Concern Over Afghan War Grows On Capitol Hill After Political, Military Setbacks

Washington Post:

A series of political and military setbacks in Afghanistan has fed anxiety over the war effort in the past few weeks, shaking supporters of President Obama's counterinsurgency strategy and confirming the pessimism of those who had doubts about it from the start.

Read the whole story: Washington Post

Comments

[rsngh1949]

11:46 AM on 07/21/2010

America & UK must identitify who are the agencies(KGB & others) which have gagged up against them so intelligently,which with massive propaganda,concted intelligence have got them trapped in the pointless ,Issueless war & made them bleed heavily to become winner. Without fighting a war with cristians & Muslims.Earlier America & UK move out from Iraq & Afgan, better it is.otherwise Americans will become most hatred Nation in The World.This is what enemy of Islam & Christanity want.Be Winner,Without Fighting a War

[rsngh1949]

11:34 AM on 07/21/2010

Great Deadly Game (Iraq & Afgan War) USA,UK Well Trapped To bleed ,Profously,Heavily
USA & UK ,so far the most mature,with foresight,vision,strategic analysis have been most intelligently,shrewdly,effectively trapped by certain forces into Iraq & Afgan War.Taking advantage of 9/11 tragedy the emotional USA well trapped by massive world vide electronic propaganda, that for safety,2 muslim nations, IRAQ & Afganistan which can not make even a motor cycle,should be occupied.Was it KGB alone or few more agencies of region,which wanted America & UK to bleed, having financed Taliban for Afgan liberation from Russians, ensure Muslim & Christian Conflict.
(a) Bleed America,take revenge for financing Taliban to liberate Afgan from Russian Occupation.
(b) Weeken America & UK economically by trapping them in baseless/pointless War
(c) Influence Afgan & make muslim states fight among themselves avenge Pak suport of Talibans.
(d) Increase own might in region by keeping USA,UK, engaged in useless,issueless,pointless War
(e) Weeken lslamic states by raising boggey of terror, & eliminating leadership of IslamIic States
KGB, & other spy agencies of region made USA,UK fools,mainearlier supporters of Afganistan,Iraq & Pakistan.KGB & other agencies give America,l well concocted,fabricated, manipulated intelligence & played havoc with America & Islamic states in region.America's war expenditure in Iraq & Afganistan is more than total GDP of India.American economy & effort destroyed. Global economic melt down.Even Britishers,got effectively,intelligently so well trapped to bleed.Both religions Christanity & Islam trapped in deadly War.KGB & other agencies are upbeat,successful in their design to put both Christian & Islamic War

[VapeGirl]

09:09 PM on 06/15/2010

Let me ask you this. If we knew that Al Queda were in UK would we invade England? If Al Queda were in France would we invade France? I do not think so!

We should have said, there are terrorist here, the group we call the Al Qaeda that is responsible for 9/11, located within the borders of Afghanistan and working with their local tribe leaders we are in the process of going in and extraditing these individuals out of their country and taking them to a neutral place where they are to be put on trial for committing crimes against humanity.

So this is also what should happen to the people that got us into Iraq and Afghanistan and continue to keep us there. They are criminals and should be treated as such. They had no right to totally invade Afghanistan and disrupt that nation. Same goes for Iraq. It was criminal.

[VapeGirl]

09:14 PM on 06/15/2010

Read my comment below then read the one above. ::sigh:: We are limited in how many words our responses can contain. Huff Post needs to change this.

[VapeGirl]

09:09 PM on 06/15/2010

It is a war we will never win. Osama Bin Laden does not care if he actually wins and holds any land....all he wants to do is to break the US as he did the Soviets. He is succeeding in this. The longer we stay there the further into debt we go. I fear we're trying to fight a conventional type war against ideology and guess what...we're loosing. We're loosing simply because we do not understand that one simple thing. We do not belong there in Afghanistan, we do not belong in Iraq with our armed forces. We invaded these countries under false pretense and our leaders and the immediate people under them that convinced them to do so are to blame.

The people that took us into these(they are not wars, because nobody declared it one), these police actions should be tried for crimes against humanity. Yes I know...shouldn't we be doing the same of the terrorist? Yes...that is the whole point! This is how it should have been handled. As a crime. Not an act of war. It was not an act of war it was a terrible crime that caused mass death and destruction. They people that did these things are not soldiers - not in the least. They are criminals and as such they should be hunted down and captured as such. Instead of going out and saying - "OMG there are Al Queda here invade the whole country!"

