How to beat the Taliban in Afghanistan / Pakistan (and win the war on terror)

[The Decider]

I am intrigued by this statement. I'm not sure how someone could possibly make it. How exactly do you judge a 100% certainty of Pakistan enslaving us unless we fight terrorism?

You haven't heard about the Pakistani Enslavement Fatwa against Canada, the US, and Puerto Rico? American Samoa too, I think. It's a truly evil plot. Pakistani sleeper agents get elected to city councils in select cities and towns. Once elected they stay low key, supporting equal rights for Muslims and Muslim anti-defamation to gain the trust of liberals and independents and other born suckers. Then over time comes the sharia legislation--mandatory burkas in Peoria, legalized muezzin calls to prayer in Bakersfield, Koran protection statutes in Tallahassee, and public stoning in Toronto. Lamb will become the official meat in pork states like Iowa. Texas will keep its beef brisket but lose the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders.

Pakistan also has military invasion plans in case the sleeper cells fail, but we still don't know what exactly those plans entail. Most analysts predict the invasion will start in Canada in mid January when no one expects Pakistani special forces dressed in parkas to ski out of the mountains in a wave of snow terror.

However the Pakistanis do it, we know with 100% certainty that enslavement of North America is inevitable without taking out Saudi satellites. Space is the final frontier.

Is that clear?

[Zeebadee]

You haven't heard about the Pakistani Enslavement Fatwa against Canada, the US, and Puerto Rico? American Samoa too, I think. It's a truly evil plot. Pakistani sleeper agents get elected to city councils in select cities and towns. Once elected they stay low key, supporting equal rights for Muslims and Muslim anti-defamation to gain the trust of liberals and independents and other born suckers. Then over time comes the sharia legislation--mandatory burkas in Peoria, legalized muezzin calls to prayer in Bakersfield, Koran protection statutes in Tallahassee, and public stoning in Toronto. Lamb will become the official meat in pork states like Iowa. Texas will keep its beef brisket but lose the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders.

Pakistan also has military invasion plans in case the sleeper cells fail, but we still don't know what exactly those plans entail. Most analysts predict the invasion will start in Canada in mid January when no one expects Pakistani special forces dressed in parkas to ski out of the mountains in a wave of snow terror.

However the Pakistanis do it, we know with 100% certainty that enslavement of North America is inevitable without taking out Saudi satellites. Space is the final frontier.

Is that clear?

Facetiously clear. William Shatner will be the new PM.

[oades11]

Let's not switch from the abstract to the tangible so quickly. OP, you can't really wage war against an idea and win. Even though it's not feasible, the idea of controlling all media, and by extension, the flow of information, in those countries which provide haven to terrorists isn't a bad idea in and of itself, since you'd be trying to win an ideological war rather than an actual military one. And as it's been said, we would need to win over "the hearts and minds" of potential terrorists in order to have any real shot at minimizing future terrorist acts. Most military intervention ultimately breeds more terrorists than what it actually eliminates.

Not only would seizing other countries' satellites/media really piss them off, but it would probably exacerbate the hatred of Westerners in those countries you've named already, which would only fuel the fire for more terrorism. Even if we could pull something like that off without complaints by those governments whose media we've basically supplanted, our propaganda would never fly. It would be too culturally different from what they're used to. It would have to be expertly crafted and incredibly subtle not to be noticed for what it really is, and if that were the case, its effect would be too gradual, too slow. If the genesis of an idea seems too foreign, it will be dismissed out of hand, and the foreigners will be blamed. In this case, we're the foreigners, and we'd be trying to dogmatically impose our culture upon another society which, predominantly, are NOT fanatical Muslims at all.

[Peter Dow]

I was under the impression that Obama can and does authorize occasional drone strikes and special ops missions inside Pakistan, and that the people running that show are cold utilitarian bastards

The same "cold utilitarian bastards" who are raising the levies around New Orleans to keep your neighbours dry in the event of another Hurricane Katrina.

The president uses the military to keep you safe, against hurricanes or terrorists.

of the sort who probably wouldn't mind blowing up a school if they felt it served their interests. The fact that the school

The term used was "University of Jihadi".

you're focusing on so much still exists suggests that the people in the government who actually know what they're talking about don't feel that blowing it up makes sense for some reason.

