Obama's decision on Afghanistan angers the left and the right.
Barry did it again and has somehow managed to piss off both sides of the ideological spectrum. Tonight we will be informed of a formal decision to commit 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan with a specific time frame.
People on the Right are upset for two reasons, both have merit. Firstly, they are upset it took Barry this long to come up with a decision and do not understand why a troop surge could not have been performed earlier. Secondly they are upset that we are publicly disclosing a time table and this sends too much information to the Taliban. Logical, although someone who lacks any experience what so ever is not supposed to make decisions quickly. Frankly announcing to the enemy one's exit strategy strikes me as painfully brain dead.
People on the Left are upset for two reasons as well and only one has merit. First they are upset because they feel betrayed by a president they believed was anti-war. Much like many clueless independent Americans crying about the unexpected socialist agenda, anti-war liberals must not have been paying attention during the campaign. In fact, here on RightCondition.com on the Obama Progress Watch page one of the foreign policy agendas was to send additional troops to Afghanistan - so Barry is doing precisely what he promised. Secondly they are upset because they feel that sending troops to Afghanistan is just wrong and some believe we should instead withdraw. Partially correct. Not sending any troops when we already have a contingent deployed and the top general requesting backup is simply irresponsible. However NOT withdrawing a war that was already won and where a directive no longer exists is simply inexcusable.
Now some might argue that we must finish the job and we must stay the course for both national security reasons and in memory of those that have fallen. This is an emotional response and not actually rooted in any logic. An argument like that would only make sense if we had a certain goal and decided to cut and run without achieving the goal, but this is simply not the case. After 9/11 our government set out to dislodge the Taliban and root Al Qaeda's ability to train and launch attacks. News flash, this was achieved and although capturing some high profile Taliban/AQ leaders would have been preferable given the time frame, terrain, troop deployment capacity and logistics we did a fantastic job.
What we are doing now is incomprehensible and with a goal that can be best described as subjective. We cannot use Afghanistan as a launch pad for Pakistan, nor can we turn the country into some Democratic stronghold. Our job is not to install democracies, our job is to defend our country and if political stability in a country with people hostile to America is the only way to do it, then we have to invade half the world. If we leave now it might look like weakness, but nobody will forget the effectiveness and mind boggling speed at which Taliban/AQ were ousted shortly after 9/11. We can do it again at any time and with impunity and anyone dares to test our might is more than welcomed to go ahead and tempt us. Maybe next time a drone spots AQ leadership meeting to discuss a plot to take over the world, we can have a president with balls willing to pull the trigger (*ahem* Clinton *ahem*).
Ultimately, if withdrawing troops is not an option, then a surge is the only sensible thing we can do as much as we might not want this to happen. Afghanistan is NOT Iraq and most insurgents operate from the countryside and there are not enough American soldiers to lock down the Afghanistan countryside a la Baghdad. I trust general McChrystal only insofar that only he can know whether he needs additional troops or not, but we cannot make an analogy to the Iraqi surge because the landscape is much too different. Now, even if these additional 30,000 troops stem the violence temporarily which would justify the escalation it would unfortunately not alleviate our longterm conundrum. With a global financial collapse looming around the corner committing precious troops to a useless piece of land like Afghanistan is the wrong move here.
People on the Right are upset for two reasons, both have merit. Firstly, they are upset it took Barry this long to come up with a decision and do not understand why a troop surge could not have been performed earlier. Secondly they are upset that we are publicly disclosing a time table and this sends too much information to the Taliban. Logical, although someone who lacks any experience what so ever is not supposed to make decisions quickly. Frankly announcing to the enemy one's exit strategy strikes me as painfully brain dead.
People on the Left are upset for two reasons as well and only one has merit. First they are upset because they feel betrayed by a president they believed was anti-war. Much like many clueless independent Americans crying about the unexpected socialist agenda, anti-war liberals must not have been paying attention during the campaign. In fact, here on RightCondition.com on the Obama Progress Watch page one of the foreign policy agendas was to send additional troops to Afghanistan - so Barry is doing precisely what he promised. Secondly they are upset because they feel that sending troops to Afghanistan is just wrong and some believe we should instead withdraw. Partially correct. Not sending any troops when we already have a contingent deployed and the top general requesting backup is simply irresponsible. However NOT withdrawing a war that was already won and where a directive no longer exists is simply inexcusable.
Now some might argue that we must finish the job and we must stay the course for both national security reasons and in memory of those that have fallen. This is an emotional response and not actually rooted in any logic. An argument like that would only make sense if we had a certain goal and decided to cut and run without achieving the goal, but this is simply not the case. After 9/11 our government set out to dislodge the Taliban and root Al Qaeda's ability to train and launch attacks. News flash, this was achieved and although capturing some high profile Taliban/AQ leaders would have been preferable given the time frame, terrain, troop deployment capacity and logistics we did a fantastic job.
What we are doing now is incomprehensible and with a goal that can be best described as subjective. We cannot use Afghanistan as a launch pad for Pakistan, nor can we turn the country into some Democratic stronghold. Our job is not to install democracies, our job is to defend our country and if political stability in a country with people hostile to America is the only way to do it, then we have to invade half the world. If we leave now it might look like weakness, but nobody will forget the effectiveness and mind boggling speed at which Taliban/AQ were ousted shortly after 9/11. We can do it again at any time and with impunity and anyone dares to test our might is more than welcomed to go ahead and tempt us. Maybe next time a drone spots AQ leadership meeting to discuss a plot to take over the world, we can have a president with balls willing to pull the trigger (*ahem* Clinton *ahem*).
Ultimately, if withdrawing troops is not an option, then a surge is the only sensible thing we can do as much as we might not want this to happen. Afghanistan is NOT Iraq and most insurgents operate from the countryside and there are not enough American soldiers to lock down the Afghanistan countryside a la Baghdad. I trust general McChrystal only insofar that only he can know whether he needs additional troops or not, but we cannot make an analogy to the Iraqi surge because the landscape is much too different. Now, even if these additional 30,000 troops stem the violence temporarily which would justify the escalation it would unfortunately not alleviate our longterm conundrum. With a global financial collapse looming around the corner committing precious troops to a useless piece of land like Afghanistan is the wrong move here.
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