Commander: US can’t seal Afghan-Pakistan border
December 29th, 2010 . by TexasFredWASHINGTON (AP) - There’s no practical way for U.S. troops to seal Afghanistan’s vast border with Pakistan and stop all Taliban fighters from slipping through, so they are focusing on defending vulnerable towns and fighting insurgents on Afghan soil, a U.S. military commander said Tuesday.
Army Col. Viet Luong said that “to secure the border in the traditional sense” would “take an inordinate amount of resources.” He said it also would require far more cooperation from the tribes inside Pakistan who often provide Taliban fighters safe passage.
Other senior U.S. military officials have said they hope the Pakistan military does more to shut down Taliban hideouts. But the U.S. has denied reports that American forces are pushing to expand special operations raids inside Pakistan’s tribal areas to target militants.
“It’s naive to say that we can stop . . . forces coming through the border,” said Luong, who oversees troops in a part of eastern Afghanistan that includes the volatile Khost province and 162 miles of border.
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Commander: US can’t seal Afghan-Pakistan border
Let’s face facts and call it like it really is; we can’t seal our own border.
On December 8, 1941 the United States declared war on Japan, and on December 11, 1941 the United States declared war on Germany. We entered World War II.
Germany unconditionally surrendered on May 7, 1945. On August 14, 1945 Japan surrendered unconditionally as well.
In three years and 8 months WWII was effectively fought, and won, and came to an end, with Germany and Japan now considered to be our friends and allies.
The War in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001. The Iraq War, Operation Iraqi Freedom began on March 20, 2003.
We have been engaged in Afghanistan for 9 years and 2 months, and there is no definitive victory in sight. We have been in Iraq for 7 years and 9 months, and while some claim that Iraq has been pacified, the Iraqis still suffer homicide bombings on an almost daily basis.
Let me point out, both Afghanistan and Iraq are approximately the same size in square miles as is the state of Texas. These are NOT WWII engagements. They are regional engagements and for some strange reason, a nation that entered, fought and brought a definitive end to WWII can’t seem to bring regional battles to a victorious conclusion.
We aren’t fighting an organized, uniformed enemy, we are fighting an ideology. We are fighting radical Islam. That is to say, contrary to what Hussein Obama says, we ARE at war with Islam and its members.
Part of the problem with winning an uncontested victory in Afghanistan is the fact that as much as some of the various sects hate each other, they hate America even more.
WASHINGTON — Rival militant organizations on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border have increasingly been teaming up in deadly raids, in what military and intelligence officials say is the insurgents’ latest attempt to regain the initiative after months of withering attacks from American and allied forces.
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Insurgents Set Aside Rivalries on Afghan Border
We can’t get a consensus on anything here in the USA, but tribal leaders and their followers, can work out their differences as they consolidate joint resources to kill Americans.
We, on the other hand, have no desire to engage in an all out war, be it Afghanistan, Iraq, or anywhere else.
Make NO mistake, our troops are more than willing to go anywhere we need them to go. They will do whatever they are allowed to do. They will break things, they will make a terrible mess of the entire area and kill anything big enough to die.
IF they are allowed to do so…
Sadly, our troops are willing, but the U.S. government, the President and the DoD don’t seem to have a bit of FIGHT in them. They are worried about ‘world opinion’, they are concerned about political correctness and collateral damages, so concerned that our troops are under orders to NOT place non-combatants in danger.
There’s a serious *catch* to that philosophy, when you’re fighting an enemy that is an insurgency, when your enemy is wearing the same garments as is every other resident of whatever nation you are in, when nearly everyone, good guys and bad, are armed to the teeth and carrying AK-47′s, just how in the hell do our troops know who the enemy really is?
Is Ed Rendell right? Have we become a nation of *wussies*?
Granted, Rendell is talking about a football game, but did he hit a true note with that statement? Has our leadership become an administration of wussies?
