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#31 (permalink) | |
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Postmaster General
Military Professional
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This is the reason why NATO cannot win, no matter what the US' frontline ally has to say.
In fact, the frontline ally has taken the US for a ride including making a mockery of the same with the so called Pact with the Taliban and withdrawing the forces from FATA. More Western troops will meet their Maker because wool has been pulled over their eyes. When will the West learn? Quote:
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![]() "Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination." I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to. HAKUNA MATATA |
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#33 (permalink) |
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New Member
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Winning is not even an obtainable goal, so should not even be part of our thinking.
We need to maintain the status quo, no matter how long we're there, and no matter how messy. A-stan can never again be allowed to become a lawless haven. It's bad enough Pakistan is. We really should've invaded Pakistan first. |
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#34 (permalink) |
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HKHolic
Senior Contributor
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I second that. Pakistan is a cesspool for international Islamic terrorism. It would've been a tougher fight because their army is better equipped and trained than the Taliban's ever was, but at least we would've accomplished something.
India would've been all over the deal like flies on crap.
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"The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world. So wake up, Mr. Freeman. Wake up and smell the ashes." G-Man |
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#35 (permalink) | ||
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Postmaster General
Military Professional
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Quote:
Sniper, Every time I read any of your posts, I fall off the chair laughing! You really spare no one. So, Pakistan should have been attacked first? Quote:
Last edited by Ray : 10-24-2006 at 14:55 PM. |
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#36 (permalink) | |
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New Member
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Quote:
We could've de-nuked them while we were at it too. And had the Indians as very powerful and interested allies in the region to help in the cause. Pakistan is a cancer, and the problems of islamic terrorism will never stop so long as that's the case. PS: I'm so glad i amuse you. |
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#37 (permalink) | |
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Postmaster General
Military Professional
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Quote:
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#38 (permalink) |
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A Self Important
Senior Contributor
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After the fighting and dying, the Taleban return as British depart
By Anthony Loyd and Tahir Luddin World News The Times October 30, 2006 Nafaz Khan: “Those British soldiers were cursing with us when we were all told to leave” (Richard Mills/The Times) After the fighting and dying, the Taleban return as British depart By Anthony Loyd and Tahir Luddin AMONG the many battles in his life, Nafaz Khan recalls the long fight for Musa Qala as one of special significance. As the former chief of police and militia commander in the northern Helmand town it was there that he fought alongside British troops against the Taleban. “I loved those British soldiers,” he said. “They were great fighters and knew each of my men by name. Together we killed many, many Taleban.” Soldiers from the Royal Irish Regiment, who were withdrawn from Musa Qala this month as part of a deal with Afghan tribal elders after more than two months of heavy fighting, remember the experience as one of violence, dirt, heat and lack of water. For Mr Khan, though, it held particular deprivation. “Shrapnel from a Taleban mortar blew off one of my testicles soon after the fighting started,” he said while waiting to petition the governor of Helmand in Lashkar Gah for more men and munitions to attack a Taleban headquarters elsewhere. “But I stayed in Musa Qala with the British and fought on for another two and a half months until we were ordered to leave. The pain was terrible, but there were Talebs to kill.” But when asked whether the deal to withdraw from Musa Qala had left the town free of Taleban influence, as Nato and Afghan government officials claim, Mr Khan’s face clouded as if in greater discomfort. “Those British soldiers were cursing with us when we were all told to leave,” he said. “They said that they had fought and lost friends to keep the town. And now these tribal elders who are in charge of Musa Qala are the same who gave the Taleban support when they fought against us. The deal was just a clever trick to get the foreign soldiers to go.” Musa Qala was one of four towns in northern Helmand to which British troops were sent this summer at the request of the Muhammad Daud, the governor of the province, after his officials and police proved incapable of defending themselves against Taleban attack. Most observers agree that British commanders had little choice but to respond to Governor Daud’s request for troops. Yet opinion divides sharply as to whether the fighting — and loss of 17 British lives — has improved stability in the province. Today there are neither Afghan police nor British soldiers nor, apparently, Taleban in the centre of Musa Qala, which is governed instead by a shura — council — of 50 tribal elders, each of whom has supplied one gunman to protect the centre of the town. Under the terms of the 14-point deal leading to the demilitarisation, Musa Qala is supposed to remain under nominal government control with the rule of law, including the collection of taxes, education and redevelopment, administered by the elders. None of that has yet happened. “It is too early to expect these things to have occurred,” Governor Daud said. “The administration of elders has only had two weeks. Schools remain closed in Musa Qala, but they remain closed in many other districts in Helmand, both for girls and boys.” He insisted that he was examining costings for redevelopment work in Musa Qala, and hoped to extend stability from the town centre into new territory. But elders said that since the British withdrawal almost all the surrounding district had returned to the Taleban. They also said that most of the fighters who had attacked the British, rather than being insurgents who had crossed the border from Pakistan, were local people. “Most of the fighters weren’t real Taleban,” said Wakil Haji Mohammed Naim, one of the elders in Musa Qala’s new administration. “There were some outsiders, but most were local men who were angry with the Government, its robbery and corruption, who were persuaded to fight against the foreigners by our preachers in the mosques. We’ll see how long this deal lasts. The Taleban are respecting it but our people are very angry with the Government.” His words reflected how easily, despite their best intent, British forces in northern Helmand often became embroiled in defending criminalised district officials against a force that was only part Taleban. “I’ll take a hell of a lot of convincing to believe that the fighting in Sangin didn’t start as a struggle between a bunch of drug criminals,” one British official in Afghanistan said, referring to another of Helmand’s battle zones in which British forces saw heavy action. “We should never have gone near it. It was a straight-up face-off between two drug lords and we were used to tip the balance.” Whatever their success in suppressing attacks, the British may find that the force required and the death toll among indigenous Afghan fighters makes it all the harder to mollify the rural population with redevelopment projects. To illustrate, Mr Khan pulls out the ID of an attacker killed in the fighting at Musa Qala. It was a United Nations voter registration card, belonging to an Afghan man who only two years ago had believed enough in the political process to vote in the presidential elections.
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To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway |
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#39 (permalink) | |
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Postmaster General
Military Professional
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Take heart.
All is not lost. Quote:
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#40 (permalink) |
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New Member
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As long as we're killing more of them than they're killing of us while maintaining military influence within their borders, it's a price we have to accept.
Which is why we love our soldiers and airmen and marines so much. Cause they're doing what has to be done. And what has to be done is damned dirty right about now, and for the forseeable future. |
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#41 (permalink) | |
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Postmaster General
Military Professional
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#42 (permalink) | |
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Postmaster General
Military Professional
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The Taleban will get all the assistance and they will carry on their forays into Afghanistan, while the hapless NATO troops merely scratch out a military existence so as to look good! Winning in such conditions is very difficult! I sympathise with the troops! |
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