{"id":2774,"date":"2017-05-01T23:23:08","date_gmt":"2017-05-01T14:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/?p=2774"},"modified":"2017-07-06T17:44:45","modified_gmt":"2017-07-06T08:44:45","slug":"half-measures-in-afghanistan-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/half-measures-in-afghanistan-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Half-Measures in Afghanistan… Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, here we go again. \u00a0We shall sprinkle a few troops about, just enough to get somebody killed. \u00a0We’re going to send 300 more Marines to the twice-abandoned Helmand province, because I guess things are different now. \u00a0From the execrable Yahoo News aggregation of an AFP story<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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“In those days Afghan security forces were tiny and just got started,” Brigadier General Roger Turner told AFP. “With the leadership in place now they… are poised to do much better.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Well we also had something like 12,000 troops in Afghanistan at one time, and that didn’t seem to help. \u00a0Actually, it did — it helped a lot. \u00a0But that was politically unpopular, so the United States walked off the field. \u00a0Fine — so let it be written, so let it be done. \u00a0America voted twice in a row to lose in Iraq and Afghanistan, and by the way in Europe and at home, so let’s just focus on the only war we can win — and it’s not in Afghanistan, MOAB or no:<\/p>\n

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Mirza Mohammad Yarmand, a retired Afghan general based in Kabul, was optimistic.<\/p>\n

“If the Afghan forces and the US Marines jointly fight the phenomenon of the terrorism in southern Helmand, we will have tangible results,” he told AFP.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Yes, and those tangible results will return horizontal. \u00a0Sorry General Yarmand, you’re probably a good guy, but America is no longer in the Good Guy business. \u00a0Afghanistan holds nothing for America, and it is important to learn the lesson of Obama — America holds nothing for Afghanistan<\/em>. \u00a0This is a false hope. \u00a0Solve it yourselves or die trying. \u00a0That’s where things are.<\/p>\n

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Well, here we go again. \u00a0We shall sprinkle a few troops about, just enough to get somebody killed. \u00a0We’re going to send 300 more Marines to the twice-abandoned Helmand province, because I guess things are different now. \u00a0From the execrable Yahoo News aggregation of an AFP story<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

“In those days Afghan security forces were tiny and just got started,” Brigadier General Roger Turner told AFP. “With the leadership in place now they… are poised to do much better.”<\/p>\n

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Well we also had something like 12,000 troops in Afghanistan at one time, and that didn’t seem to help. \u00a0Actually, it … Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2774"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2775,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2774\/revisions\/2775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}