Veterans Day is a Good Day to Figure Out how to Lose a War
The Fastest Way to End a War is to Lose it.
And that appears to be the President’s strategy for dealing with Afghanistan.
Apparently Obama is not even considering a strategy for victory. He wants to find a way out. Expect the next talking point to be “Peace with honor”.
That’s what he wants to “drill down” on in what is likely to be the President’s final meeting with his war counsel today.
One close aide explained that Obama “wants to see more intellectual energy” focused on how this mission ends, saying that the President has insisted that “we’re not going to be in Afghanistan for another 8 years.”
Another said that Obama wants a clear picture of the “American bridge” out of Afghanistan. He doesn’t have it yet. He’s not satisfied with what he’s heard so far. The President will press for answers today.
So, he wants to abandon the “Good War” that he built his entire campaign declaring that he would refocus and win?
He’s already sent out the National Security Advisor to tell us all that McChrystal’s troop increase request is just nonsense.
As President Barack Obama prepares to make a final decision on Afghanistan, National Security Adviser Jim Jones dismissed and even seemed to mock a request for more troops from General Stanley McChrystal. “You could have 200,000 troops there and the country will swallow them up as it has done in the past,” Jones said.
The comments came in a little-noticed interview with Der Spiegel, a German magazine, published over the weekend. Yesterday, Jones took the unusual step of publicly denying media reports that Obama was leaning towards a decision that would send between 34,000 and 40,000 troops to Afghanistan, numbers close to those requested by McChrystal.
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Later, Jones said that the United States wanted to get out of Afghanistan as soon as possible and suggested that adding troops was pointless.SPIEGEL: Afghanistan is famously referred to as the “graveyard of empires.”
Jones: I know and that’s why I say we cannot solve the problems with only military forces. You can keep on putting troops in, and you could have 200,000 troops there and the country will swallow them up as it has done in the past. There are many empires who tried to make Afghanistan a stable and different country, and there have always been neighbors which were not interested in a stable and centralized government.
So, happy Veterans Day! Especially for those veterans of the Overseas Contingency Operation in Afghanistan.
Category: Politics
We will, as a Nation, rue the day we got scammed into giving the Empty Suit in Chief that job.
The sad part is that the people who don’t have to bleed are the ones who can’t stomach the war. Obama is too afraid of having to make a decision to actually lead. When I see him I see a leader (no offense to any Lts. out there) that is too afraid to make a decision that might get someone hurt, and in the end alot of people get hurt.
He lied when he said that he wanted to win the “good” war. His campaign was based on smoke and mirrors. He is happy for photo ops with troops, but he won’t give them what they need to win.
What happens when we leave? Will it be just like when we left them after Russians retreated. What comes out of Afghanistan next will be way worse than Al-Qeda, they will be emboldened because they will have “beaten” America.
Are we SURE that this country elected someone named
O-B-A-M-A and not O-S-A-M-A??
What a cuckold this country has become. And we’re watching it get more screwed every day.
“Will it be just like when we left them”
They as a people have to make the choice to un-fvck themselves as a society. Until they create a society where their women folk are less suicidal & apt to want to slay their own young (just talk to female combat medics who have served on MEDCAPS about how hopeless your typical Afghan woman is) and where raping “beardless boy” dancers isn’t a “cultural norm”, I don’t think the Hindu Kush barbarians are likely to become Jeffersonians.
My son is about to deploy to Afghanistan. If, God forbid, something happens to him, and this report above is correct regarding Obama’s intentions, then I will consider any harm done to my son as a willful act by the president against my son, and do my best to bring charges against him.
Either we stay there to win, and do whatever is needed to accomplish that goal, or we pull everyone out now, then try the president and his advisors for negligent homicide for every casualty we suffer from this day until the last man is out of country.
Then we charge the president and every member of his advisory group and his cabinet for crimes against humanity for the genocide that will result from out abandoning the Afghans to the psychopaths in AQ and the Taliban.
Either we need to go in and win, or the president and his flunkies need to fall on their swords. We can’t play Solomon and split this baby between two mothers. It’s an all-or-nothing affair.
That’s my 2-cent’s worth. I understand that other’s mileage may vary.
“then try the president and his advisors for negligent homicide for every casualty we suffer from this day until the last man is out of country.” Won’t happen, EVER.
“If the American people knew what happened in Congress every day, half of us would be hung from the light poles on Pennsylvania Avenue and the other half would be in prison.”
–Sen. Robert Byrd
This is why we should have a limited return to the draft, strictly for the trust fund ferrets of our subhuman body politic. If their spoiled brat progeny were to be put in situations where they come back with parts missing or in aluminum coffins our wars would be waged differently. Such a policy that puts their brats in the game will never happen, it makes too much sense.
Good grief, they all said the surge in Iraq was hopeless and we would cause more trouble and casualties. They said we should be focusing on Afghanistan and that was where we needed to win. Well the surge worked pretty damn good and you don’t hear much about Iraq anymore. Now Afghanistan is unwinnable and it’s the “Graveyard of Empires.” Aw bullshit, there is not a country not even our own that is not capable of being defeated or the changed to a degree. Hell, I never thought this country would shift as far left of center as it is currently shifting.
