The Bush Regime is more interested in doing things for political gains than for any other reason.
Bush Regime, right out of the Kerry talking points, eh?
My brother in law returned from his second stint in Afghanistan and he said morale was high, and while the work was difficult, he knew excellent progress was being made and terrorists were being culled at a remarkable rate.
Further, I'm in contact daily with a friend who is in Afghanistan and he is anything but the way Novak describes. In fact, his chief complaint is lack of internet access.
My opinion: Novak is throwing another tantrum because he's no longer a WH insider. Just a CNN dilettante.
Owl_Eagle
”Guns Before Butter.”
I don't think that is it. Novak has a paleo isolationist bent. He isn't fully in that camp but he listens to them. The most legitimate side of that is simple concern about imperial overreach and whether we can hold everything, or need to, in all these foreign places.
I don't agree with Novak, and even less with the full blown isolationist paleos. I think the war requires forward reach into same hard to get to places, because that is where the enemy likes to hide. But it is not simply a snit. We should continually review our troop deployments around the world and what they are accomplishing. And whether it remains necessary. There is a definite historical tendency to just stay forever any place we've fought.
In Afghanistan, we should be looking at ways to get the locals up to snuff to take over the remainder of the job. Not as a defeat. Just as a way to get our troops back, to reduce the hardship on them and to have them available for new emergencies. If that takes a while yet, OK. But it is where we need to be headed.