"Obsession" isn't just "a fragrance for men." According to our Commander-in-Chief, "obsession" now also characterizes the widespread interest in the timeline for bringing home 100,000 American boys and girls safely from Afghanistan so they can grow old with their sweethearts and lead economically productive lives, rather than becoming Pentagon statistics or lifelong burdens on their family members and the public purse.
President Obama said there's "a lot of obsession" about the withdrawal date for U.S. troops from Afghanistan, the AP reported Sunday.
This "obsession" has so afflicted the body politic that Thursday night, three-fifths of the Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives voted for an amendment on the war supplemental that not only tried to lock in the July 2011 timetable for the beginning of the drawdown that President Obama promised last year, but also would have required the president to establish a timetable for the completion of the drawdown.
Are some of us "obsessed" with a withdrawal timetable for U.S. forces from Afghanistan? Damn straight we are. Advocacy of a withdrawal timetable is the principal means by which Americans outside of the military can act politically to protect the lives of our fellow citizens who are being deployed. Every day by which we can shorten the war is a day on which our fellow citizens won't have the opportunity to be blown up in Afghanistan.
And as for the people of Afghanistan, the withdrawal timetable is our ticket to freedom from having the same relationship with Pashtun residents of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan as the Israeli army has with Palestinian residents of Hebron in the southern West Bank. The withdrawal timetable is the little patch of blue that we prisoners call the sky.
The group of Americans afflicted by this "obsession" is surely going to continue to grow in numbers and influence. The 162 who voted for a timetable for withdrawal yesterday represented almost a 20% increase over those who voted for an exit strategy last June. The three-fifths of the Democratic caucus in the House who voted for a timetable for withdrawal yesterday featured many members of the Democratic leadership, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who usually doesn't vote on the floor (her statement backing her vote for the amendment is here), David Obey, chair of Appropriations, who co-sponsored the amendment; John Larson, chair of the Democratic Caucus; Chris Van Hollen, assistant to the Speaker; George Miller, chair of Education and Labor; Barney Frank, chair of Financial Services; and Henry Waxman, chair of Energy and Commerce.
And crucially, important Democratic players have begun to violate the Washington consensus that pretended that war spending had nothing to do with unmet domestic needs. David Obey tied funding for teacher's jobs to the war supplemental, and labor unions, by insisting on money for teachers in the House bill, have helped to jam up Congressional approval of the war money. MoveOn called out House Republican leader John Boehner for suggesting that we should cut Social Security benefits -- including raising the normal retirement age to 70 -- while saying no limit can be placed on war spending. And Speaker Pelosi told the Huffington Post:
It just can't be that we have a domestic agenda that is half the size of the defense budget... in terms of the war now in Afghanistan, which is a growing part of it... we have to say how can we carry this and can we carry this on the backs of children's nutrition.
Once the artificial wall between consideration of war spending and consideration of domestic spending is thoroughly breached, every Republican, Wall Street and corporate Democratic attack on Social Security and on spending to support domestic employment under the guise of "deficit reduction" is likely to provoke a counterattack from important Democratic players on war spending and the Pentagon budget. That's going to drive even more Democrats and Independents into the "timetable for withdrawal" camp.
Time is running out on the Obama administration's ability to maintain politically a large-scale deployment of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Even solely from the point of view of its own narrow self-interest, the administration should get busy pursuing serious peace talks with the Afghan Taliban, because there's no reason to expect that the administration's leverage in the future will be any greater than its leverage today.
Follow Robert Naiman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/naiman
William Bradley: The Afghan War and the Spirit of Jefferson
On this 4th of July weekend, with General Petraeus taking command in Afghanistan, what would Thomas Jefferson do? Would he see the massive military and nation building mission in Afghanistan as a wise and necessary course of action?
The imperatives of imperial geostrategy are: prevent collusion, maintain security dependence among the vassals, keep tributaries pliant and protected, and keep the barbarians from coming together."
"The United States may have to cope with regional coalitions that seek to push America out of Eurasia, threatening America's status as a global power."
"Uzbekistan, represents the major obstacle to renewed Russian control over the region. Its independence is critical to the survival of the other Central Asian states, it is the least vulnerable to Russian pressures."
The Central Asian Republics are of importance from the standpoint of security to three of their most immediate and more powerful neighbors, namely Russia, Turkey and Iran, with China also signaling an increasing political interest in the region. But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold."
The Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea."
"Uzbekistan is, in fact, the prime candidate for regional leadership in Central Asia."
"Once pipelines to the area have been developed, Turkmenistan's truly vast natural gas reserves augur a prosperous future for the country's people."
Face it folks, you've been swindled. we haven't spent $281 B and thousand of lives to stop Al Qaeda (who are active in a half dozen other countries), or to free the Afghan people from the tyranny of the Taliban (50 other countries who are suffering just a badly).
