[Rich]

Until such time as we've brought down the regimes in North Korea and Cuba, broken up the Han imperialist terror empire and eradicated Islam from the planet we will need armed forces. And those armed forces should be fighting. Small wars are good. They help us develop and improve our armed forces and keep us prepared for larger conflicts.

However there should be no collaboration with Saudi or Pakistan. Both countries need to be broken up. They need to be smashed as states. Is this the safe option? No, there are no safe options, just wishful thinking.

[mikema63]

I'm pretty sure that compared to the fuck all we get for it we spend too much and lose too many lives. Both of which will go up under a troop surge for obvious reasons.

[One Degree]

Obviously, I do not like intervention in other people's affairs. The problem is if we don't, someone else will. I am not sure there are any viable alternatives at present.

[Rich]

I'm pretty sure that compared to the fuck all we get for it we spend too much and lose too many lives. Both of which will go up under a troop surge for obvious reasons.

The problem is you can not always see the wars and problems that your armed forces have deterred and your interventions have prevented. There might have been a lot less trouble if the US had intervened earlier in WWI. They certainly would have saved a lot of trouble intervening earlier in WWII.

[mikema63]

I'm glad that you can justify complete nonsense policy with imaginary threats.

[Beren]

The problem is you can not always see the wars and problems that your armed forces have deterred and your interventions have prevented. There might have been a lot less trouble if the US had intervened earlier in WWI. They certainly would have saved a lot of trouble intervening earlier in WWII.

They could have saved a lot of trouble for others, but they intervened in the right time to their own greatest benefit in both cases.

The US needs a vast military to dominate the world as much as they can, the only issue is whether how much it's worth it.

[foxdemon]

The problem with the NATO occupation of Afghanistan is that the country is very remote.

Before Western intervention, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were backing the Taliban' stake over. They never really stopped their support. Furthermore, NATO could bring in supplies through Pakistan and Russia. At the time of the invasion, even the Iranians were ready to cooperate.

Today relations have soured with Pakistan, Russia and Iran. So there is no reliable access route for logistical support. It is very risky to try to hold Afghanistan without at least one of this countries being supportive.

What we are seeing today is covert Iranian and Russian attempts to support one Taliban faction while Pakistan and Saudi Arabia support the other Taliban faction. What we will see if NATO withdrew is a continuation of the regional conflict between those two alliances which are already struggling against each other in places such as Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

If NATO did withdraw, it would put Russia and Iran against Pakistan. How would that effect Chinese alliances? China wants Russia on side to secure the common boarder while China also wants Pakistan on side to force India to split their strength.

It is true that an American presence in Afghanistan gives America influence in Central Asia. But it doesn't look to be viable in the longer term due to that remoteness and the resulting logistical difficulties.

[skinster]

[Suntzu]

The problem with occupations, you can't win 'em. You stay forever or go home. I thought Trump was smarter.

[Political Interest]

Trump obviously has no political opinions, he just makes it up as he goes along.

How is he any really different to Obama or Bush? So far he's shown absolutely nothing. Trump is basically a Neo-Con.

[One Degree]

I will be surprised and disappointed if we commit many ground combat troops. This is not a plan I would expect from Trump and especially not the military.

[Rich]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqwMTAPH6XE

More pathetic leftie fantasy. Afghanistan's total GDP is less than 20 billion dollars. The idea that our involvement is driven by some desire for corporate profits is preposterous. But this doesn't matter for the leftie. The leftie has to believe that all evil in the world is caused by evil western Capitalists. There's only one natural resource extractor left in the top ten world corporations: Exxon Mobil, and they sure aint going to be getting much profit out of Afghanistan any time soon. I remember that Lefties thought that our involvement in Syria was driven by investment opportunities.

[Zionist Nationalist]

The Russian involvement in Syria is definitely driven by investment opportunities but the lefties ignore this

[SolarCross]

The Russian involvement in Syria is definitely driven by investment opportunities but the lefties ignore this

It isn't the main reason, not by a long way, unless by "investment opportunities" you mean arms sales. Al-Assad Syria has been ally for Russia since even before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Syria hosts a warm water port for the Russian Navy and has been a long time consumer of Russian arms. Al-Assad's Syria is literally the only real friend the Russians have in the middle east. Russia's main interest there is strategic.

[MB.]

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government ... istration/

Charles Lane: Military Leaders ‘Consolidating Power’ in Trump Administration
President Donald Trump, right, speaks as Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, left, listens at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., Monday, Feb. 20, 2017, where Trump announced that McMaster will be the new national security adviser. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)AP Photo/Susan Walsh
by BREITBART NEWS
24 Aug 2017
26
Charles Lane comments on reports that military leaders in the Trump administration are “rapidly consolidating power throughout the executive branch.”
From Lane’s Washington Post op-ed:

You know that Americans are going through an extraordinary political moment when The Post reports that “military leaders are rapidly consolidating power throughout the executive branch” — that they’re “publicly contradicting” the president and “balking” at carrying out his policies — and civilian politicians react with undisguised relief.