Well, if so, perhaps they'll share their reasons for giving the enemy Taliban's ideological headquarters an exemption from attack? Given the demonstrable military incompetence we've seen as regards matters such as failing to secure NATO supply routes, I would suggest that the assumption we make is that they don't have a good reason and press for the appointment of competent generals with a competent military strategy.

I would also like to point out that I see nothing wrong with peace talks with the enemy.

What's wrong is that the enemy should have and could have been defeated years ago. With Panetta (or whoever it is who leads the doves inside the Obama administration) seeking peace talks we can see that his generals lack the strategy and / or the political authority to win this war.

I wouldn't expect it to go anywhere, but if they want to talk

If they want to talk we can debrief the enemy leaders at Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

I can't see how that puts us at a disadvantage and you might learn something. Fundamentally you should respect your enemy just a little, even if you have most of the guns.

The disadvantage of not adopting a more aggressive military strategy and stalling for peace talks is that meanwhile we lose more soldiers in Afghanistan and we lose more political support for the intervention there.

Fundamentally you should respect your enemy just a little, even if you have most of the guns.

We should respect the Pakistani people and we should respect those democratic Pakistani politicians who too respect the people and would rather like our help to free the Pakistani people from those Taliban terrorists and fascistic militants in the ISI whose idea sponsoring terrorism was.

We should not respect the enemy. We should kill the enemy and win the war.

[Yarn]

Likewise, Patriot missile defense will be totally inadequate to defend Israel from a non-ballistic threat. Low level supersonic aircraft on a climb, lob, bank, and retire mission will be immune to the Patriots.

Their deterent is probably more reliable than their anti-missile defense system. Israel has the most advanced system in the world, and it uses more than just Patriots. But only a few bombs have to get through to destroy most of it. It is a very small country.

Our troops aren't there to fight. They are there to be sacrificed to provide the rationale for our own entry into any conflict.

They are there because we got spooked into doing something stupid after 9/11.

[Darklordabc]

Terrorism is nothing.

It isn't even worth what we are doing, much less risking nuclear war over as you say we should do. The only caveat is that they can't get WMDs

Its easy to say "oh, but don't let them get nukes", but how is that possible without military bases, soldiers, air strikes and all the other things we call the war on terrorism.

I haven't read the thread, but if War against Pakistan is whats been suggested, then that is crazy talk.

[Jack]

A reminder to all members regarding the use of images (photos/videos) in posts.

Please make sure they address the topic of the thread and are accompanied by a response. As the forum rule #6 under Content says, "Images, while permitted in posts, do not constitute a coherent debate response. Please do not post images without commentary."

Thank you.

[Senor Hoint]

Its easy to say "oh, but don't let them get nukes", but how is that possible without military bases, soldiers, air strikes and all the other things we call the war on terrorism.

I haven't read the thread, but if War against Pakistan is whats been suggested, then that is crazy talk.

This is a blatant appeal to emotion. Statistically, yarn is correct. A tiny, tiny minority of deaths in America are from terrorism.

[Hry]

I read some of this dude's proscription for solving all America's foreign policy problems, and I think there are a few glaring flaws. Well, more than a few. For instance, the idea that controlling media in a country as remote and decentralised as Pakistan would have any influence... or the idea that we could casually appropriate Saudi media with no repercussions. You know what they say about the best laid schemes of mice and men....

More fundamentally though, he's assuming that the USA actually wants to win the War on Terror. All the term is is a convenient buzzword for all the conflicts that the American empire has to fight at the limits of its geopolitical reach to try and impose its will. Every empire, from Persia to Britain, has fought a perennial succession of wars to impose its will on the furthest-flung places. For instance, the Persian Empire pretty much never stopped revolting. Literally, for hundreds of years, some area would be fighting for independence. People don't like being ruled by outsiders, even by proxy.

