George's Bottom Line:
George Will sparked a debate with Defense Secretary Gates this week with his call to pull out of Afghanistan, first on 'This Week' then in the Washington Post.
Derrick Crowe: War Gone Wild in Afghanistan
After more than 800 U.S. military casualties, tens of thousands of Afghan civilian deaths and $228 billion, we have zero indications that Pashtuns in Afghanistan are any closer to giving their support to the Kabul government.
Lorelei Kelly: Is "Escalation" the Right Word?
Seeking an alternative to the word "escalation" to describe U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, I asked deployed or recently back friends and they each offered a different answer.
George F. Will - Time for the U.S. to Get Out of Afghanistan - washingtonpost.co...
George Will Takes on NeoCons on Afghanistan - George's Bottom Line
George F. Will - Time for the U.S. to Get Out of Afghanistan - washingtonpost.co...
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The analysis of George Will is excellent. We have lost our sight in Iraq and Afghanistan. First we were hunting for OBL in Iraq and then in Afghanistan and then in Pakistan. That was Bush's strategy. Now OBL is not the target. He is forgotten. We have an important agenda at home-- health care. Let's concentrate in domestic affairs and keep people happy. When people are happy then they will give public referendum for peace. When people are unhappy the military industrial complex have their say to pursue war and government (any government, republican or democrat) will oblige.
Mr. Obama will win the 2012 election if he withdraws honorably from Afghanista
I am sorry to see the vicious GOP attack machine at work. They have used this effective technique to weaken Mr. Obama's initiatives at home and abroad. It is better to listen to some pundits and calculated voices like that of George Will, for goodness sakes.
During the Presidency of George Bush, it was high crime, or at least, unpatriotic to question the President's decisons regarding wars; the very existence of America depended on not cutting and running.
Having said that, I am a staunch supporter of Obama, and I just cannot rationalize the escalation of the war in Afganistan. Does Obama think he can win?
Obama was selected by the Wall Street/Legal establishment! Follow the campaign money and weep.
George Will is now to the left of President Obama!
and so is Atilla the Hun! isn't change wonderful?
Whoa! Dont' get too excited. Remember that Patrick Buchanan was an opponent of war on Iraq from the start.
Knowledgeable people say that Bin Laden is hiding out in our friend Pakistan's country so fighting in Afghanistan is not unlike invading Iraq because the 9/11 bombers came out of Saudi Arabia. I think we should leave Afghanistan to its own destiny, like the Russian and English figured out after spending a lot of blood and treasure there.
If we want Bin Laden--isn't that our objective?--than we should help our Pakastani friends, to whom we give a lot of money, help find him. Afghanistan is a loser for everyone except the military-industrial complex. But since they run the show, I expect we'll be in Afghanistan for a long time to come.
This is not about the neo-cons,this is Obamas' war! Stop the escalation now!
Regardless of whether you're for continuing the Afghanista
Notice he uttered not a peep about how Afghanistan was being basically ignored by the Bush administration during the run-up and invasion/occupation of Iraq. Where were George Will's concerns then? Nonexistant, or cynically kept quiet to not hurt his beloved leader and conservative agenda.
Citing George Will as a reliable source of wisdom on anything only undercuts your own stance. We don't NEED his backing. And quite frankly, any opinion he argues for that agrees with my own position would make me stop and re-evaluate my opinion to make sure I wasn't missing something. I may not change it, but I sure as hell would give it a strong and objective reanalysis. His judgement is that bad.
GEE! Can't you take "YES" for an answer. Will is one of the most knowledgeable pundits, serious, thoughtful and not of the "Scream to cover your ignorance" breed we see on Cable News.
Give Afghanistan back to Russia. Colonial powers can swap countries like pawns. It is their back yard. This time we promise to not fund insurgents or train Taliban to fight them.
George Will is a pathological liar who is wrong on everything. I don't give a dam what he says. He is a snake.
So I guess you support this useless Afg war?
When Bush sent soldiers to Afghanistan, George had no problems with it. Now that Obama proposed sending more troops to try to win the war, George want's out. That's the snake part.
Good point. Individuals on this board can spend hours debating the past and debating who did what to whom. All of that debate of "the past" will not change our current situation in Afghanistan. It is this current administration that must come up with current situations for the situation that they are now in. We need to get out and take care of our own business. Helping others in another way.
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For 7 years, the Republicans AND Democrats stayed positively SILENT on GWB's handling (mishandling is the better word) of the "War On Terror" in Afghanistan! There was not ONE PEEP from either the right OR left on what became known as the "Forgotten War"!!!
