Posted on 09/01/2009 12:43:00 PM PDT by markomalley
What is the scariest thing I have read recently on Afghanistan?
It is not the leaks from General McChrystal's strategy assessment, though they are certainly sobering enough. McChrystal's statement that the situation in Afghanistan is "serious" but salvageable should banish irrational exuberance about the war (if any is left after 8 years). But by itself, it does not indicate a worse-than-we-realize situation. On the contrary, the attentive public and the expert community has consumed a steady diet of bleak reports from the field and so I, at least, do not have to revise downward my evaluation of the battlefield prospects for McChrystal's efforts in Afghanistan.
Nor is it the steady drumbeat of complaint of electoral fraud in the recent election. It is depressing to realize that this last vote was probably the least "free and fair" of any of the several elections or referenda in the combined theaters of Afghanistan and Iraq, but the purity of the election is not the most urgent concern in Afghanistan. A better election would have been nice, but would not have substantially altered the near-to-mid-term prognosis there.
Nor even is it George Will's remarkable column calling for the United States to retreat from Afghanistan. It reads like a 3-M column: part come-home-America George McGovern, part loopy Michael Moore, and part Jack Murtha. Perhaps it is the Murtha correspondence that I find most telling, for what distinguished Murtha was the absence of any serious plan for meeting U.S. national security objectives once the troops were pulled out. George Will, at least thus far, doesn't offer one either. Will's column is a depressing read, but it is not scary.
No, the scariest thing…
(Excerpt) Read more at shadow.foreignpolicy.com ...
This last quote really brought me up short. There are few things more toxic for effective civil-military relations in wartime than the military believing that their political commanders are not serious about seeing the conflict through to a successful conclusion.
I don't know why this would bring anyone up short. Why would anyone expect a "Bush-like commitment" out of the Obama administration? I see nothing other than "business as usual" for the Obama administration in this report.
The scariest thing is we have a muzzy in the white hut and a bunch of Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood (Saudis) people there too. My guess is intel will get leaked back to the Taliban and Al Qeada to kill our troops.
This would be like Tojo or Hitler having one of there own in the white hut during WW2.
Retired Marine - now Judge Carter was in Afghan and was told by Marines that they cannot shoot back at the Taliban. This mickey mouse chicken sh*t nonsense will get American boys killed.
Hopefully Judge Carter will do his Constitutional duty in the near future.
Ping for later
I am shocked to read that Obama may lack the moral strength to see things through. Going with what way the wind blows, makes him sound like some slick Chicago politician. Say it ain’t so.....
Politically, the decisions about Afghanistan are lose-lose propositions for Obama.
Now he knows what it’s like to be President. It’s not a simple as being a demagogue social worker.
Robert Kaplan, in his book "Imperial Grunts", mentioned the ROE which were hamstringing the Special Forces.
Once a slick Chicago politician, always a slick Chicago politician. The O thugs have taken lessons from the Daley Machine and ratcheted it up a few notches. Did anyone expect anything less?
More troops in Afghanistan yet not a word from code pink or the “World Can’t Wait” Crowd.
Well, Stalin did have Harry White and Alger Hiss in FDR's govt...
A couple of months back a guest suggested that Obama cared
more about the politics of Afghanistan than the safety of our troops there. BOR became angry and replied something
to the effect that it was “ridiculous” and refused to let the guest continue. BOR is a patriot who, like most Americans, refuses to believe we have a Communist/Muslim in the White House. Beck should replace BOR in his time slot.
Wasn’t Obama’s get thing during the debates about how tuff he was going to get on Afganastan? Now we’re losing ground there, and will probably bail so they can prepare for another hit on us. I never thought a democrat would do that ... /sarc
Everyone should read “Witness,” Whittaker Chambers’
autobiography. Not only is Harry Dexter White and Alger
Hiss exposed, including the Yalta Conference, but Chambers
explains clearly the struggle we face against Obama and
his czars.
Thanks for mentioning White and Hiss.
Exactly right. The troops are sitting-ducks because they
are required to be fired on first. I expect a massacre of
our troops may be part of Obama’s plan.
He needs another “crisis” and if one doesn’t develop, he’ll make one. He can’t win this war. He has no idea what it would take, he doesn’t have the boots on the ground behind him and only his political generals will back him. We need to pull our boys and girls home....now.
But it's the same ol thing....
When politicians are in charge of a war.....troops will die, when they shouldn't have.
Period.
Witness is an amazing book, and I agree it should be read by every Freeper.
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