Taliban

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Biden’s Failing Presidency


I voted for Joe Biden however I am very discouraged with his performance so far. I would give him a grade of D right now, even though he has been in office only 8 months. He can turn it around but he has to change his mindset.

My first disappointment with him was his decision to complete what Donald Trump had started in his presidency, the removal of all troops from Afghanistan. This was always a mistake. With Trump, a man who said he knew more than his generals, I stayed quiet only because this was a man who was impossible to reason with. But Biden, who did not listen to his military advisers, just as bad as Trump, was told by many of his top generals that he needed to leave a force of about 2,500 to 3,500 troops in Afghanistan to maintain its stability. But Biden figured he knew better and did not consider the repercussions of a complete pull-out. And in 11 days, the country was overrun by the Taliban. General Milley described this as a complete failure.

Now, the intelligence is saying that Al-Qaeda is in position to become a serios threat to the U.S. within the next 12 months as they position themselves in Afghanistan. What can Biden do? He has put himself in a very difficult position. To reverse course now and reinsert troops into Afghanistan is a very difficult process and will be a deadly one. But for Biden, the time to do that is now while the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are relatively weak. Still, he would need a country that would allow troops to flown in prior to their invasion of Afghanistan. And what countries might support such an undertaking? Turkey will not as it did not 20 years ago. Pakistan is unsuitable. That leaves Saudi Arabia and Qatar as the best candidates. I suspect the leading generals at the Pentagon have already draw up such a plan and Pres. Biden would do very well to listen to them.

Now comes Biden’s infrastructure bills. This is where Biden has shown little if any leadership at all. Even though the 2nd infrastructure bill was his vision, he must discover its political viability. The Republicans and a number of Democrats have come out and said they will not support this bill. Biden does not need to have this bill passed this year! He needs to shut down discussion on the bill and return it to committee for reconsideration. That done, he could focus on the bi-partisan roads infrastructure bill that will pass and which all Democrats can declare as a victory. And with the second bill, it needs to broken up into pieces and each passed on its own. In the existing bill, most people support the proposal to get broadband to areas which are not now served; This should get bi-partisan support. Unlike that portion, many people, including many Democrats are balking at the day-care portion and so why not cut that out?

Biden, in my opinion, does not understand the underpinnings of good leadership. He needs to put Nancy Pelosi in her place as in that relationship, the tail is wagging the dog.

Other failures, his slow response to the victims of hurricane Ida. His not having a plan for the southern border and the influx of migrants. This is where a “bad look” has haunted the administration. He has failed to speak to the public in a manner that will soothe their concerns about these immigrants, It is not easy but that is why he has highly intelligent advisor who understand the political landscape and know how to navigate it.

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Afghanistan: Biden’s Huge Blunder


President Biden made a misguided plan to remove U.S. troops from Afghanistan immediately after taking office. He was more concerned with the look rather than the reality. As someone who served in the 25th Infantry Division, I can tell you that absolutely no commander is willing to leave the battlefield before the job is done, and the job in Afghanistan is far from done!

One of the concerns, unwarranted, was that we were becoming an occupational force in a country where we have been involved for 20 years. Really? Let us look around and you will quickly see that we have been an occupying force in Germany, Italy, Korea and Japan since 1945. What of that? In Korea we have committed 28,500 troops. And in Japan we have 39,000 troops! In Germany we have 34,000 troops. That is a total of over 100,000 troops.

Afghanistan is unstable and very likely to fall under the control of the Taliban before year’s end. This is extremely unnecessary since we should maintain a large military presence there. The army maintains 10 infantry style divisions on active duty. That comes to over 200,000 men. By simply splitting 2 divisions at a time for one year in Afghanistan, you would not be putting our men at risk for more than a minimal time.

The Afghan troops are failing miserably, many just quitting the fight even before it has begun and giving up bases and materials to the Taliban. There are a small number of elite forces who are struggling to push back against the Taliban but they simply lack the numbers to maintain the fight, let alone win it.

The Vietnam War shows us the inevitability of what will happen upon our departure. Now, as someone who was a part of that, I can say in that case we needed to withdraw as we lacked any commitment from the general public for us to stay. But you can see on YouTube how the last personnel leaving that country had the Vietcong hot on their tails. Although such a thing will not happen in Afghanistan, it will still happen in time.

If we are going to continue to be a true friend to the people of Afghanistan, we must recommit to having a large military presence in that country until its troops are fully and properly trained, and, until the country is both politically and economically stable. That will probably take a long time but for our own security, we need as many stable governments in the middle east as can happen.

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Biden’s Horrible Decision About Afghanistan


President Biden has pledged to take all of our troops out of Afghanistan by September. His generals in Afghanistan have been vocal about this being a mistake and President Biden needs to listen to them!

I have heard it said that our country is not about “nation building.” Nothing could be further from the truth. At the end of World War 2, we left a very sizable number of troops in Germany, Italy, Japan and Korea. Of those four countries, all still have U.S. troops stationed there to help maintain the peace. Other countries which host a contingent of U.S. troops are Poland, Turkey, Greece and Spain. It has been 76 years since the end of that war, so why do we keep troops there? In the cases of Germany and Japan, the U.S. insisted in 1945-6 that those countries write into their constitutions that they will only maintain a defensive force, although in recent years both countries have built their military to a size where they could easily become offensive. For the most part, those countries have become very stable and their contributions to the world of innovation, science and industry have been huge.

