The Down Range Forum
Member Section => Down Range Cafe => Topic started by: twyacht on December 14, 2009, 08:05:22 PM
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I cannot believe the statements from the "brass". I know the press sucks, but this is not the voice of a "Top Military Officer"
Certainly respect his service to this country, but IMHO, his language is just all wrong
http://newsmax.com/Newsfront/AS-US-Afghanistan/2009/12/14/id/342370
Top US Officer Fears Taliban-Pakistan Militants
Monday, 14 Dec 2009 09:17 A.M.
By: ANNE GEARAN and AMIR SHAH
America's top military officer expressed concern Monday about the "growing level of collusion" between Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan and al-Qaida and other militant groups taking refuge across the border in Pakistan.
Painting a grim picture, Mullen said Afghan insurgents were dominant in a third of Afghanistan's 34 provinces and "the insurgency has grown more violent, more pervasive and more sophisticated."
Last weekend, the Pakistani government announced it was winding down a major offensive against the Pakistani Taliban in its base in the South Waziristan border area and may launch a new operation in another district near the Afghan border where insurgent leaders are believed to have fled.
The Pakistanis launched the offensive in October against the Pakistani Taliban after a series of attacks against targets inside Pakistan. However, U.S. officials have complained privately that the Pakistanis have been reluctant to move against extremists who launch operations against U.S. and NATO targets inside Afghanistan, including the Haqqani group that is believed based in Pakistan's North Waziristan region.
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We're going about this all wrong, he speaks like a politician not a military officer worthy of command. Our military was NEVER designed to be "held back".
"It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it."
General MacArthur
A competent leader can get efficient service from poor troops, while on the contrary an incapable leader can demoralize the best of troops.”
General Pershing
“War is cruelty. There's no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.”
General William Tecumseh Sherman
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I noted in another blog that the pantywaists in DC have completely yielded to the P/C crowd and forgotten how to win a war. We now have a "containment policy." It didn't work in Korea. It didn't work in Vietnam. It won't work in Afghanistan. It doesn't work anywhere. When you send your forces against an entrenched enemy, you must not send them in insufficient numbers. That only ensures that the enemy will kill them off with small losses to their entrenched forces. If you cannot overwhelm the bad guys with troops on the ground, you need to do what we had the guts to do in Nagasaki and Hiroshima and overwhelm them with fire from the sky. We have forgotten this lesson. I fear for my country.
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In today's military rising to General means political influence and Political Correctness.
Patton or Puller would not rise above Lt. Col.