What in God's Green Goodness Are We Up To In Afghanistan?

good piece imo

http://men.style.com/gq/features/landing?id=content_8938

American troop levels and war costs in Afghanistan will soar in the coming year, and party leaders, including Representative David R. Obey of Wisconsin, the House Appropriations Committee chairman, have warned that Democrats will most likely give the administration just one more year to get a handle on the military situation there before they start losing patience.

Mr. Obey said he would give the White House a year to demonstrate progress, just as he gave the Nixon administration a year to show progress in the Vietnam War inherited from the Johnson administration.

“With respect to Afghanistan and Pakistan, I am extremely dubious that the administration will be able to accomplish what it wants to accomplish,” Mr. Obey said last week. “The problem is not the administration’s policy or its goals. The problem is that I doubt that we have the tools there that we need to implement virtually any policy in that region.”

Mr. Obey, who entered Congress in 1969, added: “At the end of the year, Nixon had not moved the policy, and so I began to oppose the war. I am following that same approach here.”

The House spending bill requires that the Obama administration deliver a report early next year on progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan, though it does not set any benchmarks for American military performance....

nice!!

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/09/200992111035319236.html

The most senior US and Nato commander in Afghanistan has said the war against the Taliban "will likely result in failure" if more troops are not sent and a new strategy developed.

General Stanley McChrystal said in a leaked report obtained by the Washington Post that, despite some progress, "many indicators suggest the overall effort is deteriorating".

Inability to provide adequate resources "also risks a longer conflict, greater casualties, higher overall costs, and ultimately, a critical loss of political support" he said, according to the Post report published on Monday.

"Any of these risks, in turn, are likely to result in mission failure."

2 wars > 1 war

this is just a general agitating for thousands more troops, right? and not very subtly.

Hypothetically, what happens if Obama does the sensible thing and haul's ass?

in that case any stubbed american toe that can even theoretically be linked to the actions of an arab person will become the basis for the vilification of the democratic party for the next thirty years

i don't know about that Tracer. i have this vague intuition that nobody in america, outside the political class, wants anything to do with afghanistan.

So politically, Obama only loses support from the left by fighting an unwinnable non-war? Can he not articulately reframe the whole scenario: ("The Taleban, while diametrically opposed to our own values, is not the same as Al Qaeda. Afghanistan has to be responsible for its own future and have the will to resist extremism and keep its people safe. We will provide support where and how we can but we cannot commit to a generation's military occupation of a country thousands of miles from our borders.") in that candid and convincing manner of his?

goole the political class seems to be doing a pretty good job of having things its way these days!

i mean, a majority of americans supports a public health care option. a majority of americans supported letting bank shareholders be wiped out. none of that apparently matters!

i think democrats would be happy to get out of the war in afghanistan because it's a war in afghanistan. i think republicans would be happy to get out because it's obama's war and/or they can complain about it later.

win win!

afghanistan was never tied up with the heavy 'saving civilization' crap that iraq was saddled with, it was basically forgotten by the bush meme machine, as well as practically (remember when john kerry used that against him? lol good times). as a consequence, there's really not any easy idea-hook to pin anything on one way or another. if you want to talk about afghanistan you kind of have to talk about it seriously! there's hardly any domestic politics left to wring out of it (pretty amazing when you think about it). maybe i am completely misreading the entire situation, i dunno...

well we never got osama. i dunno i just feel like we pull out and that first video he makes where he's all like "nanny nanny boo boo, i'm gonna getcha" and the republicans will be like "obama and the democrats don't have the stomach to stay the course against the terrorists who masterminded 9/11"

i mean have you forgotten the way they play these things??

Well, that's Obama's problem.

I'm not going to worry about what David Broder and Newt Gingrich tell Cokie at the Sunday brunch.

that way of thinking is the trap they've set for the democrats of course. if the war on terror is indefinite, and actually infinite, then anything less than maximum bristling hostility can be connected with any perceived success of terrorist tactics, from now until forever. the only way out is to replace that framework. but it will take hard work and discipline among democrats and their kin and frankly on the basis of the last few months - no, the last few decades - i'm not sure they have it in them.

i mean, it's so much more pleasing to talk about "birthers" 24/7 isn't it??

Hey guys remember how well Tom DeLay and the rest of the Republican Congress supported Bill Clinton in Kosovo?

