To bring peace to the Afghans, talk to the Taleban
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Planes, Trains, Armored Trucks, and Afghanistan
Instead of “planes, trains, and automobiles,” my trip from western Nineveh to Mosul, to Erbil, to Vienna, to Stuttgart, to Atlanta, to El Paso, and then to Florida was much more interesting. It included helicopters, armored pickup trucks, trains, buses, cars and numerous jets. And the “fun” has just begun. After Florida there will be Washington, D.C., and then back to the war. As always, I beg forgiveness for the great difficulty I have responding to emails.
In addition to all the travel there is also the endless homework. A big challenge has been finding reliable sources whether they be military, political, or journalistic. I’ve located another source whom I pay attention to regarding Afghanistan. Former British military officer and ITN reporter, Adam Holloway MP is now on the Defence Select Committee. I’ve mentioned Mr. Holloway in my 2006 dispatches on Afghanistan, after having met him on a remote airfield in Afghanistan. He’s a very smart man with an eye for truth about the war: good, bad and the ugly. In Afghanistan it’s mostly the bad and ugly. Mr. Holloway has written an important piece at www.spectator.co.uk. : To bring peace to the Afghans, talk to the Taleban.
What Mr. Holloway is proposing might cause nervous twitches – perhaps spasms – in America and in the United Kingdom. But I know for a fact that he’s paying close attention to Afghanistan. After I first met him there in 2006, I learned through a source that Mr. Holloway financed his own second secret trip to the hinterlands so that he could avoid the dog and pony show of an official visit. In December 2007, when I visited the U.K., an important part of the trip that I have not previously mentioned was that I met with Mr. Holloway numerous times to discuss Afghanistan.
The United Kingdom is a critical partner in the Afghan war. Mr. Holloway’s controversial article deserves serious consideration and discussion. Furthermore, this Member of Parliament is willing to open a direct line to citizen-voices from the United States, and so with his permission, Mr. Holloway’s email address:
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Comments
The Brits tried it, and we had to save them. The Pakistanis are trying it, and they're losing.
People who skin other people alive don't deserve to talked to. They deserve to be killed. That's the moral thing to do.
I was born in Iran and grew up in Kuwait but I am American by choice. I was for removing Saddam from power from beginning of this war and most of all I wanted the war to liberate the kurds in Iraq. I think after the first Iraq/Kuwaiti war we owed Kurds big time!
As you have said, we have almost won the Al-Qaida battle , now its time to win the war with iran in iraq! I agree with that old Sheik who told you that "the Iranians are poison to the Iraqi people"...Well, I hope someone will teach that to Obama and Clinton.
Thanks and may God continue to bless you.
BTW: I have ordered two more of your books to send to my congressman and to my Senator.
I really appreciate your first hand accounts of events at the point of the spear. I am beginning to question your analysis of the bigger picture. I think that your vision may be clouded by an antipathy to Washington--or is it Bush?
By the way, I am sure that you know that there were numerous attempts to talk to the Taliban (American spelling) before and after 9/11. They didn't want to talk. Oh, and I recommend some light reading during your travels--"A Thousand Splendid Suns". Is the Taliban depicted there the same ones Mr Holloway meets with?
As the COIN manual stated, don't fight the last war.
Geez, what has happened to the once mighty British Empire?
Your not a 10 year old child with your fingers in your ears chanting "la la la la la..." so you had to see the comments and hear the news that IRAQ was going to result in an insurgency. Please change this position to "NO body BELEIVED what others were saying...I certainly didn't." To go on the aire or write that NO one expected it is to discount what generals said (remember they wanted a much bigger force to attack). So to say NO one is dishonest or ignorant.
Again Thanks For Brining Iraq home to us - it's been a great source of info. Just don't distort the situation in order to sell your point. People DID anticipate exactly this happening to your pals.
Thanks ff
Also, Frek, were you among those few Americans who applauded George H.W. Bush for standing aside and watching Saddam Hussein slaughter tens of thousands of Kurds and Shiites who rebelled after the first Gulf War? You liberals love citing Cick Cheney's logic for not intervening back then, but did you actually believe Dick Cheney then? Or were you like most liberals who blasted Bush 41 for being a coward and a hypocrite and for tolerating massive slaughter? Were you among the majority of liberals who argued that the Gulf War was a failure because we "didn't finish the job" and left Saddam Hussein power? If you were among the latter, please do us all a favor and admit it.
As for your points, what does the Gulf War have to do with anything? I was in Iraq during all that, and I was disgusted and dismayed we didn't "finish the job." But I don't think Cheney and Bush were "cowards" for not invading Baghdad, and they were pragmatic as the times called for. A year later I had decided they were correct to do. I also thought, in Feb. 2003, that the current war was an outrageous mistake, and I've been proven correct in every way that matters.
