the will of God" will do it for us?

[Tokolosh]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

we don't need..... no more trouble..

what we need is love,
to guide and protect us on..
If you hope good down from above
Help the weak if you are strong now.

we don't need... no more trouble..
what we need is love sweet love..

but we don't need... no more trouble..

I'm afraid it's too late for reconciliation.
An advance on Tehran still sounds more probable.

[Lamont Cranston]

defiance cannot be tolerated

[Lamont Cranston]

Originally Posted by pbradley

Fucking kill those poppy-growing misogynist fucks!

You mean men like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar? Whom the USA trained, armed, organised and established a drug growing & smuggling network to fund? When he wasn't fighting Soviets he would spend his free time throwing acid in the faces of women he considered insufficiently modest.
They knew perfectly well who he was, it had been documented going back to his dealings with the ISI through the 1970s, and they worked with him and others like him.
And when they no longer had a need for them, they stood back and let them tear Afghanistan apart.
And for misogyny - well the allies Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and so forth aren't exactly known for being bastions of feminism.
More likely what this is about is ramping up the presence in Central Asia and protection of the natural gas pipeline after the Dubya regimes foolery led to the one through the Caucasus being cut off (hard to believe people think these morons orchestrated 9/11). Gotta re-establish credibility.

[Derek]

Originally Posted by pbradley

You mean sit around, smoke pot, and pray that "the will of God" will do it for us?

Hahahaha genius.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by pbradley

Fucking kill those poppy-growing misogynist fucks!

Originally Posted by Lamont Cranston

defiance cannot be tolerated

so do you feel strongly enough to go over and fight war yourself?

or do you hide behind those suits who send our youth and brothers to do it for you?

"love is lovely and war is ugly, so make love and not war, if your gonna make war go far, if your gonna make love draw near.. brothers beware, sisters beware, beware of the warmonger.." everton blender

[pbradley]

None of that matters.

In the USA, all pacifism and war-advocation is arbitrary.

You have no personal stake in Afghanistan so praising eternal peace is easy. I've decided to not care about wars in which I have no power. Iraq sucked me dry of empathy. I am not in favor of war in Afghanistan nor am I against it because I've never been asked.

[SYRFox]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

"love is lovely and war is ugly, so make love and not war, if your gonna make war go far, if your gonna make love draw near.. brothers beware, sisters beware, beware of the warmonger.." everton blender

war isn't ugly. war is fun.
you pothead dumbfuck hippy.









































just kiddin'

[phoenix]

This is not that surprising given the last two months in Pakistan, right? It's just a really big game of chess. 17k troops is a safer move than getting the nukes out. On the whole.

hmm.

[Johnny "Magic Fingers"]

Mmmm, I'd like to hear from one of our fellow forum members from Afghanistan (or Iran or Iraq or ....) and see what they think....

Oh - that's right, we don't have any.

It's just us Western kids chattering away as usual....

[tesla69]

Originally Posted by pbradley

You mean sit around, smoke pot, and pray that "the will of God" will do it for us?

if EVERYONE was doing it, it would work!

If there is one place where proactive Western military action is warranted it is in Afghanistan/Pakistan. The Taliban are about as opposite to what I believe how life should be as possible. And they aren't satisfied with living their own lives, they must live ours as well. I'm don't approve on using drones to blow up their children, but they really want us either to be their muslim slaves or dead. The Koran won't allow it otherwise. What is nuts is how the US helped give Pakistan nukes. If you know anything about the govt of Pakistan that is just a frightening situation.

[floatingslowly]

Originally Posted by tesla69

proactive Western military action is warranted [....] in Afghanistan/Pakistan.

I can't believe my eyes! did you really just write that??

that said....

I agree, but I think it's pointless. the lumbering US military machine cannot fight this type of war. it's like using a hammer to kill as many cockroaches as you can before they all scatter back into the dark. the hammer is more than sufficient to take out all the bugs, but direct application of force is limited.

I suspect that "our" greatest victories in this war are so highly classified that you will never hear about them. westerners don't have the stomach for wetwork.

[Rob Instigator]

the war in aghanistan was the orignal one, which got sidetracked becauyse afghanistan does not have enough petroleum, so instead bush made BILLIONS every quarter for his oil company fat cat buddies (exxon alone made record profits of 14 BILLION every three months) by attacking Iraq, an extremely oil rich country.

afghanistan was left to swelter and fester. It is time we focused on finishing there, and capturing bin laden no matter whether the saudi arabian royal family gets in a tizzy about it. fuck them.

[floatingslowly]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

It is time we focused on finishing there

we should ask the russians if they have any good ideas for that. amiritie?