Did you guys know we left Afghanistan in 2003?
No? Neither did I, but the douchenozzles at VoteVets are pimping this numbuts evaluation of Afghanistan:
One Iraq analogy that does apply pretty neatly to the Afghanistan situation is that in both cases, you can count on screwball conservatives to take a debate and depict it in utterly black and white terms, no matter how nuanced, multi-faceted and careful it actually is. Ben Frumin flags Condi Rice’s latest interview in Fortune, that hot-house of crack journalism, as evidence of this phenomenon:
“The last time we left Afghanistan, and we abandoned Pakistan,” she said, “that territory became the very territory on which Al Qaeda trained and attacked us on September 11th. So our national security interests are very much tied up in not letting Afghanistan fail again and become a safe haven for terrorists.
“It’s that simple,” she declared, “if you want another terrorist attack in the U.S., abandon Afghanistan.”
If memory serves me correctly, the last time we left Afghanistan and we abandoned Pakistan, was not actually before 9/11, but when Condi and the Bush administration invaded Iraq….But on a broader level, who exactly is talking about abandoning Afghanistan?? I’m pretty sure that for all the haranguing done by Michael, he’s not ready to call for the U.S. to start packing its bags.
Oh my. Where to start. For one thing, we didn’t pull out of Afghanistan. I was there in 2004-2005 (when we were allegedly gone) and I met an absolute shitload of great troops fighting the good fight, and not a single one of them was named Patrick Barry that I recall. He must have been busy in Iraq, although his Bio makes no mention of that.
Second, um….are you shitting me? NO ONE is calling to abandon Afghanistan? I guess that would depend on your definition of “abandon” is, but based on your definition of “left” I think we may already have a problem.
For starters, you should check out the individual pages of all the members of the “Out of Iraq Caucus” which, as the Detroit Independant Examiner noted:
A congressional caucus called the “Out of Iraq Caucus” is now looking to focus on finding ways to get the U.S. out of Afghanistan.
“I think we see that we have the same problems in Afghanistan that we once had in Iraq: no end, no exit strategy, no clear end product of our presence there,” said Democratic Congressman Raul M.Grijalva of Arizona.
Further,
Another caucus, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, has formed a group to investigate current U.S. policies in Afghnistan and Pakistan. Currently, the caucus attention is focused on President Obama’s request for $83.4 billion for additional funding for the two ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This shift in concentration has brighted the hopes of anti-war advocacy groups like the Progressive Democrats of America::”We would love to see the Out of Iraq Caucus continue working.We want to focus more attention on Afghanistan. Our theme should be health care, not warfare.” said their executive director, Tim Carpenter.
Perhaps you’d like to address the views of The Nation:
In my view, there are many good reasons to support the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. But Afghanistan is not Iraq and public opinion still largely supports Obama’s escalation. (This is partly, I think, because there’s so little media coverage of what’s actually taking place in the country — recent estimates of coverage by major news outlets report that a scant 0.6 percent of reporting has been devoted to Afghanistan.)
So, the first step to effectively opposing the war in Afghanistan is shifting US public opinion. That’s why a coalition led by United for Peace and Justice has organized this Thursday’s National Media Day of Action. The idea is to focus attention on all the reasons the current strategy isn’t working and to highlight positive solutions for re-shifting our priorities.
And, if abandoning Afghanistan is not the unstated goal of this video, please explain to me just what that goal actually is:
(Note that the video stresses the financial impact, while Patrick Barry is saying that he sees more evidence of “Calls for increased foreign assistance, channeled through Afghan-run NGOs as a means of addressing root-causes of terrorism”.)
Category: Politics
We did abandon Afghanistan as in, funding, manpower, etc. etc. We never left it, and we still have always had troops there, but a case could certainly be made for us morally abandoning it, as the American public couldn’t be bothered to remember it existed as a war.
Afghanistan was always a minimal footprint sort of operation. That’s how it started and that’s how its been for quite some time. I don’t think there was ever a point between 2003 and 2007 where anyone was calling for a surge of armored divisions to be sent to Afghanistan the way we surged troops to Iraq.
In hindsight, I think this sort of SF-only, ‘less is more’ war strategy we had in Afghanistan, and to a lesser extent Iraq, was flawed. Any time we perform some sort of forced regime change, we need to assume that there will always be a post-conflict insurgency stage of reconstruction. That phase will always need a large amount of troops to provide security.
Someone is mixing timelines. We did essentially abandon AND leave Afghanistan (as Rice notes) after Operation Cyclone circa 1989.
Oddly enough Operation Cyclone was authorized by Jimmy Carter?
And I’ll generally agree with AS above in that Afghanistan clearly received less emphasis than maybe it should. But I’ll leave any conclusions for the historians
To show how utterly asinine and ridiculous the “we left A-stan in 2003” argument is, I would ask to differentiate the tortured logic of linguistics neccessary to reconcile that with the reality, and give you this scenraio:
Phone Rings
Man: Hello?
Wife: Ralph, I thought you said you were leaving the nuddy bar?
Man: I did honey, about an hour ago.
Wife: No you didn’t, I can hear the music and teh man on the speaker just said “put your hands together for Ms. Spantaneous Bootay.”
Man: well, sure, I mean I haven’t physically left, but an hour ago I turned my attention from the naked women dancing around me to read the New York Times.
Wife: Oh, that makes sense I guess. But I was more comfortable with the women than the NYT.
Yeah, sure. I guess it depends on what “left” meant.
Army Sergeant,
Were you in Afghanistan? Did you leave the wire?
We didn’t *leave* Afghanistan, but George *Yes, I really DO have ADHD* Bush blew it ALL to hell and back we traipsed off to Iraq and took the focus off of Afghanistan…
I have, for a very long time, blasted Bush and his “Stay the course” nonsense. When we took the focus OFF of Afghanistan, we ceased to stay the course where the COURSE really was.
“Calls for increased foreign assistance, channeled through Afghan-run NGOs as a means of addressing root-causes of terrorism”. Yeah, give the Taliban and AQ more heads to whack off. These people just don’t get it, that acorns and farts aren’t going to keep the bad guys from killing all and sundry that they can get their hands on.
Tanks and Bradleys would be about as useful in Afghanistan now and the russians found Tanks and BMPs to be in the 1980s.
The fight in Afghanistan isn’t a heavy force fight. We need mobility, yes, and more infantry to dig the enemy out of the mountians, and the ability to run them down in their hide-outs in Pak.
and yes. I’ve been to Afghanistan.
Yep, it is all about light infantry.
The tribes who live in the Britsh drawn map known as “Afghanistan” have no desire to implement the governance goals our politicos have drafted for them. Geezus people, most Afghan males see nothing wrong with banging 12 year old boys and girls… You really believe these barbarians are going to jump head first into civilization?