Obama: Afghanistan decision in 'coming weeks'

[Jolie Rouge]

Allen West
3 hrs


So let me ask this rhetorical question... If you are in a foreign land wearing the uniform of the US military with tactical gear and carrying a weapon, firing live ammunition at people not dressed like you, speaking a different language and who are firing live ammunition at you -- what do you call that?

While President Obama was crying yesterday, American men were engaged in combat in Afghanistan. The place where Obama declared combat operations had ended. They were surrounded by the Taliban,trapped; they were not crying. They were FIGHTING.

And the fact that the Obama administration strains to say the word "combat" is deplorable. What an incredible juxtaposition between what real men do, and how manipulative weak liberal progressive men act.

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[Jolie Rouge]

[Jolie Rouge]

President Obama caught the attention of every overemotional liberal in the country yesterday by turning on the waterworks while talking about children who died in mass shootings.

Normally this would absolutely be a healthy and appropriate response to such a horrific tragedy, but given the fact Obama’s never cried a single tear over the children who have been murdered in abortion, it seems quite clearly this was a political ploy.

Here’s a list of other folk that Obama never cried or mourned publicly for:



http://www.youngcons.com/heres-a-lis...ngle-tear-for/

[Jolie Rouge]

Taliban announce start of spring offensive in Afghanistan
Published April 12, 2016

KABUL, Afghanistan – The Taliban announced the start of their warm-weather fighting season on Tuesday, vowing "large-scale attacks" in the 15th year of their war against the U.S.-backed Afghan government.

In an email to media, the militants said the spring offensive had begun at 5 a.m. They dubbed the campaign "Operation Omari" in honor of Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar, who died three years ago. The statement said waging jihad against American invaders is a holy obligation.

It said this year's campaign will incorporate suicide attacks, assassinations, and other tactics aimed at undermining the enemy's morale.

The Taliban added that in areas under their control, "mechanisms for good governance will be established so that our people can live a life of security and normalcy." The insurgents control several rural districts and last year seized the northern city of Kunduz and held it for three days.

The Taliban said they would try to avoid killing civilians or destroying civilian infrastructure, and would carry out a "dialogue with our countrymen in the enemy ranks" to try to convince them to join the insurgency.

More than 11,000 civilians were killed or wounded in 2015, according to the U.N.

The Taliban went through a period of infighting after Mullah Omar's death became public last summer. Mullah Omar's deputy, Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, had run the insurgency in his name and was elected as his successor by a small clique amid mistrust from the rank and file.

The dispute had little impact on the battlefield, however, where the Taliban have advanced on a number of fronts over the past year. And in recent months, Mansoor has consolidated power, bringing several onetime rivals back into the fold.

The Kabul government has meanwhile been working with the U.S., China and Pakistan -- which has some influence over the Taliban -- to revive peace negotiations, but the insurgents earlier this year refused to take part in any talks.

The fighting subsides in much of Afghanistan during the winter, when snow and inclement weather descends on the mountainous border with Pakistan, making it difficult for the militants to travel back and forth and stage attacks. But the Taliban remained on the march in the warmer south of the country, where they threatened or briefly seized strategic territory in three provinces.

The violence is expected to intensify once the poppy harvest in the southern provinces is finished in coming weeks. The Taliban will deploy extra forces to protect smuggling routes used for arms, minerals and other contraband that fund the insurgency.

Jabbar Qahraman, presidential envoy to Helmand, said most of the estimated 5,500 government troops and police killed in action in 2015 lost their lives in the opium-producing southern province.

He blamed not only the Taliban but an "opium mafia" working with the insurgents. The drugs gangs "are a big headache as they are so active, and they have the full support of Taliban fighters in Helmand, each helping the other to their own benefit," he said.

Most of the world's heroin is produced from Helmand's poppy crop, worth up to $3 billion a year, with much of the profits going to fund the insurgency. Officials and diplomats in Kabul have said that Mansoor is the kingpin of this illicit trade.

Local officials say security forces have been overwhelmed by months of heavy fighting across Helmand. Ali Shah Khan, a tribal elder in Sangin district -- which was under attack for weeks -- said Kabul had been warned of the Taliban threat "so many times but no one listened and that is why the Taliban have gained control of more than half of the province."

At one point in December, the province's former deputy governor, Abdul Jan Rasoolyar, issued a plea for help on his Facebook page, warning the entire province could fall. "Without good leadership and coordination between the security forces, they just let the Taliban gain control over more territory," Khan told the Associated Press last week.

