Kerry prepares for cut and run in Afghanistan

Probably the last person I’d ever ask about military issues, John Kerry (lied, while better men died), has a blueprint for cut and run in Afghanistan in this morning’s Wall Street Journal entitled “Testing Afghanistan Assumptions“. Of course, as is his MO, be compares Afghanistan to Vietnam. Except Afghanistan isn’t anything like Vietnam, except in the mind of John Kerry who wants to remind us that he spent three months in Vietnam once.

[O]ne of the lessons from Vietnam—applied in the first Gulf War and sadly forgotten for too long in Iraq—is that we should not commit troops to the battlefield without a clear understanding of what we expect them to accomplish, how long it will take, and how we maintain the consent of the American people. Otherwise, we risk bringing our troops home from a mission unachieved or poorly conceived. Gen. McChrystal offers no timetable or exit strategy, beyond warning that the next 12 months are critical. I agree that time is running out and that troops are dying without a sustainable strategy for victory. But we cannot rush to judgment.

Timetabled withdrawals seem to be the Left’s way of saying that they don’t understand “exit strategies”. You think they would have learned their lesson when, in 1995, then-President promised the American people that we’d be out of Bosnia by October 1996. of course, we still have troops in Bosnia. The Democrats don’t understand victory – they seem to think that by just announcing an end date, all parties will comply. Kerry is no different. Kerry doesn’t bother in his missive to examine what would happen if we did withdraw. He’d rather pontificate about the judicious use of force – ignoring the indisputable fact that war and victory are necessary regardless of the cost. Navel-gazing in Congress will only result in more needless deaths among US forces while Kerry and his useless pals try to appear as if they know something about war and strategy;

Mr. Obama promises not to send more troops to Afghanistan until he has absolute clarity on what the strategy will be. He is right to take the time he needs to define the mission. We should all follow his lead and debate all of the options. It may be that Gen. McChrystal has provided the road map to victory. Or it may be that some other strategy would work better, with fewer risks. We can’t know until we test every assumption and examine every option.

In other words, Kerry, Congress and Obama is more than willing to let more US soldiers die while they campaign for the 2010 elections and stroke their anti-war base. This is what we get when Democrats have both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue – 535 armchair generals.

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Congress sucks, Military issues, Phony soldiers