New York Times:
As Americans, including President Obama's top advisers, tensely debate whether to send more American troops to Afghanistan, Afghans themselves are having a similar discussion and voicing serious doubts.
Malou Innocent: Obama's (In)Decision on Afghanistan
According to CBS News, President Barack Obama will send most, if not all, of the 40,000 additional troops that General Stanley McChrystal requested and reportedly...
Joseph A. Palermo: The "Goldilocks Principle" and Afghan War Options
General McChrystal's recommendation for more troops and material has a distinctly Westmorelandian flavor to it. If approved, it could create an additional $40 to$80 billion per annum in war costs.
Robert Kuttner: The Audacity to Change
Obama, like Kennedy, needs to overcome the dubious counsel of his own advisers, this time both economic and military. The president needs to listen to other voices, including his own.
Hidden behind the gates of military bases across the U.S., troops facing AWOL and desertion charges regularly find themselves in the hands of a military that metes out informal, open-ended punishments.
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Gotta go. Everybody enjoy the day, it's beautiful here in the Midwest.
Peace
I love your av.! ;-))
Catch you later!
MNmommy I'm a Fan of MNmommy 337 fans permalink
"He" didn't increase troop levels.
The troops that went over were ordered by the Shrub.
I realize that the finer points and details and facts can get y'all confused.
Well MNmommy I see reading is not a priority for you. Feel free to post a retraction at your convenience.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Barack Obama has approved a significant troop increase for Afghanistan, Pentagon officials said Tuesday.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/17/obama.troops/index.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/17/AR2009021702411.html
"Months ago, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David D. McKiernan, requested more than 30,000 additional troops this year, and an initial 6,000 arrived last month under orders signed by the Bush administration. But a senior White House official said that no other deployment decisions will be made until the Obama administration completes a strategic review of the Afghan war in late March."
A strong communist movement was able to take control of Afghanistan in 1978. From that point on, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia (the two future supporters of the Taliban government in Afghanistan), and the US, in order to bring down this communist government, began stirring up feudal era social tendencies, which were especially prominent in the countryside. As the new government attempted to move the Afghan people into the modern era, reactionary and backward looking forces, supported by their similarly conservative allies, held on to the past.
The new government and its Soviet allies had to fight against a local version of Afghan Tea-Baggers and survivalists. For several years, in spite of what many Americans think, the Afghan people supported their modern government. Alas, this power by the people was brought down with help of American military hardware, used so successfully in killing Afghan and Soviet military personnel. All of the investments in roads, schools and various other components of infrastructure were destroyed or left to rot. Social reforms, such as education for women, measures to erase ethnic discrimination, and land redistribution were all reversed by the reactionary forces that brought down the modern government.
Now, at the same time Americans are recognizing the corrosive and rotten nature of their own economic system, chickens are coming home to roost, from all those American poultry farms distributed across the globe.
EXCELLENT post.
Thank you.
Congratulations for laying out the recent history of this tragic land.
Some people have VERY short memories.
Fanned & Faved.
Fanned.
Have a cigar.
OT
Is it just me - or has the "Refresh" bar (usually appears when a lot of new posts have been added to the thread),disappeared from anyone else's screen?
It is gone from mine as well. I think they are messing with software update again
ex-Microsoft Vista programmers hard at work.....
Yes
If only them Taliban fellas would dress in nice, bright-red tunics (and not dress like the locals); and all line up - in a row; and stand still; and not run from one ".....STAN", to another; or hide in caves; or move among the 35,000 villages in A/STAN - this job would be a doddle!
Folks - there is NO WINNING this one.
I truly hope President Obama begins to scale down operations, as quickly as it is safe to do so, and bring the troops home.
So, let's say your country is involved in not one, not two, but three quaagmires that offer no easy way out.
(I mean, as much as I want the troops sent home from each of these lands, I know that this is only an ever so slightly lesser of an eevil compared to staying, and that a great deal of misery awaits the poor people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, on top of the awful misery they have already endured.)
The awful outcomes that await the US no matter what it chooses to do (times three) would probably convince most saine and reasonable people that more elective waar and aggression isn't the answer. Sadly, I don't think that avoiding painful quaagmires will ever be the lesson learned by the waarmongering right.
Yup, it's always easy to start a fight, not so easy ending them and this is true in any situations
Good post, DM.
This is just a whole nest of "weevils" - and the sooner it ends, the better.
The longer the wars continue, the more the locals are going to suffer anyway.
End the wars.
Nor will that lesson ever HAVE to be learned, if they can keep dumping the consequences of their decisions off as someone else's responsibility to resolve, and then mounting a campaign against the way that the new recipient is handling it, ala "you missed a spot over there."
