Barack's Not So Excellent Adventure
Some depressing but utterly predictable news today from the Washington Post:
"On Thursday, during a visit to NATO headquarters here, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal admitted that preparations for perhaps the most critical operation of the war -- the campaign to take control of Kandahar, the Taliban's birthplace -- weren't going as planned. He said winning support from local leaders, some of whom see the Taliban fighters not as oppressors but as their Muslim brothers, was proving tougher than expected. The military side of the campaign, originally scheduled to surge in June and finish by August, is now likely to extend into the fall."
The involvement in this war is going to prove to be one of the most phenomenal mistakes that the weak Obama has made as President.
As is usual with this sort of thing, the irresponsible hippies that make up the left in this country insisted correctly all along that Bush and Cheney had totally destroyed any American chance of a successful outcome to the Afghanistan military action, and Obama should have said so as soon as he took office, and pulled out. Instead, he caved to pressure from Republicans and "responsible" (i.e. always wrong) pundits, and permanently signed on to this doomed war.
One more time he has been suckered by the Republican party into collaborating with their phony "bipartisan" behavior. He was afraid of being savaged by the Republicans for not continuing this useless, violent folly. Well, wait, Barack, until you see how you are going to be savaged by history for not ending it.
"On Thursday, during a visit to NATO headquarters here, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal admitted that preparations for perhaps the most critical operation of the war -- the campaign to take control of Kandahar, the Taliban's birthplace -- weren't going as planned. He said winning support from local leaders, some of whom see the Taliban fighters not as oppressors but as their Muslim brothers, was proving tougher than expected. The military side of the campaign, originally scheduled to surge in June and finish by August, is now likely to extend into the fall."
The involvement in this war is going to prove to be one of the most phenomenal mistakes that the weak Obama has made as President.
As is usual with this sort of thing, the irresponsible hippies that make up the left in this country insisted correctly all along that Bush and Cheney had totally destroyed any American chance of a successful outcome to the Afghanistan military action, and Obama should have said so as soon as he took office, and pulled out. Instead, he caved to pressure from Republicans and "responsible" (i.e. always wrong) pundits, and permanently signed on to this doomed war.
One more time he has been suckered by the Republican party into collaborating with their phony "bipartisan" behavior. He was afraid of being savaged by the Republicans for not continuing this useless, violent folly. Well, wait, Barack, until you see how you are going to be savaged by history for not ending it.
Comments
In the late 70s the government of Afghanistan declared women equal and free citizens to enjoy all the same rights as men. Unfortunately for them the government was also Marxist - this judged by Reagan and co to be a worse sin than brutal fundamentalist repression. Afghanistan is a long term collateral victim of Cold War politics. After setting the Russians up for their Vietnam, the West abandoned the place to savages.
Question we need to ask is if we can stomach our people getting killed fighting there (two more Australians lost just the other day) less or more than we can stomach the Taliban returning to crush whatever spark of humanity remains, all over again.
I look at the pictures of Afghan children, and unveiled girls who might reach adulthood before being forced to marry a man they do not know... and I don't see how I could walk away.
I would agree with that, if it didn't seem that despite our hundreds of billions of dollars of useless expense, the Taliban is returning whether we like it or not.
Maybe if Bush hadn't turned Afghanistan over to the ex-Union oil executive Karzai, things might have been different.