[TAIsabel]

06:21 PM on 06/15/2010

Bring back the draft. As long as we have a volunteer army comprised of great amounts of young men and women with no other option than the amrmed forces due to lack of college and job opportunities, there will be no end to this.

[Enroh Mot]

06:38 PM on 06/15/2010

Jessica Lynch said she joined the military because she couldn't get a job at Wal-Mart, as long as they keep undermining public education, raising college fees, and destroying the economy ( just read in today's issue of Counterpunch that home foreclosures are on the rise) a lot of young people are finding being cannon fodder their only option.

[Jannsmoor]

06:47 PM on 06/15/2010

It has been this way for as long as there have been armies.

[Jannsmoor]

07:42 PM on 06/15/2010

I agree with you. I have a feeling of deja vu that dovetails with reading 1984 when I was in high school. As one writer put it "We're always at war in Eastasia."

[Fred Enfield]

05:42 PM on 06/15/2010

They're suddenly "concerned" after political, military setbacks. Someone decided to shoot back and we don't know what to do? What was the point of spending trillions on H-Bombs, Stealth technology, missiles that can't miss, undetectable submarines, blazing fast warships and amazing electronics? We seem to be constantly fighting undeclared wars on someone else's terms where our marvelous technology is useless. We're constantly getting slaughtered in convoys. Have you ever heard of Al Qaeda or the Taliban or drug dealers getting trapped in convoys? The Soviet army prevailed against staggering odds at Stalingrad. Forty or so years later, they were driven out of Afghanistan, a country devoid of space stations. Our technology ( and strategies ) will apparently not save us from degenerating like the Soviets.

[TheRLeePost]

04:58 PM on 06/15/2010

This is what happens when we don't place leaders into leadership positions.

Now, before all the libs go off, Obama is leagues above Bush. However, just being better than Bush, and even far better, doesn't make him a sage. It's not Obama's fault, he's a well intended (I think) guy. It's our fault.

I mean, geesh, what does it take to finally understand that you can't impose a government from outside? We have the recent and still very painful experience of Vietnam to illustrate this.

There is no rational plan in Afghanistan. It is a military exercise resulting from our failure to gauge political risks in the middle east. It continues largely from the same arrogance and ego which polluted the events which spawned it.

This 'concern' is 8 years and 7 months, over 1700 deaths and $277 billion late. That we had to execute a police action in a foreign land was a sad reality of the moment (again, brought about by our own misreadings), but to have then blundered so into another foreign black hole of death, futility and expense is a clear sign that we have NO LEADERSHIP in the country.

-RLee
http;//therleepost.blogspot.com

[Enroh Mot]

05:04 PM on 06/15/2010

In foreign policy we do have leaders, the Pentagon, and their partners the war profiteers.

[VapeGirl]

09:21 PM on 06/15/2010

Because as many countries believe, and rightly so, the American government is Imperialistic. We are in that we cannot stop meddling in other countries when they do not need it! We need to stop this reckless ideal that we can build nations based on our own customs and beliefs. The rest of the world is not the US! They have their own languages, their own customs, their own beliefs. It is time we recognize this.

Our so called leaders are lackeys of corporations and have become merely whores to their whim.

[Enroh Mot]

04:37 PM on 06/15/2010

Zbigniew Brzenski ( father of Mika on Morning Joe) who was President Carters, National Security Adviser, came up with idea of supporting the religious fanatics who were attacking the Afghan government, because they were sending girls to school, and treated women with equality, the idea was to lure the Soviets into a trap, a trap we've now fallen into.

[EHarold]

04:27 PM on 06/15/2010

"California-based geologist Bonita Chamberlin, who spent 25 years exploring the country, is convinced that Afghanistan's vast mineral deposits including oil and natural gas and gemstones could bring the nation great wealth. With Gary Bowersox, Chamberlin co-authored Gemstones of Afghanistan (1995) regarded as the most complete study of Afghanistan's gems and minerals..
Chamberlin told me that she had identified 91 minerals, metals, and gems at 1,407 documented potential mining sites in Afghanistan. These sites also contain solid combustible minerals, metallic and non-metallic minerals, rare metals, radioactive elements, precious metals and gemstones, salt and industrial minerals. Beryllium and uranium are among the minerals in Afghanistan of the greatest strategic value, Chamberlin said.

