Tag Archive for SOFA

Truth Trickles Out: Afghanistan troop cuts will likely lead to Taliban surge, study warns (Surprise…exactly as we predicted)

March 3, 2014: Our track record continues its pristine record of accurately cutting through the lies and deception and correctly forecasting the impact of United States’ policy.  In one of the most recent reveals, it took a gold star panel of overpaid, retired bureaucrats and generals (forgive me if I am redundant) to “discover” that NATO’s optimistic predictions for Afghanistan’s future, contrived at its 2012 Chicago summit, were ridiculously flawed.  The study conducted by the “nonpartisan” think tank CNA concluded that stability in Afghanistan will require tens of thousands more troops costing billions more dollars than NATO envisioned at its 2012 summit.  The review,conducted at the behest of the Pentagon’s policy directorate, found that the Taliban insurgency is likely to swell in the years following the upcoming US and NATO military withdrawal, which contradicts the expectations set at NATO’s May 2012 summit. The review also saw widespread deficiencies in NATO’s planning for Afghanistan manpower, logistics, air support and ministerial strength.

As we reported previously, it was readily apparent to anyone willing to take an unbiased look at the situation in Afghanistan that our counterinsurgency strategy “coined” (pun intended) by strategic snake oil salesmen like disgraced General David Petraeus, Australian “fiction author” David Kilcullen, and RAND Associate Director/Mental Incompetent Seth Jones was an abject failure.  In particular, sealing the border connecting Afghanistan to Pakistan, the single most critical element required to win in Afghanistan, was not even attempted and discounted by the brain trust listed above.  Further, the brain trust relied nearly exclusively on financial aid (bribes which ultimately funded the Taliban) and training of the Afghan police and military (soon to just be a well trained and equipped Taliban army), which has again proven to have no historical precedent for success in warfare.  The damning Government Accountability Office (GAO) study (http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d1166.pdf) sums up this situation succinctly stating: “The Afghan government and international community have set an objective of having the Afghan army and police lead and conduct security operations in all Afghan provinces by the end of 2014. As of September 2010, no ANA unit was assessed as capable of conducting its mission independent of coalition assistance.”  After a decade and almost a trillion dollars of direct and indirect spending the US had effectively trained a whopping 0% of the Afghan Army to operate on its own!  Anyone that thought just a few hundred billion more dollars and a couple more years would change this was stupid or lying…perhaps both.  I am honestly sick of listening to these idiots create policy after policy on how to “win” in Afghanistan when none of them have a lick of sense, have been in an actual firefight firsthand, or can show that a single policy they recommended led to a decisive US victory.  Of course many excuses were put forth, but the reality was something much deeper as those with functional brains recognized.  The fact was that victory was impossible without the will to actually fight a war to decisive ends, which required the US to have a coherent strategy, competent leadership, the ability to unilaterally run the Afghan government, and the “US” military (not the Afghan enemy) to prosecute a war of attrition across the border into Pakistan and wipe out millions of Pashtuns.  None of these necessary conditions were in place, which created an insurmountable situation in Afghanistan in respect to achieving a decisive victory.

Not so ironically, the review comes as the US policy makers realize they must retreat out of Afghanistan in defeat and will need an alibi to cloak their failure.  Dusting off the Iraq playbook, it should come as no surprise the US, after “exhausting all options with an intractable President Karzai,” will have to pull its troops out of Afghanistan because he won’t sign a status of forces agreement (SOFA).  The spin will be used to justify Bush and now Obama’s military defeats, but don’t expect anyone to question Jay Carney about why after invading, occupying, killing over a hundred thousand people, and placing our puppet in charge that we somehow are now unable to stay because of minor bureaucratic red tape.  The weakness of the public mind knows no bottom.

The CNA review panel at least is correct in recognizing the persistent Taliban insurgency will mount an increased threat to the Afghan government for years after the envisaged NATO withdrawal. The CNA team’s prediction of an increased Taliban threat to Afghanistan through 2018, supported by a recent US intelligence assessment, “stands in direct contradiction to the assumption of a reduced insurgent threat made at the Chicago Summit,” the report states. This is about as much credit as I can give the CNA team.  Beyond this, their analysis becomes pure garbage and it is nauseating to think how many tax dollars were spent on this trash.

The problem with the study is the CNA panel falls short on accurately getting the present facts right and thus, utterly blows their long term forecasted endstate, which predicts a stalemate.  “We conclude that this force is not likely to defeat the Taliban militarily, but that if it can hold against the Taliban insurgency through 2018, the likelihood of a negotiated settlement to the war will increase,” the CNA review found.  The reality is that every province that has been turned over to the Afghan military has effectively been turned over to Taliban control.  The Taliban have outlasted the US, NATO, and the Afghan military for over a decade.  The Taliban will make short work of the Afghan military one on one.  To think they will be looking for a “negotiated settlement” is utter insanity.  The Taliban will defeat and absorb the Afghan army rapidly.  As the last US forces pull out of Afghanistan the Taliban will mount a full scale assault on Kabul to retake the country.  This will leave the situation on the ground almost the same as the US found it in 2001 with the difference being the Taliban are far more numerous, better trained, better armed, better organized, and with an earned hatred of the US.  In a laughable twist to counter this, the CNA team advises (remember, the team is made of “senior” policy makers and generals) the Pentagon to keep international military advisers in the Afghanistan ministries of defense and interior through “at least” 2018 to mitigate long-term problems, including corruption and incompetence.  After reading this, I was left with zero doubt why the Taliban have outlasted the US military.  Our leaders are idiots.  It is a joke to propose that a few advisors will save the day.  Equally blind is the notion that corruption and incompetence, not a viable enemy at the gates will be the big problem for the encircled Karzai regime.  Even with a large number of troops and advisors in country right now, the US has failed to accomplish defeating the military or rooting out corruption.  After thousands of Americans have been killed in this useless war, there still is not even the slightest spark of logic or integrity within the senior echelon and the apathetic public remains in a mute, trance like state when it comes to calling out President Obama and his mob of derelict morons driving the US off a policy cliff.

To conclude, make no mistake of these facts and further predictions.  One, the US suffered a strategic defeat in Afghanistan.  Two, the US will use the failure, albeit an intentional failure, to sign a SOFA (agreement) as a means to save face as it retreats.  Three, the Taliban will retake the country and will be more powerful than they ever could have been if the US did not invade back in 2001.  Four, the Karzai puppet regime will not last to 2018 and Karzai will most likely be killed or flee back to Europe where he hid billions of US aid in complicit Swiss and Dubai banks.  Fifth, in absence of a war in Afghanistan and a failing domestic economy, the US will start wars elsewhere to feed the coffers of the Congressional-Military-Industrial Complex and distract the unemployed masses back in the US.

By Guiles Hendrik

March 3, 2014

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