re: US Marine captain writes stinging op-ed: 'We lost the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan'

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Those wars had been largely won. We only lost cause Obama pulled the troops out after first announcing a year in advance his attention to do so.

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Bush 43 signed the surrender documents in 2008.

"The U.S.–Iraq Status of Forces Agreement (official name: Agreement Between the United States of America and the Republic of Iraq On the Withdrawal of United States Forces from Iraq and the Organization of Their Activities during Their Temporary Presence in Iraq) was a status of forces agreement (SOFA) between Iraq and the United States, signed by President George W. Bush in 2008. It established that U.S. combat forces would withdraw from Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009, and all U.S. combat forces will be completely out of Iraq by December 31, 2011.[1] The pact required criminal charges for holding prisoners over 24 hours, and required a warrant for searches of homes and buildings that were not related to combat.[1] U.S. contractors working for U.S. forces would have been subject to Iraqi criminal law, while contractors working for the State Department and other U.S. agencies would retain their immunity. If U.S. forces committed still undecided "major premeditated felonies" while off-duty and off-base, they would have been subjected to an undecided procedures laid out by a joint U.S.-Iraq committee if the U.S. certified the forces were off-duty.[2][3][1][4]

The agreement expired at midnight on December 31, 2011, even though the United States completed its final withdrawal of troops from Iraq on December 16, 2011. The symbolic ceremony in Baghdad officially "cased" (retired) the flag of U.S. forces in Iraq, according to army tradition.[5]"
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Our forces are incapable of conducting a war without massive bases with unheard of amounts of life support. You can go to almost any FOB in Iraq or Afghanistan right now and if no one told you any different you'd never know you were in a warzone. Wifi, steak and salsa nights and a gym every other block is the norm. The vast majority of people who have served in these conflicts suffered only as much as hardship as missing their summer vacations.

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This is complete nonsense dude. There are plenty of shitholes left over there.

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This is complete nonsense dude. There are plenty of shitholes left over there.

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The overall point is correct. Our people don't know how to fight insurgencies.

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Bush 43 signed the surrender documents in 2008.

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The SOFA wasn't a surrender, and it wasn't the cause or result of the failures in Iraq. Bush, Clinton, and Obama all share blame for that with others, with Clinton and Obama taking the majority of it.

Clinton is largely responsible for the mess that Iraq was in the first place, and Obama? Well...

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Obama inherited the power to restrain the sectarian impulses of President Maliki. Under Bush, U.S. military commanders had compelled Maliki to include Sunnis in the government and purge sectarian Shiites from the police. When Obama took over, however, he shifted authority from the Defense Department to Hillary Clinton’s State Department and to his Iraq pointman, Joe Biden. Soon thereafter, when Maliki began removing Sunni officers from the security forces, Obama’s representatives let him get away with it.

The Obama administration did at times exert restraining influence on Maliki while the United States still had 50,000 troops in Iraq. When Maliki tried to disqualify Sunni candidates in the 2010 parliamentary elections, U.S. pressure compelled him to reinstate the candidates.

In the aftermath of those elections, neither Maliki’s Dawa party nor the rival Iraqiya party could garner a parliamentary majority. Obama could have ensured that someone other than Maliki became prime minister, a course of action recommended by CENTCOM commander General James Mattis, who deemed Maliki too sectarian and pro-Iranian. Instead, Obama threw America’s weight behind Maliki on the advice of Biden, who believed Maliki to be less sectarian and less beholden to Iran than critics claimed.

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That's only a small part of what he fricked up.

I'd be embarrassed that you were a Marine Officer, but fortunately you didn't do shite while you were in. Sit down and shut up about things you know nothing about.

does this guy not understand the difference between winning a war and succeeding w/the subsequent occupation and rebuild?

We are great at kicking the shite out of people. Rebuilding their countries as an occupying force? Ehh... It's quite a bit more difficult.

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We know exactly how to fight them.

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Nah. We don't spend enough time or money on understanding who we're fighting or the languages they speak. Passing the buck to Washington is a pretty lame excuse. The military could have pressured Washington more if they wanted to. They didn't.

Afghanistan.



Afghanistan.



Afghanistan.



Afghanistan.



Afghanistan.

Okay now you're just rewording all of my positions and agreeing with me

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Okay now you're just rewording all of my positions and agreeing with me

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Nah.

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We do. 

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Wrong from go.