Simple Man Politics

A hundred thousand welcomes to all of my friends out there. I hope you’re all ready for today’s installment of Simple Man Politics. On Monday we discussed the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, so I think it's only right that we discuss the war on terror now. I have decided to break up the subject of the war on terror into two parts. Part one is going to be about Afghanistan, and part two, Friday’s edition, will be about Iraq. What do you all say let's get started?

The war in Afghanistan began October 07, 2001 when the United States and the United Kingdom mutually decided to respond in retaliation for September 11, 2001 after ascertaining that Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda were responsible for those horrific terrorist attacks on New York, the Pentagon, and flight 93. Two military operations were established to gain control of Afghanistan. The first was Operation Enduring Freedom. This operation involved coalition partners against Al Qaeda in the eastern and southern parts of the country along the Pakistani border and was lead by US military forces and is not a NATO operation, although many coalition partners are NATO members. Approximately 20,000 troops are in OEF.

Originally the US and the UK led air strikes against the Taliban and Al Qaeda while ground forces were supplied by the Northern Alliance. In 2002 the US, UK, and Canadian infantry were inserted into the conflict along with Special Forces from other allied nations and NATO troops were incorporated after that.

The second operation is the International Security Assistance Force. The ISAF was established in 2002 by the international community to stabilize the country and NATO assumed control of the ISAF in 2003. There are currently 47,000 troops from 40 countries with NATO as the core of the force.

The initial battles against the Taliban and Al Qaeda were extremely successful, and very soon after the war in Afghanistan started, control was entirely in the hands of coalition forces and the Northern Alliance. They had chased what was left of the Taliban and Al Qaeda out of the country and into the tribal areas of Pakistan, where eventually Pakistani President Pervev Musharraf came to be an ally in our war against the terrorists and the Taliban. However, at this time Musharraf has declared his intention to resign form the office of President of Pakistan. Also there currently seems to be some resurgence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the tribal areas. They are strengthening and are running more ops across the border into Afghanistan.

Our presidential nominees have very similar ideas how to fight the war on terror in Afghanistan. McCain says the war there is very important and he will get Bin Laden for sure. Obama says he will get Bin Laden even if it means invading Pakistan to do it. They even agree that more troops are needed in Afghanistan. McCain says three brigades are needed and they both say more resources and troops from NATO would be nice. Even the French President is allocating more troops for Afghanistan.

I believe that the war on terror in Afghanistan is absolutely necessary and winnable if we don’t treat these animals with kid gloves and get all human rights about them. I think more troops are definitely needed there and not just from us but from every nation in the coalition. I also think we should chase these bad guys down even if it means going into Pakistan to get them since a lot of their support comes from the Pashtuns in the tribal areas of Pakistan. I also think we shouldn’t worry about capturing Osama Bin Laden, and his cohorts we should just kill them where we find them. They aren’t giving any quarter to our people and we shouldn’t show them any mercy either. If we do that all the rest of those crazy bastards out there will think twice before messing with us and we can have some peace when this is all over.

That is all I have to say on this subject, and I hope I didn’t offend anyone with my comments. I hope you all have a great day, and I will see you on Friday for the second part of The War on Terror, ciao4now!!!!!