Posted on 09/15/2009 3:47:20 PM PDT by SJackson
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has joined Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold in declaring that the United States needs to start thinking about how to extract its military from Afghanistan.
While almost 100 members of the House (including many conservative Republicans) have signed on to Massachusetts Congressman Jim McGovern's call for the development of an Afghanistan exit strategy, Feingold has been a relatively lonely Senate advocate for a rethink of the eight-year occupation.
At the annual Fighting Bob Fest gathering in Baraboo, however, Sanders drew cheers from the crowd of 8,000 when he said, "We need to take a very, very hard look at our war in Afghanistan. We need to be clear in our goals and we need a real discussion about an exit strategy to bring our troops home."
Sanders made his statement at the largest annual gathering of grass-roots activists in the Midwest, where there was no question of the crowd's enthusiasm for the "Health Care Not Warfare" message promoted by activists with Progressive Democrats of America.
Prior to coming to Wisconsin for the event, Sanders explained his views on the need to rethink Afghanistan in a video produced as part of the Brave New Films "Senator Sanders Unfiltered" project.
In it, he said:
"My major concern about the war in Afghanistan, and why I voted against the recent defense authorization bill, is that we seem to be getting sucked into a quagmire without the kind of debate, without the kind of discussion that this country desperately needs and that the people of our country are entitled. What we know now is that the number of troops that the generals are requesting is going up and up. We know that we ... have already poured several hundred billion dollars into Afghanistan; that number is going to go up. But we don't know what the goals of our efforts in Afghanistan are or what kind of exit strategy we have.
"I worry that Afghanistan will be another Vietnam. I worry that Afghanistan will be another Iraq. We've been there eight years already, and how many more years are we supposed to be there? How many more American troops are supposed to die? How many more tens and tens of billions of dollars are we supposed to be spending at a time when we have a record-breaking deficit? I find it amusing that some of my more conservative friends are saying, 'Well, we can't afford to spend more money on health care in this country. We can't afford to spend more money on education or environmental protection. But, yes, we can afford to pump tens and tens of billions more into the war in Afghanistan.' "
Sanders says: "We need a real national discussion of an exit strategy, a real national discussion about what our goals are. We haven't had that and the American people should be demanding it."
Sanders is doing his part to open the discussion. And the muscular reaction to his statements made it clear that the American people are making the demand.
Stopped clock asked a question.
“Sanders is doing his part to open the discussion. And the muscular reaction to his statements made it clear that the American people are making the demand.”
Yes, 8000 leftists at a gathering translates into the entire country supporting the agenda.
And nothing happened last weekend either.
LLS
Question : If Hitler and a band of Nazis had escaped from Germany at the end of World War II, and took refuge in a neighboring country, wouldn’t we still go after them; wouldn’t we still consider that we were at war with them?
We overthrew the Taliban government in Afghanistan, but they are still out there, in the mountains of Afghanistan and also in Pakistan. Should we declare victory and go home now?
Hillary Clinton once criticized Bush for not capturing Bin Laden. She said how hard was it to find the tallest man in Afghanistan? I haven’t heard her say anything quite so stupid recently. But, do these liberal Democrats have the spine to stay after Al Qaeda? Do we still remember Sept. 11th or do we just give up now? What do the liberals want us to do?
Sorry but Sanders is right. We’ve done our jobs in Afghanistan. Karzai is a corrupt SOB and the nation is trending back towards what it used to be in the 90s. We went to kill Islamofascists and we succeeded. Nation-building and helping their economy is not part of the deal.
We need an exit strategy for Vermont.
This worthless pos also voted against defunding Acorn.
Stopped clock indeed. However, I would revise the resolution to read, "Due to the current unworkable rules of engagement and the incompetence of the commander in chief, it is recommended that the troops be safely extracted and withdrawn as soon as possible.
LLS
With Ried, Pelosi, Obaaama in charge?
Get us the mfh out.
It has become immoral to ask American soldiers to risk their lives there.
How about through Iran - kinda like Sherman's march through the South.
wow, i agree with the leftist socialist hunk of crap. i don’t trust obammy to do what is right. the only thing he will accomplish is dead soldiers. he doesn’t have the will to win the war therefore we should bring our young men and women home now.
I wish we'd done that in 2003, but I wouldn't trust Barry to lead a conga-line, much less a nation at war.
Triple E, I have come to the same conclusion. It is time to go.
Our military cannot function with the impossible ROEs they now have to operate under. I called my Congressman and Senators this very morning about that, saying it is criminal, and that four brave Marines were slaughtered last week becasue air and artillery support was denied them due to fear of civilian casualties due to the new ROE.
Obama has NO intention of winning this war in Afghanistan. This is all political theater, with our military being used as pawns.
We need to declare victory and get the hell out.
Iraq is far more strategic in the scheme of things.It’s terrain is flat and sutiable for military operations. Afghanistan is a backward tribal mountainous hellhole, and will be the same for the new few centuries. Leave them be.
If Al Qaeda comes back, send the BUFFs over and eliminate them from 35,000 feet with extreme prejudice. That goes for Pakistan too.
What has emboldened our enemies is that we hamstring our military and try to fight nice. They don’t respect that kind of weakness—it only encourages them. They only respect destruction on a large scale akin to what we visited upon Japan in 1945. That changed their tune in a hurry.
We will soon be drawn into a war of attrition, with death by a thousand cuts there, if we send even more troops in.
Bush should have prosecuted this war, and action against North Korea in the seven years he had to do so. He barely won Iraq.
Wars cannot be fought in a politically correct manner. Do the job, and get out.
We are still in South Korea after 59 years, Western Europe for 65 years, Japan for 64 years, Bosnia for 14 years, Kosovo for 10 years, Kuwait for 18 years, Afghanistan for 8 years and Iraq for 6 years.
And we can’t even put the military on our own Southern border to protect Americans from the drug wars and the invasion of illegals.
We don’t even know who we are fighting in Afghanstan now.Tribes fight over anything and we are getting sucked deeper into that vortex. Plus in eight years we could not even stop poppy growing which fuels the worldwide heroin trade. If we wanted that outcome, we would have achieved it already.
Fighting house to house in Afghanistan? The hell with that. We made that mistake in the second battle of Fallujah and lost 51 Marines when we should have levelled the place.
It is time to go. This is turning rapidly into another Vietnam, and that can never be allowed to happen again to our military.
I’m no noob, and the asbestos suit is on. I’ve lived long enough to see that history is repeating itself, and the outcome will be just as disastrous.
No, we won't.
We could still have intelligence gathering, special-forces ops, and drones to continue fighting.
As for keeping a relatively large contingency of troops there, forget it.
Anywho, the real issue is that we're letting Islamofascism boil over HERE. We're letting Hamas and Palestinian refugees come here. Does that make sense?
Some never seem to learn from history and I guess we are damned to repeat it. I personally want to kill every haji there.
Unfortunately, you're not going kill every single terrorist out there. Better to bring our troops home, defend our borders, stop Muslims from emigrating here and drill our own energy resources. Just isolate that region and let them stew in their own juices and threaten to nuke them if they attack us again.
Well said.
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