Thread: Afghanistan, World's Longest War Has Only Just Begun

Afghanistan, World's Longest War Has Only Just Begun

Politics / Afghanistan
Dec 20, 2009 - 07:22 AM
By: Rick_Rozoff

The higher number of Defense Department contractors, 160,000, added to over 100,000 troops - with the likely prospect of both numbers climbing yet more - will result in over a quarter of a million U.S. personnel serving under the Pentagon and NATO. The latter has 42,000 non-U.S. troops fighting under its command currently and pledges of 8,000 more to date, with thousands in addition to be conscripted after the London conference on Afghanistan next month.

Approximately 35,000 U.S. soldiers are also assigned to NATO's ISAF and if the 33,000 new American troops are similarly deployed the North Atlantic bloc will have over 120,000 forces fighting a land war in Asia. Along with a Pakistani army of 700,000 active duty troops fighting on the other side of the border and an Afghan army of 100,000 soldiers, there will soon be well over a million military personnel engaged in a war with a few hundred al-Qaeda and a few thousand Taliban forces.

Despite U.S. President Barack Obama's pledge in his December 1 address at the West Point Military Academy that deploying 30,000 more of his nation's troops to Afghanistan would be coupled with "a goal of starting to withdraw forces from the country in July 2011," everything else he has said and all the facts on the ground suggest that the war will continue into the indefinite future.

At a press conference a week before the West Point troop surge announcement he said "it is my intention to finish the job," and in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech on December 10 he affirmed: "We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes."

History establishes that it is easier to deploy to than to withdraw from an active war zone.

The White House has already increased U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan from 32,000 at the beginning of the year to over twice that amount - 68,000 - currently, with the first contingent of even more reinforcements arriving this week. The 30,000 additional troops headed to the war front and the 3,000 more support forces pledged by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will push American military personnel in Afghanistan to over 100,000.

That number, likely to be increased yet further and accompanied by a veritable invasion of private military contractors and State Department operatives, will be augmented by over 10,000 more non-U.S. troops serving under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), bringing combined American and NATO regular military forces to well over 150,000 and total Western personnel to over 300,000 with an estimated surge of as many as 56,000 new U.S. contractors. With the addition of assorted security, intelligence, private contracting and other military camp followers from NATO nations, the figure could top a third of a million.

An occupation and warfighting force of those dimensions is not designed for a limited mission or a short stay.

In fact on December 6 U.S. National Security Adviser James Jones (former top military commander for NATO in Europe) gave the lie to the 2011 withdrawal anodyne in an interview with CNN when he brashly asserted "We have strategic interests in South Asia that should not be measured in terms of finite times. We’re going to be in the region for a long time.â€

Animal control officers don't let a mad dog, a rabid possum, or a raging bear roam about until it attacks someone.
Everyone knows that a mad dog will bite someone, no matter how nice one talks to it.

But many Americans, probably the majority, think that if we just leave Is|amist terrorists alone, they won't bother us.

You're right, this is the world's longest war. It began in 624 AD, and it will continue until Messiah returns.

"World's Longest War. . . "

". . . the world's lengthiest war, now in its ninth and on January 1 to enter its tenth calendar year. . . "

I'm certainly no proponent of war, but saying the war in Afghanistan is the longest war in the world is stretching the truth a bit, isn't it?

Afghanistan...Graveyard of Empires, in the end, we will leave, beatened, demoralized just like the Russians.

It has been brought to our attention this is a duplicate post:
http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-182304-isaf.html

However will leave open since more comments here than to the original.

Please search before posting.

Thank you.