At a House Armed Services Committee Hearing on February 3, 2010, U.S. Rep. Todd Russell Platts (R-PA) declared the corrupt Afghan national security forces “one of the lynchpins to the success we’re going to achieve” in the Afghanistan war.
Platts should request a copy of the report obtained by NBC News which was prepared for General Petraeus on the Afghan National Army (ANA). The report details the massive shortcomings of a corrupt and often truant ANA, saying that “corruption, nepotism, and untrained/unmotivated personnel make success all but impossible.”
By the way, American Taxpayer...you’re funding that corrupt ANA with your tax dollars.
How do they measure “motivation?” Maybe they are motivated but just not to serve U.S. overlords and their flunkies?
A) I was against invading Iraq from the year 2000, when I predicted that, if Bush was elected, we would invade Iraq and be at war for x-1 years of his presidency, where x is his number of years in office (I was off by one)
B) I surmised in 2002, when we were about to invade Afghanistan, that we would likely never be able to “win” in Afghanistan, and that we would quickly turn our attention to Iraq as a more “winnable” contest
C) I did not think the surge in Iraq could work in any meaningful sense
D) I was wrong about the surge in the most important sense: it saved American lives (whether as a direct result of the surge, or indirect result of payoffs, etc. lives were saved)
E) The exact same arguments were made pre-Iraq surge (corrupt forces, untrained personnel, etc)
Due to all of these factors, I will reserve judgment on the Afghan effort for at least another year (two Friedman Units, if you like).
$0.02
the most corrupt nation on earth, the usa, is lecturing the afghans about corrption? go back to sleep sheeple.
yet another parallel to the vietnam war
we all remember how that turned out, don't we?
what's it going to take to get us out of there?
We need to just kill Bin Laden and get the hell out of there already.
I'd like to know how the white house makes decisions. Do they get a list of choices drawn up by the real power brokers (AIPAC et al) with limited range? Why else are we broke, at war with at least two nations and have the country falling apart. The solutions to our national dilemma are simple. End all the wars, invest in infrastructure and green economy, promote real education, universal one payer health care and criminal trials for those on wall st. and the Bush Administration. Platts is a total idiot.