Afghanistan Progress ‘Slower’ Than Anticipated

I thought YOUR president was supposed to bring them all home!

Unfortunately, I think the Intelligence Agencies in that arena are compromised. Remember, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”.

Everywhere the CIA operates, those local drugs quickly appear on American streets. The CIA did not foresee the collapse of the Soviet Union, even though it was a dead, rotten, shell, that any MORON should have seen was collapsing. The CIA helped LIE us into Iraq.
I would like to know just who the CIA is really working for, and why it is not defunded and put to sleep.
The CIA has a LONG history ….. of being a disaster.

Why don’t the reporters bring the gruesome of war home on TV, like they did Vietnam.

Those people are ‘tribal’. I thought the US was crazy to even try to go into this country. Especially since Americans have no ‘stomach’ for war casualties. Ignorant as I am, even I knew from history that Afghanistan is impossible to ‘rule’. The British and Soviets at their heights couldn’t win in Afghanistan and Afghanistanis know this. They have no rules of engagement like us and they have no loyalties except to their tribes. Their goal is to win without any rules and they are ruthless fighters. It’s on their home territory which also gives them another huge advantage. Only Alexander the Great was able to subdue them briefly I believe by decimation. The US will most likely not be willing to do what works militarily (and break them) because they consider themselves to be too civilized.

The sad thing is that we’re going to drop all of these lives and money only to inevitably get out in 3-5 years time… yep, believe me the politicians will stay in there because they’re pockets are full of defense contract $$$. And the poor Afghans that did get behind us are going to get hung by their throats when we leave.

So, remind me again why the USA started the war against the entire “tribal societies” of the country instead of just providing proof that Bin Laden was behind 911… which is what the Taliban asked for before turning him over to the USA back in 1991?

Of course Tier One plan A it was the right strategy it was developed by them, the ROE, COIN/WHAM, 5 year plan, 400,000 ANSF, 25 year (2035) Taliban denial policy. We would have won. But counters are always in Tier Two Plan B OP Sandbag. Tier Three Plan C OP Meat Grinder.

im an ordinary afghan which grow up in that country.and for the last 10 years i read every single news about afghanistan.i im not agree with panetta about their stratagy.i dont think so that it is workable.they should to work more in pakistan than afghanistan which is the root cause and master mind of all problems which US is facing in afghanistan.some time there is one cause for many causes.i think curruption is the biggest factors for all the bloodshed. i remember i during king time one police with a stick far away in the rugged mountain of kunar was bringing the same trible people for any crime to the city ,so why not the whole world forces (NATO)cannot bring one warlord to justice.

General McChrystal asks for 60,000 troops to win the Afghan war. Obama the GREAT military strategist waits MONTHS on end to sends ONE-HALF of that.
McChrystal and his aids blast the interloper President for his incompetence as soldiers die over a failed politically motivated war policy.
And McChrystal gets fired? It’s obvious that with all the blood on Obama’s hands after the criminally negligent policy he created… HE SHOULD BE FIRED ASAP.

Wow! Where has Leon Panetta been all this time? It does not take a brain surgeon to know that we are going backwards in Afghanistan. Yes… I hate to say it but we are back in Vietnam again. Generals with their hands tied and reporting to an incompetent Commander in Chief. If they wont let our military fight the way they are suppossed to, bring them home now.

My son in law is deploying to Afghanistan in a few months. He is also becoming a father after he deploys. Now the change in command occurs. Do you think I am concerned? Of course I am. Any time the Political Command takes over War Planning we start on a slippery slope which can turn real bad. Remember a little conflict called Vietnam ? Same thing occurred, and Democrats for some reason are the ones who think they can call the shots for wars! Let the military commanders ask and GET what they need to do the job the 1st time. Then our boys will have a chance to FINISH THE JOB. Don’t we ever learn from the past mistakes ?? Semper-Fi

USA has never been winning Dognavox. Go read a history book and turn off Fox News.

OH, THANK YOU, ABC — we all needed that wonderful picture and story about how CRAPPY everything is going, and now even “Afghanistan” is falling apart too!
The Gulf oil spill is horrendous, the jobs situation sucks, and our economy is still in the toilet, but ABC finds the time to make everyone feel even worse by reminding us that our “waffler-in-briefs” is an incapable boob in the military arena too!!
NICE!!

How many more body bags will it take?

