{"id":3885,"date":"2010-02-13T17:54:12","date_gmt":"2010-02-13T22:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=3885"},"modified":"2010-02-13T18:03:31","modified_gmt":"2010-02-13T23:03:31","slug":"occasionally-win-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2010\/02\/13\/occasionally-win-one\/","title":{"rendered":"occasionally win one…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Troops Take Positions in Taliban Haven
New York Times<\/strong>
By DEXTER FILKINS
February 13, 2010<\/div>\n

<\/a>\"Invading<\/a>KABUL, Afghanistan — American, Afghan and British troops seized crucial positions across the Taliban stronghold of Marja on Saturday, encountering intense but sporadic fighting as they began the treacherous ordeal of house-to-house searches. More than 6,000 American, Afghan and British troops came in fast early on Saturday, overwhelming most immediate resistance. But as the troops began to fan out on searches, fighting with Taliban insurgents grew in frequency and intensity across a wide area. The pattern suggested that the hardest fighting lay in the days to come. <\/p>\n

One American and one British Marine were reported killed by small-arms fire, but none from the Afghan Army, whose soldiers make up the majority of those in the fight. Three American soldiers were killed and seven wounded when they were attacked by a suicide bomber on a motorcycle during a foot patrol in neighboring Kandahar Province. A second British soldier was killed by a homemade bomb in southern Afghanistan in a blast unrelated to the operation in Marja. NATO officials said that no civilian casualties had been reported. In the chaos, the claim was impossible to verify. <\/p>\n

American commanders said the troops had achieved every first-day objective. That included advancing into the city itself and seizing intersections, government buildings and one of the city’s main bazaars in the center of town…<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
While I’m no fan of wars, if we’re going to fight them, it might be nice to occasionally win one. As I understand it, this offensive has a dual objective. It’s a Taliban stronghold. In addition, it’s the world center for the Poppy\/Heroin trade. Success shuts down the Heroin business, the main financial resource for the Taliban. Since we’ve been there for over seven years, it seems like it might have occurred to someone to go after the area before – but better late than never. This is the first General McCrytstal offensive in what I think of as Obama’s Surge<\/em>. Afghanistan is actually our legitijmate, "legal" war against the fundamentalist Taliban, sponsors of Bin Laden’s al Qaeda. The whole point of this Middle East jaunt was to do something meaningful about the 9\/11 attack on New York, about al Qaeda. Somewhere early on, we got lost – maybe, more to the point, took a very wrong turn. Hopefully, this offensive against the Taliban is a step in the right direction. Anyone notice that our military has seemed more like its old self since Donald Rumsfeld left the scene? Bush was kind of dull. Cheney  was devious. But Rumsfeld was worse than incompetent, he insisted on spreading his incompetence all over the Pentagon. Like I said, I’m no fan of wars, but if we’re going to fight them, it might be nice to occasionally win one. Maybe we’re finally getting around to doing that…<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Troops Take Positions in Taliban Haven New York Times By DEXTER FILKINS February 13, 2010 KABUL, Afghanistan — American, Afghan and British troops seized crucial positions across the Taliban stronghold of Marja on Saturday, encountering intense but sporadic fighting as they began the treacherous ordeal of house-to-house searches. More than 6,000 American, Afghan and British […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3885\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}