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gordjenkins said:Do you think-for one moment- one second -finding or,,, whatever to ,,to Bin Laden would make one iota of difference to the present situation ??
You sir are living in the past
Anyone? Anyone?

gordjenkins said:Do you think-for one moment- one second -finding or,,, whatever to ,,to Bin Laden would make one iota of difference to the present situation ??
You sir are living in the past
*cracking knuckles*gordjenkins said:Do you think-for one moment- one second -finding or,,, whatever to ,,to Bin Laden would make one iota of difference to the present situation ??
You sir are living in the past
Midnight Rambler said:*cracking knuckles*
Great...now I have to TYPE 2000 words because you conveniently forgot the recent past!!! :threat:
A Wall St. Journal story on new US and ISAF commander Gen. McChrystal's thinking...
Sorry, Mr. Rasmussen, Canada has done its bit
Montreal Gazette
11 Aug 09
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, new secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, says the Afghanistan combat role of the Canadian Forces should be extended beyond our scheduled 2011 withdrawal date. "From an alliance point of view," the former Danish prime minister said, "I would strongly regret if (withdrawal) became the final outcome" for Canada.
Sorry, Mr. Secretary-General, but you're reminding us of that comic-strip label: "People unclear on the concept." No Canadian political party would even hint at extending the 2011 deadline, which was only barely accepted in Parliament. The Conservative government, the clearest supporter of the mission, instantly rebuffed Rasmussen's gambit.
"From an alliance point of view," Mr. Rasmussen, we regret that certain major members of NATO can't be prevailed upon to fight. After the U.S. and U.K., Canada has had the highest number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan. Bigger countries, notably France and Germany, have troops deployed under restricted conditions which usually keep them safe - and ineffective.
True, withdrawal has its problems. CanWest News Service reported last month that in Uruzgan province where the Netherlands has an important combat presence, a local leader has warned the Dutch that if they withdraw on schedule next July he will have to flee the country or do a deal with the Taliban. The inherent danger of any military "sunset clause" is that it tells opponents they can wait us out.
The U.S., preparing to leave Iraq, has already added manpower in Afghanistan, and Pentagon leaders are reportedly ready to ask for thousands more men. But expecting the U.S. to go it alone is ultimately impractical and even shameful. Still, asking Canada to re-enlist is just not reasonable.
A Canadian departure from Kandahar in 2011 would seriously undermine NATO's war in Afghanistan, said a U.S. counter-insurgency expert, who served as a special adviser to the alliance's new ground commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal.
The withdrawal of a small number of troops is not as big an issue as the loss of experience and credibility with local Afghans in what has become the most important battleground in the war-torn country, said Anthony Cordesman (link to think tank bio)
"It isn't simply a matter of troop levels," Cordesman, of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
"It's a matter of experience continuity; having shaped the security presence in one of the most critical provinces in the country. And so would a Canadian departure seriously hurt NATO? The answer at least this point seems to be: Yes." ....
milnews.ca said:...or is there a noticeably higher incidence of MSM stories suggesting, "hey, we should be staying, you know". Funny how these are coming out now that it appears the PM is firm on going - where were these arguments, say, a couple of years ago? :![]()
It's always difficult to read tea leaves, and parse what the government really means when it says Canada will no longer have a "combat role" after 2011 in Kandahar. I'm not sure they know what they really mean. It is, however, a position that now enjoys overwhelming popular and political support. The question is, if we were respondent to American or NATO pressure to continue on in some capacity anyway, what options now remain open with that? Would a continued presence of a Canadian Provincial Reconstruction Team still be open for debate? (Probably.) Would the use of helicopters in transport roles be? (Possibly.)
How about continuing ANSF mentoring? Maybe not so much.
It's not just that mentors, with their ANSF partners, are in combat as much as, if not more than the regular battalion troops in the same province, making their "non-combat" designation pretty much a joke. Nor is it that they have to follow the same Western-level force protection standards in their defended locations and vehicles. When you're a 4-man team working a platoon house with 30 dependable ANA or ANP, there's no margin for error there. And it's not just that they'd necessarily have to sponge off the nearest main force battalion for all kinds of things (a logistical train, to start with).
