Deja vu all over again: Obama to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan
Tuesday, December 1, 2009 at 21:11 It disappoints me that he keeps invoking September 11 and Al Qaeda, all the while ignoring that they arose in Saudi Arabia. I believe he knows better and that makes these remarks all the more suspect. He tries to mitigate the impact by suggesting that NATO and ‘our friends’ support this.
They may support it in theory, but I’ll be surprised to see them send a significant number of troops to join the 30,000.
It is true that the inexcuseable dithering of the Bush administration has put Obama in this damned if you do, and damned if you don’t situation.
I’m old enough to have heard this ‘war is peace’ talk before - back during the Vietnam era. Gee, if we could just fine tune this, and tweak that, we’ll have it done and be out. Escalating this conflict to end it makes about as much sense as handing the keys of the liquor store to an alcoholic. You end up with a dead person.
An insurgent war isn’t nearly that simple. We’ve never been good at fighting and winning insurgent wars - just as England couldn’t fight an insurgent war in colonial America, the French couldn’t fight it in Southeast Asia, the Russians and the British couldn’t fight it in Afghanistan.
Oh, but we’re Americans. We’re exceptional.
Or not.
Final points:
Al Qaeda operates where ever they feel like it. The could just as well use the Sudan or Somalia. Any place that is without a functioning government. The world is full of potential safe havens for them.
Afghanistan, with our corrupt puppet dictator, is no more capable of building and maintaining a democratic government than I am capable of becoming a rocket scientist.
This will be followed by an obscene expansion of the usual suspect cadres of war profiteers.
This will keep our national focus off of the serious business of rebuilding America.
The only thing that it does do is help the employment picture: They’ll need a lot more bodies in uniform. That auditorium at West Point won’t cut it.
This speech should not have been made at West Point. It should have been made from the White House - the place that speaks to all Americans and not a crowd of eager young officers in training that don’t need convincing.
I hear that Joe Biden will make the usual rounds of the political talk shows to do the heavy lifting of developing support for this plan. I pity him.
The exit strategy is supposedly going to begin in July of 2010. If it doesn’t, it never will.
And, where is the all American anti-war movement?
Bush Administration, Obama, afghanistan, al qaeda, biden, surge, troops in Afghanistan
Reader Comments (1)
Nice article, Mave. Only thing I can say is that, as a retired military veteran, I'm very pleased to see that diplomacy is still alive. Which is something that was lacking when President Bush/Vice President Cheney were around and pushed this American cowboy knee jerk reaction to any and all perceived threats to America thing.
The good thing I see from this speech is that the President affirmed to the troops that his administration is trying to keep a finger on the pulse of it all and manage it, as if to say, I understand what's going on, you do the fighting, I'll do everything else, and I'm with you troops the whole way. Rather than other Presidents in the past do of just rolling with it, letting the troops conduct diplomacy and/or this I-got-a-bigger-stick-than-you-do-and-we're-America-damnit-we-can't-lose way of thinking. Vietnam was a good example of that.
I'm sorry, but that's the only way I can look at it...through the eyes of the troops. And I think he has clear cut goals of trying to keep Al Quaeda on the run and disjointed so they remain ineffective, while at the same time coming up with some kind of exit strategy. And by the way, I notice he has come under fire for not setting dates in stone for an exit strategy. But that's fine. Because you NEVER signal to the enemy what exactly you are going to do. That would be suicide for our troops. The President was sufficiently vague about specific particulars. And I was pleased to see that. And I was really happy to see he didn't fall into a trap other Presidents have done of "nation building." I got the impression he understands that ain't gonna happen. It hasn't happened for eight years, it's never gonna happen.
Whatever is happening, I can see that he is listening to his Generals in coming up with this option. President Obama knew he would face flak from the right, the center and the left in whatever the hell he did, but I see a President that's facing it with his full attention and trying to do the best he can.