The speech was made….troops will go to Afghanistan (was there any doubt?)……McChrystal gets his demand for 40,000 more troops so that we can win the war in Afghanistan……McChrystral? Is this the same McChrystal that lied to the family of Pat Tillman and the country so that his death and memory could be used as a recruiting too?…..anyway, the president has bowed to the Right and has fallen into the mind set that we can successfully leave Afghanistan in 18 months……Remember that….this is a statement to appease the doves while massaging the genitals of the hawks….
Mission statement?….we, meaning our troops, will be training the Afghan army and police to step up and take over the defense of their country……a noble endeavor…..the police?….the police is more corrupt than the Afghan president’s brother….the army?…..1 in 4 of the army can read and write…..they do NOT have the will to step up and take on the fight……
BTW, all this advisers and training has a familiar ring to it, at least for me,…..it was the mission in Vietnam….and we see how much of a brilliant success that was….(that was sarcasm)…….
All in all……the US will be in Afghanistan for years and years to come……there is NO way out…..if they stick to a failed policy of training the un-trainable…….wed can look at Iraq and say what a glorious surge it was…..indeed but sad to tell you people……Afghanistan is nothing like Iraq…….as far as the surge will be concerned…..we are basically agreeing to an open end commitment….regardless of what the prez has said……and we are asking our allies to fall into the same trap that we are laying for ourselves……
The only thing that we can be assured of….is that it will cost billions upon billions and all we will accomplish is the deaths of Americans and Afghans……..troops will remain and the mission will be altered to fit the rhetoric…..
This is an excellent review.
lobotero.wordpress.com – go to my favorites!!!
sky…..thanx!
I think it’s probably just the way the world is today. If we weren’t in Afghanistan, we’d be somewhere else. It probably always was that way – look at the Romans 2000 odd years ago.
Morning Quin….damn you are back…I was beginning to think that I had pissed you off or something….
But as usual you are correct…..the Western world is in some sort of imperialistic mode right now…if not Afghanistan then most likely it would be Iran……but no matter where it is…it will involve people with brown skin….just saying…..
I sincerely hope liberals aren’t swayed by the pointless July 2011 withdrawal date that Obama mentioned. You could tell exactly how likely that was when he added “depending on conditions on the ground.” Yeah, OK.
Obama doesn’t do Bush well.
Hi Clint…welcome back……like I say it is an open end commitment…Obama has raised the amount of troops twice now from 40,000 to 100,000+ and that does not include the private army of Blackwater…..
I’m surprised at how much publicized ambiguity there is over the withdrawal date (Greenwald documents it well.) Sounds like Obama wants to stick to it, but Gates/Clinton view it as a “target.”
Given his record so far, I’m not optimistic that Obama will go against the advice of generals and established Cabinet members when July ’11 rolls around.
Morning Clint…..most pundits say that Afghanistan is NOT like Vietnam…..I was there and I have heard all this BS before….nothing said now is different than it was in 1969…….and how did that work out?
lobotero,
You mean you don’t want ‘Peace With Honor’ all over again?
Tee hee……a snow job at best……