True, he doesn't seem a bit like Lyndon Johnson, but the way he's headed on Afghanistan, Barack Obama is threatened with a quagmire that could bog down his presidency. LBJ also had a progressive agenda in mind, beginning with his war on poverty, but it was soon overwhelmed by the cost and divisiveness engendered by a meaningless, and seemingly endless, war in Vietnam.
Meaningless is the right term for the Afghanistan war, too, because our bloody attempt to conquer this foreign land has nothing to do with its stated purpose of enhancing our national security. Just as the government of Vietnam was never a puppet of Communist China or the Soviet Union, the Taliban is not a surrogate for al-Qaeda. Involved in both instances was an American intrusion into a civil war whose passions and parameters we never fully grasped and could not control militarily.
The Vietnamese Communists were not an extension of an inevitably hostile, unified international communist enemy, as evidenced by the fact that Communist Vietnam and Communist China are both our close trading partners today. Nor should the Taliban be considered simply an extension of a Mideast-based al-Qaeda movement, whose operatives the U.S. recruited in the first place to go to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets.
Those recruits included Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attack, and financier Osama bin Laden, who met in Afghanistan as part of a force that Ronald Reagan glorified as "freedom fighters." As blowback from that bizarre, mismanaged CIA intervention, the Taliban came to power and formed a temporary alliance with the better-financed foreign Arab fighters still on the scene.
There is no serious evidence that the Taliban instigated the 9/11 attacks or even knew about them in advance. Taliban members were not agents of al-Qaeda; on the contrary, the only three governments that financed and diplomatically recognized the Taliban--Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan--all were targets of bin Laden's group.
To insist that the Taliban be vanquished militarily as a prerequisite for thwarting al-Qaeda is a denial of the international fluidity of that terrorist movement. Al-Qaeda, according to U.S. intelligence sources, has operated effectively in countries as disparate as Somalia, Indonesia, England and Pakistan, to name just a few. What is required to stymie such a movement is effective police and intelligence work, as opposed to deploying vast conventional military forces in the hope of finding, or creating, a conventional war to win. This last wan hope is what the effort in Afghanistan--in the last two months at its most costly point in terms of American deaths--is all about: marshaling massive firepower to fight shadows.
The Taliban is a traditional guerrilla force that can easily elude conventional armies. Once again the generals on the ground are insisting that a desperate situation can be turned around if only more troops are committed, as Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal did in a report leaked this week. Even with U.S. forces being increased to 68,000 as part of an 110,000-strong allied army, the general states, "The situation in Afghanistan is serious. ..." In the same sentence he goes on to say "but success is achievable."
Fortunately, Defense Secretary Robert Gates is given to some somber doubts on this point, arguing that the size of the U.S. force breeds its own discontents: "I have expressed some concerns in the past about the size of the American footprint, the size of the foreign military footprint in Afghanistan," he said. "And, clearly, I want to address those issues. And we will have to look at the availability of forces, we'll have to look at costs."
I write the word fortunately because just such wisdom on the part of Robert McNamara, another defense secretary, during the buildup to Vietnam would have led him to oppose rather than abet what he ruefully admitted decades after the fact was a disastrous waste of life and treasure: 59,000 Americans dead, along with 3.4 million Indochinese, mostly innocent civilians. I was reporting from Vietnam when that buildup began, and then as now there was an optimism not supported by the facts on the ground. Then as now there were references to elections and supporting local politicians to win the hearts and minds of people we were bombing. Then as now the local leaders on our side turned out to be hopelessly corrupt, a condition easily exploited by those we term the enemy.
Those who favor an escalation of the Afghanistan war ought to own up to its likely costs. If 110,000 troops have failed, will we need the half million committed at one point to Vietnam, which had a far less intractable terrain? And can you have that increase in forces without reinstituting the draft?
It is time for Democrats to remember that it was their party that brought America its most disastrous overseas adventure and to act forthrightly to pull their chosen president back from the abyss before it is too late.
Not on my tax dollar, jc. As the article states, the Taliban has no standing army and no uniformed troops. There's no way to tell who is and who isn't a member and as we all know, the vast majority of US deaths are caused by IEDs, which can be placed by anyone at any time without showing their face.
The presence of the USA's invading and occupying forces drives local and Muslim Nationalistic and Religious sympathizers to join the resistance.
Increasing that presence makes the USA less safe. Bring ALL the troops home NOW!
Aside from intelligence work and a few surgical air strikes when truly justified (i.e. against proven al Qaeda training camps), the only defense against terrorism in the USA will come from defending the hearth here at home.
