Opinions differ on what we should do in Afghanistan. What advice would you give the president?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Mr. Obama,
Take a look at the history of Afghanistan. Every foreign power that has ever set foot in that country has been bloodied and defeated. The place is a murky stew of religious, ethnic, and political tensions that are constantly shifting and changing. We cannot ask our armed forces to operate effectively in such an environment. And further, we can’t afford it– we’re a nation deeply in debt with monumental domestic problems. And besides, you just won a Nobel Peace Prize. Live up to it, please.
No one has ever “won”-whatever that means-there.
My advice is to get out. We’re pushing 10 years now.
I’d ask Obama to list the things we’ve gotten out of a decade there.
We’ve gotten ZERO.
We may even be in negative territory, let alone zero.
Al Queda is not in Afghanistan. The government we are fighting to support is corrupt. We are essentially supporting one side in a civil war.
More troops have not helped. We have increased troops from 32,000 when you took office to more than 68,000 now. Things have gotten worse not better.
You can’t keep pursuing a strategy that is not working. You need to look at the objectives and see if they can really be obtained. We will never be out of Afghanistan if we keep fighting.
It is time to leave.
= doing the same thing over – expecting different results.
where empires go to die.
trudeau nails it in todays’ doonesbury
it’s time to time to declare victory and go home.
mr pres- why are we in there? if we are trying to destroy the terrorists- that is one thing. if we are nation building, that is something else. sir, i don’t think that you would have a problem i you tell us that we are there to destroy the terrorists. if you tell us that we are there to nation build- you lose! big time.
#3 tells it all. We went in to get a pipeline for Cheney. We stayed to keep the pipeline and to put Iran in the jaws of a pincer. It’s still the neocons’ wet dream and it won’t change until we get rid of Bush’s Secretary of Defense and Bush’s political Generals.
Read David Rohde’s series on his 7 months of capitivity in Afghanistan. It started today in the NYT–link below.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/world/asia/18hostage.html?em
If we are to stay in Afghanistan, the war must be paid for and supported by the public. Put the war funding in a bill with a tax sufficient to pay it, and see if it gets bipartisan support.
Frankly, I think once faced with the cost both parties will want to leave.
Get out while you still can
before it becomes your Vietnam
What started in righteous anger
is ending in the wrong plan.
You can’t build a nation from the outside
according to your own designs
but you can destroy your own nation from inside
by building a terror industrial complex.
The change we can believe in is no more wars
You become ever more like the enemy
when you adopt the same means
you and we are better than that.
Draw down and get out.
Time to get the hell outta Dodge. Long overdue.
—
Go Barack Obama
I would tell him to evaluate all info and make a decision based on all his security meetings with staff and McChrystal’s evaluation. I really could not get too exercised regardless his decision. Obama has stated repeatedly since 2007 that he wanted to and would send more troops to Afghanistan.
That said, I hate wars and wouldn’t be upset if he withdrew all troops. I am just going to have to defer to the CIC on this one.
I’d ask him: Is it worth it?
Even if we drive the taliban out, they will be in other areas and Al qaida is in places like Yemen and Somali now and leaving the Pakistan region for better climates and quieter failed states to do their thing.
So, what do we gain?
And what will come of the area if we do manage to clean it up a little? Will it make the country run? The people to have a better life? Or will it just revert?
So, is it worth our young people’s blood? our money? our effort?
Or are we just now spinning our wheels?
Here are links to two posts of mine from earlier this month:
http://libertystreet.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/afghanistan/
http://libertystreet.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/what-is-the-goal/
The United States will end up bankrupting itself if it stays in Afghanistan.
I’d get the Senate to debate a bill to fund our further involvement in Afghanistan for the next five years.
Let’s get the Democrats to repeatedly ask the Republicans to identify the source of $300B or to call for an exit.
And then I’d get out asap.
Get out now. It is just a matter of how bad you want the defeat to be and the longer the worse the defeat and the more deaths
If President Obama would answer the following questions, maybe, just maybe, we would have an honest, open dialogue:
So, I have some questions that I would like to have answered:
* What are our objectives in Afghanistan?
* How will we know we have met or objectives?
* Who is the enemy?
* Are we involved in ‘state’ building?
* How will people with no concept of our democracy respond?
* Are we there to protect Israel from Pakistan’s nukes?
* Are natural resources (oil and gas) part of our reasons for being there?