The Pentagon is working the press again, this time in support of a so-called withdrawal plan that would break a promise made to the American people by their president. According to The Wall Street Journal:
"U.S. military officers in Afghanistan have drawn up preliminary proposals to withdraw as many as 5,000 troops from the country in July and as many as 5,000 more by the year's end..."
This joke of a "withdrawal" plan isn't anything remotely approaching a real drawdown. It's less than a 10 percent reduction in U.S. forces in Afghanistan over 6 months. It puts the Pentagon squarely at odds both with the stated desires of the White House and the very clearly articulated will of the American people. If you agree, sign Rethink Afghanistan's petition to get the troops out of Afghanistan.
First, let's remember what the White House said on this:
"After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home....[O]ur troop commitment in Afghanistan cannot be open-ended -- because the nation that I'm most interested in building is our own."--President Barack Obama, Dec. 1, 2009.
"I'm confident that the withdrawal will be significant. People will say this is a real process of transition; this is not just a token gesture."--President Barack Obama, April 15, 2011.
"In July of 2011, you're going to see a whole lot of people moving out, bet on it."--Vice President Joe Biden, qtd. in Jonathan Alter's The Promise.
The American people are and have been crystal-clear about their expectations for a drawdown for months now.
These are not ambiguous numbers. Heading into a presidential election season, likely voters and Americans in general are telling pollsters and their elected representatives that they expect a real troop withdrawal, with most of them wanting troops out within a year. The Pentagon's draft plan isn't remotely in the ballpark of what the American people want.
Bringing home 5,000 people in July and maybe another 5,000 people by the end of the year is an insignificant, token withdrawal from a force of well over 100,000 U.S. forces in Afghanistan. It's less than a 10 percent adjustment of the American personnel on the ground. The Pentagon is telling the White House and the American people to take a hike.
Osama Bin Laden is dead. Al Qaeda has been driven from Afghanistan. The last plausible excuse for keeping troops in Afghanistan is gone. Yet, the military continues to fight a counterinsurgency campaign with tens of thousands of U.S. troops, a campaign that's failed to blunt the ever-growing level of insurgent attacks across Afghanistan. Civilian casualties are at an all-time high. Troop injuries and acute stress are at an all-time high in the war. Costs are at an all-time high. There's no rational reason left to continue this farce.
The Pentagon's token troop adjustment would break a promise made to the American people by their president, and it would blatantly flout the will of the voters. The "plan" is laughable and should be rejected by the White House. President Obama and Congress must demand a real plan to get the troops home as swiftly and safely as possible.
If you're fed up with this war that's not making us safer and that's not worth the costs, sign our petition to get troops home.
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Let Afghans decide their own futures and governments. All we have to do is help them fight their cockroaches. Let us escalate the troop turnover, they already know how to fight. We need this breather to develop better ways to help friends and fight terrorists.
Naively, the Left thinks Bin Laden's demise means the war can draw down. The Pentagon- true to their rule of "reinforcing success"- will expand it. It remains clear that the Muslim states have to be extensively manipulated to be benign to America.
In war, truth is the first casualty. ~Aeschylus
And, if there is a civil war, why should we be the self-declared referee? Why should we even care about them fighting a bloody civil war? We had one and it set some of the slaves free and preserved the Union. Maybe a civil war is the only way Afghanistan will find its true identity. Maybe brother David Petreus can stitch together an agreement between the Taliban and Kabul that will help us draw down. But, win , lose, or draw we must start to take big steps to leave that forlorn place. Please read: Afghanistan: "A military history from Alexander the Great to the war against the Taliban" by Stephen Tanner. That book will open your eyes.
Bottomline of reality! You can't kill every Afgani. One can simply pass on the art of bomb making at their leisure. We need t refocus how we use our resources.
Who knows who really on the pro demo afgani gov't... given so much corruption. Fine, leave a security force to support the govt. but bring and redeploy troops to ports of interests and security risk to inspect cargo(could put more on mexico boarder). Simplicity: any and all suspect shipments of unknow origin checked. Terrorists are coming either by boat, plane or walk across out boarder....if not already here! They don't have the tech skills to fire no missle. So concentrate efforts at those areas.
The Afghanistan withdrawal? Probably something just as ridiculous.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWJzd6jWR5M&feature=related