print“Fifty-five percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Thursday back the president-elect when it comes to reducing the number of American combat troops in Iraq and increasing the number in Afghanistan.
“The reason is simple,” said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “The war in Iraq is very unpopular, while a majority support the war in Afghanistan.”
This seems to bear out what I conjectured sometime ago in “A War To Call His Own”:
“Electability in fin de siècle America hinges on projecting strength around the world—an American leader has to aspire to protect borders and people not his own. In other words, Obama needs a war he can call his own. In Afghanistan, Obama has found such a war.”
America might have been able to come to some agreement with the Taliban in early 2002 after the Northern Alliance took over Afghanistan – power in Afghanistan if they ratted out Al Queda – but Bush et al were too flush with victory and focused on Iraq to go for such a deal. Meanwhile, the War in Afghanistan, like Vietnam, spreads over to neighboring countries – most of all, Pakistan ( WHICH HAS NUKES !!). More troops in such a rural country will just be throwing more into the rathole of Pushtunistan…
I want to see the Obama Exit Plan for Afghanistan. Gee. He never served and wants to send more boys into harms way. I think thats called a CHICKENHAWK
I don’t think we should send more troops to Afghanistan and should remove ourselves from Iraq. I think we should just stop warring with any country and focus on fixing our country. Other countries see that we have a broken economy that we are struggling to fix and don’t trust us to help them when it is obvious to them that we can’t help ourselves.
Leaving aside for the moment any discussion of the war in Iraq, a little perspective on Afghanistan is in order — courtesy of my son, who served a combat tour there in 2007: The former Soviet Union sent a full 400,000 troops into Afghanistan and was forced to withdraw ignominiously. We have been in country since 2002 and have never had even 50,000 US troops on the ground. Moreover, we have lost approximately 450 lives. In other words, we have done far more with far less — all this IN SPITE of the Bush Administration’s bone-headed decision early on to jointly share operational control in Afghanistan with our European allies(sic), who have been “weak sisters” for the most part — and that is putting it mildly. Yes: I suspect Obama can perhaps win this, if he goes about it correctly….Not overnight, and not perfectly — as almost nothing in Afghanistan is done that way (ever). However, Obama first needs to find the courage to FLATTEN a number of mountain villages across the border in Waziristan if he is to show that he means business — a necessary task from which the Bush/Rice team continually shrunk.
P.S. I didn’t vote for Obama and I don’t agree with him on anything else besides Afghanistan, as far as I can tell.
Obama campaigned on a “bring the troops home” theme. It was not obvious then that his idea of “home” was Afghanistan and/or Pakistan. So…Welcome to your NEW home in Afghanistan. While I think Bush is the promoter of his daddys “new world order” Tri-Lateral commission plank and a one world government Obama is a smooth talking, very smart guy with at least half a brain in working order. Prepare for the worst…HOPE for the best is about all any citizen slave can do anyway!