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-- Obama's Kennedy Moment on Afghanistan
Obama's Kennedy Moment on Afghanistan
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentis...anistan-vietnam
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Imagine the scene aboard Air Force One, the US president's plane, sitting on the tarmac in Copenhagen on Friday. Barack Obama is exhausted, having flown the Atlantic overnight to back Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympic games. He is also feeling humiliated, since his efforts on behalf of his adopted home town have been roundly spurned. Rio got the gig � and Michelle is not best pleased. The weary president is facing a long flight home. And he knows he is returning to a White House under siege. Healthcare, the economy, spiralling unemployment and a host of other knotty issues are blighting a first term that began with so much promise. The very last thing Obama wants to talk about is America's losing war in Afghanistan. Enter General Stanley McChrystal, the earnest US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, clambering up the steps to Obama's cabin. The general, who has flown to Denmark after seeing Gordon Brown in London, is pressing hard for a surge of up to 40,000 extra US troops to stave off what he warns could be a strategic disaster. The calculations of Obama's advisers who arranged the meeting are more political. They know their boss has to get Afghanistan right and time is not on his side. The result? Obama takes the meeting, as planned, and for 25 minutes he and McChrystal chew over various Afghan policy scenarios, just as they did two days before in a teleconference, and as they will do again in more meetings with senior security staff over the next two or three weeks. This root-and-branch review will determine not only the future of US military operations but those of Britain, too. It may also seal the fate of President Hamid Karzai's fraud-tainted government. Having rushed his fences earlier this year, Obama is having serious second thoughts. With advice pouring in from all sides, the bottom-line question is: will Obama pull the plug, will he downgrade the US commitment, will he cut and run, as hawkish Republicans will interpret it? Or will he heed McChrystal and escalate, will he pursue a widening, indefinite war, will he risk a second Vietnam, as panicky Democrats see it? Sacked diplomat Peter Galbraith's weekend broadside alleging UN complicity in electoral fraud is but the latest of many considerations pushing Obama towards some variation of the downsizing option. Karzai's manipulation of the vote had handed the Taliban its "greatest strategic victory in eight years", Galbraith said. "Obama needs a legitimate Afghan partner to make any new strategy work." In Galbraith's estimation, and that of many in an increasingly antiwar Congress, he does simply not have one. The weekend's news that another eight US servicemen have died in Afghanistan's bloodiest year so far; polls showing plummeting public support � only 26% believe more US troops should be deployed; and the enormous, ill-affordable financial cost of Washington's involvement are all signposts pointing to the exit. The refusal of most Nato countries to fairly share the burden, and the studied ambivalence of even ultra-loyal Britain over troop increases combine to send the president a tacit message: you are fighting a losing battle. From George Will of the American right to Tom Friedman and Bob Herbert on the progressive and liberal left, a commentariat consensus is forming that Obama should shift to a policy of containment, using special forces, aerial strikes and money in a more closely defined campaign to disrupt al-Qaida. Forget nation-building, they say; do not try to eradicate the Taliban, for you cannot. Instead, encourage "Afghanisation" by training the Afghan police, army and civil leaders to stand up for themselves. Learn the lessons of British and Soviet imperial history and wise up before it's too late. And it's not just commentators. This switch is forcibly urged on Obama by his vice-president, Joe Biden, and congressional Democrats. It's unclear as yet which way Obama will jump. He may even duck and try a middle course, which would satisfy nobody. But a decisive juncture approaches inexorably. Underscoring that view, New York Times columnist Frank Rich drew a parallel with John F Kennedy's time in office. All the advice from Kennedy's military commanders and the Pentagon favoured a Vietnam escalation, Rich recalled. "Military leaders lobbied for their new mission by planting leaks in the press. Kennedy fired back by authorising his own leaks, which, like Obama's, indicated his reservations about whether American combat forces could turn a counterinsurgency strategy into a winnable war," Rich wrote. "Though Kennedy was outnumbered in his own White House � and though he had once called Vietnam "the cornerstone of the free world in southeast Asia" � he ultimately refused to authorise combat troops. He instead limited America's military role to advisory missions. That policy, set in November 1961, would only be reversed, to tragic ends, after his death." Maybe history does repeat. For the jet-lagged, overburdened Obama, Afghanistan is looking increasingly like his Kennedy moment. |
Not really.