Obama and his team seem to be looking for a scenario where all the blame for any failure will fall on the Afghans. They are all politicians with the inherent need of a politician to be able to spin any result to make themselves look better. I think they are so scared of failing or giving the impression of failure that doing nothing appears to be better than doing anything.
Everything that has come out so far is an attempt to put all the responsibility on the Karzai government. How can a guy that comes from Chicago and Illinois claim to be so worried about corruption in government. That’s laughable.
The real danger here is us backing away, giving the Taliban safe haven on the Afghan side of the border and letting them continue to try to first destabilize and then take over the government of Pakistan thereby putting nuclear weapons in their hands. Oh and if the Obama administration really believes that the Taliban and Al Qaeda are not still in bed together I’ve got some beachfront acreage here in the MidWest to talk to them about.
It appears to me that we have another set of politicians, including some politicians that used to wear the uniform but really aren’t soldiers, who believe they can prosecute this war better than the generals. Can anyone say Johnson and McNamara? We all know how well they did running the war in Vietnam from DC. I will be redoubling my prayers for our troops over there. I think they will need it and then so will we all.
Well, Colin Powell, who does after all have a few credentials, has told Obama to take his time and get it right……
Colin Powell has also been out for awhile and has not had to formulate strategy with regards to this type of conflict. Personally, I’m more incline to trust the boots on the ground. Of course, it doesn’t say anything about Powell’s suggesting any strategy other than to take his time….
Of course, it’s also possible that Powell was mocking him with the suggestion to “take his time”. 🙂
Joe: Powell’s suggestion is interesting to say the least. He must have forgotten Vietnam and what taking your time and playing not to win got us in that war. The last time this country fought to win was WWII. Korea was a UN war and they weren’t playing to win, because the UN isn’t in the business of winning, just maintaining. Has that strategy done anything to help the people of North Korea? Has it done anything to provide security to the North’s neighbors? That would be no and no. Vietnam was not fought to win.
The smaller skirmishes leading up to the first Gulf war shows that there were times we did win, however we completed the mission.
The first Gulf War was stopped short of total victory because of “sensitivities to some of the “coalition partners”. We wouldn’t have had to deal with Saddam, had we finished the job when we were there the first time. We didn’t and more people suffered and died before we went back. I forget who was CJCOS at that time……..
People think that everything can be taken care of overnight. However, old tribal animosity dies hard, but there is going to be progress, as long as we can show the Afghans that we will provide a decent level of security while they get their bearings and work to make their country better. If we demonstrate that, they will be more open to what we have to say, but since that level hasn’t been attained, yet, we still have a lot of work to do and getting rid of the taliban and aq, or at least making them ineffective, is the hard work we need to undertake.
The hand picked General and the SecDef have said what is needed, now, yet we need to sacrifice more warriors unecessarily while he “ponders” what to do?
I don’t know the answers, but I’ll play the devils’ advocate and throw this out there – it may be too late to win the hearts and minds. Maybe we would have had more success if that were our primary goal from the beginning, 7-8 years ago? We may have to wait a generation to win the hearts and minds, since many Afghani’s have tragic memories of the last eight years, don’t really care who wins, they just want to be left alone. I have not been there, but I have heard that the local populace will nod and smile, and wait us out. With no buy-in from them, an untrustworthy government, and no sign that as a people, they are amenable to any kind of centralized government, would we just be throwing good money after bad? Could the Commander-in-Chief be weighing sending more troops in now to assist the one’s already there, against the chances we will lose even more soldiers in the long run in a country that shows no sign of getting its act together in a governmental/security sense? Can 100,000, or even 1,000,000 soldiers in a country the size of Texas force 30 million people to come togehter as a nation? Would this be nation-building in a region that doesn’t understand the concept of a nation, only the concept of the clan and the tribe? Or do we forget nation-building, and just engage in an open-ended, perpetual fight against Al Queda and the Taliban? These are questions from someone who reads a lot, but has never been to Afghanistan nor in combat – these are not hard and fast opinions. I just want to know….
Damn Joe…you just don’t get it,do ya?…*sigh*
AHF,
I do not have a hard and fast opinion. I am asking pointed questions. Do we reinstate the draft and flood 250,000 sq. mi. with millions of men in a full scale World War type of effort? Rush in with 40,000? Some well informed people say pull out, some say keep the status quo, some say 40,000 – 80,000 new troops, some say fight the war at arm’s length with drones, some say if it’s a war we can’t afford to lose, drum up hundreds of thousands of new troops. Can we still win the hearts and minds? If your country had been occupied for years, and thousands of your fellow citizens had been killed, could they ever win your heart and mind? Is it all about supporting the men and women already there at any cost? Is it about broader geopolitical issues? Where will we be in ten years? I don’t frickin’ know! The more I think about the options the more confused I become. Enlighten me AHF!