In response to all those who want the United States to pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan:
U.S. military generals do not have the power to choose which wars they fight. Only their commander in chief can do that, and he is President Barack Obama.
As a check on the president’s power, only Congress can officially declare war and Congress must vote to pay for war. Should Congress want to end a war, it can cut off money and stop U.S. involvement, no matter what the president wants.
Democrats have had control of Congress for almost three years and the White House for almost a year. It is clear by their actions that they have decided to continue both wars. For those who want the wars to end, they are the ones to talk to.
What is not clear is why Obama is laying the blame on "failure" in Afghanistan on the Afghanistan central government. Afghanistan never signed up for duty.
There was no "central" government in Afghanistan when the USA went in to rout the Taliban, which harbored the Al-Qaida. Afghanistan still does not want a central government.
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Obama has sent thinly spread out unsupported troops expanding out into the Afghanistan wilderness settlements exposing them to attacks from locals. Now Obama is demanding that
Afghanistan develop an "adequate" government, an army, and a police force. Why should Afghanistan?
Bush understood this hence his containment strategy of using Spooks and Drones to attack whenever and wherever the Taliban and Al-Qaida popped up. We should not be there for nation building, but just be in the shadows doing our thing with as few people as possible.
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Obama has to re-chose one of three Afghanistan strategic paths
1. Counterinsurgency -The path Obama took during and after the election to surge the good war, and take the fight to the enemy "with troops on the ground" to take them down. A counterinsurgency strategy of clearing, holding, and rebuilding so we could disrupt, dismantle, and defeat the Al Qaeda. We would protect the local people.
2. Counterterrorism -Go back to the Bush Afghanistan approach of a "spooks and drone containment war" to interdict and disrupt the enemy activities. We would abandon the local people.
3. Quit - the fight and when the next event occurs treat it as a police action.
One Administration thought is the idea that we should only fight the Al-Qaida in Pakistan and not the radical Islamist Taliban, because the Al-Qaida is basically gone from Afghanistan and according to Joe Biden the militant Taliban is not a threat.
The Taliban gave safe harbor and aided and albeit the Al-Qaida before and after 9/11.
Obama on 10-6-09 said that Al-Qaida has "lost operational capacity" so the question is could Al-Qaida reconstitute its Afghan base?
If the Taliban is left by Obama to retake Afghanistan the women will be oppressed and will again give safe harbor, aided and albeit the Al-Qaida.
Unfortunately when Obama chose strategy 1, he also placed new restrictive rules of engagement on our troops and gave the enemy many civilian civil liberties. Now with the 2009 summer offense nearly over the military is saying they need another 60,000 for a total 120,000 troops to fight under Obama's rules. Most Obama talk has a high number of just 40,000 troop.
Obama has failed his 3:00 am wakeup moment. Obama is dithering.
Many Governments in the would rule their people different than the U.S.A. This does't mean they are right or wrong. Who are we to judge any other nation when we as a nation are having our own problems here at home. It is time for us to save our troops and bring them home and stop spending the billions of dollars funding needless wars, which are needed here to fix our own problems.
After 9/11 the Bush administration acted rapidly to invade Afghanistan. The objectives were to drive the Taliban from control of the government and to dismantle and destroy al Qaeda. The Bush efforts were initially successful. Both the Taliban and al Qaeda were driven from Afghanistan and sought refuge in the remote tribal areas of Pakistan. From this location the Taliban revived and al Qaeda continued to survive and operate.
Under the Bush administration the emphasis was on military defeat of the enemy--the Taliban and al Qaeda.
An important corollary objective was the formation of a new democratically elected government in Afghanistan. But the military objective came first.
Now, eight years later, Afghanistan is again threatened by a highly resurgent Taliban force which is assuming control over major parts of Afghanistan and al Qaeda is still operating.
General Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has requested an additional 40,000 troops to bolster his forces ( total US force 108,000), but a stalling and bogged down Obama administration fails to act on this request. This failure threatens the Afghanistan war effort. The administration suffers from a serious bureaucratic paralysis, while it wrestles with all its priorities.The Obama administration has taken its eye off the ball stressing that the Karzai government address its corruption, and become a viable partner, before more troops are sent. A run off election is now scheduled for November 7,2009.
In the mean time the Taliban gains more strength,American casualties increase and there is a strong possibility that the Obama administration may chose a road that will lead to defeat in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is not, as a number of anti war advocates claim, "another Vietnam". There is not the remotest comparison between Afghanistan and Vietnam. In Afghanistan we are in a fight for our very existence with radical Islamic jihad. In Vietnam we were fighting a war in an isolated far away land which posed no immediate threat to our homeland. Not so in Afghanistan--the land of the Taliban, protectors of the brain center of al Qaeda and training ground for radical Islamic jihad which spreads death and destruction to America and the rest of the free world.
Look at the permanently stupid proclaiming their expertise on Afghanistan. Houstonjac should stick to screwing up peoples investment portfolios where he does no better than random chance. The next thing they will be telling us how they predicted the housing crash and the stock market crash, all without any proof. Finally they will tell us that they were smarter than economist Dean Baker.
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/beat_...
I have no expertise on the Afghanistan situation,
but it appears to me that the Obama Administration is doing everything it can to pull our troops out to cater to those on the far left.
The whole world, including Iran and North Korea is watching Obama and planning their next move.
The Administration not listening to it's generals and Secretary of Defense.
The Administration taking money from the defense budget to build a tribute to Ted Kennedy.
The great and enlightening Fox News just said that Obama will be announcing something about Afghanistan very soon. Hopefully, Obama has finally gotten off his butt!
Had Congress declared war on Afghanistan on 9/12/01, quite possibility we would be out of there now with a victory. Instead they turned things over to W and he became fixated with Iraq. As a result we are still losing Americans lives in both countries nine years later. If there is blame to be had it belongs to Congress for abdicating its constitutional responsible.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Wednesday that it's "possible" the president could reach a decision before Nov. 7, despite earlier suggestions from the White House that the administration wanted to wait until after the runoff to announce its new strategy.
The strategy of smoke and mirrors...
There are times when politicians start something and then move on to something else. Then the special interest enter the picture and become the tail wagging the dog. President Eisenhower warned the American people about the threat of the congressional military industrial complex before he left office. The war monger/war profiteers love a forever war and they do not care how many of our fine soldiers die or are disabled, and they do not care about the number of innocent civilians that get killed. There needs to be a time limit on any military adventure. Colin Powell's doctrine of overwhelming force worked in the first Gulf war, and should be used in the future.
Colin Powell learned from Viet Nam never to fight that type of war of gradual buildup again. His overwhelming force doctrine worked well in the first Gulf War and worked in the Iraq War after the surge.
Instead of increasing troop strength in Afghanistan as advised by his generals and his Secretary of Defense, Obama is spending his valuable time that should be spent on making some type of decision on Afghanistan in surging his attacks on FOX NEWS.
The military forces in Afghanistan is a NATO force of which we are just a part. Corruption in Karzai's government, the cheney/bush totalitarian, criminal, and incompetent mis-administration, and the Musharraf government is the main reason this War has been going on for over 8 years and still no Afghan Army large enough to do the job. Call the Marine Corps and the Army and ask them how how it takes to train a soldier, and how many Afghan enlistee's could have been trained in 8 plus years. At present an enlistee in the Afghan Army receives approximately $100 per month while his Taleban counterpart receives from $200 to $500.One could train a million man Army but if there is still widespread corruption then the war will go on forever--nothing gets resolved.
LarryVegas:
President Obama can handle FOX and the war.
This war is just another Bush mess that Obama
will try to fix.