Obama to announce decision on Afghanistan next Tuesday

Obama is delirious.

Surfguy faints.

 

Largely true. I base this partly on Helen Thomas the famous presidential press member who thinks this, too. It is hard to judge motivation of course Obama could just be a believer that the Taliban is such a threat that he has to risk his whole presidency on protecting the country. Obama see them as such a threat that he has to go against the vast majority of Democrats who oppose the escalation in Afghanistan.

 

A Tragic Mistake




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By BOB HERBERT
Published: November 30, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/opinion/01herbert.html
“I hate war,” said Dwight Eisenhower, “as only a soldier who has lived it can, as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”
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Bob Herbert


He also said, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.”

I suppose we’ll never learn. President Obama will go on TV Tuesday night to announce that he plans to send tens of thousands of additional American troops to Afghanistan to fight in a war that has lasted most of the decade and has long since failed.

After going through an extended period of highly ritualized consultations and deliberations, the president has arrived at a decision that never was much in doubt, and that will prove to be a tragic mistake. It was also, for the president, the easier option.

It would have been much more difficult for Mr. Obama to look this troubled nation in the eye and explain why it is in our best interest to begin winding down the permanent state of warfare left to us by the Bush and Cheney regime. It would have taken real courage for the commander in chief to stop feeding our young troops into the relentless meat grinder of Afghanistan, to face up to the terrible toll the war is taking — on the troops themselves and in very insidious ways on the nation as a whole.

More soldiers committed suicide this year than in any year for which we have complete records. But the military is now able to meet its recruitment goals because the young men and women who are signing up can’t find jobs in civilian life. The United States is broken — school systems are deteriorating, the economy is in shambles, homelessness and poverty rates are expanding — yet we’re nation-building in Afghanistan, sending economically distressed young people over there by the tens of thousands at an annual cost of a million dollars each.

I keep hearing that Americans are concerned about gargantuan budget deficits. Well, the idea that you can control mounting deficits while engaged in two wars that you refuse to raise taxes to pay for is a patent absurdity. Small children might believe something along those lines. Rational adults should not.

Politicians are seldom honest when they talk publicly about warfare. Lyndon Johnson knew in the spring of 1965, as he made plans for the first big expansion of U.S. forces in Vietnam, that there was no upside to the war.

A recent Bill Moyers program on PBS played audio tapes of Johnson on which he could be heard telling Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, “Not a damn human thinks that 50,000 or 100,000 or 150,000 [American troops] are going to end that war.”

McNamara replies, “That’s right.”

Nothing like those sentiments were conveyed to the public as Johnson and McNamara jacked up the draft and started feeding young American boys and men into the Vietnam meat grinder.

Afghanistan is not Vietnam. There was every reason for American forces to invade Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001. But that war was botched and lost by the Bush crowd, and Barack Obama does not have a magic wand now to make it all better.

The word is that Mr. Obama will tell the public Tuesday that he is sending another 30,000 or so troops to Afghanistan. And while it is reported that he has some strategy in mind for eventually turning the fight over to the ragtag and less-than-energetic Afghan military, it’s clear that U.S. forces will be engaged for years to come, perhaps many years.

The tougher choice for the president would have been to tell the public that the U.S. is a nation faced with terrible troubles here at home and that it is time to begin winding down a war that veered wildly off track years ago. But that would have taken great political courage. It would have left Mr. Obama vulnerable to the charge of being weak, of cutting and running, of betraying the troops who have already served. The Republicans would have a field day with that scenario.

Lyndon Johnson is heard on the tapes telling Senator Richard Russell, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, about a comment made by a Texas rancher in the days leading up to the buildup in Vietnam. The rancher had told Johnson that the public would forgive the president “for everything except being weak.”

Russell said: “Well, there’s a lot in that. There’s a whole lot in that.”

We still haven’t learned to recognize real strength, which is why it so often seems that the easier choice for a president is to keep the troops marching off to war.

 

Why is it that smart people lose their common sense once inside the beltway.

Afghanistan is a s**thole. They have been at constant war for 300 years. What is the strategy? Nation building? It never was and never will be a nation. Just get the hell out of there.

 

Often time, it is just that: they lose their nerve; or get obsessed with winning reelection; or being popular; or cashing in after being in office; or just being seen as respectable by the permanent class of lobbyists and pundits who are there as politicians come and go.

 

Lets see. Bush did something stupid. Obama escalates the stupidity. But its still Bush's fault. You got to love that kind of spin. Both statements this guy made are wrong.

a) There was no reason to invade Afghanistan. A bunch of Saudi blow up a building in New York and we invade Afghanistan. How does that make sense?

b) Bush could not have won the "war" is Afghanistan. There is no objective or exit strategy in Afghanistan, so it can't be won or lost. One of the few smart things Bush did was not committing a lot of troops in Afghanistan.

 

I will say this, after listening to the President's speech tonight.

I have a lot more respect for the man!

 

I decided I would have more respect for Obama if I merely read his sophistry.

 

Much as I support Obama's decision on this (I especially like the phased withdrawal, probably because it's mad unrealistic...but oh well.), you can't help but see that LBJ coming out of him.

 

Going to be kind of awkward in Oslo in a couple of weeks.

 

yeah, that too.

well, won't be the first time.

Nobel Peace Prize Winner
HENRY A. KISSINGER , Secretary of State, State Department, Washington.

 

not very good company

But hey! At least Kissinger wasn't a socialist.

 

I am not happy with his decision, but I understand it.

What I don't understand is why the heck he still has us in Iraq - in fact, it pisses me off.

 

or a muslim!

 

Read it yesterday and it was definitely worth the time.

 

The next 9/11 might not be a bunch of foreign guys with visas trying to build bombs on American soil.

It might be a 45 ft yacht sailing into a harbor detonating a nuke.

These people are crazy - you can't underestimate the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Just because there's been a lull doesn't mean they are going to disappear. It horrifies me that people are once again becoming complacent.

Pakistan has nukes. The Taliban are fighting to destabalize that country and don't be thinking they aren't trying to get access to those bombs.

And they aren't interested in lobbing them at us. They will figure out how to get them close enough to cause serious damage.

 

And yet the Taliban / Al Qaeda have killed far more American civilians and military personal than the Soviets did in 50 years.

 

The Taliban hasn't killed anybody outside of Af/Pak. Their fundamental reason for existence is to tell Muslims how they should be a true Muslim and declare everybody else a kafir. They don't care about the USA except as they relate to Muslims.

Even if we completely turn Af/Pak into "America With Funny Clothing", Al Qaeda will just go somewhere else, like Somalia or Sudan or Yemen or The Philippines. Is your plan to pacify every country in the world at 1 to 5 trillion dollars each? If so, you need to tell us where we are going to pawn the USA to get the money. Since we already have the country mortgaged once to the Chinese, you are going to have trouble getting it mortgaged 5 or 6 more times to pay for your massive global WWIII sized pacification wars.

 

Unbelievable. You forget 9/11??? You think Al Qaeda was in somalia? You think the Taliban don't shoot American soldiers? You think they didn't protect Bin Laden?

You have to clean out the Taliban and Al Qaeda in this area. Not just afghanistan but in Pakistan - in fact, Pakistan is more important in some ways. This isn't about Africa or the Phillipines. Bin Laden isn't going to run off there and "blend" in. This is it.

This isn't some ideological war against Communism. This is about wiping out an organization dedicated to obtaining nukes and using them against us. Geez, how people forget over the years.