If you take this view, and to my mind it's the most logical one, on a fundamental level the USA isn't really fighting Islam. It's fighting a nebulous desire for self-rule, expressed through religious means. The same happened to the British Empire famously in the Sudan in the 1880s. Popular support for Islamism is totally dependent on Western intervention - and intervention certainly isn't going to stop as the American Empire has to protect its geopolitical assets. What's more, if radical Islam isn't the rallying force for home-bred insurgency, something else can serve instead - in Iran and Yemen, resistance to Western intervention has taken the form of socialism in the past.

Finally, from a geopolitical standpoint, I don't see any reason why American tacticians would particularly want to defeat this enemy. Islamism poses extremely little existential threat to the USA, especially compared to the last enemy, the USSR. Pakistan tops the list (inb4 someone totally ignorant of all facts says Iran) but there is no imminent danger of Islamic revolution in the country. The USA has the whole situation pretty well in hand at the moment, as long as it's happy to continue the spending necessary. That's not a moral judgement - I loathe the American Empire's actions in the Near East - but rather a dispassionate one.

[Yarn]

Its easy to say "oh, but don't let them get nukes", but how is that possible without military bases, soldiers, air strikes and all the other things we call the war on terrorism.

Pakistan arms militants, but not with advanced equipment, and certainly not with nuclear weapons. None of these nuclear weapons are in Afghanistan, pushing the militants of Afghanistan into Pakistan increased insecurity within Pakistan, and we can't really do anything about Pakistan's nuclear arsenal short of nuking it in a first strike.

Nuclear weapons don't appear overnight, and they aren't easy to make. Iran poses a credible proliferation risk. Iraq and Libya were never close to being one. They were too small, too poor, too isolated, and too primitive. And anyways, we could bomb them with impunity long before anything happened. Bombing Iran, though perhaps a good idea, would be incredibly costly.

Afghanistan never had a chance in hell of getting nukes. Around 75% of the country can't read, they are poor as fuck, and there aren't very many Afghans.

[Peter Dow]

In its only trial by fire, the first Gulf War, the Patriot missile system officially achieved a 40% success rate in terms of preventing missiles from hitting Israeli cities. It can slightly divert, as opposed to block completely, missiles at a higher rate, but with nukes that is irrelevant because any location near your target will suffice.

Well a lot of defence spending has gone on developing anti-missile missile systems and I suggest that one must presume that the US and other NATO countries' militaries have already invested in suitable anti-missile systems which are not entirely irrelevant to the task. We should deploy what we have, though it be not perfect.

The Patriot technology is more advanced now than it used to be. But the scale of the arsenal we'd be dealing with would be larger than anything previously dealt with, and even an intercept rate of 90% would still yield unacceptably high casualties;

I am not proposing that anyone "accept" a first nuclear strike by Pakistan.

all of the major cities of Afghanistan would be gone if those missiles that got through were directed towards them.

I think it even more unlikely that Pakistan would consider nuking Kabul or any major Afghan city. Why would they ever?

I am not proposing that the Afghans declare and attempt to prosecute a low-intensity war on the state sponsors of terrorism in Pakistan but rather that NATO does. Afghans are not equipped to the task. They have enough problems with the Taliban already without contemplating war on Pakistan.

I think Afghans would be best staying neutral in such a show down between NATO and the Pakistani ISI and we should respect Afghan neutrality or expressions of support for Pakistan from the Afghan president if he thinks that's his best move to stay out of our fight with Pakistan.

So the military logic of the Pakistanis ever targeting Kabul or other urban areas in a stand-off with the West escapes me. The vast majority of NATO-ISAF's military power in Afghanistan is already deployed outside urban areas, in military bases.

I presume you didn't think this through and you are happy that I have done that for you now?

And then there is the matter of retaliation. We would be left with a choice between obliterating Pakistan, or large parts of it, or crippling our deterent by showing we don't have the resolve to use it.

Wrong. That is not the choice. There is a third option.

Our commanders in chief ought to respond to a first strike nuclear weapons attack by Pakistan on our forces in Afghanistan by using our tactical nuclear weapons to destroy all Pakistani military bases.

Both your options are poorly thought out.

• There is no military need to obliterate Pakistan in order to destroy the Pakistani military and beat them in any war.

