To escalate or not to escalate? That is the question.
Obama’s answer: Escalate.
Kim Chipman and Tony Capaccio of Bloomberg News report President Obama plans to deploy 4,000 troops to Afghanistan on top of the 17,000 he already sent there in February. According to administration officials, the additional forces will train the members of the Afghan army and “set benchmarks for progress in battling militants there and in Pakistan.”
It is hoped that this new strategy, which will be announced later today, will turn the tide in America’s eight-year-old war in Afghanistan and stem the recent wave of insurgent violence that has racked the landlocked nation. An important presidential and provincial election is scheduled to take place in Afghanistan on August 20 and security will be crucial to its success, as many expect the Taliban and other insurgents to do everything in their power to disrupt what would normally be a peaceful political event.
The London-based Times reports the top commander of the British Army is ready to deploy a further 2,000 troops to Afghanistan.
According to Simon Tisdall and Ewen McAskill of The Guardian, diplomatic and military officials say the Obama administration thinks it has only one year to make real progress in Central Asia before it loses the support of the U.S. public. The American people have never liked long conflicts, and for good reason. Unfortunately, the president may need more than a year to fix this situation.
The hyenas over at Code Pink want President Obama to immediately withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan and focus instead on diplomacy and bringing humanitarian aid to that country. Are they serious? What good is humanitarian assistance if you don’t have troops there to stabilize the country and provide security? Of course, a conventional military strategy won’t work in Afghanistan and the Obama administration recognizes that fact, which is why it is putting a great deal of emphasis on training Afghan forces to protect their country. With regard to fighting the Taliban and other Islamic militants, this is an unconventional war and should be fought mainly by unconventional forces like the Army Rangers, Green Berets, Navy Seals, Air Force Combat Controllers and PJs, and Recon Marines. But there still needs to be a certain number of conventional troops for the reasons I outlined above.
The Code Pinkers and those who agree with them need to come up with a more realistic alternative than the “Kumbaya” approach. Utilizing “soft” methods in a conflict such as this one is important, of course, but as a great man once put it, it helps to have a big (insert your own expletive) stick.
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I couldn't have said it better, especially the last sentence!
ReplyDeleteOther than code pink - where are all those other anti-war protestors that jumped all over Bush for doing the same thing in Iraq? Freakin' hypocrits.
ReplyDeleteThis is actually something I can agree with Obama on. But, I don't think this is enough. This is what Bush should have done in the very beginning in both Iraq and Afghanistan. If you're going to fight a war - you bring the wrath of the entire military might down on your enemy. Once you've completely devastated them - then you bring in the back-ups to help rebuild and retrain.
These wars could have been over a long time ago.
Bobo - Iraq was an unnecessary war. We had no reason to attack Iraq. They are not being hypocrites at all. I am not being a hypocrite when I say I was against the Iraq mistake but in favor of attacking Afghanistan. The Taliban harbored the people who attacked us. Iraq had nothing to do with that. Iraq never attacked us. Even if Iraq had WMDs, they had no delivery mechanism. There was absolutely NO reason to attack Iraq and Bush and his cronies have yet to explain why they lied about Iraq and why it was so important for them to start that war. Hopefully, they will be answering in court one of these days if Congress ever gets any balls.
ReplyDeleteThanks to Bush and his start-a-war-and-cut-taxes-for-the-rich fiscal policy, we cannot afford to throw an overwhelming number of men and equipment at Afghanistan. In fact, we probably cannot afford to keep the promises we made to Afghanistan (that Bush never kept) at the beginning of the war there that we would build infrastructure and economy for the Afghan people. In case you don't remember, like most of the world, all kinds of promises of aid and support were made at the beginning.
And, in case you are also not aware of this, we won the military conflict in Iraq in two weeks or less. But Bush had no plan to win the peace. Remember? And, in case you are also not aware, we kicked the Taliban out of Afghanistan within a few months but.....we had no plan to win the peace and we "forgot" about Afghanistan.
So our military performed excellently as they always do but our idiot political leaders failed miserably and thus 4000+ American soldiers died and countless Iraqis because of the inept leadership in Washington. And they will continue to die because of that incompetence, because Bush and his Rasputin never followed through in Afghanistan.