Posted on 11/07/2009 9:17:07 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
In the protracted Washington debate over the war in Afghanistan, the most concise analysis so far has come from America’s top soldier: “If we don’t get a level of legitimacy and governance (there), then all the troops in the world aren’t going to make any difference.”
Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was speaking two days after Hamid Karzai was declared the winner, by default, in August elections so massively rigged that a U.N.-backed electoral complaints committee threw out about a million Karzai votes. That forced a run-off from which his challenger, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah withdrew, saying the second round would be just as fraudulent as the first.
So much for an exercise in democracy President Barack Obama had used as his rationale for escalating the war a few months after he took office. “I did order 21,000 additional troops there to make sure that we could secure the election, because I thought that was important.”
It was. It showed that the United States and its NATO allies are fighting on the side of a corrupt and discredited government in a war, now in its ninth year, for which, according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, there can be no purely military solution.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.reuters.com ...
BLOOD ON OBAMA’S HANDS for not sending our troops what they need. I heard that a lot under President Bush but never hear it now.
lol democracy for afghanistan. that was a good one. When do they plan to open a McDonalds there?
I spent some time this week with a couple of people who’ve had quite a bit of experience with Iraq and Afghanistan. While I believe there are no greater Americans than our soldiers, I believe that our ROE’s and other constraints have doomed our position in Afghanistan irretrievably. The US Embassy there might as well as start building the evacuation helicopter pad on the rooftop....[you young Freepers might not understand this, but some of the older ones will]
With Democrats in charge....it’s starting to look like another Vietnam....Dems are great at screwing things up.
Obama had used as his rationale mass confusion.
Cute idea. Completely unachievable.
Eff the Muslim world. It can't be fixed. Bring our people home. You don't send neuro-surgeons to fix a trainwreck.
Carpet bomb both theaters on our way out and yell "Adios mo fo's. Next time, it's nuclear!".
Our current dual-front conflict is the invasion from Mexico, and the domestic enemies of the Constitution now running this coup from DC.
We need our soldiers and sailors home, with us, now.
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