So, let's say your country is involved in not one, not two, but three quagmires that offer no easy way out. (I mean, as much as I want the troops sent home from each of these foreign lands, I know that this is only an ever so slightly lesser of an evil, and that a great deal of misery awaits the poor people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, on top of the awful misery they have already endured, much of it at the hands of any American military, that while having the good intentions of the voters back home, do more harm than good.)
The awful outcomes no matter what the US "chooses" to do (times three) would probably convince most sane and reasonable people that more elective war and aggression isn't the answer.
Sadly, I don't think that avoiding painful quagmires will ever be the lesson learned by the warmongering right.
Is the "warmongering right", the same guys who always want to take the others guys stuff?
Whatever policy Obama decides on I'm sure it will be more intelligent than "Muddle Through".
After all, he sure nailed the problems we'd face in Iraq before the unnecessary war even took began.
New main on health care.
Thanks CA
another boondoggle promoted by the libs
willt7311 I'm a Fan of willt7311 I'm a fan of this user 103 fans permali
Telling stories again? How do you know how it would have turned out?
It would have turned out differently beyond doubt. If he had put 150,000 troops in Afghan. and kept after OBL till he got him it would have been different. They went for the oil and lost the whole deal.
Look Kewl, this argument is a waste of time.
We might end up agreeing on what the outcome would have been but that means nothing. It will just be our opinion on what could have been.
We might feel allot better if we got OBL but know one thinks that would be the end of it. As long as we are seen as occupiers we will be breeding more terrorists. Also I think the oil WAS the whole deal all along.
Good morning
Morning fellow night owl
And a top of the day to you, lady.
Yes indeed. I enjoyed the poetry immensely. How's it going?
goedemorgen
Goede middag!!
Good morning.
Good morning, k dub.
Did the president decide too quickly on Afghanistan when he first took office?
I don't have any of the "insider" information that would allow me to answer that question.
Spoken like a true bot.
But you said he's not decided yet.
Which is it?
No, he hasn't decided on implementing this new strategy.
He decided to go with the strategy when he appointed McChrystal.
If you remember, he had already decided on the campaign trail......
How many times do you have to be told, it's an evolving situation that is looking increasingly futile. You should be glad we don't have a president who sticks to rigid ideology in the face of evidence to the contrary.
In just 3 months?
PHOENIX -- President Barack Obama told military service members Monday that the war in Afghanistan was a "war of necessity" and that the U.S. would adhere to its timetable to withdraw troops from Iraq by the end of 2011.
"By moving forward in Iraq, we're able to refocus on the war against al Qaeda and its extremist allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan," Mr. Obama told 5,500 members, families and guests of the Veterans of Foreign Wars at their annual convention here. "That is why I announced a new, comprehensive strategy in March," the president told the welcoming but subdued crowd.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125054391631638123.html
Changing quickly hey?
What is different there now then 6 months ago?
This is PART TWO of my earlier post. To continue: If we can begin to focus from the outer to the inner, from the apparent to the subtle (a nod to C. Naranjo), and awaken to the fact (in my opinion) that we are ALL truly connected with each other and all that is, we can become the solution instead of being the cause of our MUTUAL predicament I see going on all around us. If we choose ( yes, we DO have a choice!), NOT to get a little rationality here and NOW, and get our act TOGETHER, then all I'm left with is this little gem of a metaphor: Nature bats last! So, for the sake of our grandchildren, please, at least pause for a moment and give it a thought. Thank you. In peace.
This sounds good but it aint real. SarahGlenn aint me and I aint them. We are NOT all together.
It's as REAL as it gets, my friend. We ARE connected even when we are at odds with each other. Don't you get that? WE need to quit being drunk on our illusions and work this crises out TOGETHER, or we ALL go down TOGETHER. Doesn't THAT make us connected? Hello?
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Barack Obama has approved a significant troop increase for Afghanistan, Pentagon officials said Tuesday.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/17/obama.troops/index.html
And in August, just 3 months ago ---
PHOENIX -- President Barack Obama told military service members Monday that the war in Afghanistan was a "war of necessity" and that the U.S. would adhere to its timetable to withdraw troops from Iraq by the end of 2011.
"By moving forward in Iraq, we're able to refocus on the war against al Qaeda and its extremist allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan," Mr. Obama told 5,500 members, families and guests of the Veterans of Foreign Wars at their annual convention here. "That is why I announced a new, comprehensive strategy in March," the president told the welcoming but subdued crowd.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125054391631638123.html
Bush failed in Afghanistan because he was in such a hurry to git into Iraq and grab the oil. End of story.
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First Posted: 11- 6-09 10:42 PM | Updated: 11- 7-09 12:07 AM