Just stay in your lane, admiral
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, if the Washington Post can be believed, has expressed concern that the public support for the war in Afghanistan is slipping;
Mullen also expressed concern over recent opinion polls indicating that for the first time a majority of Americans do not think the war in Afghanistan is worth fighting.
I wasn’t aware that military hierarchy was supposed to be worried about the political implications of fighting wars. I’ve always thought that the military’s job was to fight the wars that politicians told them to fight and let the elected representatives worry about public opinion. I’ll grant that President Obama has done a piss-poor job of making the case that we need to continue to press the fight on the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but it’s certainly not the admiral’s job to comment on public opinion.
Now, Karl Eikenberry was also on the networks yesterday morning making the same case. My former platoon leader, the ambassador to Afghanistan, should be out there making those statements, he’s a political appointee now. But the Admiral should stick to military issues and leave worrying about public opinion to the folks who get elected.
In my mind, this how the Obama Administration is putting out feelers to withdraw from Afghanistan, though. The President acts like it’s distracting his domestic agenda, so I’m sure he wants to abandon the tiny resource free country. That’s a mistake…we’d be repeating the mistake we made in 1988 when we abandoned Afghanistan after the withdrawal of the Soviet troops leaving it ripe for the Taliban to pick.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Military issues
Given the fact that our relationship with Saudi Arabia does not seem to be changing anytime soon, if ever, coupled with the fact that our current mission in Afghanistan’s success is largely dependent on what Pakistan(not exactly a reliable ally) does or does not do, and I am inclined to say that leaving Afghanistan might not be such a bad thing after all.
Of course no rational American wants to see the Taliban retake Afghanistan, but if our current course of action is going to ensure that they retake it sooner or later, then why not now rather than later?
Then again, if our overall policy was reshaped in a manner that directs us to pursue actual victory in wars and actualy considers America’s National Security to be it’s top priority, maybe we would not be in such a crappy situation in Afghanistan with such a poor choice of potential options at the moment.