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Thread: Camp David: 'All the King's Horses & All the King's Men' Can't Put Afghanistan Back Together

  1. #1

    Camp David: 'All the King's Horses & All the King's Men' Can't Put Afghanistan Back Together

    Trump can't unscramble the omelet. (JUST bring them home ffs.)



    FPmag
    Trump makes no decision on Afghanistan strategy



    In mid-July, President Donald Trump sat down for a meeting with the head of an American chemical company
    that transformed his view of the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.
    Exploiting the country’s abundant natural resources could result in an incredible economic windfall, Trump was told.
    In his conversation with Michael Silver, the CEO of American Elements, a firm specializing in the production of advanced metals and chemicals,
    Trump learned of the enormous wealth buried beneath Afghan soil:
    perhaps more than $1 trillion in untapped mineral resources in the form of copper, iron, and rare-earth metals.

    “We are sitting on enormous wealth,” Afghan President Ashraf Ghani reportedly told Trump.
    “Why aren’t the American companies in this instead of China?” (cuz they haven't policed the world??)
    “Trump wants to be repaid,” said a source close to the White House. “He’s trying to see where the business deal is.”
    The talks at the White House underscored how the president and some of his deputies are anxiously casting about for alternatives in Afghanistan
    and are ready to entertain unorthodox plans after years of stalemate on the battlefield.

    The president’s ambivalence, stemming from a deep skepticism of the war,
    has sparked frustration at the Defense Department, dismay in Kabul, and internecine fighting within the administration.
    It also created an opening for outsiders pitching new ideas — including Silver
    and Erik Prince, the founder of the controversial private security firm Blackwater (now Academi)
    to turn the tide of the war.

    Trump went into the Camp David meeting looking to find a deal in Afghanistan, but he will face the same reality as his predecessors.
    “There isn’t any way out of making a choice between unappealing options at this point,”

    Current and former Pentagon officials say Trump in June sought to distance himself from the war effort
    by granting Mattis the authority to determine troop levels in Afghanistan up to an additional 3,900 troops.
    But the retired four-star Marine general dug in his heels, declining to send in more troops
    until the president signed off on a clear strategy — throwing the ball back into Trump’s court.
    Mattis “doesn’t want to deploy troops only to have the president then undercut him the next day with a full withdrawal,”

    The Pentagon plan back in May, proposed by commanders,
    calls for sending more U.S. troops to help train Afghan forces to fight the Taliban
    and taking a tougher diplomatic line with Pakistan for its tolerance of militant sanctuaries on its territory.
    The plan amounts to staying the course in hopes of winning better terms in an eventual brokered peace deal with the Taliban.
    It enjoys broad support among most of the president’s top advisors,
    including Mattis, McMaster, Kelly, and Tillerson.

    But Trump balked, declining to commit to the military proposal.
    Trump told McMaster “to go back to the drawing board,” an official said. “But he just kept coming back with the same thing.”

    For Trump, Afghanistan is the worst kind of business deal, requiring a long-term commitment with no guarantee of success.

    Erik Prince’s plan involves deploying 5,500 contractors to work directly with Afghan forces, a proposal he claims would be cheaper and more effective.
    The attraction of Prince’s option for some is that it allows the United States to quickly scale back U.S. conventional forces and focus on counterterrorism operations.

    That plan runs counter to current military thinking, however.
    “You cannot counter terrorist and insurgent organizations like al Qaeda and the Islamic State and the Haqqani network with just counter terrorist forces and operations,”
    “We had to face that reality years ago in Iraq, that you could not kill or capture your way out of an industrial strength insurgency, and that is what Afghanistan faces.”
    Turning over war fighting to private security contractors is not a new idea in Washington, and critics say the track record from past experiences in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere is abysmal.
    Prince “has no accountability or transparency,” McFate said, “and he’s giving a big hand wave to the hard questions.”

    The proposal faces steep opposition from most of Trump’s national security team and the military’s top brass.
    “Nicholson hates it. Mattis hates it. Even McMaster hates it,”

    As deliberations inside the White House went around in circles over the summer,
    Trump reportedly vented his fury at a July 19 meeting with his advisors.

    Kelly laid out three basic options shortly after taking over as the new White House chief of staff.
    The first option, set out by McMaster in May, involves more troops and an open-ended commitment.
    It garners the most support in the administration and in Congress, but the president has so far failed to endorse it.

    The second option is some version of Prince’s security contractor proposal that involves scaling back U.S. troops,

    The third is for a complete U.S. withdrawal, though no one in the White House is pushing for it.