We're their to build a pipeline that may be needed to go around Iran to feed into Pakistan and India.
Of course we won't need that pipeline if we bomb Iran.
Either way we're their put money in corporate pockets.
and we should no longer trust anyone who preaches otherwise.
No wonder the clowns on thsi site are openly disparaged by everyone.
President Obama and his team sat down, looked at all the information, weighed the pros and cons of every plausible situation, recieved additional input from other parties with stakes in the eventual conclusion, and made the best decision that they believed would work.
The "surge" troops, from what I've read, are just arriving in Afghanistan to fulfill the President's plan. Why not give it a chance to work before deriding it as a failure?
Tell me something I don't know. Still, the reality is, President Obama and his team looked at all of the evidence and advise and made a decision. As a person who supported him during the campaign and voted for him in the Democratic primary and general election I trust his judgement and am willing to give his plan a chance to work.
You may not have the faith in President Obama that I, and the many folks who supported him, do, and that's your right as an American. All I'm saying is you should give him a little faith.
The endgame will likely come from a negotiated peace between the northern-backed Karzai government and the southern indigenous Taliban. If folks are in a hurry to get to that end, the environment where the Taliban would be open to negotiate a peace needs to be created.
And, frankly, as long as the hardline Taliban, which allowed Al Quaeda to have free roam in the country when they were in power, controls chunks of the southern region of the country and honestly thinks they have a chance at winning, they won't be in any mood to negotiate a peace, especially if it would mandate that they not give sanctuary to Al Quaeda.
The corrupt Democrats escalate the war.
Both the Democrats and Republicans are corrupt to the core... equally.
The battle in not between Democrats and Republicans.
The battle is between the American people and our entire corrupt government.
we have been fighting these wars for the last 9 years with a cost of over a trillion dollars. yet the only thing we have to show for it is a soaring national debt.
republicans and democrats alike have no problem giving the people of iraq socialized medicine at the expense of the american taxpayer. yet they will do only minor twiks to our high cost low quality health care.
republicans and democrats alike have no problem giving the people of iraq the money to develop state of art infrastructure. yet ours is falling apart and their is no money to fix them.
republicans and democrats alike have no problem building state of the art hospitals in afganistan yet will do nothing to give the people of the good ole us of a first rate health care.
republicans and democrats alike have no problem building first rate schools in afganistan yet slash the education budget in the good ole us of a.
"when the truth is found to be lies"
jefferson airplane
You can fool all the people some of the time. You can fool some of the people all of the time and those people are my audience.
Glenn Beck staff meeting April 3, 2009
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30872349/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/
It is not a "neo-con" position to face the fact that if the U.S. pulls out prematurely, based on a "negotiated" settlement, the Taliban will immediately break any and all agreements, and then easily overrun the Afghan forces. Al-Qaida will be back in Jalalabad as quickly as they can cross the non-existent "border" from Pakistan. There will be a revenge bloodbath against Afghan "collaborators" that will rival anything we've seen in a century. And they will then set their sights squarely on Pakistan with its weak, nuclear-armed government.
How will you spin all of that? That the ensuing massacre is OK because it's not "our" people? That you are satisfied because you've forced the government to "end the war"?
Not to mention the fact that this appalling spectacle will guarantee a Republican White House and Congress for decades to come.
I couldn't say it better.
It used to be a liberal idea that when you break something you are responsible to fix it. That when you take on the responsibility of bettering the lives of an entire country, you don't up and abandon them to a fate war worse than any of you comprehend, let alone ever have the misfortune to experience.
The Afghan conflict was one of the most noble ambitions this country has ever professed --- to repay a hideous terrorist atrocity with not carpet bombing vengeance, but a mandate to rebuild a country so their deprivations would never again serve as inspiration for barbarism.... Today's its all politics.
The way things are now, if the US withdraws in 2011, Afghanistan will become a civil war between ethnicities, an inter-factional struggle for market share in crime, a proxy conflict between regional neighbors and a renewed jihadi safe haven (if not AQ, then any of the others who hate you just as much - Lashkar-e-Taiba, Harkat ul-Mujahideen, Tehrik-e-Taliban etc).
And then we will wring our hands all over again while the Afghan people die and die and die.
Let the military run the war and you would be surprised at how quickly the war will come to a final conclusion.
I know you aren't going to like this, but the military actually told President Johnson that this was a war they did not want to fight! Go figure that one, but like good soldiers they did as they were told by their political bosses. Are you aware that the President personally would tell the Air Force where they could and could not bomb on a daily basis?
You have the exact same thing happening today when you have the political leadership telling the troops what the rules of engagement are. The Taliban can shoot at our troops, throw their weapons down, and then walk away while our troops watch them through their sites. That's stupid. Aim a rifle or weapon at me and you will die. You can run if you want, but you are only going to die tired!