“My biggest beef is that this is part of what’s happened in this country,” Rendell said in an interview on 97.5 radio in Philly. “I think we’ve become wussies. … We’ve become a nation of wusses. The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything. If this was in China do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium, they would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down.” SOURCE
In MY not so humble opinion, yes, they have become an administration of *wussies*, and it’s not just the current administration, but the leadership of America as a whole, past and present, for quite a few years past now.
If the incoming Congress can’t get a grip on these ‘wars’, if they can’t begin to restore America to the position of greatness she once enjoyed, if the American voters can’t select, and vote for, a truly Conservative President that will lead this nation, and not apologize for her actions, if We, The People don’t turn this nation around and if all these things don’t happen very soon, America as we knew it is a goner.
And we have no one to blame but ourselves.
You are “spot-on,” Fred.
If we were fully committed to winning those wars we would use everything in our arsenal, including tactical nukes, to clean that nest of vipers out, once and far all!
We also need SOLDIERS leading our troops, and not politicians wearing combat fatigues!
I’ll tell you — it is getting embarrassing!
JDL
Agree with Longstreet. Nuke the tribal areas and come home. Enemy would be easier to identify. Would be composed of all the mutants that survived the nukes.
I’ve done a bit of study on Afghanistan. Talk about a “nation” of tribals!
As for winning a war there, has any armed force ever won a ground war against Afghanistan? I don’t think so. Just look at Afghanistan’s geography! Talk about impossible terrain! I see no way to secure Afghanistan’s “borders,” particularly from the ground.
Any border CAN be sealed shut, if that is the mission that allows the use and deployment of land mines and claymore mines.
Period.
Do you know what a anti-personnel mine is?
Do you know what a “Claymore Mine” looks like?
I have placed and set off(detonated) a railroad car of them in the very early stages of the Vietnam War.
They work.
We have warehouses full of them here in the USA.
But you must have the approval of our Army Generals to use them. And then this means the political president on the USA will have to approve their use.
We could also use surveillance cameras to review what is passing by, make a decision whether to detonate or not.
But personally, I am sick and tired of using our soldiers in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, etc.
I say pull all of them out. Period.
Continue the use of remote controlled weaponry like the predator strikes and recon planes.
And if the raghead muslims get out of control. deploy a cruise missile on them.
These countries are a sewer to me and should be treated as such.
Another cost cutting move is to also get rid of the United Nations in NYC!! We don’t need them and can’t afford them any more.
I say, get ready for a depression here in the USA, so we better arm and protect our own borders here in the USA.
Put our soldiers and weaponry here, ON OUR OWN BORDERS!!!!
I gotta say, I agree with mrchuck. We had people sniffers in the Nam, & the technology has only gotten better. We don’t have the manpower to physically seal the border, but we sure have the firepower to turn whatever comes across into crispy critters. That ugly pile of rock & 12th century ideology called Afghanistan isn’t worth 1 American life.
Ed Rendell: as a lifelong resident of the Philly environs, his comments gave me a long laugh, since he’s one of the very people whose official actions have helped turn us into a nation of “wusses” (I prefer the politically incorrect epithet that begins with the letter “p”), if in fact that is what we have become. I doubt it. The only “wusses” are those that inhabit the Democratic party, and their liberal fellow-travelers in academia, the media, and society at-large. The majority of Americans, I suspect, are the same contrary, gun-toting, freedom lovers they’ve always been. At least, I hope so.
A good friend of mine has a brother serving with the Marines in Afghanistan. His brother told him that in a firefight with the Taliban, once they throw their weapons down, they have to be allowed to just walk away. They can throw everything they got at our troops and once their ammo is expended, throw down their weapons and walk away and our guys can’t do a stinking thing about it.
We won WWII by unleashing the dogs but now the dogs are muzzled and chained.
I flew people sniffer missions from time to time in Vietnam. The sensors also detected troops of monkeys. Hope the technology is much better. Not that the people in the tribal area of Afganistan aren’t closely related to the afore mentioned primates.