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Obama Loses Another War He 'Ended': Afghanistan is turning into a disaster, just like Iraq.
FrontPage Mag ^ | 10/01/2015 | Daniel Greenfield

Posted on 10/01/2015 8:57:08 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

A day after the Taliban had overrun the city of Kunduz, Obama told the UN that, "Ideologies are not defeated with guns, they're defeated by better ideas."

The better idea that the Taliban had was fighting a war with guns, while Obama was still searching through his hashtags for a better idea than a bullet. Instead of convening a summit on “countering violent extremism”, the Taliban retook the last of their cities to fall to the United States.

In a single day in September, the Taliban had captured a city of a few hundred thousand people.

Tajikistan saw the fall of Kunduz coming months ago, but Obama’s vaunted intel operation was too busy cooking the books to make it seem as if he was winning in Iraq to waste time lying about another war.

In March, Obama was crediting himself with having shifted the momentum against the Taliban. Now the Taliban have shown him which way the momentum had really shifted.

Last year, he declared the war was over. But Obama and reality have never been on speaking terms. The war had not reached a “responsible conclusion”. The fighting wasn’t over until the Taliban said so.

Obama claimed that the combat mission of American soldiers was over and that they were only there as advisers. This comes as a surprise to the Americans who are fighting the Taliban in Kunduz, trying to relieve trapped Afghan forces. The official story is that they’re “advising” the Afghans. The real story is that Obama lied to American soldiers and to the American people.

Again.

The Afghanistan scam isn’t even a new scam. Obama pulled this same exact trick in Iraq, renaming the mission and redefining the American soldiers there as “advisers”. But ISIS let him withdraw before humiliating him by capturing a city. The Taliban haven’t been that obliging.

After futile efforts to negotiate with Biden’s “moderate Taliban”, Obama gave up and decided to go ahead with a fake withdrawal. The Taliban responded to the fake withdrawal with a real invasion.

Like the rise of ISIS, the Taliban victory was only a surprise to the foreign policy cocktail crowd circuit. The Taliban had been moving in on the city for months. While Obama golfed, partied and selfied, the Jihadists tightened their grip on the city and its underequipped forces. The Taliban still don’t golf, but now they’re the ones partying and taking selfies in the streets of the provincial capital.

In a replay of the Iraq disaster, the Afghan forces surrendered or deserted to join the enemy. Obama’s plans for a transition have been shot to hell. His declaration that the war is over has become a joke.

And the Taliban have demonstrated that he can’t leave without their permission.

The question is what will Obama have to give the Taliban in exchange for letting him leave. The 5 Taliban commanders weren’t enough. Freeing every terrorist in Gitmo won’t do it either. Obama’s deal with Iran has sharpened the appetites of terrorists around the world.

Just like in Iraq, Obama chose to ignore the threat for as long as possible until it was on the news. Obama cooked the intel on the fight against ISIS to make it seem like he was winning, but he had been cooking the intel on Afghanistan from the very beginning.

Americans have never been told the dirty truth about his Afghan surge.

Obama needed cover to withdraw from Iraq so he lied and claimed that the surge was needed to fight Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. His own intelligence briefings however showed that there were only around 100 Al Qaeda in the country. The surge was based on a lie and the lies didn’t stop there.

Thousands of American soldiers were killed or crippled by rules of engagement that kept them from fighting the Taliban. Obama didn’t want to beat the Taliban. He wanted to bring them to the negotiating table. That was his “better idea” than “guns”. It was a better idea built on dead American soldiers.

And the “better idea” has failed miserably.

The negotiations with the Taliban didn’t work. The political solution failed in Afghanistan, just as it did in Iraq. And now the Taliban are rebounding, the way that ISIS did in Iraq. All Obama has left are his lies.

The official story is that our mission is no longer a combat mission. Never mind the bombs and bullets.

Meanwhile the United States can’t provide useful support to the Afghans because the Taliban have taken a city and Obama won’t authorize air strikes on populated areas. It’s the same strategy of human shields that allowed Hamas and ISIS to hold out, and now the Taliban are using it to their advantage.

The US can’t provide air support for battles within the city. That leaves Obama with a choice between sending American soldiers into battle or carrying out air strikes on urban targets. He’s already made his decision by sending in American personnel and then lying about it. And then lying about the Taliban.

The Taliban, according to an anonymous official source, attacked Kunduz for “publicity purposes”.

But it’s Obama who bombs countries for “publicity purposes” as he’s doing in Iraq and Syria. The Taliban aren’t trying to recapture Afghanistan for “publicity purposes”. They are doing it to establish Islamic law.

Islamic law is the Taliban’s version of a better idea. And Islamic law is established by the gun and the sword. Obama’s better idea is the lie.

Obama lies about the motives and agendas of Islamic Jihadists. He lied about his success in Afghanistan. He lied about the end of the war, the reasons for the large American death toll and his transition plans.

