Afghan soldiers stand in formation in Tarin Kowt, Afghanistan, November of 2008. Photo by John Scott Rafoss of the United States of America. Wikipedia
Ciro Scotti, Fiscal Times: After $68 Billion to Train Afghan Troops, No Exit for the US in Sight
Early next October, about a month before the presidential election, America will mark a disturbing milestone: the 15-year anniversary of invading Afghanistan to seek and destroy terrorists who masterminded the September 11, 2001, attacks that killed thousands, brought down the World Trade Center and set the Pentagon aflame.
Outgoing President Barack Obama, who promised as a candidate in 2008 to extricate the country from the grinding warfare in Afghanistan that has killed tens of thousands of civilians, left almost 2,400 U.S combat troops dead, and maimed or wounded many thousands more, will depart office with that pledge unfulfilled.
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WNU Editor: U.S. military aid to build-up the Iraqi army failed .... and now we can say the same thing about Afghanistan. And even with all of this money .... they still have a problem with boots .... The Afghan Army Has A Problem Getting Boots For Its Soldiers (May 6, 2016)
2 comments:
The first place I always look, footwear. It tells you a lot.
Footwear is definitely important. In the event of a major war, does the United States even have the manufacturing capability to outfit the troops with boots, uniforms, etc? Probably not. Even if it had the facilities it lacks the properly trained personnel to operate the equipment.
Essentially facilities would need to be built from scratch and personnel trained. As such, America probably needs a change in policy that is very conciliatory to the big powers of Russia and China as we and our military simply are not currently up to the task neccessary to take on something like that.
It's not surprising the training programs have thus far failed. American military personnel are not properly trained for modern warfare. As such, there's no reasonable way to expect such a mission to succeed.
Furthermore given the incompetence of the US government there's no way they are capable of such "nation building" endeavors as Iraq and Afghanistan. Our own natikn is falling apart!!
I'd suggest focusing on securing our borders, workkng on fixing our crumbling infrastructure, open up all of our own oil and gas reserves for drilling, building the appropriate refining capacity, and redeploying most of our troops around the world back home. Preferably this redeployment would be done orderly. Either way it sedms it MUST happen.
Additionally we should be looking at finding ways we can add value to the big powers of Russia and China. We will probably need to start small at first but in time such actions may pay huge dividends for us.
Under POTUS Trump there will be BIG changes. Whether it is for the better is unknown.
Oh well back to the issue of the post, footwear. Clearly a military needs proper footwear and it is wise to focus on this. If the US needed to do a WWII type deployment we would be unlikely to be able to properly outfit the forces with "made in USA."
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