{"id":28649,"date":"2012-02-07T12:47:08","date_gmt":"2012-02-07T16:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=28649"},"modified":"2012-02-07T12:54:09","modified_gmt":"2012-02-07T16:54:09","slug":"truth-lies-and-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=28649","title":{"rendered":"Truth, lies and Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blackfive and Instinct sent us this link<\/a> to the Armed Forces Journal in piece written by LTC Daniel Davis about how he feels that the military is lying to the public about conditions in Afghanistan;<\/p>\n

I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with U.S. troops and their Afghan partners. My duties with the Army\u2019s Rapid Equipping Force took me into every significant area where our soldiers engage the enemy. Over the course of 12 months, I covered more than 9,000 miles and talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces.<\/p>\n

What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He goes on to recount several incidents to illustrate why he’s bucking the official Army line. Apparently, there’s also a classified report that Davis wrote for his bosses which paints an equally bleak picture of the war in Afghanistan. I can’t say that I’m surprised at all. I’ve said countless times that if this how we’re going to fight the war, we should just pull the troops out now.<\/p>\n

This Administration has set withdrawal as it’s primary goal in Afghanistan, the military is one part of that administration and their goals reflect the goals of their chiefs – so their reports are going to be what their bosses want to hear. There is little use for facts in a bureaucracy.<\/p>\n

Davis reports that many of the Afghans he met under fire were reluctant to confront the Taliban. And i can’t really blame them completely. When we finally execute our grand victorious withdrawal, they have to continue to live there, and the Taliban will move back in. It’s been a concern of the Afghans since we arrived there.<\/p>\n

Our national commitment to eradicating the Taliban has been lacking since the first US soldier stepped on Afghan soil. Yeah, they’re a bunch of cowards who won’t stick their necks for their own country, but our presence hasn’t inspired them to pick up their banner. What with the theme of every election which threatened withdrawal. <\/p>\n

Of course, we have to keep in mind that this is only one LTC’s point of view, but apparently he feels strongly enough about it to endanger his career.<\/p>\n

ADDED:<\/strong> Also thanks to Nicki and Country Singer who also sent the links to this while I was taking my sweet time writing about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blackfive and Instinct sent us this link to the Armed Forces Journal in piece written by … Truth, lies and Afghanistan<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28649\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}