In a sharp reversal, we are now the ones whose screens are full of Iraqi information ministers bellicosely yelling about all their victories. And then we’re confused when ISIS or the Taliban show up at the airport.

At the summit on “countering violent extremism”, Obama doubled down on beating the terrorists with Twitter hashtags, jobs and support for the Muslim Brotherhood. Then he proceeded to blame Ben Carson and Donald Trump for ISIS and the Taliban, claiming that the failure to build “diverse, tolerant, inclusive societies that reject anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant bigotry” leads to Muslim “extremism”.

Afghanistan is diverse, if you count only Muslims, but not remotely tolerant or inclusive.

Obama claimed that “We will ultimately prevail because we are guided by a stronger, better vision”. But this progressively bionic, “stronger, better vision” didn’t even allow Obama to see the fall of Kunduz or Mosul coming. The conviction that his ideology is on the right side of history is useful when terrorizing a bewildered GOP establishment, but the Taliban are far more convinced of their rightness than he is. In a battle between fanatics, Islamic Jihadists have more conviction than leftist community organizers.

The first American team into Afghanistan after 9/11 flew in a plane carrying the tail number 9/11/01 with orders to link up with the Northern Alliance, break the Taliban and destroy Al Qaeda.

Kunduz fell to the Northern Alliance two months after September 11. What the Bush administration managed to get done in a few months at the cost of eight lives, Obama spent six years in office undoing at the cost of thousands of American lives.

Obama still doesn’t have a plan for winning in Afghanistan. Certainly nothing as crude as the team that flew in on a plane marked 9/11/01. But he does have a “vision”. Unlike plans, visions are worth very little. Every deluded lunatic has them. Obama’s vision is that he is bound to win because the left is right.

That’s not a plan. It’s a mental illness.

The Taliban are just as deluded as Obama, but they make plans to carry out their vision. They don’t just give another version of the same empty speech, spew a few lies at a camera and then go golfing.

Instead they coordinate a lightning attack that takes local forces by surprise and allows them to seize a city. Like Obama, the Taliban are evil. Unlike him, they aren’t also lazy and incompetent.

That’s why the Taliban have Kunduz, while Obama is left with his vision, his hashtags and his lies.


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: afghanistan; iraq; obama
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To: SeekAndFind

These wars are ending exactly the way he wants them to, with his side winning.


21 posted on 10/01/2015 9:30:50 AM PDT by fella ("As it was before Noah so shall it be again,")
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To: SeekAndFind

And we all remember the flak Bush got with the whole “Mission Accomplished” deal. And even then it was about the Abraham Lincoln’s mission, the entire campaign. But the drum beaters beat away, didn’t they?


22 posted on 10/01/2015 9:33:10 AM PDT by cld51860 (Volo pro veritas)
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To: cld51860

I should have written NOT the entire campaign...


23 posted on 10/01/2015 9:37:03 AM PDT by cld51860 (Volo pro veritas)
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To: SeekAndFind

Ww spent less than 4 years fighting World War II from the Pearl Harbor attack on Dec. 1941 to the Jap surrender Sept. 1945.

We have been fighting in Afghanistan for 14 years.

You can’t effectively fight and win wars against an amorphous idea like “muslim terrorism”.

Especially when you have leaders so pussyfied and eaten up with Political Correctness that they can’t even admit that muslim terrorists are the enemy and just call it “War On Terror”.

You have to identify and isolate the actual living, breathing entity that is your enemy.

But our leaders spend their time telling us how the enemy is really a Religion of Peace made to look bad by just a bad apple or two.

Now, instead of concentrating of defeating muslim terrorists, our own government tries to convince people that patriotic Americans who disagree with the government are terrorists.


24 posted on 10/01/2015 9:39:31 AM PDT by Iron Munro (Proverbs 21:20 - The wise have stores of food and oil but a foolish man devours all he has))
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To: SeekAndFind; daisy mae for the usa; AdvisorB; wizardoz; free-in-nyc; Vendome; Georgia Girl 2; ...

Front Page mag - A Project of the David Horowitz Freedom Center

Daniel Greenfield Ping List Notification of new articles.

I am posting Greenfield's articles from FrontPage and the Sultan Knish blog. FReepmail or drop me a comment to get on or off the Greenfield ping list.

I highly recommend an occasional look at the Sultan Knish blog. It is a rich source of materials, links and more from one of the preeminent writers of our age.

FrontPage is, a basic resource for conservative thought.

25 posted on 10/01/2015 9:41:12 AM PDT by Louis Foxwell (This is a wake up call. Join the Sultan Knish ping list.)
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To: SeekAndFind

If Pakistan falls to a combination IS / Taliban, it would mean Obama was instrumental in the largest government change since the fall of the Soviet Union and give Islam a fully armed base to pursue WWIII. An Islamized Europe is already a given. Yet no one will even dare name or discuss honestly what is happening.