In both Afghanistan and Iraq at the beginning of this month there were about 2,500 troops each. The stability of each is quite precarious to the extent that U.S. troops could do little to stop ISIS when it terrorized that region and is still lurking in the background. In Afghanistan, the Taliban are an even greater threat to the security of that country. By and large, the people of Afghanistan are quite happy to have U.S. forces present. Not withstanding that, the Taliban have taken a sizeably portion of the country and returned it to the brutal subugation it held prior to the war. It does not take much intellect to know that when the U.S. creates a military vacuum, one which Afghany forces are not prepared to defend, the Taliban will quickly take over.

If anything, the U.S. needs to increase its forces in Afghanistan and maintain a presence for the foreseeable future. Afghanistan has tremendous agricultural potential but that will be minimal if the Taliban are allowed to return. History dictates that it must be remembered. When the U.S. and other allied forces were victorious in World War 1, no troops were left in Germany to insure its stability. There existed several far right wing groups who did not care for the new regime and from the early 20s until 1933, they engaged in political war with the ruling government only to have it taken over by the Nazis. Other huge mistakes were made, ridiculous reparation demands of Germany cause the country to remain bankrupt until Hitler took over and refused to pay. Would things have been different had the allied forces maintained a presence in Germany? We can only speculate but at the very least it would have put a damper on right wing efforts to overthrow the ruling government.

It is very unlikely that Afghanistan will ever reach the economies of Germany and Japan, but it can become a very stable country if it is allow to find its own way with inteferance from the Taliban. And even more importantly, the work is far from done in Afghanistan for the U.S. as long as the Taliban is allowed to maintain its current strength. I can only hope that someone in Biden’s circle will read and take to heart this article, or, that he will heed his generals and stop removing troops.

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The American Military Crisis


The murder of Afghan civilians by the American Army soldier was not only avoidable, but to some degree, predictable.  In this age of immediately available information it is sad that the American public is so uninformed about its soldiers.  I can tell you from personal experience that being a soldier is like no other a person can experience.  It therefore is the responsibility of the government to inform and the American public to be informed.  Both scenarios have failed.

The last time America fought a war like World War II was World War II.  From that point on warfare has changed dramatically.  Guerrilla warfare was developed by the Japanese during World War 2.  It has been adopted as the preferable form of fighting by small fighting forces everywhere since.  Vietnam was America’s introduction at a large-scale to that form of warfare.  To its credit, during the Vietnam conflict the Department of Defense seldom required a soldier to serve more than a single one year tour of duty in Vietnam.  It relied up rotating in new troops on their first tour to take the place of departing troops.  A single unit, the 25th Infantry Division, for example, stayed involved in the war for much of its duration.  But on a man-by-man basis, replacements were brought in as an individual soldier completed his one-year tour.  That was a formula used at both office and enlisted levels.  The U.S. seemed to have learned that battle fatigue was a real detriment to the effectiveness of a fighting unit.  And anytime a man was returned to the war zone his thinking necessarily made him feel more vulnerable to a bullet with his name on it.

During that era there were always upwards to 1.5 million men on active duty so the ability to rotate men through the war zone without using them more than once was more easily accomplished than it is today.  During Vietnam there were many men who asked to be sent for a second tour in Vietnam, and few who asked for a third.  But in the individual soldiers mind was the knowledge that if he had already been to Vietnam once, he would not be required to go again.  Such knowledge is absent from the soldier’s psyche today.  Worse, those being required multiple trips to war zones are those who volunteered to be reserve troops.  That only happens when the numbers of active forces are too low to meet requirements.

What makes this even worse is that since the government has taken the tack of base closures, it has also reduced the size of the military.  In some instances the size of individual units have been reduced by as much as two-thirds while others have been totally disbanded.  The reason given, as always, is the level of funding.  The problem with such thinking is simple.  It is foolishness in the extreme.

America for over twenty years now has been trying to enforce peace and guarantee the safety of Americans on the cheap.  You cannot properly assess the strength and preparedness of the nation’s military in terms of dollars and cents alone.  History shows clearly that a country’s budget for its military is necessarily large, at least as long as it desires to be fully prepared.

Today, America has 10 active Army Infantry and Armor Divisions and three reserve infantry divisions both of which are a part of the National Guard.    In 1989 there were 19 active divisions and 10 reserve divisions.  Why is it we could afford that level of preparedness then but not now?  Simple math shows that we reduced that part of our defense by over 55%.

During those same years the size of the Air Force and Navy also have been reduced in both active and reserve numbers.  It would seem that our politicians have lost sight of the fact that in the end it is people, not machines, that win wars.  Technology serves a very important part of our readiness but technology is worthless without a sufficient human presence.  But on the battlefield, the place where the ground soldier must operate, even the best technology has its limits.  It should be painfully obvious to all but the most apathetic that the biggest deterrent to an enemy force is the number of men it faces, not their technology.  The Taliban certain respects America’s technology but it does not fear it.  Right now they know they have a superiority of number and are willing to play the game of attrition.  They know they are not going anywhere and can simply wait out America and hope for its resolve to wane.  But were they to face a very large increase in the number of men on the ground, their resolve would necessarily weaken.  They know American does not have such resources, so they simply wait, pick their fights, continue the battle of attrition confident in their ability to wait things out.

This scenario is not going to change in the future even as our enemy does change.  America must increase the size of its military, greatly, and become willing to pay for it.  But the cost of such an increase will reap long-term rewards.  Our military’s ability to keep fresh troops in the field will be enhanced.  It is morally wrong to ask the same small group of men to put their lives in harm’s way over and over and not expect there to be both short and long-term negative effects.  With enough men at its disposal the Army could have looked at SSG. Bales request, or requirement, to be deployed to a war zone for the fourth time in 11 years as the assumption of unnecessary risk and blocked his deployment.  With the shortage of manpower, such as it has, the Army’s hand was forced, and now we have the results.