Obama's War - Down and Dirty with US Marines in Afghanistan | The Long Crisis

In the summer of 2009, reporter and brave man Ben Anderson traveled to the Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan to document the first military campaign ordered by President Obama. Anderson provides an inside view of what life is like for Echo Company’s U.S. Marines – including getting ambushed by the Taliban and hit by a roadside bomb.

As you will quickly see from the video the new Obama plan of winning the hearts and minds of the Afghanistan people have about as much of a chance for success as the hearts and minds campaign of presidents Johnson and Nixon during the Vietnam War.

In their effort to defeat the Taliban the Marines are shown kicking down doors, engaged in endless patrols through the dreary Afghanistan villages, living in harsh conditions, and discussing among themselves and to the video crew how Americans care so little about their efforts in the Afghanistan war zone.

The argument that president Obama gives for the enormously expensive US effort in Afghanistan is in my opinion, pure bullshit. As you will see in the video present Obama states that the mission of the US in Afghanistan is to deny Al Qaeda and the Taliban access to training camps and safe haven areas where they could plot future terrorist activities against the United States homeland. This really makes no sense at all as our own intelligence services estimates that there are no more than 100 Al Qaeda operatives within Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda has much more of a presence in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and even the Philippines, then they have in Afghanistan. As for the Taliban they have wisely changed tactics and are now using suicide bombers, IED’s, and low intensity pop shots at the coalition forces rather than meeting those forces head on. In Afghanistan we are fighting a resourceful and clever enemy on their own turf. The Taliban will not give up. They will fight a low intensity assymmetrical form of warfare for as long as it takes to exhaust our patience and resources.

As one Taliban commander said several years ago “you have the watch but we have the time”. The Taliban know full well that even at the new troop levels that president Obama has committed to Afghanistan,100,000 troops are not nearly enough man power to control a country as large as Afghanistan, especially when you are fighting skillful determined warriors who have a long history of being involved in conflict.

So the question is, why are we really in Afghanistan? Unfortunately, the honest answer would seem to be the same as the reason that we stayed in Vietnam for so many difficult years. And we all know how well that worked out. And that answer is, in simple terms, to save face.

Yes, I know that president Obama, Defense Secretary Gates, the various generals in the Air Force, Army, Navy and Marine Corps all say that we must win the war in Afghanistan in order to provide security to the United States. Their argument is much the same as during the Vietnam era when all sorts of predictions that losing the war would bring disaster to the United States all proved to be wrong. The true disaster was for the United States to involve itself in a land war in Asia to begin with. President Eisenhower was absolutely correct in warning against our involvement in a land war in Asia.

Now president Obama has chosen to escalate a war in one of the poorest nations on earth that is even more remote from the United States and with more rugged geography than Vietnam. Keeping our troops supplied in that country is difficult and extremely expensive. There are no seaports in landlocked Afghanistan. Our military has to be supplied by airlift and by truck convoys from neighboring Pakistan through dangerous and treacherous mountain passes.

I really cannot buy the position that the very security of the United States is dependent upon our success in Afghanistan. To escalate the war there is to give Al Qaeda and the Taliban the gift that just keeps on giving. Osama bin Laden’s stated plan from well before the 9/11 attack was to bankrupt the United States. Whether bin Laden is dead or alive really makes no difference. With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan already costing the United States in excess of $1 trillion, at a time when economic conditions are already poor and deteriorating, the escalation of the war is to fulfill bin Laden’s wildest dream.

Just watch the US Marines in action in the video. Note the profound cultural differences between the Marines and the Afghanistan people. Who can believe that the US will stay and defend the Afghans, whom they consider rag heads and a primitive people, as public opinion within the US becomes even more negative and the US economy continues to flounder. Team Obama is truly crazy if they think that by escalating the war and causing even more civilian deaths we are ever going to win the hearts and minds of these tribal people.

As the reporter Ben Anderson states near the end of the video the only reason that we are still in Afghanistan is to save face. No American president wants to be known as a president who lost a war. American hubris and arrogance lives within the psyche of president Obama. President Obama is likely betting his second term in office upon the results of his war escalation. Unless there is an amazing improvement in the Afghanistan war and the US economy well before the 2012 elections, president Obama will be a one term president.

In the meantime, pity the United States Marines who will bear the brunt of the escalation in fighting. While the Marines are a superb offensive military force they are not well suited for the type of low intensity asymmetrical IED and suicide bomber warfare that they will experience in Afghanistan. All of our military will pay a high price for the face-saving effort and do-gooder notions that president Obama and his team of so-called experts are determined to carry out with flawed strategy and tactics in Afghanistan.