Post-2011 Afghanistan: Plan B

Ahmed Khan

Plan B? We have not got Plan A or any other Plan.

The whole thing is very poorly planned with no strategy or vision.

We have got it all wrong, it's no longer Al Queda we are fighting but the ordinary Afghan people. History will tell you that Afghan's like nothing better than fighting superpowers (the only time they unite as a nation) and have already humilated Britian (mid 1800's) and more recently the Russians.

Today's 13th century Afghan's are already teaching Britian and America a lesson in strategy planning and advance thinking.

To aviod any more deaths of our brave soldiers, fighting a war which cannot be won, it is time to withdraw lock stock and barrel. We are on the 'back-foot'and it is high time to 'save face' and conduct a humble withdraw!

MBloom

When as a child my mother said she wanted me home by 9pm i should have said " Sorry Mum, but i thought that you meant that 9pm would allow the first assessment of the progress and your strategy and a tokenistic reconfiguration or forces".

As a sentence this would make about as much sense as yours does. Read your Orwell - it's precisely this sort of drivel in political discourse that he loathes.

Verity

Obama will become a lame duck very shortly, so it doesn't really matter what he means.

Nicholas

What a thoroughly unpleasant looking pair.

Minnie Ovens

What an unutterably long drawn out bugger up.
I'm sure the training of the Afghan security forces will be as successful as that carried out in Vietnam, except these security forces are probably Vietcong from the get go.
I also read Con Coughlin's article which stated that CGS, General Richards was not invited to the Afghan strategy talks at Chequers! Surely that cannot be true?
This whole charade is going to continue to kill both British and US soldiers in great numbers while both Governments try to formulate a spin strategy to give the perception of leaving without losing.
What great leadership. What jaded morality. What principle?

woolfie

You might like to tell your mates over at the Telegraph that since they changed the comment system, the login link is broken and we can't get in ! Of course like all out of date old school media there is no way to contact them to let let know. What a bunch of Luddite toss pots

boulay

if the military deaths in Afghanistan pass the number of deaths on 11/9 does the whole adventure stop making sense?

TrevorsDen

Boulay - this is not a numbers game. In WW2 when did British deaths outnumber the deaths of Poles killed in Hitler's invasion? Should we have stopped then?

Mr Khan is also wrong we are fighting foreign fighters (Pakistani) in Afghanistan. The locals do not want the Taliban.

But nit seems the point of the article is valid - we are tagging along with the Americans but at the moment there is no guarantee they will not up sticks and pull out for their own internal politics.

If the democrats think they will lose the next election they will pull mout leaving us high and dry.

Meantime Obama is dissing his best ally over an oil slick.

porkbelly

If Obama is serious about only fighting for territory the Afghan government can truly control once the NATO troops are withdrawn then the reality is only Kabul and some parts of the North will be contested; the rest of the country will be left to the Taliban. At that point Obama will declare victory of sorts and withdraw (Britain will have little choice but to follow suit). The Afghan "government" will concentrate on looting what's left and fighting each other for power; the Taliban will have, once again, a state of their own from which they can plot the takeover of Pakistan which is a far more enticing target than Afghanistan. Those nuclear weapons have a powerful appeal to the 13th Century mind. Then we shall see how these short-sighted fools clamoring for us to pack up and run today feel about the prospect of a far-away local conflict affecting their lives.

strapworld

I would truly like to read one of the Speccies resident writers put together a critique of Obama and his anti-British rantings over BP. They are quite disgraceful.

I would like a full British Press offensive (yes, I am dreaming!) on Obama. Demanding proof of what he says happenned to his grandfather, in Kenya, when he was allegedly tortured by our troops fighting the Mau Mau.

It is time to remind Obama that mighty that they are, this small country has stood by them time after time and they have ignored us quite often!

It is time to remind Obama that although BP accepted blame (WHY?) for the spillage the actual rig was being operated by American companies.

It is time to draw a line on our 'special relationship' it is time that we had a Prime Minister who stood up for British companies and told Obama that he is not only out of order he is in real danger of alienating Great Britain.

