Startling Evidence of Success
Colleague Bill Roggio, Long War Journal, includes this startling video from Al Jazeera that records evidence of a captured American weapons cache and burnt-out, abandoned vehicles left over from the Taliban victory at a severely remote ISAF outposts in Nuristan Province (eastern Afghanistan) on October 3-4 that resulted in US casualties and a hasty retreat from the region.
The reports at the time, which Bill Roggio and I discussed that weekend in surprise, were that the Taliban assault troops came in waves, as many as 300 attackers, and that the fighting continued over night. Despite repeated US airstrikes, the Taliban pressed the assault. Within a week, word came that ISAF had abandoned the position it had fought to maintain.
Roggio writes:
- “The Taliban provide footage from what was formerly known as Combat Outpost Keating in the Kamdesh district in Nuristan province. The Taliban now are in full control of the district and claim to have recovered US munitions at the site.”
What this may mean in Washington is that Stanley McChrystal’s ISAF, over-committed, out-numbered, is already in retreat from the Taliban offensive along the AfPakia border to the East.
This reminds of the retreat on the Korean Peninsula in the summer of 1950, before MacArthur’s counter-attack at Inchon Peninsula. Retreat is not a plan. At this point, it is a mystery what POTUS and the DoD have available to respond to the Taliban cockiness evident in this video.
Is ISAF already defeated in the East of the country? Is the delay at the White House because there is no politically sophisticated way to acknowledge surrender and flight? How do you secure a country when the enemy holds the East? A withdrawal to the cities may be in order, building strategic hamlets with the clear and hold strategy used by General Abrams in the late Vietnam war.
And yet video like this suggests that the Taliban is highly motivated, has good intelligence, enjoys easy recruiting, knows how to pick a fight, is unafraid of American airpower. Speaking Saturday 14 with my AfPakia roundtable of Bill Roggio, Rufus Phillips, Ari Rafiq re the White House dilemma, and re the latest controversy over the leak of a memo from Afghanistan Ambassador Eikenberry.
Might these military setbacks have anything to do with Obama’s insistence on Mirandaizing captives, severely restricting interrogation procedures, and hamstringing our soldiers with legalese to the point where they have become dispirited and ineffective. It couldn’t be easy fighting in some god-forsaken, hostile place, knowing that the commander-in-chief has nothing but utter contempt for you.
I’m no mil stategist, but even in a singular defeat, I see opportunity. Course that would be if the CIC weren’t a Muslim traitor. Whose allegiance to the caliphate can no longer be denied.
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sorry fror my skepticism, but for some reason, i can’t help but think the Taliban has been receiving many an intelligence leak about US, not the other way around.. at any rate, believe we were more or less on the gain side before O showed up..
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watched & listened to Journalist David Rohde being
interviewed by George Stephanopoulos the other day..
he says “we cannot walk away from Afghanistan”.. that the majority of Afghans are wonderful people, and they feel America will abandon them (sound familiar Dems), the Taliban on the other hand couldn’t hate US
more or these same Afghans more if they tried..
Freelance War Reporter Accuses Times of Lying About Taliban Bribes
[The Times has acknowledged that small bribes were paid to guards so that they would look the other way while Rohde escaped. But executive editor Bill Keller denied that any large sums of money exchanged hands — even though they were prepared to pay $2 million to the Taliban to secure his release.]
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so now that the Taliban / AQ have moved in & taken over these “remote outposts”.. why do we not pound those “abandoned remote bases” into glass??
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During the campaign, boy genius claimed that he would fight to win in Afghanistan. He claimed that the Bush Admin. had neglected the Aghan campaign, that he had the answers, and that he would set things right. Almost 11 months into the current Admin. and they’re still working on strategy?!
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doublethought @ 1:41 am
re: [claimed that he would fight to win in Afghanistan]
just finished posting about that here.. bg @ 8:01 pm
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oops re: bg @ 9:06 pm
i’m sorry, wrong link..
gah, now i have to go search for it..
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doublethought @ 1:41 am
Obama’s sweepers are tossing things into their black hole so fast it’s hard to find anything..
but here you go..
Palin Takes on Obama Over Will to Win Wars
["Just once, I would love to hear Barack Obama say he wants to win," she said, prompting another round of loud approval from the audience.
In fact, Obama has said repeatedly he wants to win in Afghanistan and Iraq, though his most detailed remarks on the conflicts came during his campaign's policy rollout phase prior to Palin's entry in the race.
On July 15, Obama spoke about emphasizing the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan, saying, "And that's why, as president, I will make the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban the top priority that it should be. This is a war that we have to win." On March 19, he had said, "We need to start fighting the battles that need to be won on the central front of the war against al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.... It is not too late to prevail in Afghanistan."
And on August 1, the then-presumptive Democratic nominee delivered a speech at the Wilson Center in Washington with the title: "The War We Need to Win."]
Remarks of Senator Obama: The War We Need to Win
videos have been deleted from YT & are nowhere to be found..
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ht Mike H at another blog..
Taliban govern openly in Nuristan
[One month after US forces abandoned outposts in the Kamdesh district in Afghanistan's eastern province of Nuristan, the Taliban are operating in the open, without fear of retaliation.
The Taliban and their commander Dost Mohammed recently flaunted their control of the district to Al Jazeera. Dost, who some had claimed was killed during US and Afghan raids in Nuristan, granted an interview with the news organization from Kamdesh. Coalition forces attacked the Taliban in mid-October after the battle of Combat Outpost Keating and the subsequent US withdrawal. Mullah Abdul Rahman Mostaghni, a district-level Taliban commander, was thought to have been killed in the raid.
The Taliban have created "administrative units and the officials have been appointed," an unnamed commander told Al Jazeera.
"We also established the judiciary department and the commission for the promotion of virtue and the prevention of vice section," the commander told the news agency. "We are working on providing people's basic needs."
The promotion of virtue and the prevention of vice section will enforce the Taliban's strict, repressive brand of sharia, or Islamic law.]
more @ link..
btw, in case you missed it..
just a sample:
Islamic Sharia Law in the USA
Harold Koh Confirmed
Barack Obama linked to Chicago sharia finance fugitives wanted by FBI
Obama Administration Stacking the Deck with Islamists
[
Abdul-Malik also makes no bones about discussing how the election of President Obama is a step forward in the project of Islamization and the long term goal of Islamist domination which falls right in lock-step with that of the Muslim Brotherhood as revealed in their manifesto. He said:
“This is our challenge; to say ‘ok, I’m not a Muslim but I’m fascinated by the nation of Muslims and Islam and so on and so on... People of da’wa think that the outcome is to turn everyone into a Muslim and that will turn the tide. That was not the case in Yathrib, at the time of the Prophet (saw), it was not the case in Andalusia, it was not the case in so many civilisations that Islam had impacted upon. It took hundreds of years in some societies for Muslims to become 50% of the population but they had those four sections of the population to say ‘we will not have racists and bigots and sexists to have dominance over people who are fair minded, reasonable and rational…“
[..]
“…even under the pressures that you and I know about, the deen of Islam is growing because people see even within all of this struggle it is better to be a Muslim under these conditions than to be a kaffir under any conditions… before Allah closes our eyes for the last time you will see Islam move from being the second largest religion in America-that’s where we are now- to being the first religion in America.”]
there’s so much more that links Obama to Islam it’s not funny..
Western Civilization is committing suicide..
Uncle Sam has a Liberal gun to his mouth,
and/but, Islam has the hammer cocked..
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