More troops means more targets and more mourning families.
www.anamericaninbrussels.com
Your joking.
And the dying continues. In our name.
IMPEACH HIM!
KBR, a spin-off of Halliburton where Dick Cheney was the CEO, has one of the largest contracts in Afghanistan. In addition, KBR also has one of the largest contracts in Iraq.
Not to be confused, ArmorGroup North America holds one of the contracts for providing security in which personnel were captured in photos embarrasing our country. Other security contractors include Aegis, Blackwater, GSI, KBR, Titan, and many more.
Before calling for impeachment, get your facts in order to support your case.
I really enjoyed Lincoln's Cooper's Union speech, and it swayed its generation of Americans. You might read it, if you get the opportunity, and discover what passed for technique by the greatest orator of his time. T4T may be inspired by Lincoln, but most that Lincoln had to say was general, merely universal and forever true.
In T4T's post, the data might be called trite and incidental to his conclusion. I suspect he merely rejects the call for impeachment and points out how President Obama's policies are but consistent with previous policies, accepted without impeachments then so that impeachment is ridiculous when our conduct is smarter. If so, he could say more since there is plenty to be said but he doesn't really have to.
Historically the US is on a dead-set loser. No one has ever successfully invaded this strange country with its forbidding terrain, and its deadly guerilla fighters.
Of course, since WWII, no US President has ever been his own man. He has to do what he is told to do by the people who really run the country. The big war materiél companies. Of course the big auto manufacturers like General Motors and Ford, etc may have gone bad in the last recession, but that was only on the automobile side. The war materiél departments were OK
It is a pity the companies, producing uniforms and weaponry, can't run the army as well as they run their businesses
If, the fighting man was led by people who wanted to WIN wars, each soldier would be taught to live off the land, carry as little equipment as possible and become a guerilla fighter, the way the other side does.
Think of the benefits. planes and bombs wouldn't have to be replaced all the time. Soldiers free of hideous weights would be fit when they retired from army life. Wars wouldn't be being fought all the time. The list is endless. So, apparently, is men's patience.
"My ardent desire is, and my aim has been...to comply strictly with all our engagements foreign and domestic; but to keep the United States free from political connections with every other Country. To see that they may be independent of all, and under the influence of none. In a word, I want an American character, that the powers of Europe may be convinced we act for ourselves and not for others; this, in my judgment, is the only way to be respected abroad and happy at home." -George Washington
The Administration has to justify why our troops are still there or get them out.
Excuse me but -- " How the U.S. Military can pull out of the Afganistan without taking sides in their civil war." Would be a better article is it included real options and alternatives.
The Taliban do not want to be fighting the Americans but they will. The Tailban are not the 9/11 Terrorist they are rebels like the old Confederate Sholdiers in the U.S. but these guys have not quit .
So come on real answers, we know the Vietnam War was started on a lie and kept going to sell weapons to the military . War profiteers are always with us. The President listens to reports from the front all day everyday he needs help not more complaints. A Veteran Journalist like yourself should not be used by the Right to add undue pressure to cause problems.
one soldier for every fifty Afghans.
It ain't going to happen, in excess
of half a million troops as an occupation force.
That fact equates to the Pentagon Papers.
Meanwhile the USA has to take care of this hotel and the quest there now. The control it including the water system they bombed, power grid and everything else they destoryed has to be rebuilt. Even the farms and food supply was destroyed and now the only cash crop is opium.
On top of that the Old Managment of this hotel is facing a Hostile take over from the Taliban and wants the USA to stop them. But here is the problem the old managment is extremely corrupt as the last election proved to be.
What does the USA do ? So many forgieners now trying to help the people as long as they are in Afganistan we have to protext them, don't we ? We can't just walk away without putting millions at risk.
So we are in the middle of a civil war and on the wrong side
I did not vote for a two-term war.
2. hose who say we are there to get the Taliban, do they suggest we further invade Pakistan to get the Taliban or Al Qaeda?
3. At least with Lyndon Johnson the media would ask tough questions. Too bad our media is MIA on the wars.
4. Russia wants the place, give it to them
5. No more excuses. Get us out, now.
Vietnam didn't pull off 9/11.
Vietnam didn't bring down the Soviet Union.
Other than that...
Unless, of course, the goal is to prevent rather than enable Afghanistan to become governable, which would thrill oil pipeline consortiums to no end.
They were never built to be an international police force.
Get them out, now