Posted on 12/01/2009 10:44:17 AM PST by shortstop
There are four questions Barack Obama needs to answer tonight.
Why, what, how and when.
As he lays out his plans for Afghanistan, as he tells the country why he wants it to commit to years of additional warfare and billions of new spending, he needs to answer those questions.
Why we should be in Afghanistan.
What we want to accomplish there.
How we will accomplish it.
When we will come home.
Here’s my prejudice: We already won in Afghanistan, it’s time to come home. We chased the Taliban out of power, we got Al Qaida out of the country – we did what we set out to do.
So we should come home.Particularly with the insane rules of engagement, which tie our troops’ hands behind their backs, we should come home. This isn’t our swamp, we shouldn’t be wading in it. We have no objective, we have no allies, we have no purpose, we have no business. We should pull up stakes and leave that Third World hellhole to its own devices.
I’m a conservative Republican, a veteran and an NRA life member, and I’m as gung-ho as the next guy. When the rubble needs to bounce, we should make the rubble bounce.
But we don’t need any more of these bull-crap wars where we send our troops out there to be nothing more than targets for Muslim bombers. If we’re not going to fight – and believe me, we’re not going to fight – then we shouldn’t be there.
And if we don’t have a fight there, if our direct national interests are not involved, then we don’t belong there. Sometimes, when you’re helping somebody else out of a jam, you can go in. But that somebody else has to want you, and they have to have enough backbone to stand on their own once you’ve helped them.
That’s not Afghanistan.
Those people don’t like us or our kind, they have no interest in entering the modern era, they would just as soon kill us as look at us.
And we have no national interest there.
Not that I can see.
But I’m not giving the talk tonight, the president is.
So he better make his case.
And he better specifically address and convincingly answer these four questions.
Why. Why do we want to fight there?
What’s in it for us, how are our interests involved, what is the cause of the war? Why should we sacrifice our blood and treasure to fight distant warlords on foreign soil?,p>
See, people shouldn’t go to war for no reason. Initially, we attacked Afghanistan because its Taliban government gave haven to our attacker, Al Qaida. We have since toppled the Taliban and displaced Al Qaida.
So why do we want to keep fighting them.
That’s the most important thing Barack Obama must explain.
What. What is the mission? Specifically, what do you want to accomplish?
Not some nebulous bull-crud nonsense about securing Afghan society or things like that. Something identifiable, quantifiable and recognizable. We need to know what the purpose is, what it is specifically we are to do there.
It can’t be an ad hoc mission, where we go over and take on whatever pops up. We must dictate what we do, and what we want to achieve, not merely play response or catch-up to the bad guys.
What do we want to accomplish.
Without a specific list, it is foolish to go in. It is a blank check the American people can’t afford to sign their names to.
How. How will we accomplish the things we want to do there? What is the plan for achieving the mission? How do we reach our objectives?
If the president has been through this months-long process, on the foreign-policy issue he discussed the most in his campaign, there ought to be some pretty good plans for how we get from Point A to Point B.
How will Obama win this war?
If he can’t answer that, he shouldn’t start the war.
When. When do we come home?
When will this be done and what will be the hallmark of completion? Where is the finish line? From Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan, our great weakness has been knowing when to quit. We have set out at full throttle with no more thought to an exit strategy than the man in the moon.
And we can’t have any more of that.
Nor can we have what so many in Washington have whispered about, a five or 10 or 15 year commitment in this meaningless backwater. Afghanistan is soon to become the longest war in American history. That is, given its fundamental insignificance, unbelievable and unacceptable.
So Barack Obama should tell us when and how we’re coming home.
And if he can’t do those four things, if he can’t convincingly answer those four questions and address the issues associated with them, then we have no business staying in Afghanistan.
Tonight Barack Obama will stand up at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, and make the case for sending some of the cadets around him to their deaths.
He better nail it.
Or we better tell him, “No.”
Because our near 50-year history of fighting the wrong war poorly has got to stop.
Have a clear strategic objective, turn the military completely loose to achieve it by any means necessary, or keep the troops home.
Tonight Barack Obama will show that he has either learned the lesson of Vietnam, or that he is going to repeat it.
IMO, there is going to be a lot of Bush bashing tonight.
It’s a small world, there are NO meaningless backwaters.
"Where were you born?"
1) Do you swear to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
2) Have you read the Constitution in it's entirety?
3) Have you read the Healthcare bill in it's entirety?
If you answered yes to any of these questions you have committed perjury. Go straight to jail!
I have only one:
1) What do we have to do for you to take up residency in some other country so we could find a REAL president?
4) Will you be subjected to your own Healthcare Bill? And if the answer is no, why not?
You are probably right about that...Nope, you are right on the money...
BTW, I only have one question...In two parts...
“Mr. President, where is your original, unmarred or unaltered Birth Certificate, and when are you leaving the White House?”
I’m kinda hoping for 12:01pm EST January 20th, 2013
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