All I can say is I thank God I convinced my sons to avoid the military like the plague…Our kids are nothing but cannon fodder for this government which has nothing on it’s mind other than it’s own self preservation. How does this government think it can control the Afgans, when it can’t/won’t control it’s own borders??? Laffable

You cannot assure a win when the key is in the hands of someone else. Hope is not a course of action.
Wrong policy, Mr. Paneta.

“Afghanistan Progress ‘Slower’ Than Anticipated” sounds like the headlines regarding the economy, “Jobless claims ‘Higher’ than Anticipated”. This Obama administration is beyond incompetent and destroys everything it touches.

New American foreign policy “Talk to our enemies and sell them our friends” is not really new. American government has exercised this policy for many decades toward Israel. America has betrayed Israel on regular basis, even Bush did it twice, not mention Democrats, including Carter. In 1948, when Arab countries attacked Israel, it was not America who sent Israel military support, but the USSR. In 1973, when Israel was loosing the war and Golda Meir asked President Nixon for help with military equipment, Henry Kissinger, secretary of state, said “Let’s Israel to bleed”. Fortunately, Nixon made a right decision and sent weaponry. America, Democrats specifically, uses Israel as a bargain chip in ME policy and will sell it to global isalmofascism at any convenient moment. However, we must remember the recent history to understand the consequences. In 1938, Britain and France made Munich so called “peace” agreement with Hitler and sold to him Czechoslovakia in hope to get peace. In 1939, WWII was started. Stupidity of Britain and France is responsible for deaths of 55+ mln. people around the world, however, these countries have never learned their lesson and have not yet been put on trial in international court. By the way, palestinian muslims fought on Nazi side. In nuclear age, American policy toward Israel duplicating very recent bloody mistake can lead to deaths of hundreds of millions people, including Americans.

No kidding! Obama gives his generals half of the resources requested and politicians define the rules of engagement (RoE). What the heck do you expect?

Define WIN. It can not be done in Afghanistan. There is no definition for WIN. We can not WIN in Afghanistan because WIN has no meaning. It is simple. There is no positive result for the effort – the lives and money we are spending. We are just “there” and we are the terrorists.

Panetta: ‘We’re dealing with a tribal society.’ Yeah, Leon, we’ll probably never get inside the heads of AIPAC. *sigh*

I have supported this war all along but I have to acknowledge that It is a new VIETNAM war once again. We will lose this war.

Vietnam all over again.
Apparently they do either teach history in the US or learn from it.
Meanwhile Muslim extremists are emigrating to every country in the world.
All poor, a refusal to assimilate and revolution is now in the cards.
Machiavelli would be proud

This is just a diversion. a “Look Over Here” tactic. Every business and bank depend on the internet. “THEY” will not let him do it. Is he trying to draw attention away from the gulf? Or the fact that there’s proof HE is an illegal alien? Or his Big Bank deals? Or his failure in Afanistan? He’s has us tied up on new socialist ideas every day. Diversions, keep us from vetting our canidates maybe. I’m not sure, but rest assured, the tail is wagging it’s dog as a furious pace.

What a fool! We knew about all these situations in Afghanistan. We helped them defeat the Russians!! We know more about their inner workings than anyone.

NOV’10 (D)-OUT!

Panetta is a Democrat political hack. Who cares what he thinks/says?
A real CIA counter-terrorism expert said, in ParcBench last week: The Good War Counter-Insurgency–Colonize or Come Home.
Kent Clizbe reviews 20th century counter-insurgency operations (COIN), and points out that the only successful COINs were in colonies.
Total control of politics, economy and security are required for COIN. Successful COIN cannot happen in Afghanistan, where we trust (and fund) the locals to govern, run their economy, and provide security.
Either we do it with overwhelming, colonial-style, benevolent imperial power, or we Come Home.
That’s the choice that faces Obama and his geniuses. They asked for the job. Let them make the decision.

According to Mr Panetta, young Americans are dying in Afghanistan for “stability” which makes pefect sense given our commander in chief’s distaste for the “War on Terror.”

