Military stories from past to present, both wars.

Bite of a Big Green Dill Pickle

September 26th, 2009 Posted in The SandGram v1.0

 

Last month I wrote about the challenges facing Afghanistan.  It’s not even the problems we face as a military over there, but what it will take to change that place.  I hate to say it, but the Russians are probably sitting down each day, laughing at the U.S. because they are wearing the tee-shirt “Been there and done that” as they too tried to tame the wild wild west. 

 

The Afghans will NEVER have a national identity, they are tribal to the max, thus it is my opinion that we will never break the cycle they are in no matter how many troops we throw into the equation.  President Karzai has shown that he wants to win at any costs and if I didn’t know better, had ACORN over there teaching his folks how to stuff ballet boxes.  Now we are stuck in a hard place with him in office.  Does the U.S. support a guy whose election is in question?  Will the Governors in the 34 provinces support him or lend help to the opposition or Taliban?  I would lean more towards the latter of the two.  It all comes down to the War Lords and folks in power in the different tribes. 

 

History has a remarkable way of repeating it’s self.  The British army was destroyed back in 1842 as they marched out of Kabul with only one survivor out of over 16,000 making it to the garrison in Jalalabad.  The Afghans were split and tribal then as well, but the enemy of my enemy type thing will bind them together as this war drags on causing them to take up arms against us.  I can tell you that we are losing this war on the P.R. front only because the bad guys are fast on the draw spreading lies and rumors to all the locals.  It doesn’t help that insurgents blend in with the locals so that when an air strike takes them out, you get the scolding from President Karzai on how bad we are. Before we can tell what happened, the UN files a false report based off of the losses reported by the village elders, who turn right around with their hands out to get payment from the US over the deaths.

 

President Obama is surely realizing now that the job of POTUS is not as easy as one might imagine.  I wouldn’t wish that position on my worst enemy.  President Obama is dealing with the following things that I would like to call my observations for the week…

 

  1. Iran and Nukes:  These guys don’t care.  They are going to make nukes. Now the question is, will the U.S. allow the Israeli’s access to fly over Iraqi airspace to bomb the nuke sites? The Iranians are still supplying arms and explosives to our enemies who are making IED’s out of them.  Is he willing to use nukes against Iran so that my son isn’t sitting on some FOB outside of Tehran one day in the future?  It may come to that.
  2. Japan and China:  Japan’s new Prime Minisiter Yukio Hatoyama and his Government is looking at kicking the US out of their country which is fine with me, but they are making a play with China to build some kind of Eastern Asian alliance.  This along with China starting to build up a real navy with Nuke subs etc, can be a scary thing.  I am a bit surprised at this since the Japanese did such a number on the Chinese in WWII.  Maybe the Chinese are setting a trap for them.
  3. North Korea:  The guy is one step away from having his troops run over the border into South Korea where they will rape and plunder the South, then run back over the border knowing that the U.S. can’t do anything to stop them.  The U.N. will slap their hands but that is about it. 
  4. Gen. McChrystal’s report was leaked to the press requesting up to 40 thousand more troops in Afghanistan.  Once again, the Afghan’s will view more troops as an occupation of their country and you will have them turn against us in a heartbeat.  Time to leave with the promise that if any terrorist stuff happens we’ll drop a nuke on them. The End..period.  America is worried about the health care package and they should be more worried about the billions we dump into that crap hole each month with no return.
  5. Terror cases in the U.S. grow:  You have guys looking to hurt the U.S. anyway they can.  We’ve been lucky so far that the FBI has been on top of their game catching these idiots who want to bomb our homeland, but what about the cell that is really good out there, patiently waiting?

 

Anyway, these are just my thoughts for this week, more to come.

Semper Fi,

Taco