Agree with all. Fingers crossed he pulls us out of this dump before more lives & treasure are spent for nothing. If it were up to the generals, they’d keep us here forever.

quote:

Originally posted by arabiancowboy:
Agree with all. Fingers crossed he pulls us out of this dump before more lives & treasure are spent for nothing. If it were up to the generals, they’d keep us here forever.

This. There is no incentive for career politicians in uniform to stop doing what they are paid to do. There never has been. And Afghanistan is the Black Hole of conflicts - it has eaten entire nations throughout history, and the only successful interlopers in this innocent-looking patch of desert and rock - that's how you get sucked in, in spite of the history you should know - have left before they, too, were consumed.

It makes me sad that there are kids who will graduate high school this year who've never lived when we weren't at war.

Beyond the career generals, there is a shit-ton of money being made by the defense industry. They are so intertwined with the .gov as to almost be indistinguishable.

I think it is past time to pretty much pull everyone. I think we should ramp intelligence folks on the ground way the hell up and let them do their job and keep us informed. If something substantial develops that can't be dealt with by missles or bombs then we take fresh troops in, blow them problem to hell and gone and leave. The middle east is a sucking black hole of death. It always has been and always will be.

quote:

Originally posted by mark_a:
I think we should ramp intelligence folks on the ground way the hell up and let them do their job and keep us informed. If something substantial develops that can't be dealt with by missles or bombs then we take fresh troops in, blow them problem to hell and gone and leave. The middle east is a sucking black hole of death. It always has been and always will be.

We should not be ramping anything up, especially intel & strike aircraft. We have more than enough. The thing we lack is political will to crush our enemies with the brutality required to actually be victorious. Since we won’t burn villages like we did to the Apache or Comanche, we won’t win and gain nothing by staying. More intel analysts won’t help, and it’s impractical to send them without the force protection & logistics required to sustain them. And once you send all those jabronies, we’re back to where we are now.

Time to pack our shit and leave. Wholesale withdraw is the only solution we are capable of executing.

A California judge yesterday dismissed the Stormy Daniels defamation suit against Michael Cohen and Donald Trump with prejudice.


https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/.../1092799399913287684

^^^^^^^^
A California judge, no less.

quote:

Originally posted by mark_a:
It makes me sad that there are kids who will graduate high school this year who've never lived when we weren't at war.

It is the human condition.

As Santayana said, "Only the dead have seen the end of war".

quote:

Originally posted by arabiancowboy:
Time to pack our shit and leave. Wholesale withdraw is the only solution we are capable of executing.

I questioned the wisdom of going there full-on in October of 2001. There wasn't then, and there isn't now, anything to win.

What we needed to do then, and now, is blow up terrorists. That's it, and it does not require an occupying army. Station a certain number of special ops folks there and give them free reign to do what they do - kill folks who need killing and blow shit up. Everything, and everybody, else needs to come home.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinio...lenge-you-to-do-this

Newt Gingrich: Trump and the trivialists -- After State of the Union speech I challenge you to do this

The theme of President Trump’s State of the Union is going to be “choosing greatness.”

Following on an election in which “Make America Great Again” was a primary theme – remember the campaign hats said MAGA, not Trump, there is a certain logic to President Trump emphasizing that Americans should move beyond vicious partisanship and “choose greatness” for their country......

apparently the democrats want a compromise on border security

I see this as a binary problem - its either secure or its not

where is there room for compromise?

https://www.dailywire.com/news..._campaign=benshapiro

BREAKING: Big Trump Win: Tax Cuts Trigger Exxon Mobil To Invest Whopping $10 Billion In America's Infrastructure

^^^ More winning!

Rep. Dan Crenshaw gets it..
Border security, the actual choices:

1. Status quo, with 400,000 illegals apprehended per year.

2. Dept of Homeland Security Request: 234 miles of new fencing where they’ve identified a need, plus other tech. $5.7 B price tag

3. 2,000 mile wall, $25 B price tag

We choose #2
https://mobile.twitter.com/Dan...on-border-control%2F

I'd choose #3.

quote:

Originally posted by arabiancowboy:
Good article.

I am hopeful that President Trump announces a significant withdrawal from Afghanistan. It’s time to leave, and no one else has the balls to say the truth: “it won’t get any better out there. This is as good as we can accomplish. Time to go.”

Actually... Rand Paul does have the balls to say the truth:

Senator Rand Paul Calls Out Mitch McConnell for Undermining President Trump

Senator Rand Paul delivers a righteous speech supporting President Trump’s decision to begin removing the US military from the Middle East, and calling out Mitch McConnell and the UniParty for undermining the president. Rand is fired up.

MUST WATCH:

Excellent video chellim1. Rand Paul nailed it. We have done everything we can over there and we are just wasting money and lives with no improvement. Afghanistan will remain a shithole from now till eternity and us staying there will never change that.

Jim

Great speech by Paul.
It is time to leave, nuke 'em on the way out.

With no end in sight, it would be indeed, a good time to withdraw.

We all have memories.
Sgt Andrew Russell (SASR), land mine, 16 Feb 2002.

Seventeen years ago, the Coalition aim was to remove the Taliban from power, and deny Al Qaeda a terrorist base of operations.

Today, the Taliban control and contest about 45% of Afghanistan districts. Including Uruzgan.

Time to move on, we tried, but that area will never change. Never has, never will.

I generally agree with Rand Paul regarding Afghanistan. However, he, like his kooky father, is very naive in his isolationist views.

People wail about us being the world's policemen and wish to put an end to it and bring everyone home. That is foolish IMO.

I don't think any of us would want to live in a world where we are not the policemen. Make no mistake about it, if we don't do it, Russia, China, or the muslims will. It sucks, but it is the world we now live in.

The argument should actually be about how to better prosecute these foreign actions, not whether we should prosecute them at all.

quote:

Originally posted by Gustofer:
I'd choose #3.

. I hear you, but I’d choose number 2+.

2+ is doing the 5.7B priority work now, monitoring the results, and reserving the right to add more as needed. I’d guess that there may be some portions where for whatever reason a wall is unnecessary. If that is true, it would be more fiscally prudent to only put in wall where needed.