I am very conservative, and I have said from the beginning that the war in Afghanistan is a mistake! The country’s terrain is nothing like the flat table top desert of Iraq, which is perfect for armored vehicles and tank fighting. The people are not as fractious as Afghanistan, and are willing to work with us to help then secure a more moderate government.
Afghanistan is mountainous and the people hostile to everyone-especially outsiders! They might hate each other, but will band together to destroy invaders. They are like stone-age people, very backward and hostile. This place eats armies even highly technologically advanced ones; and as you can see it always, always comes down to boots on the ground taking and securing territory. that bit of truth hasn’t changed for 4,000 years! Unless we are committed to hunt down the terrorists in Pakistan with massive bombing and accept thousands of civilian casualties, I am afraid it is virtually impossible to destroy the Taliban. They are like an aggressive form of cancer, that even when you think you have cut away enough of the disease, or irradiated it to death,there are always a few cells alive that will grow to eventually takeover the body and kill it.
Afghanistan is a mistake; as it is needlessly killing our people, draining our treasury, and destroying our National will to fight.
Afghanistan is the mistake, and not Iraq. If we are going to fight terrorism, let’s either fight with the gloves off-No stupid Rules of Engagement-just kill them all, or leave them be.

This so-called war is a “DISASTER”…Almost like another Vietnam…We will NOT defeat these “Guerilla Fighters” as they are masters at what they do and they do NOT fight by conventional means….We will just keep losing more young men at a very high cost, in terms of blood and $$$…Time to come home!!

This “exclusive” interview is all PR and no substance. The former president said repeatedly from the start that the war would take “generations” and the average person with their mind on the pulse of history knew it too. How, then, is this war “harder and slower than anyone anticipated”? “Generations” is pretty slow already, what’s slower than that? This is merely designed to assuage our concerns. We take what we read and see at face value every time and debate substance where there is none.

Sad to say, the harsh and hard to hear reality is…
Obama is a very poor commander in chief.
I know some will argue against that, but it is beyond obvious now.
He seldom even speaks about the war, won’t call it a war, and even the word “victory” is never used.
Sad times.

Maybe if Bush & Co. had a clue, they could have left Obama & Co. with an exit strategy. You would think that after 7 years looking for Waldo bin Laden that the Bush administration would have the responsibility to have a plan.
Nope, no plan. Just a hot potato tossed to Obama. Blame Obama for everything Bush did – or refused to dob.

When are we going to DEMAND that OUR TROOPS COME HOME ALIVE???? This is pathetic that we Americans just go on living our lives while OUR SOLDIERS ARE DYING NEEDLESSLY! WAKE UP AMERICA!

Change we can believe in?

Does anyone really believe anything this stuffed shirt says? They really must be that delusional thinking people believe this propoganda. We are there to make certain companies rich, to grow the opium so the C.I.A. has lots of budget money, This is all about GREED and nothing else and we all suffer for it.

We were winning in Afghanistan when Bush was president. The military’s the same, the only difference is Obama is now calling the shots. Logically, therein lies the problem. Obama is now calling the shots!

Obama’s Vietnam.

Slower than expected?
Could it be that Obama’s CIA has 2 informants and both work for Sheik bin Laden as Obama blows up civilians.
Could it be because Obama imported all those Pakistani terrorists last year with McChrystal.
Could it be that US Soldiers are not allowed to have their weapons loaded under Obama and terrorists get to shoot first.
This Obama regime has done nothing but undermine Karzai’s Government, get Americans murdered, trusted terrorists and has made Afnminstan War Lord central in the guns and bribes handed out.
Faisal Shahzad was a created Obama terrorist due to Obama’s Predator policy in the region. There are millions more now like him coming to America due to Obama Muslim tribal warfare.
Bush 43 won Afghanistan, the British mismanaged it and Obama has turned it into another catastrophe.
McChrystal dithered it for Obama and got out as he didn’t want to be a scapegoat for the regime.
Problem is American Soldiers can’t get out, Patraeus is stuck in it, and Americans can’t get out because the Obama terrorists are coming inside America where they live.

So the CIA chief says that the going is harder than he thought? Does anyone realize that this man has no intelligence experience? NONE. And he was chosen to run the CIA. Any reader of Afghan history probably knows more about the difficulties faced there than he does. How in the world did we end up with so many people in positions they have no business being in?

In response to Robert Natale’s comment “War? Who cares? If anyone is stupid enough to enlist they’re too stupid to be missed anyway.”
I give you this “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”
John Stuart Mill
English economist & philosopher (1806 – 1873)
-From an Enlisted Marine that is too stupid for anyone to care about…

i love how panetta looks to his right and covers his face when he mentions the ‘narcotics’ problem. his body language makes clear he is hiding something.

This is the leakiest administration ever. For several months we’ve been loudly announcing that the Kandahar offensive will begin in June. I can only assume that this was done to show what a take-charge president for the cheapest of political reasons to prop up an inept and inexperienced CIC and show the American people what a take charge president we have. With months to recruit, arm and prepare, clearly, they were ready for our troops.

