That blithering idiot, Eugene Robinson
Washington Post Pulitzer award-winning columnist Eugene Robinson, the guy who won the Pulitzer by faithfully cutting and pasting talking points from the Obama campaign for more than two years issues a warning today in his column entitled “A plan for Afghanistan: Declare victory — and leave“. Of course that’s not a plan and Robinson doesn’t really issue a warning…unless you realize that he doesn’t write anything that doesn’t jibe with the Obama Administration policy unless he clears it with them first.
His deep and intellectual analysis ends with this line;
The threat from Afghanistan is gone. Bring the troops home.
Of course, he’s referring to the death of bin Laden and an out-of-power Taliban as the threat which is gone. Yes, bin Laden is gone for good and the Taliban is out of office, but will their absence be permanent? That’s tougher to answer, isn’t it?
The weak-kneed Karzai government is making noise about “negotiating” with the Taliban for their reintegration into the Afghanistan government – does anyone honestly think that the group who throws acid in the faces of pre-teen girls for attending school will be content having only a small part in the daily lives of Afghans?
Of course that’s a question that Robinson wants to avoid and as long as people like Robinson, who get their marching orders from the White House, make these kinds of noises, the Taliban and al Qaeda will continue fighting and hoping for the quick withdrawal of US forces from the region.
You can bet your bottom dollar that Robinson wrote the piece today because the Obama Administration is testing the waters for an early and quick withdrawal.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Media, Military issues, Terror War
You’re being redundant: “Eugene Robinson” = “blithering idiot.”
Yet again, a liberal proves that those who don’t remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Eugene and his kind, including some at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave won’t be satisfied unless they get to see the embassy staff leaving Kabul aboard the last helicopter out.
You know, it makes me wonder why we ever bothered with all that D-Day, Battle of the Bulge, Iwo Jima, Okinawa stuff when we could have just declared victory and went home after Midway and North Africa.
I’m a regular Hardball watcher so I’m regularly subjected to his substanceless blather. He doesn’t make me change the channel like Joan Walsh does but anytime he’s on a panel he embarrasses himself, particularly when next to people, like Howard Fineman or Michael Smerconish, who actually know what they’re talking about. More than being wrong he simply has nothing to bring to the table. He’s never, once, made me go, “hmm, interesting” or “I never thought about it like that”, etc.
“The weak-kneed Karzai government is making noise about “negotiating” with the Taliban for their reintegration into the Afghanistan government.” If the government and the Taliban can agree to end the fighting and allow the Taliban to participate in the Afghani government then the war can end. If that does not happen then the war continues until one side prevails or there is no one left to fight.
As an old Army fart from the early ’70s, it looks a lot like Vietnam to me:
Afghanistan government = RVN government (supported by the US, under overt and covert attack, lots of corruption, not trusted or supported by own people)
Karzai = Diem (family business, crazy brother, lots of corruption, weak, not supported by the population)
ANA = ARVN (not motivated, training could be better, leadership could be better, corruption in the officer class)
Taliban = Viet Cong (guerrilla force, Afghan nationals and others, know the AO better than the US)
Pakistan = Laos (rest area, supply route, attacked by the US with high-tech weapons, we cannot directly invade, torn by their own internal issues)
Pakistan = Russia & China (directly support the insurgency, can deny direct participation — Pak. is supposed to be a US ally and that is different, US has secret forces)
Lashkar Talib = Pathet Lao (fighters in support country)
Iran = Cambodia (alternate supply route, overtly neutral but covertly against the US)
Pak. Federated Tribal Areas = North Vietnam (source of aggression, protected second country we cannot invade), and
US = US.
There is no equivalent to the single North Vietnam government. Pakistan has nuclear weapons. China’s role is still murky. The PRT works in Afghanistan just as well as it did in Vietnam. The war is being fought in the American press and will be won if the American public no longer supports the war.
Tell me why this analysis is false? What is it about the American military that we cannot adapt to this?
Please don’t make us find another Bob Caron to lift people off of a Pittman building in Kabul.
re #5
The Vietnam analogy is fundamentally flawed because the Taliban is not now, nor has it ever been, a popular or nationalistic movement. It’s a religious movement whose senior membership is comprised of a particular tribal group and whose foot soldiers were traditionally drawn from refugee populations in Pakistan divorced from their native country’s cultural structure. The Taliban also doesn’t have a client state that supports them with heavy weapons and military advisers, even if some elements of the Pakistani government provide lesser aid and the inaction of the central government creates a de facto autonomous region for them to base themselves out of.
#5
The politics in A-stan are quite a bit more convoluted that Vietnam. Karzai enjoys support from his family, clan, tribe, and region. His rivals, the Ministers of Defense, Security, and Transportation (the 3 biggest warlords, not including Dostum) are cooperating because of our money. They won’t cooperate with Taliban because that organization is poor too.
May I suggest as a better analog the Yugoslavian experience of 1985-96?