I certainly agree – the more I hear Obama talk about his Afghanistan policy, the less I like it. But what’s a peacenik to do? The idea of the U.S. as policeman of the world is so ingrained in both political parties’ mindsets that we’ll have to wait for the next candidate for Change before we see any. And what will the middle east be like in 2016? How will they feel about the U.S. then?

Obama has to feed MIC… damn the humanity.

America, who can we blow up today?

Via Gorilla Guides earlier today…they’re going after Fallujah again:

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43248

we had to destroy the village to save it.
that is still the operative mentality.

We need to elect more people to Congress who will cut of the funds for these wars and the MICC. Folks don’t join the military to go to war for 20 years non stop. Cheney is determined that his and Rummy’s plans come to fruition.

Remember…Rummy is still in an office in the basement of the Pentagon…he hasn’t gone anywhere….and I doubt Cheney is planning on it either.

K.. my views on Afghanistan have gotten me in trouble here before, but I’ll try again. Afghanistan is not Iraq. I believe that Afghanistan belongs in the you-broke-it-you-bought it category until the evidence convincingly says otherwise. There is plenty of evidence that suggests Iraq would be better off if we left immediately. This is generally not the case with Afghanistan, and there remains some suggestion that a more systematic US approach there than shrub’s non-approach (aka, having a plan) could strengthen the government and progressive civilian elements there. Afghanistan needs a plan, more US support, and a sunset date for withdrawl a few years off. Iraq needs an immediate withdrawl.

I agree.

Excerpt from Eric Margolist posted today (www.ericmargolis.com)
“CALGARY – Barack Obama wants to withdraw US troops from Iraq and send them to Afghanistan, which he calls the real front on the `war on terror.’ He also has repeated threats to attack Pakistan `if necessary.’

One understands Obama’s need to sound macho. Rival John McCain has been beating his chest, proclaiming, `I know how to win wars.’ Polls show Americans trust McCain three to one over Obama as a war leader. Unfortunately, recent US presidents seem to require small military conflicts to prove their political virility.

But Obama has long called the US-led occupation of Afghanistan a `good war,’ a view most Americans and Canadians share. They see Afghanistan – and now Pakistan – as hotbeds of al-Qaida and Taliban terrorists that must be eradicated.

It is distressing to see Obama succumb to the blitz of war propaganda over Afghanistan and adopt George Bush’s faux terminology of terrorism. Before Obama urges widening America’s war there, he should consider:

*Al-Qaida never numbered more than 300 men. There are hardly any left in Afghanistan. Survivors scattered into Pakistan. Finding them is police and intelligence work, not a job for thousands more western troops”

Virginia Quarterly Report 2008

“The world promised reconstruction to Afghanistan; it was to be thrust from the medieval rule of the fundamentalist Taliban into the booming twenty-first century. However, progress has materialized only in scattershot fashion across this country where elite villas, five-star hotels, and fabulous malls for a very few take precedence over roads, schools, and farms. Hovels were bulldozed to make way for expensive housing for Kabul’s wealthiest residents—top government officials and their lackeys. Hundreds of refugee families living on government-owned land in the posh Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood were ejected from that prime real estate. Mansions and malls tower over mud-and-burlap vendor stalls in a clash of priorities between, on the one hand, a tribal, Islamic culture and, on the other, secular, gotta-have-it, drug-infused venture capitalism. The latter influences everything, including international aid organizations.

Daily, Afghans thread their way through a traffic jam of abbreviations emblazoned across Land Rovers: UN, UNESCO, UNDP, ACF, MACA. No reliable figures exist on the overhead of the three hundred and fifty Kabul-based aid agencies, but indirect signs—air-conditioned Land Rovers, Nissan Pathfinders, Toyota Land Cruisers, and luxurious residences—suggest a high figure. The average cost of maintaining a foreign UN employee hovers around two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Every time an aid agency convoy leaves Kabul, they spend as much as twenty thousand dollars on security teams. Add to that the soaring cost of monthly rentals—as much as fifteen thousand dollars—and you have a tidy sum devoted to their upkeep.

Despite these few showy trappings of prosperity, most of Afghanistan still lies in ruins—along with the optimism that first greeted the US-led military coalition six years ago. The US strategy in Afghanistan has even unofficially allowed some Afghan warlords, recruited by the Bush administration, to fight al Qaeda and the Taliban for control of Afghanistan’s flourishing opium trade.

“Who doesn’t want money?” says Shirish Ravan, project coordinator for the Kabul office of the Illicit Crop Monitoring Program of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. “The money is guaranteed. It doesn’t rot. It’s not like fruit but more like gold.”

These warlords use profits from drug trafficking to fund their armies and amass power, further weakening the nearly impotent Karzai government—all under the auspices of the US war against terrorism.”

The other difference is:

Johnny McTelepromtper will be banging rocks together & screaming at trees when giving commands to our soldiers in Afghanistan.

Barack Obama will actually be listening to his Commanders on the ground in Afghanistan.

Johnny will let Osama remain free.

Barack will get him (or reveal to the world that Osama died years ago).

See Digby today about this. She reminds us that no Western power has been able to “tame” Afghanistan for more than 200 years. The British and the Russians have failed in Afghanistan; now its our turn.

What Obama needs to do is to figure out what constitutes an achievable objective in Afghanistan that a war-weary country (both the U.S. and Afghanistan, and throw in Pakistan for good measure) can agree to.

Afghanistan became a haven for Al Qaeda and the Taliban because it was, in essence, a failed state. Obama is going to need some good minds to figure this one out.

Bob in HI

Obama has a much greater chance of success for bringing peace of some kind, because he won’t approach dialog with them while simultaneously applying a lead boot to their jugular. Obama is civilized, Bushco is not.

Oh I agree completely with that assessment and nobody is calling for a permanent occupation. The question is twofold: have we done everything we reasonably can to assist with the nation-building process that we haven’t already done (shrub’s policy there has been incidental at best), and would the Afghans truly be better off than they are now if we were to leave immediately. If the answers to these two questions are, yes, then Afghanistan is Iraq and we should leave as soon as possible. If the answers to those two questions are, no, then we need to look at all of our options before making any sudden decisions. The fact is, we’re there now. We may or may not have been justified in going in, but that’s in the past, and like it or not we have to take some degree of responsibiliy for the situation we’ve helped create there. I don’t know whether Obama’s Afghan surge is the right solution or not, but it sure beats no solution at all… and withdrawing today is, no solution at all.

“The fact is, we’re there now.”

Congratulations on your assimilation to Teh Borg.

This has been the Republican strategy since the beginning: create “facts” on the ground that force the next president to pursue the same idiotic policies in fear that to do otherwise would have worse consequences. It is the ultimate in “framing.” Obama is not as smart as I think he is if he allows Bush and Cheney to frame all of his choices in this way.

Bob in HI