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Saturday, October 8, 2011
A forthcoming government review is to warn that there are significant risks of civil war or a Taliban takeover of the country when Nato forces are withdrawn in 2014.
If they're withdrawn more like, and not left in place under some other guise, but we'll let that slide for now.
After 10 years, as highlighted in an excellent article on BNP Ideas, we've failed to achieve much in the way of any of the stated goals like fighting terrorism, the opium crop - all but eradicated under the Taliban - has soared, and we've left a country in ruins.
Afghanistan has just been a hole which has swallowed Western lives and Western money.
Our insane Afghan escapade has left the unenviable situation of more lives and money being spent to keep a puppet regime in place, or the collapse of the puppet regime should we withdraw.
There is simply no way the whole mess won't collapse when Western support is withdrawn, and the West has neither the resources or the will to remain there indefinitely.
As a nation we're sick of seeing our troops die in some far flung foreign war which we should never have been involved in to begin with.
Here are the only two scenarios that will happen. One is that we remain there, under some other guise like peacekeepers or humanitarian aid, so that the politicians can claim they've fulfilled pledges of withdrawal. We'll be there in one shape or another for decades.
Or, two, we withdraw, the Karzai regime won't last a year, we'll end up with either anarchy as tribal groups battle it out and jockey for position, or a hard line Islamic government. Not to mention a people who are angered by the mess we've left them in and the war that we have waged on their country.
Well done Blair and the other war mongers, a right mess you've got us and Afghanistan in, and it's a mess with no pretty way out.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
The battle that was fought from July 21-24 is known by two different names because the Union and Confederacy used different conventions for naming Civil War battles. The Union named them after the nearest body of water, and the Confederates for the nearest settlement or farm.
In the months after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter public opinion and political pressure had been building for a Union attack on the CSA capitol of Richmond, VA. President Lincoln and politicians were clamoring for action because the Confederate troops were encamped a very uncomfortable 25 miles (40 km) from Washington D.C and they believed the capture of Richmond would bring a speedy end to the nascent war.
Because of the building political pressure, the unseasoned troops of the Union Army of Northeastern Virginia under the command of Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell advanced his 35,000 man force across a creek called Bull Run, a Potomac river tributary. McDowell's intent was to launch a surprise attack against the equally unseasoned CSA Army of the Potomac force of 22,000 troops under the command of Brig. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard near Manassas Junction.
The inexperienced showed as the Union Army clumsily executed the attack, but still had the advantage over the Confederate units on the scene until a brigade of Virginians under the command of a then unknown colonel and instructor at the Virginia Military Institute name Thomas J. Jackson stood their ground against the Union attack and earned him his 'Stonewall Jackson' nickname.
Jackson's stand combined with the arrival of reinforcements via train from the Shenandoah Valley under the command of Brig Gen. Joseph E. Johnston swung the course of the battle in favor of the Confederacy as they launched a strong counterattack that forced a Union withdrawal under pressure. The Union withdrawal turned into a rout as some of the troops panicked and fled in the direction of nearby Washington D.C.
The First Battle of Bull Run was at that time the largest and bloodiest battle in US history, with Union casualties totaling 460 killed, 1,124 wounded, and 1,312 missing or captured. On the Confederate side the victory came with a cost. In addition to losing Brig. Gen. Barnard Bee and Col Francis Bartow, their casualties were 387 killed, 1,582 wounded, and 13 missing
The First Battle of Bull Run/Manassas also caused both sides to realize that this would be a long, drawn out and nasty war with far bloodier battles to come and they began to act and think in those terms in the aftermath of this first clash of the war.
