Obama's War - Why is The Largest Military Machine on The Planet Unable to Defeat the Resistance in Afghanistan?

Ain't no money in "winning"...there is a LOT OF MONEY in fighting a long war that has no resolution.

For the same reason the imposition of martial law will never succeed in the U.S.

Afghanistan also sent the Soviet Unions ass packing it home in the '80s.

It is protected by the Holy Spirit.

Strength and Honor.


There is an untameable and unstoppable Force that will always - without fail - overcome any technological gadgetry deployed from the feeble minds of men.

All it needs to manifest in a powerful way are open portals that will let the Flow through.

Ideology and all other pointless considerations hurled about by the perishing rats have nothing to do with it.

The USA, its degraded population, and its failed leaders are all now coming face to face with their own transitory - and contingent - existence. And they are...scared shitless.

Let me put it this way. Why would a soldier feel so pissed off at their equipment, that they'd feel like destroying it themselves half the time.

It was an expensive war, but a majority of that money went to Military Contractors. The Military got really fucked out of funds and equipment for the amount of money that was being routed to pay for expensive PMCs.

Despite the all seing eye of the drones, freedom reigns. The Holy Spirit inspires resistance against the giaur.

Nope. Economics. Wars make certain people rich. The longer the war, the more money they make selling it.

Because Afghanis don't have ships, planes, tanks or even a pot to piss in..but they grow good dope I guess.

Is it still at war or are we just occupying it to keep the Taliban from taking over. At least I don't have to hear about it on the news every day.

Contractor industrial complex

All U.S. aid, both military and what is labeled “civilian,” is funneled through thousands and thousands of contractors, subcontractors and sub-subcontractors.



None of these U.S. corporate middlemen are even slightly interested in the development of Afghanistan or Iraq. Their only immediate aim is to turn a hefty super-profit as quickly as possible, with as much skim and double billing as possible. For a fee they will provide everything from hired guns, such as Blackwater mercenaries, to food service workers, mechanics, maintenance workers and long-distance truck drivers.

These hired hands also do jobs not connected to servicing the occupation. All reconstruction and infrastructure projects of water purification, sewage treatment, electrical generation, health clinics and road clearance are parceled out piecemeal. Whether these projects ever open or function properly is of little interest or concern. Billing is all that counts.

In past wars, most of these jobs were carried out by the U.S. military. The ratio of contractors to active-duty troops is now more than 1-to-1 in both Iraq and Afghanistan. During the Vietnam War it was 1-to-6.

In 2007 the Associated Press put the number in Iraq alone at 180,000:


“The United States has assembled an imposing industrial army in Iraq that’s larger than its uniformed fighting force and is responsible for such a broad swath of responsibilities that the military might not be able to operate without its private-sector partners.”

(Sept. 20, 2007)

The total was 190,000 by August 2008. (Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 18, 2008)

Some corporations have become synonymous with war profiteering, such as

•
Halliburton

•
Bechtel

•
Blackwater,


... in Iraq and,

•
Louis Berger Group

•
BearingPoint

•
DynCorp International,


...in Afghanistan.

Every part of the U.S. occupation has been contracted out at the highest rate of profit, with no coordination, no oversight, almost no public bids. Few of the desperately needed supplies reach the dislocated population traumatized by the occupation.

There are now so many pigs at the trough that U.S. forces are no longer able to carry out the broader policy objectives of the U.S. ruling class. The U.S military has even lost count, by tens of thousands, of the numbers of contractors, where they are or what they are doing - except being paid.



Losing count of the mercenaries

The danger of an empire becoming dependent on mercenary forces to fight unpopular wars has been understood since the days of the Roman Empire 2,000 years ago.

A bipartisan Congressional Commission on Wartime Contracting was created last year to examine government contracting for reconstruction, logistics and security operations and to recommend reforms.



However, Michael Thibault, co-chair of the commission, explained at a Nov. 2 hearing that,


“there is no single source for a clear, complete and accurate picture of contractor numbers, locations, contracts and cost.” (AFP, Nov. 2)

“[Thibault said] the Pentagon in April counted about 160,000 contractors mainly in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait, but Central Command recorded more than 242,000 contractors a month earlier.”

The stunning difference of 82,000 contractors was based on very different counts in Afghanistan. The difference alone is far greater than the 60,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan .

Thibault continued:


“How can contractors be properly managed if we aren’t sure how many there are, where they are and what are they doing?”

