If President Obama saw a quagmire and purposeless strategy, why are we still in Afghanistan? President Obama happens to be correct. There is no purpose to being in Afghanistan. Bush lost the war when the Taliban reconstituted in Pakistan, probably mentored by bin Laden.
The Taliban is not an ethnic or human rights issue. The Taliban are ONLY a militarized group of people that use the oppression of religion to maintain order in their ranks and within the populous of the land they occupy. They are human rights abusers.
If Karzai wants to play politics with them and 'bring them into the fold' it is because he has no choice. He either accepts the failure of the Bush war in Afghanistan and seek to move the country forward under oppression or GO BACK to warring which the USA doesn't want nor can. Let the Russians reconstitute their interests in their national security and that of their allies in the region. The Russians should have been left alone in the first place.
And this whole 'soldier sympathy' for returning to Iraq is way of line. It is the return of the Bush/Cheney empathy mess, "For the blood we spilled, we can't lose the war." Right. From the Right Wing that sent the USA military to war without body armor and Humvees with flat tires. Oh, yeah, the soldiers are so very important.
Wednesday, January 08, 2014
...A Republican, Gates (click here) served as defense secretary for 4 1/2 years under Obama and his predecessor, President George W. Bush.
He writes that Bush focused on Iraq at the expense of Afghanistan and calls the Republican president's goals there "embarrassingly ambitious and historically naive," given the resources devoted to the task.
In 2009 Obama approved the strategy of putting 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan and in 2010 appointed General David Petraeus as commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
In recalling a March 2011 meeting in the White House, Gates writes: "As I sat there, I thought: The president doesn't trust his commander, can't stand [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai, doesn't believe in his own strategy and doesn't consider the war to be his. For him, it's all about getting out."...
The Taliban is not an ethnic or human rights issue. The Taliban are ONLY a militarized group of people that use the oppression of religion to maintain order in their ranks and within the populous of the land they occupy. They are human rights abusers.
If Karzai wants to play politics with them and 'bring them into the fold' it is because he has no choice. He either accepts the failure of the Bush war in Afghanistan and seek to move the country forward under oppression or GO BACK to warring which the USA doesn't want nor can. Let the Russians reconstitute their interests in their national security and that of their allies in the region. The Russians should have been left alone in the first place.
And this whole 'soldier sympathy' for returning to Iraq is way of line. It is the return of the Bush/Cheney empathy mess, "For the blood we spilled, we can't lose the war." Right. From the Right Wing that sent the USA military to war without body armor and Humvees with flat tires. Oh, yeah, the soldiers are so very important.
Wednesday, January 08, 2014
...A Republican, Gates (click here) served as defense secretary for 4 1/2 years under Obama and his predecessor, President George W. Bush.
He writes that Bush focused on Iraq at the expense of Afghanistan and calls the Republican president's goals there "embarrassingly ambitious and historically naive," given the resources devoted to the task.
In 2009 Obama approved the strategy of putting 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan and in 2010 appointed General David Petraeus as commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
In recalling a March 2011 meeting in the White House, Gates writes: "As I sat there, I thought: The president doesn't trust his commander, can't stand [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai, doesn't believe in his own strategy and doesn't consider the war to be his. For him, it's all about getting out."...
