{"id":30648,"date":"2012-07-05T18:52:30","date_gmt":"2012-07-05T22:52:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=30648"},"modified":"2012-07-05T18:52:30","modified_gmt":"2012-07-05T22:52:30","slug":"ana-not-fighting-to-their-potential","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=30648","title":{"rendered":"ANA not fighting to their potential"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tman sends a link to an <a href=\"http:\/\/gma.yahoo.com\/taliban-ambush-witnessed-abc-news-tests-afghan-army-170634696--abc-news-topstories.html\">ABC News<\/a> article about a battle fought recently between the Afghan National Army and the Taliban which apparently highlights leadership issues in the ANA and their continued dependence on US forces to engage the Taliban;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Taliban fighters, perhaps lying in waiting, had ambushed the Afghan troops along the ridge. The Afghan troops fired back, beginning a sustained firefight that lasted about 10 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>Because of a new mandate allowing U.S. forces to only give advice, American soldiers stayed back, forcing the Afghan troops to make decisions on their own.<\/p>\n<p>But with mortars and heavy machine-gun fire surrounding the troops, and tempers flaring among the Afghans, one Afghan commander asked the Americans for air support.<\/p>\n<p>Within minutes the Afghan forces had power from the air, and the airstrikes ended the battle. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The reporter, who happened to be on the scene, observed the ANA commander dealing with his subordinates who were openly criticizing his directions in a loud argument in the middle of the engagement.<\/p>\n<p>In another article from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/war-zones\/afghan-local-police-group-deserts-to-taliban-led-insurgents\/2012\/07\/04\/gJQAzvNCNW_story.html\">Washington Post<\/a>, they report that 41 members of the militia known as the Afghan Local Police surrendered themselves and their weapons to the Taliban. <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThis [surrender] may not have a big impact on the security situation of the area, but raises doubts about the loyalties of those employed by Afghan Local Police,\u201d [Ghulam Sarwar, a local lawmaker] said.<\/p>\n<p>The Taliban confirmed that the militia group had joined its ranks and put the number of surrendered men at 86.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Other reports say that the US will withdraw 30,000 troops this month, I guess that doesn&#8217;t have anything to do the ANA not fighting up to their potential, arguing with their commanders in front of the troops and just plain giving up.<\/p>\n<p>The Afghans always knew that we wouldn&#8217;t stay until we&#8217;d won the war, because of the incessant yammering of the political opponents of the Bush Administration who wouldn&#8217;t tolerate a victory for a Republican president. The Afghans and the Taliban got the signal back during the surge that this administration wasn&#8217;t committed to victory when the CIA and the commanders told the administration that a half-assed surge of troops wouldn&#8217;t have much impact on the enemy. <\/p>\n<p>Now that we&#8217;ve demonstrated that we&#8217;re more interested in withdrawal than fighting the war, they&#8217;re beating the rush to join the Taliban. Which could probably explain the green-on-blue attacks which have cost 80 American lives this year, if anyone wasn&#8217;t too busy making excuses for the Afghans and &#8220;relatively light casualties&#8221; without taking serious measures to prevent those attacks.<\/p>\n<p>Who would have thought that this administration could do a worse job in Afghanistan than the last administration, but&#8230;taa-daa. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tman sends a link to an ABC News article about a battle fought recently between the &hellip; <a title=\"ANA not fighting to their potential\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=30648\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">ANA not fighting to their potential<\/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-30648","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\/30648","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=30648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30648\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}