Abandoning Afghanistan

In the Huffington Post today, Amanda Terkel announces “Mission Accomplished: Is It Finally Time To Leave Afghanistan?” and makes the case that the war is over there and it’s time to leave. She quotes some lawmakers like Barney Franks and Jerry “The Waddler” Nadler;

“The single biggest reason we went into Afghanistan was to get Osama bin Laden,” said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) at a Center for American Progress event Monday morning.

“If Osama bin Laden was still alive, that would have given some people an argument, ‘Oh you can’t get out of Afghanistan for reputational reasons.’ … Having killed Osama bin Laden deprives people who wanted to stay in Afghanistan for other reasons of the argument that we would be leaving in defeat,” he added.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) told The Huffington Post in an interview on Monday that once the euphoria of the U.S. success in Pakistan wears off, the country needs to start reconsidering its Afghanistan policy.

“We accomplished what we had to do in Afghanistan a long time ago,” Nadler said. “We ought to stop wasting our troops and our money and our lives and get out. And this just shows that should al Qaeda establish a base there, we can go in and take it out as we just did in Pakistan. It just shows how superfluous everything we’re doing in Afghanistan is. Pakistan is more dangerous, and look what we did.”

So, to listen to those two, we went to Afghanistan merely to act on our revenge instincts. I’d like to think America is better than that. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, we left that country unable to attack us since – our initial motives maybe have been revenge, but the strategy was to wage total war and leave them impotent.

If we leave Afghanistan right now, history will record that we only wanted revenge for bin Laden’s attack on 9-11, when that wasn’t even our initial reaction. We left Afghanistan to it’s own devices in 1988 when the Soviets withdrew and it became a terror haven and a huge terrorist training camp. If we don’t build the military infrastructure to prevent that from happening again, what have the last ten years been about if not purely revenge for 9-11?

The Taliban have launched their Spring offensive already – they certainly think they’re at war while our politicians obviously think the war is over. Think the Taliban will go easy on our troops because the politicians have lost the will to see this through to a successful conclusion?

Harry Reid doesn’t even know where the troops are anymore;

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was also asked on Monday what bin Laden’s killing meant for the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. He initially slipped and said the President had committed to beginning withdrawal of troops “from Pakistan” but quickly corrected himself to indicate the correct country that the U.S. is occupying, despite the centrality of Pakistan to the effort.

John Conyers declared the war over;

With the death of Osama Bin Laden, the Long War that began on 9/11 is finally over. It’s time to bring our troops home, refocus our resources, reward the resiliency of the American people, and rededicate ourselves to rebuilding our nation.

The Democrats have obviously lost the will to continue, though the troops haven’t. If we don’t finish the job in Afghan, we’ll be back again, but not before we pay another terrible cost.

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Congress sucks, Liberals suck, Shitbags, Terror War