U.S. and NATO forces formally concluded their combat mission at the end of 2014, shifting instead to a training and advisory role while continuing to carry out counterterrorism operations. But as the situation in Helmand deteriorated last year, some 800 U.S. soldiers were sent there in the first deployment since the drawdown. Some 13,000 U.S. and NATO forces remain in Afghanistan.

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http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/04...ghanistan.html

[Jolie Rouge]

Obama widens US Afghan role in final months in office

WASHINGTON — Far from ending the two wars he inherited from the Bush administration, Barack Obama is wrestling with an expanded set of conflicts in the final months of his presidency, from Iraq and Afghanistan to Libya and Syria, with no end in sight. In Afghanistan, where a Taliban resurgence has upset Washington's "exit strategy," Obama is giving the U.S. military wider latitude to support Afghan forces, both in the air and on the ground.

The White House says U.S. forces are not taking on a new mission in Afghanistan but rather will "more proactively support" government forces. That amounts to an acknowledgement that the Afghans need more help than the Pentagon had anticipated last year, and it is a signal to allies not to abandon the U.S.-led coalition. Defense Secretary Ash Carter will be discussing this next week in talks at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

The 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan are scheduled to drop to 5,500 by the end of this year, but the pace of that decline has yet to be decided. One factor in deciding future troop levels is the extent to which NATO allies are willing to remain involved in training and advising the Afghans.

Five years ago this month, in announcing the beginning of his effort to "wind down this war" in Afghanistan, Obama declared that "the tide of war is receding." He had ended the U.S. combat role in Iraq, but since then has gradually expanded a renewed U.S. involvement there against the Islamic State group. He also put U.S. warplanes in the skies over Libya in 2011 in the name of preventing a slaughter of civilians, only to see chaos ensue, and now small teams of U.S. special operations forces have been involved in activities there. Libya, along with Syria and to a lesser extent Afghanistan, became a breeding ground for extremism in a wider conflict against the Islamic State.

The administration says it remains committed to a partnership with Afghanistan to ensure that it does not revert to a haven for al-Qaida or other extremists with global reach, as it was before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In a letter to Obama last week, several former U.S. ambassadors to Kabul and five retired U.S. generals who commanded American troops there urged that the president keep current troop levels through the end of his term, allowing his successor to consider next steps. They argued that Afghanistan remains important to the broader campaign to defeat global terror movements.

"If Afghanistan were to revert to the chaos of the 1990s, millions of refugees would again seek shelter in neighboring countries and overseas, dramatically intensifying the severe challenges already faced in Europe and beyond," they wrote. "Afghanistan is a place where we should wish to consolidate and lock down our provisional progress into something of a more lasting asset."

With U.S. special operations forces already focused on al-Qaida remnants in Afghanistan, the Afghan government says it can handle the Taliban if the U.S. expands its air support. That is at the core of Obama's decision, disclosed Thursday, to authorize U.S. commanders to increase air support and to allow U.S. soldiers to accompany and advise Afghan conventional forces on the ground in the same way they have been assisting Afghan commando forces.

This will make a difference on the battlefield, Carter said Friday, by enabling U.S. commanders to anticipate situations in which U.S. support is needed, rather than to be reactive. He did not mention it, but an illustration of the problem with being reactive is the Taliban's takeover of the northern city of Kunduz last September, which was reversed only after U.S. special operations forces intervened. The intervention, while ultimately successful, led to one of the worst U.S. mistakes of the 15-year war when an AC-130 gunship pummeled a hospital, killing 42 people.

Carter said the changes Obama approved amount to "using the forces we have in a better way, as we go through this fighting season," adding, "It's a good use of the combat power we have there."

Gen. John F. Campbell, who was the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan until March and was among the retired generals who signed last week's letter to Obama, said in an interview Friday that although he had not seen the specifics of the White House decision to expand U.S. military authorities, he welcomed the move. Before Gen. John Nicholson succeeded him in Kabul in March, Campbell urged the administration to grant expanded authorities to assist the Afghans, arguing that they faced an especially difficult fight against the Taliban this summer.

"I had asked for more authorities for the commander on the ground to help the Afghans out, and if this is what that is, I would be all for it," he said. "We have an ally there that we need to continue to support."

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politi...d=ansmsnnews11