No, it's also that, assuming the Canadian battle group in Kandahar does leave, it will be replaced by another nationality. Almost certainly, in this case, an American battalion. Well, the whole point of Canadian mentors most days is not to teach cute little lectures, it's to achieve synchronization of effects through liaison. Which means explaining the Canadian military to Afghans and the Afghan military to Canadians, and working out all the differences that come with that.
Hey, we're as close to Americans as you can get, I guess, without being American, but it's an open question whether an American battle group commander is really going to achieve maximal value by having soldiers of a third nation, any third nation, as his interface between him and the local ANSF, rather than an American ETT or PMT. A Canadian OMLT might be somewhat better that way than a Romanian one, I suppose, but it isn't the best possible solution for getting that hard seal on the intent side that, if I were a U.S. battalion commander, I would want to have. No, once you remove the Canadian battle group you're there to interface with (and that the Afghans and you are depending on to stay alive) the need for corresponding mentoring teams from the same nationality definitely diminishes.
This is even more strongly the case if you're talking the brigade level, where I worked. I may know something now about Canadian and ANA brigade-level staff procedures, but my knowledge of American brigade-level procedures, in practice, is fairly limited. So why exactly would I be the right person to explain them to Afghans? (Never mind that before Afghanistan, Canada hadn't had a brigade deployed in combat since the Korean War, so maybe we're not the best people to explain brigade procedures to anyone.)
Now, we have a lot of mentoring experience with the ANA as an army, and if you'd like to take advantage of that, possibly with a reduced mentor component (say 30-60 soldiers with previous tour experience) imbedded in a mixed-force structure under overall U.S. leadership (as augmentees, for instance), well, that makes a lot more sense. But having the only way Afghans can talk to Americans being through both an interpreter AND a Canadian in either direction would not seem optimal, and keeping over 200 Canadian soldiers in a mentoring role in Kandahar Province past 2011 not the best application of our limited resources, sorry to say.
...
Canadians should be clear that, while our military has gained respect for the disproportionate casualties it has incurred since 2005, we haven't necessarily impressed anyone with that military's actual prowess in its counterinsurgency operations, at least to date. Being respected for one's toughness and for one's ingenuity are two different, and sometimes almost unrelated, things. To take a more extreme example, the British army on the Somme is respected rightly for taking heavy casualties and staying in the fight, but condemned for the pointless tactical approach that produced those same casualties.
The problem is that, in leaving in 2011 (which will be seen by many, regardless of the reasons, as an unwillingness to incur further casualties), we risk significantly undercutting our new rep for toughness, while still leaving the historical question open as to our smartness.
(Not that that's disastrous, mind. In that sense, we would be in a somewhat parallel position to the Australians in Vietnam.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_Australia_during_the_Vietnam_War
We may think we had some better ideas than the Americans, but after we leave early, or in a losing effort, it can't be said in retrospect that they received the full historical test. As an army, though, that kind of non-decision does not have to be crippling, as the Australians have since showed.)
See also this post.
http://kingsofwar.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/afghanistan-two-years-from-now-youll-be-saying-marcellus-wallace-was-right/
And Pat Lang, who has the distinction of having danced this dance the first time.
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2009/08/its-1963-again-this-time-afghanistan.html
Canada will not abandon Afghanistan
Come 2011, we'll be there one way or another
Lewis MacKenzie
Thursday, Aug. 13, 2009
The headline just about screamed: “Sacrifices will be for naught if we flee Afghanistan.” Sensational? Misleading? How about a real insult to Canada's disproportionate contribution to the international community's bid to keep Afghanistan from sliding back to the Dark Ages?
Parliament's decision that Canada will terminate its Afghan combat role in 2011 – that is to say, its battle group of about 1,000 soldiers “outside the wire” securing ground and seeking out insurgents – is already generating more smoke than fire in the media. And we still have two years to go!
It's an embarrassing fact that Canada, a G8 country presumably because of its wealth, is incapable of maintaining 1,000 combat soldiers abroad indefinitely. This, despite the fact that previous white papers called for the capability of maintaining a combat brigade (4,000 to 5,000 combat soldiers) overseas in support of coalition operations.
During the 1990s, the “decade of darkness,” a sleeping public paid scant attention to the devastating impact of a 27-per-cent reduction to an already modest defence budget that left only one option to commanders – dramatically cut the number of personnel in uniform. Yet, since March of 2002, Canada has maintained a sizable presence – proportionally larger than any other country – in Afghanistan.