One caliphate from western China through Central Asia through the Middle East and North and Central Africa to the Atlantic. All this with Western Europe either client states or full conquests. What about the Americas?


26 posted on 10/01/2015 9:41:19 AM PDT by JimSEA
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To: Louis Foxwell

Once again, Obama gets 100% of everything he wants.


27 posted on 10/01/2015 9:43:24 AM PDT by stephenjohnbanker (My Batting Average( 1,000) (GOPe is that easy to read))
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To: SeekAndFind

Barack Hussein Obama is a loser. He has always been a loser and he will always be a loser. Second Team Junior Varsity of world leaders.


28 posted on 10/01/2015 9:44:22 AM PDT by FlingWingFlyer (Normal people don't vote Democrat.)
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To: SeekAndFind

A day after the Taliban had overrun the city of Kunduz,

Obama told the UN that, “Ideologies are not defeated with guns, they’re defeated by better ideas.”


29 posted on 10/01/2015 10:00:33 AM PDT by MarvinStinson
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To: hal ogen

Grr. To them, it is a good thing, which tells you all you need to know about them.


30 posted on 10/01/2015 10:04:53 AM PDT by rlmorel ("National success by the Democratic Party equals irretrievable ruin." Ulysses S. Grant)
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To: DesertRhino

stated by someone who never fought in combat.


31 posted on 10/01/2015 10:14:20 AM PDT by Secret Agent Man (Gone Galt; Not averse to Going Bronson.)
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To: SeekAndFind

It is not a disaster for Hussein. His Sunni jihadists are mopping up.


32 posted on 10/01/2015 11:05:53 AM PDT by arthurus (It's true.)
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To: DesertRhino

“Ideologies are not defeated with guns, they’re defeated by better ideas.”
Something you’d hear in a freshman college class.

Nope, more like a freshman High School class.


33 posted on 10/01/2015 11:09:04 AM PDT by kagnew
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To: SeekAndFind

And when he pulls the troops, it will go to hell just like Iraq. If we had remained in Iraq a little while longer while their new government formed, we would not have the Islamic State. Watch what happens with Afghanistan if Obama has his way. Boy, talk about a man who doesn’t have a clue!


34 posted on 10/01/2015 11:09:24 AM PDT by maxwellsmart_agent
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To: The Antiyuppie

His legacy will cast a shadow on Americans yet unborn.


35 posted on 10/01/2015 11:25:26 AM PDT by DuncanWaring (The Lord uses the good ones; the bad ones use the Lord.)
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To: Jim Noble

The biggest mistake besides invading was one of the two idiot retired general’s who Bush appointed to set up the provisional government refused to pay the Iraqi army a month or so of back pay they claimed they were owed by Hussein and the entire Army complete with their AK’s joined the bad guys.


36 posted on 10/01/2015 11:35:26 AM PDT by Lumper20 ( clown in Chief has own Gov employees Gestapo)
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To: maxwellsmart_agent
If we had remained in Iraq a little while longer

We would have wasted even more money, and added to the colossal waste of our young men's lives and limbs.

37 posted on 10/01/2015 12:01:54 PM PDT by Jim Noble (Diseases desperate grown Are by desperate appliance relieved Or not at al)
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To: The Antiyuppie

“As I recall reading, the last time Europe had to get the Muslims out, it was done with swords, horses, and spears.”

As they’ve allowed themselves to be completely disarmed, if it’s to be done again, that’s the only way it will be done.

Just one more reason i will NEVER relinquish my arms. At the rate we’re importing moslems here, it’s only a matter of time before we find ourselves in the same predicament.


38 posted on 10/01/2015 12:16:05 PM PDT by Nacho Bidnith (Leftists can see racism everywhere except the mirror)
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To: SeekAndFind
In a single day in September, the Taliban had captured a city of a few hundred thousand people.

Uhh, didn't 0bama tell us some time ago that the war in Afghanistan was over? Isn't that the excuse he used for releasing some of the Gitmo detainees??

Man, the number of lies is so long it's difficult to remember them all. AND, it's becoming more and more difficult to determine which one is the egregious!!!

39 posted on 10/01/2015 12:28:41 PM PDT by jda ("Righteousness exalts a nation . . .")
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To: justa-hairyape
When it comes to leadership, Putin makes Barack Obama look like the weakling he is...Obama's overthrow of so many dictators, far from bringing peace and harmony, has simply created a chaotic, violent vacuum through which ISIS has emerged like a fast-mutating virulent virus............The new Syrian rebel army has become nothing more than a hotbed of terrorism governed by ISIS....Putins going after them ....while Obama "talks" a walk he never walks.


40 posted on 10/01/2015 3:29:31 PM PDT by caww
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