Following up Matthew Hoh's resignation letter of a couple weeks ago comes this missive from William Polk who, like Hoh, finds the only prudent course of action regarding Afghanistan to be a timely removal of foreign (i.e., US and NATO) troops. If you don't know why the "tribal areas" on the Pak-Afghan border are so notoriously hard for the Pakistanis to govern, if you wonder why the people in the Afghan countryside don't automatically see us as their friends and liberators, if you think this is the first time somebody has tried to modernize/westernize/democratize/liberalize Afghanistan, this letter is timely and important reading.
The President Obama many of us voted for would, we imagined, have been the kind of guy to seek out this, and Matthew Hoh's, viewpoint before deciding on a new strategy. The President Obama we got leaked (or opponents inside the White House did) weeks ago that a troop pullout was off the table.
I blame the table.
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Nick Turse: As Washington Talks Iraq Withdrawal, the Pentagon Builds Up Bases in the Region
Washington is sending tremendous amounts of military material into autocratic Middle Eastern nations and building-up bases in countries whose governments often prefer that no publicity be given to the growing American military "footprint."