Vulture

You have only to read Obama's autobiography 'Dreams From My Father' (written well before he became POTUS) to know what he thinks/feels about Britain.

The only term I can use to describe this is 'embittered hatred'. He believes - with no evidence given - that Britain tortured his runaway Kenyan dad during the Mau-Mau uprising of the 1950s. It all stems from there: the removal of Churchill's bust from the Oval Office; the insulting and ignoring of a British Prime Minister ( remember the gift of supermarket DVDs ad the kitchen interview granted to the hapless Brown?) The contemptuous treatment of the US's staunchest ally.

We own this unpleasant little Islamofascist/
cultural Marxist less than nothing, and anyway, as Verity rightly says, he's a busted one-term flush.
More and more American loathe him.

As for Afghanistan - not worth the bones of a single British Grenadier. Far too much good blood shed there already. Bring the troops home now.

Beer Moth

Ahmed Khan

You need to make your mind up: if there is no plan at all, as you assert, how then can that plan be poorly executed, as you go on to state?

Also, history does not come in nicely packaged, always inevitably repetitive phases. Those who fought the Afghan campaigns of the British, were very poorly supplied and prepared. The Russians were shown the door, due largely to western influence.

Much as this myth of the superhuman Afghan spirit is evoked by many in order to undermine western resolve; this misreads the dynamic of the present struggle. This is a very different scenario from either of those, with much of the effort to oust the Taliban, coming from the Afghans themselves.

In the end, the Afghans can choose whether they want to have a decent country to live in, or they want to return themselves to being ruled by medieval savages.

Minnie Ovens

porkbelly
June 4th, 2010 11:51pm

I do not think you have thought this rather wild and woolly rationale through well.
Why bother with Pakistan when a visit to Teheran may give them all they want..except a good, long range delivery system.

Austin Barry

Two more squaddies deaths reported. For whose tomorrow, exactly, did they give their today?

Osred

Daniel,

Your musings precisely reflect the bloodless self referential meanderings of the political/media nomenklatura.

Meanwhile, out here in the real world, we are funding a corrupt Islamo-narcofascist regime, and burying young British soldiers who are sent there to keep it that way.

According to you a few days ago the conflict was entering a decisive phase (because of a donors conference and the 'peace jirga' ). This article suggests the opposite - what happened?

Verity

Austin Barry - a piercing question.

Re "Dreams of My Father" ... wasn't that written for him by the FBI's Most Wanted - in the Seventies - William Ayers?

Also, the case of Obama's passport is wending its way gently through the US legal system. Many, many very interesting questions. Like, why did he come from Jakarta under his Indonesian stepfather's name, and apparently on an Indonesian passport, and apply to American universities for a grant as a foreign student?

There's quite a bit more.

I can't wait.

andy Fr Dc

It does not matter what the strategy is, Afghanistan will still be a space on a map, not a country. The Afghans Tribes are uninterested in entering the 19th century much less the 20th. All we can do is play wack a mole at the lowest possible price. Sometimes genius is recognizing your own limitations.

porkbelly

@ M. Ovens - Iran hasn't been making the supreme effort to develop nuclear weapons in order to give them away to any ragtag pack of backwoodsmen like the Taliban. But those backwoodsmen have many like-minded allies in Pakistan who will gladly fill any space (political or military) vacated by American and British cowardice. Sorry - I meant to say "realism".

dcandersson

It's crystal clear that, short of doing a Rory, we have very little idea of what is going on in Afgahnistan. I don't mean this at some 'what do we define as success' level; rather it seems the basic reporting of the events on the ground is deeply partial. How, in such a guerilla-like warfare, could it be otherwise? On top of this known unknown, various interest groups have dolloped Orwellian spin. I hear, not just from the blogosphere..., that the people of Swat (over in Pakistan) have lost patience with the Taliban for their anti-Islamic behaviour. How far is this feeling replicated in Afghanistan? I suspect, given the local dimension of things, there are only lots and lots of small-scale answers to that question. But we really seem to know so little, and understand less.