Now, SUDDENLY, after less than 8 months Obama takes office, George Will "gets religion" and discovers that Afghanistan is another "black hole" and there is no reason for us to be there!!!!
How come he didn't discover this 7 years ago??????
It's a trick.
George Will is fully aware that Afghanistan is crucial pipeline territory, and that that is the ONLY reason we are there.
It is the ONLY reason President Obama has not argued for a total pull out.
They are going to force the President to defend keeping troops in Afghanistan which will splinter the support of the Left.
The President's only out is to admit that Iraq and Afghanistan were all about oil and gas from the start.
It's going to be interesting to see how all this works out.
Could be devastating, but I'm hoping it backfires.
I remember when the Conservatives finally started abandoning ship on the Vietnam war.. My father was one of them.
It was a slow process. Many just kept their mouths shut and quit actively SUPPORTING the war.
A few, like Will, wanted us to believe they'd opposed it for a long time.
It STILL took 5 years to get American troops out of that quagmire.
Eric Altermann did a book profiling various personalities on the Right. Will's profile was very interesting. Always wanting to have access to the White House, he insulted George H.W.Bush with the "lap dog" comment and later tried to make nice. Throw in the story about him cheating on his wife and you have another hypocritical conservative gadfly.
Update for Knee Jerk Liberals.
Based on many responses over this article, I felt it necessary to update the liberals on conservative thought 3 years ago on Iraq.
The Iraq war threatens to split the conservative movement. Isolationist conservative commentators, such as Pat Buchanan and Robert Novak, have opposed the war from the beginning. This is not surprising since they have fiercely objected to almost every American military intervention since the end of the Cold War. It is more troubling, however, that conservatives such as William F. Buckley and George Will are now turning against our continued presence in Iraq.
Since the 1950s, conservatives have been defined by their muscular approach to foreign affairs; especially, their willingness to project U.S. military power to advance American interests and ideals. Most conservatives still support the Iraq war, but the voice of dissent is growing. “One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed,” Mr. Buckley wrote earlier this year.
Another key conservative, Mr. Will, believes that President Bush’s democracy project is a form of quixotic neo-Wilsonianism: republican institutions, he maintains, are unable to take root in the blistering sands of the Middle East. These views are echoed by former neoconservative Francis Fukuyama, author of “The End of History.” These “realist” conservatives argue the U.S. mission in Iraq is doomed to fail because the country does not possess the pre-existing legal culture and political institutions necessary to build a stable, functioning democracy.
Ron Paul is the best anti war advocate out there.
True, RP is the most consistent anti-war politician, but maybe not the best anti-war advocate because the way the politco/media consortium has pigeionholed him.
Anyone so out of touch as Paul can only be right by mistake.
He is an anti-war advocate out of pure selfish greed.
Conservatives are defined by lying and hate. Some ideas are conservative and make sense. However there is not such thing as a conservative in the real world. Conservatives in the real world use a label to hide their shilling corporatist ways.
this post makes absolutely no sense.
I do not understand all the haters here on HP.
George Will, for whatever reason, has changed his mind and now sees the futility of Afg. For years we condemned GBoosh for never admitting or learning from his mistakes. Now GWill has.
Whatever the reason, GWill is now for getting out of the Afg quagmire. We should be happy that it is one more (powerful against the neocons) voice to get our soldiers home.
Now all we have to do in convince Obama.
You can't cheer for a war, and then run away once your previous theories have been shown to be full of fluff. See, we liberals remember what people did in the past, and believe in holding them accountable for their actions and speech. George Will wanted a war, and he got one. Now that he was wrong about how easy it would be and how welcome we would be, he wants to pull out.
You mean the way Walter Cronkite supported the Vietnam war before 68?
Does anyone here care one iota what G Will thinks?
Why on earth must we comb-over the facts?!!!
Oh, George. You loved the war for well-nigh a decade, now you don't.
Comb-overs are funny in the wind.
Interesting that the vast majority of liberals on these posts don't bother to even do 15 or 20 seconds of research before blathering about. George Will has been skeptical and critical of these wars since their inception. He is a lot of things, but he is definitely not a neo con.
George Will 3 years ago on This Week
Conservative columnist George Will this morning on ABC’s This Week:
STEPHANOPOULOS: What does civil war look like?
WILL: This. This is a civil war.
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First Posted: 09- 6-09 11:43 AM | Updated: 09- 6-09 11:47 AM