• It is not really possible to "show we don't have resolve" by not nuking someone somewhere at any particular point in time in immediate response to a first strike by someone against us. We can indeed be 100% resolved to nuke someone in retaliation but take a weekend or as long as we like to think it through, select our target list and so on. The only way to show you have no resolve is to disarm yourself of nuclear weapons as CND would have us do.

Obliterating Pakistan in turn could cause a nuclear winter, resulting in skyrocketing food prices and hundreds of millions of additional death via starvation.

It seems strangely blinkered that you automatically assume that a Pakistani first nuclear strike against us would be "non nuclear winter causing" while you automatically assume that our retaliation using nuclear weapons would be "nuclear winter causing".

I repeat again that I am not suggesting the use of our strategic nuclear weapons to "obliterate" all of Pakistan or even its cities.

I have considered only the use of tactical nuclear weapons against Pakistani military bases which should remain an option for our commanders in chief to use if that was necessary to defeat a Pakistani military which had decided to escalate to an all out war against NATO.

Yes Pakistan's military would be obliterated by NATO's use of tactical nuclear weapons against their military bases but that would not entail any obliteration of Pakistan, per se.

Underground nuclear bomb shelters

That would likely be horrendously expensive.

Not as horrendously expensive as Pakistan's nuclear weapons which the US paid for (unwittingly) by giving the Pakistani military billions of dollars for questionable "help" in the war on terror.

It is wiser not to pay Pakistan to nuke us or anyone - but to pay our military engineers and subcontractors to build nuclear bomb shelters for our major bases in Afghanistan.

I am not proposing any overall increase in military expenditure at this stage in the war on terror. It is far more important that we get a grip over the military incompetence so that any money which is spent is spent wisely not utterly foolishly and in a self-defeating way.

And if its intent were to gaurd against Pakistan, it might incite a first strike.

It might, but if Pakistan behaves rationally it won't.

• The US invading Afghanistan might have incited a Pakistani nuclear weapons first strike against US forces in Afghanistan but it didn't.

• NATO taking control in Afghanistan as NATO-ISAF might have incited Pakistan to nuke NATO countries but it didn't.

• Border NATO-ISAF army clashes firing at the Taliban on the Pakistani side of the border from the Afghan side might have incited Pakistan to nuke us but it didn't.

• Drone strikes against Taliban bases behind the front line in Pakistan might have got us nuked but it didn't.

At every stage the Pakistani conventional military has behaved moderately and wisely in contrast to their ISI military intelligence colleagues who have been sponsoring terrorism most unwisely.

I see no reason to suppose that Pakistan would nuke us for beginning to build nuclear bomb shelters in Afghanistan. Having bomb shelters or not does not materially affect our ability to counter-strike against Pakistan with nuclear weapons. We would not be launching nuclear weapons from our Afghan bases but from further away. Rather than helping Pakistan any with the threat from our nuclear weapons deployed globally, Pakistan making a first-strike against our Afghan bases practically guarantees that we would retaliate using our nuclear weapons.

Never in history has a country been nuked for building nuclear bomb shelters. If that was the case then Switzerland would be a prime target for nuclear weapons powers because Swiss building codes require the architects to include a basement which can act as a bomb shelter if needs be.

At anyrate, the troops aren't there just to be there, they are there to fight the enemy. They can't do that from underground, which means they must spend their active hours on the vulnerable surface.

Well wherever nuclear bomb shelters are built there is no expectation that everyone must spend all their time in them. There is always the chance that one might be caught going about one's business anywhere in the world. Nevertheless it will be a comfort for some of our forces there knowing there is somewhere they can attempt to seek shelter in given some warning.

Nuclear bomb shelters are only part of the answer, along with anti-missile systems and the ability to deter a first strike with the threat of retaliation with tactical nuclear weapons against enemy military bases.

Yes there is a risk to our forces but deploying in theatre allows our military to prosecute the war in terror in a proportionate way using only conventional weapons.

We are not threatened with slavery,

You have that in writing from Al Qaeda do you? How comforting.

we are threatened with vanishingly low rates of homocide.

Vanishingly low only in the West because we have focused and invested in counter-terror security here in our homeland. Such domestic measures I include in "standing up to Pakistani terrorism" because attacks such as the 7/7 bombing of London were incited and organised from Pakistan by proxies for the Pakistani ISI.

