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Sure, it was of course so well managed by The Shrub that after 8 years Afghanistan is just a walk in the park. Perhaps if he hadn't allowed his personal vendetta in Iraq to distract our focus we wouldn'r be hearing these sad reports today.
The Three Stooges (Bushy, Cheney, and Rumshead) lied to Congress and Americans with all of the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" nonsense.
Hope this clears things up for you.
They lied? To whom?
The list I provided were the liberals who voted to send them to war, and even your stupid VP named Joe said he did not even read the entire packet of information given to him and the moron still voted to send them to war.
Excuses, excuses.
Obama is lying all the time to these same people but you do not post that do ya?
Lets face it, Obama now has the record! You should be jumping for joy now that Obama finally did something no other war time President has ever done. That is being the Commander with the deadliest year on record.
All of a sudden you chickenhawks are against war? OK, gotcha.....anybody else buy it?
And all of a sudden the left wing radical mobsters are not talking and whining about the war.
I am not buying it, you are quiet for a reason and we all know why.
Those are the million dollar questions that plague those in charge of our foreign policy but part of any solution must include not exacerbating the problem. You are never going to win anyones trust through military firepower. Perhaps the worst tactical mistake we are making is using drone predators.
If we are to REALLY get serious about making friends in Afghanistan, we would take the long view indeed, and that long view would be:
1) A legitimate election that actually has credibility with the Afghan people. Many consider this last election a sham, and there is proof from Karzai's challenger there was massive fraud. These kind of elections do no good and actually cause more harm than good (resentment and lack of trust).
2) Education, foreign investment, and employment. This could be agricultural assistance, but more importantly, its ridding the countryside of Taliban influence. This is NOT possible through military force! Actually, you get the opposite result. An added emphasis of a choice to doing something other than poppy farming shows a serious attempt to do something positive in Afghanistan. And you can not BS your way thru this relying on military force alone. The Soviets and countless other empires have learned this the hard way, and so will we.
3) A limited use of military force and an emphasis on training and building a police force in this region. Pakistani and or United Nation involvement must drastically increase. As it stands, most of the world views this as the United States very own quagmire and want a very small part of it, or no part of it. U.N. involvement includes barely venturing out of their armored vehicles for many, if not most
We broke it, we bought it. And we are not gaining converts
1- I do not condone influencing any country's political landscape. Let its people decide and settle things, whatever the circumstances for them may be. If war is not acceptable today, it should not have been acceptable in 2002. The reality is, we influenced the political landscape, and have been doing that for over two decade. I'm a conservative when it comes to foreign policies. Pakistan is a failed democracy, largely for the same reason, that we wanted to influence who ran the country. Palestine is another example. We helped overthrow PLO and installed Hamas. Why can't we just let the country decide what they want and avoid internal politics? We're there, and we have a reason. It is not about putting whoever wants to be in power, or whoever we feel is right for the country. It is all about whoever gets in power, we work with them to meet our goals and then get out.
This is also why Pakistan's democracy still has a chance of recovering. Instead of installing another military dictator, we can definitely work with whoever has been chosen. Legalities of election is that particular country's responsibility. Not ours. Same with Iran. Taking sides must STOP.
2- And you think Taliban and the extreme right wing networks in the region would allow that without our help? We're not fighting the Afghan government, we're fighting people who completely killed any chance of a healthy democracy in Afghanistan, the folks who were our allies in the 1980s, remember? This should have been a priority, and there was some success back when we got into this war. Then, it was a forgotten war, and Taliban got a chance to recover and expand. Now, we're back to square one, and forced to fight a bigger war. As for repercussions of pulling out NOW, I didn't hear anything from you.
3- Agreed. We did have support when the war started, then lost it due to massive mismanagement and a well known distraction. Baby steps are needed to get Pakistan (and India) aboard as they are most affected by this issue. If we do pull out NOW, as you prefer, without looking left or right, and things go bad, who gets the blame?
You can bet, it is not easy for ANYBODY right now to be at war in Afghanistan.
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