It is, after all, His War now, and since He Owns It, you watch the criticism start to mount through 2010.

yeah i think we're on a short countdown to hearing about supporting afghan civil society and gov't as a fuzzy-headed liberal nation building adventure (which might even be true)

I don't think so - Republicans are gung ho for this war, domestic support for it is almost entirely on the Republican side.

Also the War on Terror meme is dead. That particular propagandistic blight was owned by the Bush admin, and you'll note that Obama has foregone the phrase entirely.

Catching Osama and the upper Al Qaeda leadership is the only practical goal in sight here, and is probably foremost on Obama's mind (a little nation-building in Afghanistan is a prerequisite for accomplishing this though, and you can't do that unless the country is secured militarily... so he's kind of between a rock and a hard place. An open ended military commitment in Afghanistan is doomed, just as it was with the Russians, so that's not really a feasible strategy).

Republican support for the war in Afghanistan is at like 70% or something, are you guys not aware of this

i don't want to say you're not right Tracer -- the current media/political environment means that any action by the president necessitates a not-equal but furiously opposite reaction -- i just don't think afghanistan is a hill anyone wants to die on. where's the real constituency for it?

xps 70% really? you always have to correct for the GOP's atrophied share. ONLY 70% of the people still willing to call themselves republicans? feh, you couldn't go to war on that. can you stay at war on that?

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/15/afghan.war.poll/index.html

The poll suggests that 23 percent of Democrats support the war. That number rises to 39 percent for independents and 62 percent for Republicans.

Support will drop the longer Obama's president.

probably, but I think we're talking years not weeks there

Kosovo's a bad analogy - there were not terrorists who killed American civilians on American soil hiding out in Kosovo, it was an easy war for Republicans to oppose. To support withdrawing from Afghanistan, Republicans have to willingly and publicly admit that catching Bin Laden isn't worth it.

also they won't be able to say that Obama's made less of an effort there than Bush, because that simply isn't possible

so Karzai promised "change" in his re-inaugural address; sounds hauntingly familiar.

and hooray for David Obey:

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=9126805

so how do we get rid of this warmongering fuck in 3 years?

self-therapy:

http://pol.moveon.org/afghan_timeline/?id=18131-1293854-VAebEWx&t=4

http://rethinkafghanistan.com/?utm_source=credopetition

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/12/what-congress-should-ask-mcchrystal/

(in addition to What in God's Green Goodness ...)

so how do we get rid of this warmongering fuck in 3 years?

Palin/Beck '12!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU0DxJVWhGw

http://i49.tinypic.com/2nb7vv8.jpg

hisssssssssssssssssssssss!!

huh

I dunno how much to trust polling in such a country but still

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8464763.stm

Militants attack Afghan capital Kabul

is there a better afghanistan thread? anyway greenwald has been really enlightening lately imo - http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/05/afghanistan/index.html

damn cold

that is the all-purpose reaction to any greenwald piece

my brother's being shipped out there next month :-/

dude. i am sorry to hear that.

How to End the War in Afghanistan
By David Miliband
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23870

New information not good:

U.S. Admits Role in February Killing of Afghan Women

KABUL, Afghanistan — After initially denying involvement or any cover-up in the deaths of three Afghan women during a badly bungled American Special Operations assault in February, the American-led military command in Kabul admitted late on Sunday that its forces had, in fact, killed the women during the nighttime raid.
...
Three women also died that night at the same home: One was a pregnant mother of 10 and another was a pregnant mother of six. NATO military officials had suggested that the women were actually stabbed to death — or had died by some other means — hours before the raid, an explanation that implied that family members or others at the home might have killed them.

Survivors of the raid called that explanation a cover-up and insisted that American forces killed the women. Relatives and family friends said the bloody raid followed a party in honor of the birth of a grandson of the owner of the house.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/05/world/asia/05afghan.html

extremely grim report: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/01/08/afghanistan-winter-crisis/

The country’s new rulers, cut off from most international aid as well as Afghan government assets held in U.S. accounts, have scant resources to protect millions of vulnerable people against another harsh winter. Aid groups estimate that nearly 23 million Afghans, out of a total population of 39 million, already do not have enough to eat. Many also lack solid shelter and money to heat their homes at night, forcing them to choose between food and fuel, and creating additional potential for a full-fledged humanitarian disaster, aid officials said.