    Trump has been keenly interested in at least some version of the second option.
    One twist on this proposal would see an expanded role for the CIA in counterterrorism operations,
    but CIA Director Mike Pompeo has misgivings about that approach.

    A modified version of the first option, which proposes increasing troop levels up to 15,000,
    is the strategy being presented at Friday’s Camp David meeting.

    Pakistan

    The strategy would change the U.S. relationship with Pakistan significantly.
    “The president thinks we’re being ripped off by Pakistan,” “He’s just pissed about this."
    The DoD view is it is a troubled relationship, but we need logistics.”

    The president wants to cut off all military aid to Pakistan. “That’s part of the strategy,”

    The Pentagon has already frozen support to Islamabad under the coalition support fund,
    which provides payments to Pakistan for supporting counterterrorism operations.
    In regards to freezing payments, Mattis said he couldn’t certify that Pakistan
    had taken sufficient actions against the Haqqani network, an insurgent group based in Afghanistan.

    Cutting off support for Pakistan would raise yet more problems, however.
    For years, both diplomats and generals have agreed that the only way to ensure
    the survival of the Afghan government and bring an end to the war
    is a negotiated settlement with the Taliban, which enjoys support from Pakistan.

    The issue is the Taliban, and we’re not questioning what our counter-al Qaeda or our counter-ISIS mission is,”
    “The real question revolves around the Taliban and what our strategy is there.
    It’s similar to Yemen, where we have the authorities to fight [al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula]
    but we don’t have a policy or strategy for the civil war with the Houthis and Iran’s involvement.… We don’t have anything.”

    Whichever military proposal wins out, the mining idea remains a top priority for Trump.
    Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross is currently conducting an overall assessment of mining opportunities in Afghanistan
    Tillerson is looking at whether the country would be stable enough for long-term American investments.

    The tantalizing idea that Afghanistan’s mineral potential could transform the country and save the fragile Kabul government has proved elusive.
    Gen. David Petraeus, who was commander of U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan in 2010-2011,
    touted the country’s mineral wealth as offering “stunning potential.”
    But Afghanistan lacks the infrastructure of roads, trains, and bridges needed to extract the minerals,
    not to mention the security required to ensure private companies can operate safely.

    Coveted rare-earth minerals in Afghanistan are located in [POPPYLAND] Helmand province
    in the country’s southwest, most of which is now controlled by Taliban militants.

    Trump may want a deal that brings peace to Afghanistan, paving the way for economic opportunities,
    but it’s unclear how the White House believes it can persuade Kabul, regional powers, and key players
    including Pakistan, Iran, China and Russia — to help broker a peace agreement.
    Last edited by goldenequity; 08-19-2017 at 05:00 AM.



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  3. #2
    Plan A: BRING THEM HOME
    Plan B: MAKE A DEAL WITH THE TALIBAN

    I choose A.
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  4. #3
    When has a country we've invested in ever used the money for what we agreed to on paper? Speculating on Afghanistan's resources is a literal dead end, and this tool's thinking about it? Just when you think the President's hit his stride, he soars to new heights of dumbfuckery.

  5. #4
    Ain't nobody going anywhere.

    The Taliban forces shut down the opium trade.

    The opium trade fuels the "off book" operations of the surveillance state we live in.

    That money is not going to be taken off the table.

    Move along now.

  6. #5
    Graveyard of empires.
    I don't have a handy source, but I recall Hillary was/is supportive of a greater role for military contractors as well -made economic sense to her.

    The mission can't be defined in any honest way.
    Gee, what to do...

    Fear of man will prove to be a snare, but whoever trusts in the LORD is kept safe. Proverbs 29:25
    "I think the propaganda machine is the biggest problem that we face today in trying to get the truth out to people."
    Ron Paul

    Please watch, subscribe, like, & share, Ron Paul Liberty Report
    BITCHUTE IS A LIBERTY MINDED ALTERNATIVE TO GOOGLE SUBSIDIARY YOUTUBE

  7. #6

  8. #7

  9. #8



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  11. #9


    The USGS found high grade deposits in Helmand province, Afghanistan.


    Uranium extraction in Afghanistan's Helmand




  12. #10
    Here I thought the trove of resources were just opiates, but they've got uranium too? More good news for our life expectancy.

  13. #11


    Are we there yet?

  14. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by enhanced_deficit View Post
    In last 10 years or so, the King's men have certainly made poppy trade great again.
    And we wonder why people are dropping dead left and right with heroin overdoses...

  15. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Anti Federalist View Post
    And we wonder why people are dropping dead left and right with heroin overdoses...



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