Everything is a Kennedy moment for Obama. He's got so much on his shoulders, and people are so skeptical of everything. I feel really bad for him, it must suck to be under nonstop scrutiny and have to make some of the biggest decisions in the world every day.
The US and NATO need to withdraw instead of escalating the war.
What exactly would we "lose" if we pull out? Our dignity?
That makes me laugh.
great article
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| Originally posted by ziptnf Everything is a Kennedy moment for Obama. He's got so much on his shoulders, and people are so skeptical of everything. I feel really bad for him, it must suck to be under nonstop scrutiny and have to make some of the biggest decisions in the world every day. |
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| Originally posted by tathi great article 1+, I remember watching this great series called "Don't tell my mother" where this journalist guy goes to the most dangerous places in the world and when he was in Afghanistan he said the locals consider guerilla warfare against super powers a local sport like cricket or soccer US needs to pull out, its debt has already spiraled out of control. |
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| Originally posted by Lomeli What exactly would we "lose" if we pull out? Our dignity? That makes me laugh. |
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| Originally posted by saluyamo I'd say we'd lose the War on Terrorism. Think about this, a group of rag-tag guys with no formal experience, no satellites, drone planes can hold out for 8+ years. The Taliban's propaganda department would have a field day |
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| Originally posted by Krypton You'r essentially saying we should continue this war to save face. If we'r fighting a war on those grounds, it's already lost. |
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| Eight American and three Afghan soldiers were killed in the nearly six-hour firefight Saturday, the heaviest U.S. loss of life in a single battle here in more than a year |
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| "The election was characterized by massive fraud," Galbraith told CBC News from the UN in New York. In certain provinces in the south, for example, there were as many as four to 10 times votes recorded as voters actually appeared," he said |
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| Originally posted by saluyamo No I said that if we pull out it terrorist groups who hate the West will have a field day knowing that they can defend* against us. |
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| and the war on terror(ism) could never be won, even if the elections in Afghanistan wearnt ripe with fraud it would only be a matter of time before the Taliban infiltrate and gain power in Afghanistan once again. |
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| *Obviously we have killed a huge number of them as well as lots of their leaders and kicked them mostly into a neibouring country, though it still stands that we have not fully defeated them. |
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| Originally posted by Krypton The War on Terror is as winnable |
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| Right, kicked them into the neighboring country. The reality is, NATO controls nothing more than the cities and military bases. The countryside is Taliban territory. |
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| Al-Qaeda, a stateless, constantly evolving entity. |
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| Originally posted by saluyamo So if we control nothing more than cities and military bases against what you call nationalist fighters how do you expect us to beat |
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| Unless NATO and other nations are going into Somalia and other hot spots eg. South East Asia, many other parts of Africa, Columbia we are FAR from over in the war against terrorism and |
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| if whenever we do pull out of Afghanistan it will more than likely again become a hot spot making what we've done quite moot. |
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| Originally posted by Krypton Al-Qaeda isn't a nationalist entity... Hmm, you still buy into this War on Terror garbage huh? What we'r doing right now is quite moot. And as a country with 100% national debt to GDP, we can't afford any more of these occupations of entire countries when we should be really going after Al-Qaeda. Not Baathists or Taliban. |
Many people ask how did USA fuck up in Afghanistan so badly?
To answer that question we have to spin the clock backwards to December 2001.
The talibans had just been drawn out from Kabul and a huge meeting was arranged in Bonn, Germany to decide the future of the war torn country. The Bonn-meeting was a golden opportunity. A new beginning.
But massive mistakes was commited by the americans during that meeting.
They invited all old warlords to plan the future of Afghanistan. The same war lords that was the VERY reason why the talibans once emerged in 1994. So what can you expect of war lords that know nothing but killing?
The afghan politics have since been suffering by corruption, killings, every warlord still houses his own private army.
Thanks to the mistakes by the americans back then they are still suffering casualities today.
Good job!
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| Originally posted by saluyamo I apologise, I think I confused you by what I are trying to argue. I never said that Al-Qaeda was a nationalist entity, I quoted what you described them as, I have never brought into the war (you are the one that believes that the war is winnable. Sarcasm?), yet the places I listed I would assume be listed as 'strongholds' of terrorists and/or people with the intent of causing terror either to the USA or the West in general. It seems we agree on the fact that the occupation is moot and that we should be using what resources we can spare to hunt Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organisations. |
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