The lack of an accurate count,


“invites waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer money and undermines the achievement of U.S. mission objectives.”

The Nov. 2 Federal Times reported that Tibault also asked:


“How can we assure taxpayers that they aren’t paying for ‘ghost’ employees?”

This has become an unsolvable contradiction in imperialist wars for profit, markets and imperialist domination. Bourgeois academics, think tanks and policy analysts are becoming increasingly concerned.

Thomas Friedman, syndicated columnist and multimillionaire who is deeply committed to the long-term interests of U.S. imperialism, describes the dangers of a,


“contractor-industrial-complex in Washington that has an economic interest in foreign expeditions.”

poppy fields.

Outsourcing war

Friedman hastens to explain that he is not against outsourcing. His concern is the pattern of outsourcing key tasks, with money and instructions changing hands multiple times in a foreign country.



That only invites abuse and corruption.



Friedman quoted Allison Stanger, author of “One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy,” who told him:


“Contractors provide security for key personnel and sites, including our embassies; feed, clothe and house our troops; train army and police units; and even oversee other contractors. Without a multinational contractor force to fill the gap, we would need a draft to execute these twin interventions.”

That is the real reason for the contracted military forces. The Pentagon does not have enough soldiers, and they don’t have enough collaborators or “allies” to fight their wars.

According to the Congressional Research Service, contractors in 2009 account for 48 percent of the Department of Defense workforce in Iraq and 57 percent in Afghanistan. Thousands of other contractors work for corporate-funded “charities” and numerous government agencies.



The U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development make even more extensive use of them; 80 percent of the State Department budget is for contractors and grants.

Contractors are supposedly not combat troops, although almost 1,800 U.S. contractors have been killed since 9/11. (U.S. News & World Report, Oct. 30)



Of course there are no records on the thousands of Afghans and Iraqis killed working for U.S. corporate contractors, or the many thousands of peoples from other oppressed nations who are shipped in to handle the most dangerous jobs.

Contracting is a way of hiding not only the casualties, but also the actual size of the U.S. occupation force.



Fearful of domestic opposition, the government intentionally lists the figures for the total number of forces in Afghanistan and Iraq as far less than the real numbers.



A system run on cost overruns

Cost overruns and war profiteering are hardly limited to Iraq, Afghanistan or active theaters of war. They are the very fabric of the U.S. war machine and the underpinning of the U.S. economy.

When President Obama signed the largest military budget in history Oct. 28 he stated:


“The Government Accountability Office, the GAO, has looked into 96 major defense projects from the last year, and found cost overruns that totaled $296 billion.”

This was on a total 2009 military budget of $651 billion. So almost half of the billions of dollars handed over to military corporations are cost overruns!

This is at a time when millions of workers face long-term systemic unemployment and massive foreclosures.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have now cost more than $1 trillion. The feeble health care reform bill that squeaked through the House, and might not survive Senate revisions next year, is scheduled to cost $1.1 trillion over a 10-year period.

The bloated, increasingly dysfunctional, for-profit U.S. military machine is unable to solve the problems or rebuild the infrastructure in Afghanistan or Iraq, and it is unable to rebuild the crumbling infrastructure in the U.S. It is unable to meet the needs of people anywhere. It is absorbing the greatest share of the planet’s resources and a majority of the U.S. national budget.



This unsustainable combination will sooner or later give rise to new resistance here and around the world.

because as much as the US likes to boast about its great military a bunch of Red neck hill people with zero technology is kicking their fucking asses...

They are not trying to defeat anyone...they are protecting Opium production for the big Pharmaceutical company.

[link to www.cbsnews.com]

KABUL, Afghanistan Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has been increasing for a third year in a row and is heading for a record high, the U.N. said in a report released Monday.

The boom in poppy cultivation is at its most pronounced in the Taliban's heartland in the south, the report showed, especially in regions where troops of the U.S.-led coalition have been withdrawn or are in the process of departing. The report suggests that whatever international efforts have been made to wean local farmers off the crop, they are having little success.

The Taliban banned poppy production which was why the war started. When the west is thrown out comprehensively (and it will be) they can afford to ban opium again as under islamic law.

Mullah Omar has a cloak handed down to him from Elijah the prophet, via Elisha, and Mohammed PBUH.

They couldn't defeat barefoot Vietnamese peasants, or Tecumseh's militia either.