Over Christmas 2005, when the odds were high that the Taliban were in a position to attack and capture Kandahar city, the centre of gravity and birthplace of their movement, Canadian units started their move from Kabul to Kandahar and, during the summer of 2006, soundly defeated the insurgents in a conventional fight. We have been there ever since, in one of Afghanistan's most volatile provinces.
With a deployable full-time army of fewer than 15,000, we now have many soldiers with multiple tours in Afghanistan. By 2011, some will have four and possibly five. Add to each tour a year-long training regime before deployment and you start to understand the challenge of maintaining a modest-sized fighting force in the field.
The infantry that provides the bulk of the battle group's strength is doing so with fewer than 5,000 deployable full-time soldiers. Without augmentation by an even smaller and invaluable part-time militia, we would have been forced to abandon the Afghan mission before now.
During the past eight years, our soldiers have suffered per capita casualties well beyond those of any other country. Using the United States for comparison, our population is about 10 per cent of theirs. Our 127 killed would roughly translate to 1,270 U.S. fatalities; the U.S. number is currently just under 800. This comparison is in no way a criticism of any other country – it merely provides a measurement of our unwavering commitment to the Afghan campaign.
Those who suggest that our departure from the primary combat role in 2011 would render the sacrifices of our dead and wounded “wasted” are respectfully (particularly to surviving family and friends) wrong.
Those sacrifices saved Kandahar city and, for the past four years, the entire province of Kandahar when NATO, at the political level, was incapable of generating anything close to the number of boots on the ground that should have been provided to assist our contingent. When the history of the current Afghan conflict is written, Canada will be credited with playing a major role in the country's survival in the most critical early stages of the war.
As far as Canada's abandoning Afghanistan in 2011, even without reading between the lines, you can bet this won't happen. Afghanistan is the largest recipient of our foreign aid, with a number of signature projects that will continue. An ever-growing civilian presence assisting with governance and other aspects of nation-building also will continue.
The very effective Provincial Reconstruction Team and its protection element will no doubt stay, along with an increased number of mentors to help train the Afghan army and national police. The United States will probably lobby for retention of our outstanding medical facility at Kandahar airfield, along with the recently deployed helicopters and perhaps our artillery unit. The latter two will be controversial and lead to heated parliamentary debate because of their association with that dreaded term “combat.”
Let's face it: The Americans know as much about our army as we do, and they're probably surprised that we have been able to maintain a battle group in theatre as long as we have. By 2011, that will have been longer than the two world wars combined. I doubt very much we will be asked to extend a combat task they know we would find exceedingly difficult to do.
Canada will not abandon Afghanistan in 2011, no matter what the headlines suggest for the next two years.
Lewis MacKenzie is a retired major-general who was the first commander of United Nations peacekeeping forces in Sarajevo.
Midnight Rambler said:That goes against what the CDS has said on the matter. "No military mission" means just that. No BG, but also no PRT and no OMLT. No Air Wing, no nothing. That was his take on things.
OMLT cannot stay as they definitely engage in combat (arguably more than the BG). PRT also engage in combat, perhaps not as much; however, IEDs (the number one killer) hits everyone. If the government says "End Ex", then that's that. Conduct a Relief in Place with an incoming unit, and wave good bye as we fly out of KAF. That is the party line from "the boss".
Of course, my mention of the CDS as boss was deliberately in quotes. I guess I'm just passing on his take of direction received thus far. I understand that the employment of the military is simply a matter of foreign policy at the sharp end, and in two years, many things can (and probably will) happen. Governments may come and go, outside events may affect policies and so forth.E.R. Campbell said:The "boss," indeed. Whenever someone told me that "they" had just decided something (usually something unpleasant) my first question, always, was: "Which they?"
Who is the "boss?" Boss of what?
These decisions (there are several of them, I think), whatever they may be in (or may have become by) the Spring/Summer of 2011 are about 99.99% political, so my guesstimate is that Gen. Natynczyk's views on the whole matter are of little to no importance. Minister McKay - or his successor, and there's likely to be at least one before July 2011 - will have some, but quite limited, influence on the matter.
The "boss" is the PM and he will seek the advice of his political brain-trust, including his polling teams. The polls matter now and may (will if we are still in a minority parliament - Conservative or Liberal minority, same difference) matter just as much in 2011. That means that the public, per se, and public "opinion leaders" and public "opinion makers" (many in the media) may be the "boss."