Robert,what mess? Have you noticed the Afghan casualty numbers since Obama took office?Are the results any better than when Bush ran the show? What was the unemployment rate when Obama was inaugurated?What is it now almost 18 months later?The man is no leader, no manager and not particularly intelligent,despite the propaganda.If he is so smart,why wasn’t he a Phi Beta Kappa? And quiet flows the oil…

Rise up fellow hippies and stop Obama’s illegal wars..Power to the people..

Maybe it was a typo? or maybe you don’t have your facts correct but it was 56,000 soldiers, sailors, airman and marines who gave the ultimate sacrifice not 500,000.

You people have to have patience. These Wars take time. And when you’re not allowed to fire your weapon at the enemy, it takes longer still.

lol,
Our glorious mercenaries fighting against neanderthal cavemen and going nowhere with all the so called progressive and high technology we have…gawd save us if those jokers ever have to fight against a real army not sand fleas and Bedouin in Iraq and neanderthals in Afghanistan

It’s not “harder and slower” than **anyone** anticipated – it’s harder and slower than the current administration had a clue about when they show-boating about getting out by 2011. (At least it sounded good on the campaign trail!!)

The US has been prosecuting numerous imperialistic wars behind the guise of “fighting insurgent-terrorists”. You could venture to guess 60 TRILLION has been spent these last 9 years. Because ?14%…?12 million Americans are long term unemployed for 1 and 2 years? Because how many businesses and companies are bankrupt or out of business? These financial political decisions are insane…psychotic…non-sustainable. So what happens if the American people do not stop these decisions by Washington? Does Middle America collapse? Does homelessness expand exponentially? Does violence explode? Do Mexican illegals take over the SW United States? Will there be a large die off of population due to malnutrition; starvation and disease? There are almost no jobs. Many of the middle class (blue-pink-white collar) have not worked for 1 and 2 years. Many businesses and companies are barely keeping their doors open or their lights on for business. A toxic oil spill is killing the Gulf waters in columns and zones for decades-generations and A toxic oil spill is killing the Atlantic waters for decades-generations. NOW is the time to create an economy around Global-sustainable-environmental ENERGY management. NOW is the time to create jobs in ELECTRIC: pantograph-trains, Nuclear, Wind, Solar, Hydro, and alternate fuels. The US is more than 30 years behind the oil peak schedule for a survivable transition away from crude. The US has to take care of itself.
The internal economic meltdown and no jobs….
This is the perfect time to move jobs to a new energy grid,
to garner momentum from the deepwater oil tragedy
that is killing the Gulf and the Atlantic oceans.
Anyone that still wants deepwater drilling is in psychotic denial
of the dead zone that used to be the Gulf and the Atlantic oceans.

We must accept that what we are up against is only in part Taliban, which is corrupted reactionary movement that has only recently been adopted by the Afghan ppl. What we are truly up against is a rugged, war-hardened, and stubbornly independent Pusthun people that have throughout history violently rebuked foreign invaders, even if the cost is their own lives. We arent fighting a load of bedouins or dumb camel herders, were fighting a people who’ve been at war constantly for millenia. They are experienced fighters with a long history of waging guerrilla warfare against invaders.
They are one of the few remaining people on this earth that follow a highly principled code of life (look up “Paktunwali”). These are the same Mujahideen, freedom fighters, than Rambo fought alongside in Rambo III against the Russians. Included in the many civilizations they have fought are Alexander the Great, who in a letter to his mother, described the inhabitants of what is now Afghanistan as lion-like brave people: ” I am involved in the land of a ‘Leonine’ (lion-like) and brave people, where every foot of the ground is like a well of steel, confronting my soldier. You have brought only one son into the world, but Everyone in this land can be called an Alexander.
More recently, they defated the British Empire (twice), and then the Russians. Now they are fighting Us.
If we want to follow the plight of the USSR, we can embrace the Kill ‘em All attitude that the more ignorant members of our citizenry espouse. Like USSR, our civilization, namely the economy, is already showing unhealthy signs of strain. If we want to actually win the war, we must essentially “convert” them. This can only be done by showing them humanity….ie humanitarian aid, schools for boys AND girls, hospitals, and infrastructure….without an imperialist agenda. The only greater vulnerability than its inability to provide these basic needs, is the Taliban’s dependency to villainize the west to survive.