Chamberlin began surveying Afghanistan in the mid-1970s while working with companies cultivating cotton and grapes. The scope of her work changed during the Soviet invasion when heavy bombing uncovered significant deposits of rubies, sapphires, emeralds and other gemstones. Afghanistan has plentiful mineral wealth due to the collision of the Indian subcontinent with the Asian continent, which trapped and combined chemicals from ancient seas with those from the land under tremendous geologic pressures. This collision "formed minerals that exist in very few places in the world," Chamberlin said. Afghans are only lacking the infrastructure to exploit their nation's mineral wealth, she said. "The people just need the expertise and the direction. When the required infrastructure is developed, Afghans "could rule the world," Chamberlin told the Culver City Rock and Mineral Club in California."

[EHarold]

04:31 PM on 06/15/2010

And this wasn't taken from the latest news article, we've known about the minerals for decades, this latest batch of news is propaganda.

[AmandaBC]

04:34 PM on 06/15/2010

"vast mineral deposits including oil and natural gas and gemstones could bring the nation great wealth"

The nation? I don't think so. Make it US corporations and a bunch of thugs like Karzai, representing the .5% elite that became rich thanks to American bribes.

[Bat Wrangler]

04:16 PM on 06/15/2010

The U.S. military is wearing down. There are many big-ticket weapon systems the Pentagon needs, but cannot afford. Veteran's benefit costs are escalating. As America's GDP is predicted to grow slowly over the next few years, China's continues to soar. By 2040, it is projected that China's GDP may reach $123 trillion, while America's is estimated to reach $40 trillion. That means China, (in theory) will be able to invest many times more in defense as the U.S. America will be forced to engage in an arms race it won't be able to afford (unlike during the Cold War). Add to this the other mounting entitlement costs, and it isn't a pretty picture for the U.S. The Chinese soon will have us right where they want us.

[Moshe]

03:34 PM on 06/15/2010

You can't "win" an occupation.

But you can go broke trying.

Ask the Russians. And they're easy to find: They're the ones laughing their @sses off because the U.S. fell for OBL's Afghanistan trap.

See for yourself:

From OBL's interview with Al-Jazeera:

"We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah," bin Laden said in the transcript.

He said the mujahedeen fighters did the same thing to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, "using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers."

"We, alongside the mujahedeen, bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat," bin Laden said.

He also said al Qaeda has found it "easy for us to provoke and bait this administration."

"All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al Qaeda, in order to make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations," bin Laden said.

[AmandaBC]

04:22 PM on 06/15/2010

"Ask the Russians. And they're easy to find: They're the ones laughing their @sses off because the U.S. fell for OBL's Afghanistan trap."

But but but...Americans are EXCEPTIONAL!! If the Russians or any other foreigner failed, it's just because they are INFERIOR! Russia offered help and know-how for the oil spill. It was turned down by the Obama administration. Just like every other help offered by foreign countries.

[Enroh Mot]

05:40 PM on 06/15/2010

The government says that Khalid Sheik Mohammed was the mastermind behind 9/11, which is probably why they don't want an open trial, google Dancing Mossad, more suspects to thicken the plot.

[TheRLeePost]

05:03 PM on 06/15/2010

Exactly. Thank you.

[alleykat444]

03:23 PM on 06/15/2010

How about if we just leave Afghanistan, they can do what they want with the minerals and we can address the pigeon problem in our cities........

[Enroh Mot]

04:49 PM on 06/15/2010

Release lots of cats on them. that will get rid of the pigeons.

[Jannsmoor]

03:06 PM on 06/15/2010

The right lesson we should have learned from Vietnam: No amount of American blood and treasure can prop up a corrupt government that is not popular with its people.
The wrong lesson we learned from Vietnam: Use an all volunteer army, keep the wars small (but unbelievably expensive), and you can keep the war going for many years.

[WestcoastSteve]

03:03 PM on 06/15/2010

U.S. Discovers Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html

The US isn't pulling out of Afghanistan any time soon. Your sons, daughters, husbands, wives and loved ones in the military are dying to secure oil and strategic minerals that multinational corporations will make billions from.

Research Marine General Smedley Butler, two-time winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor, about his thoughts on what the Army really exists for. Look up 'War is a Racket'.

I heard about General Butler when I was in the Army in the early 80s, and nothing I've seen since has convinced me he was wrong in his assertion that the Army's soldiers are just hired hitmen for corporate interests. Not that the soldiers believe that. They act out of loyalty to their country, but their efforts, like any other worker in modern day America, are exploited to make the ultra-rich even richer.

So they'll continue to die, and America will stay in Afghanistan as long as there are prospects for profits.

[KevinFitzz]

02:48 PM on 06/15/2010

get out. now.

[alleykat444]

03:24 PM on 06/15/2010

I agree and faved because or your cat face.