The fact is, in 1991, we DID tolerate mass slaughter...so it was disengenous for this administration to use that excuse as a reason for invasion in 2007. Let's accept that without 19 Saudi Arabian/Kuwaiti morons with box cutters, we don't ever invade Iraq at all.
Whether or not anybody did or did not "expect" an insurgency, it was their job to know. The administration failed, and that incompentence - which began with a baffling war plan that basically made the machismo of a light, quick ground invasion the priority instead of intelligence, massive strength and tactics - cost a lot of lives. If you're the President, you don't get to say "I didn't expect." As for Michael Yon, he's a private citizen and he can say what he wants.
So, you're using a straw man argument and not a real argument. Frek never made any of the claims you're arguing with him about. You're just ranting and raving about your perception of someone who disagrees with you, and you hope by throwing up a smokescreen about Desert Storm you'll overshadow his main points.
And, I assume you're not one of those conservatives who tells liberals to "get over" the 2000 election, right? If you're going to obsess about ancient history, I assume you at least would not be a hypocrite.
What critics just don't want to accept is the fact that every tyranny that imposes its will on a multi-ethnic, multi-sectarian society, usually explodes into violence once the state-imposed repression is lifted and old scores are settled. This happened in the USSR, in Yugoslavia, after the Ottoman Empire's collapse, and now in Iraq. But that historical fact doesn't mean that we should forever be trying to prop up empires that are ruled with an iron fist.
Why would we give their views any more credence after their performance in Basra and Helmand?
For that matter, what makes you think that the US Military considers the British Army an able force?
AVN, your history is incomplete.
During the successful invasion in 1991, the liberals did INDEED argue that the US Military should not prosecute/extinguish the Iraqi Military (and its Republican Guard) into Iraq. Much of this was brought on using feigned outrage at the so-called "Highway of Death".
Only after the Kurds were attacked did liberals turn around to lambast the very course of action they SUCCESSFULLY advocated.
So what we have is a little bit of revisionist history.
President GHW Bush, however, weighed many considerations of which the domestic appeal of the war was a large one. I, however, believe that he made the most reasonable choice available to him at the time. America, in spite of what people claim, owed the Kurds nothing.
It still owes the Kurds nothing. And if the Kurds or their lackeys ever doubt that; if the American people ever come across such pompous attitudes among the Kurds, then they will find themselves exposed to the tender mercies of the Turks, the Iranians, the Syrians, the Saudis and their "countrymen" in the south.
America can take care of itself; they can't. And that deficiency led to their demise.
http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2008/04/men-in-black-vanish-and-people-emerge.html
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE7DD163EF934A1575BC0A964958260
It was written by B. DRUMMOND AYRES JR., Published: August 27, 1992
Relevant quotes: "Mr. Clinton, the Democratic Presidential nominee who has asserted that Mr. Bush stopped the 1991 gulf war too soon, said at a campaign appearance here that election politics should be kept out of the decision-making involving the region."
"Mr. Clinton has said a number of times that he, like some of President Bush's military advisers and aides, believes that the gulf fighting should have been allowed to continue so that the Iraqi military could have been further weakened."
"Asked what he would have proposed back then, he replied, "A slight lengthening of the war."
Mr. Clinton's running mate, Senator Al Gore of Tennessee, joined the Arkansas Governor at the press conference....was otherwise critical of Mr. Bush's handling of the gulf situation. He said the surviving Iraqi forces should not have been permitted to move about in southern Iraq after the fighting ended because that eventually resulted in attacks on dissidents.
"It was an historic mistake," Mr. Gore said.
Moreover, Laurie Mylroie, a prolific writer on Iraq who was Bill Clinton's advisor on Iraq during his 1992 campaign, wrote "During the 1992 presidential campaign, Clinton was tougher on Saddam than Bush, criticizing Bush for leaving Saddam in power. This author was, in fact, the advisor on Iraq to the Clinton campaign." Source: Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, Vol 2, Number 1.
The model of appeasement in Basrah, Pakistan and Musa Qala with truces, withdrawals and well-meaning negotiations is a proven failure.
Once you abandon your allies who dared to take up arms, provide moral or political assistance, and leave them at the mercy of enemies with no regard for upholding their end of any negotiations... then you have the results that Britain and Pakistan cultivated.
You must fight for your allies like you would fight for your loved ones. They need us and to abandon them is the best way to lose their hearts and minds to six feet of dirt.
This article is utterly stupid.
My best wishes to our friends in Great Britain. America loves you.
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