They are grateful that, while President Trump transgresses and blunders, the generals in powerful jobs — national security adviser H.R. McMaster, along with Chief of Staff John F. Kelly and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis — provide “a steadying hand on the rudder,” as Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) put it.

…

By no means am I predicting a military coup in the United States or accusing anyone of advocating one. I am merely calling attention to how much power we already have conceded, expressly and by implication, to the officer corps and how much more we may depend on them before the Trump presidency is over. This is evidence of deep political decay, which started long before Trump’s election.

[MB.]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... 431228391f

The generals have Trump surrounded
Play Video 2:59
Trump's complicated relationship with the military


0:00

President Trump has surrounded himself with generals and pledged to revamp veterans' care, while also belittling the service of his opponents. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)
By Charles Lane Opinion writer
August 23 at 7:30 PM
Loaded in 1.95 seconds
You know that Americans are going through an extraordinary political moment when The Post reports that “military leaders are rapidly consolidating power throughout the executive branch” — that they’re “publicly contradicting” the president and “balking” at carrying out his policies — and civilian politicians react with undisguised relief.

They are grateful that, while President Trump transgresses and blunders, the generals in powerful jobs — national security adviser H.R. McMaster, along with Chief of Staff John F. Kelly and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis — provide “a steadying hand on the rudder,” as Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) put it.

Non-involvement in domestic politics and submission to civilian control are hallmarks of a professional military under constitutional democracy. The United States has by and large practiced those principles while also preaching them, albeit inconsistently, to other countries.


Yet while the growing influence of military officers in the government, to the point of unsubtle pushback against the commander in chief, raises “totally legitimate” concerns, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) told The Post, those issues “should be addressed at a later time. In the meantime, we should be reassured that there are competent professionals who want to make smart choices.”

Like Schatz, I would rather be governed by McMaster, Kelly and Mattis than by Trump. Like him, I think they took increasingly thankless jobs in the Trump administration not for self-aggrandizement but rather out of concern for the national interest.

Unlike Schatz, however, I don’t think it’s too soon to fret about long-run consequences — for civilian institutions and military ones — of looking to an unelected officer corps as guarantors of political stability and upholders of national values.

This kind of thinking created problems in Latin America in the not-so-distant past; it belongs on the list of things we dare not “normalize” in the United States, even with good intentions.

It was indeed admirable of the military service chiefs, after Charlottesville, to denounce hate and racism in the emphatic terms that eluded their commander in chief. That they felt obligated and authorized to do so was nevertheless a sign that our constitutional system is badly out of balance.

To be sure, this awkward moment in civil-military relations has been a long time coming. You don’t have to embrace “deep state” conspiracy theories to recognize that the rise of a huge permanent military in the years after World War II was unprecedented, or that it strains constitutional norms and structures. Many officers emerged from that establishment to serve in senior policy roles in the White House or the Cabinet, prior to the current group.

What is new, perhaps, is the fact that the military enjoys unparalleled support across the political spectrum (72 percent expressed high confidence in the latest Gallup poll) while civilian institutions, from Congress to the media, whose constitutional role it is to check and balance the president, lack perceived legitimacy.

No wonder that many people are starting to say, or at least think, that only the military, or figures connected to it, can keep this country together.

By no means am I predicting a military coup in the United States or accusing anyone of advocating one. I am merely calling attention to how much power we already have conceded, expressly and by implication, to the officer corps and how much more we may depend on them before the Trump presidency is over. This is evidence of deep political decay, which started long before Trump’s election.

The key figure in American politics now may be Mattis, who praised the service chiefs for speaking out on Charlottesville, regularly represents the United States in foreign capitals and has prevailed in a bitter internal administration struggle over what to do in Afghanistan.

The Senate confirm ed the retired four-star Marine general, by all accounts a man of experience, wisdom and integrity, by a vote of 98 to 1, even though he had been out of uniform for only four years instead of the statutorily required seven.

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Congress waived that rule, enacted to protect civilian control of the postwar military establishment, for what it saw as the greater good of keeping the Pentagon under steady day-to-day management, given the president’s obvious defects.

If anyone in this polarized country still can claim to epitomize national consensus, it may be the man known as “Mad Dog.” What would be the political consequences if the president were to fire him, just as he fired FBI Director James B. Comey?

And what sort of crisis would ensue if Trump said or did something so outrageous that even the patient Mattis must resign on principle?

In a healthy democracy, political stability does not hinge on an indispensable general. In Donald Trump’s America, it might.

Read more from Charles Lane’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

Read more on this topic:

David Ignatius: Mattis and Trump: The odd couple that works

Anne Applebaum: Why ‘Mattis in charge’ is a formula for disaster

Ed Rogers: Mattis and McMaster are canaries in Trump’s coal mine

Ruth Marcus: The secret agreement John Kelly must make with Trump

Jennifer Rubin: Prisoners in a cursed White House

[One Degree]

All I know is each day I read the news and there is nothing there except hysteria over the nothing there.
Afghanistan is no different except to the Afghans and who cares about them.

[MB.]