However fighting a purely defensive war, whilst standing up and avoiding slavery, is not the most efficient way to win. It'll be an infinitely long war if it is purely defensively fought and meanwhile other parts of the world will fall to Al Qaeda rule, such as North Mali most recently.

In Afghanistan the threat from the Taliban to our forces in Afghanistan is not vanishingly low and going on the offensive and so winning reduces homicide against our forces too.

Pakistan's nuclear weapons and other Weapons of Mass Destruction (chemical, biological etc)

Pakistan does not arm terrorists with advanced equipment.

Not yet. The Pakistani ISI arms terrorists with conventional equipment so if the ISI can get hold of Pakistani WMD from the parts of the Pakistani state which hold WMD for the state then it is possible they could pass those WMD on to the Taliban or to the other terrorists which the ISI sponsor.

The prospect of Pakistan's nuclear weapons falling into Taliban or Al Qaeda hands is not a prospect to dismiss lightly, not when there have indeed been attacks by the Taliban on military bases in Pakistan.

We lessen the risk of WMD falling into terrorist hands by being resolute and surgically striking the terrorists and perhaps their ISI sponsors too while reassuring the vast bulk of Pakistan's security state that so long as they do not interfere to side with the ISI and Taliban we have no quarrel with them.

[The Decider]

I think Afghans would be best staying neutral in such a show down between NATO and the Pakistani ISI and we should respect Afghan neutrality or expressions of support for Pakistan from the Afghan president if he thinks that's his best move to stay out of our fight with Pakistan....

I have considered only the use of tactical nuclear weapons against Pakistani military bases which should remain an option for our commanders in chief to use if that was necessary to defeat a Pakistani military which had decided to escalate to an all out war against NATO.

Yes Pakistan's military would be obliterated by NATO's use of tactical nuclear weapons against their military bases but that would not entail any obliteration of Pakistan, per se.

Occupied nations are by definition not "neutral." They are occupied. And occupied Afghanistan wants NATO out by next year, not to mention the 69% of Americans who want the same thing. Your military plans for nuclear shelters, tactical nuclear strikes, satellite destruction---all of that--hinge on public support.

Like many military planners--American and French generals in Vietnam come to mind--you have ignored politics, domestic and foreign. How "moderate" will Pakistan's military remain when the radicals whip up Pakistani opposition to continued US presence in Afghanistan, much less all those "tactical" bombing and nuke raids against military bases? Those military bases, by the way, are within some of Pakistan's most populous cities, like Karachi and Peshawar. How much "collateral damage" are you willing to accept?

http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012...t-hamid-karzai

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/n...ut-afghanistan

I am not proposing any overall increase in military expenditure at this stage in the war on terror. It is far more important that we get a grip over the military incompetence so that any money which is spent is spent wisely not utterly foolishly and in a self-defeating way.

You are proposing military spending increases in the billions of dollars by arguing for the retention of NATO forces in Afghanistan and the building of nuclear bomb shelters for every NATO man and women assigned to that hell hole plus anti-missile batteries up and down the long border plus the increased security threats posed by that nation's public rebuke of NATO forces on their territory. You just won't give a number.

However fighting a purely defensive war, whilst standing up and avoiding slavery, is not the most efficient way to win. It'll be an infinitely long war if it is purely defensively fought and meanwhile other parts of the world will fall to Al Qaeda rule, such as North Mali most recently.[/b]

You have mentioned "slavery" again and again on this bizarre thread but you have not offered any evidence that Al Qaeda/Taliban have a world wide plan to enslave Europe, Asia, and North America (perhaps the Antarctica too if those penguins don't sit up and fly right). North Mali? The conquest starts there? How does AQ/Taliban get from North Mali to Peoria, Illinois? As a military strategist, as you seem to fashion yourself, you should be able to analyze the enemy's ability to conquer the entire West within a given timeframe and territorial sequence should we not take your considered military advice. Just claiming "slavery" isn't nearly enough to sway the Afghans or 69% of Americans. But if anyone can do it, I know you can. Give it a go.