Firing Gen. McChrystal isn’t enough. Writes Pierre Tristam at FlagLerlive (linked here at Common Dreams):
Obama took up where Bush left off, added more troops, threw more money at the folly, and called it a new strategy. McChrystal was his cover. Bad choice. McChrystal blew it? Not so: McChrystal was an improvising explosive diva waiting to blow. He did. He would have anyway.
McChrystal’s firing is the latest cover-up of a failure far larger than McChrystal’s, a failure that Obama now owns entire, and that will only increase the number of American and Afghan deaths to no purpose.
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I’d like the people in charge of our Afghanistan and Iraq military strategies to be people who forecast, correctly, that what we’ve done so far would turn out as badly as it has.
There’s an interesting Frank Rich column on that today.
Toxic sands of Afghanistan:
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/06/25/toxic-sand-another-enemy-in-afghanistan/?ncid=webmail
Oh, my.
Tom Friedman, the self-styled futurist whom I generally think of as being several years behind the times, had a rather telling comment last week:
“Why do we have to recruit and train our allies, the Afghan Army, to fight? That is like someone coming to you with a plan to recruit and train Brazilian boys to play soccer.
“If there is one thing Afghan males should not need to be trained to do, it’s to engage in warfare. That may be the only thing they all know how to do after 30 years of civil war and centuries of resisting foreign powers. After all, who is training the Taliban? They’ve been fighting the U.S. Army to a draw — and many of their commanders can’t even read.
“It is not about the way. It is about the will.”
Friedman was not on board with this thought years ago, unfortunately. I do not know what it would have taken then, or will take now, for the U.S. to acknowledge that the Afghanis do not want for themselves what we want for them any more than they wanted what the Russians wanted for them.
…which would lead one to believe that the Afghanis should maybe make their own decision, and we should GTF out.
“for the U.S. to acknowledge that the Afghanis do not want for themselves what we want for them any more than they wanted what the Russians wanted for them.”
Hear hear.
Or is it ….. “what we want FROM them?”
It’s hard to think about what goes on in countries that don’t share our concerns about women’s rights, religious freedom, etc. But can we enforce our rule on them, and hope they “see the light” the way our superior selves do? Do we stick around and try to beat the light into them?
I’m not being snarky here (not intentionally, anyway) but I’m trying to think of a place where that worked — where we went in guns blazing. I think we’re able to show the Truth and Light (as we see them) to countries when we lead by example, and when we wrap our particularly gospel in a peanut butter sandwich. But I can’t think of a place where we’ve successfully won hearts and minds with bullets.
But maybe I’m not thinking clearly…
I think you’re right – but how do we get the Taliban to change? Or people to rise up against them? Schools? Roads to farms? Hospitals?
I think that’s a start. The Taliban is offering them — something. We offer something more lasting. I mean, we could. Building infrastructure is a good place to start. But in the end, idealogy is a choice.
“…but how do we get the Taliban to change?”
We don’t.
The Taliban and the fundamentalism which fosters it is a direct result of “Westernization” and our support of Israeli Zionism.
Until we recognize Muslims as human beings with the same human rights to self-determination, cultural identity and security we subscribe to, we will never be able to realistically engage Islamic nations and convince them to exert the influence necessary to abate the human rights abuses practiced by the Taliban in Afghanistan or anywhere else.
The Taliban will never be defeated by Christian Soldiers fighting to protect human rights by denying human rights.
Only the community of Islamic nations will be able to change the Taliban.
I agree with this. And the Islamic community is seeking to do that, loads.
If we could change our policy toward Al Qaeda and the Taliban from a “hot war” strategy…search and destroy….to a “cold war” policy….contain and control…I think we could get more engagement from the Islamic community.
The hot war policy plays right into the hands of Al Qaeda, radicalizing more and more Muslims, legitimizing their fundamentalism.
But the biggest issue will be our support of Zionism. Unless we can arrive at a solution that recognizes Palestinian authority free of US and Israeli control, Al Qaeda will always have away to promote their extremism.
But how do we do that? I mean, support for Israel is written into our Constitution. How do we show support for peace, in general, in that region?
We begin by recognizing our support of Israel does not include sanctioning human rights violations against the Palestinians.
As Israel has the right to be secure within their borders, so do the Palestinians. As Israel has the right to determine their own form of government without interference from other nations, so do the Palestinians.
As Israel has the right to exist, so do the Palestinians.
And we back up our resolve, as we always do, with our wallets. If Israel continually and pervasively takes action to deny Palestine those rights, we should intervene by ending our financial support and ending our use of their soil to garage our weapons of war in that region.
For starters.
Good start. Think you’d get any takers?
Here maybe.
Thankee.
Maybe here.
And thank you for this, too.
Might run it past these folks.
And thank you again.
Oh, my! Look at the time. Time to go now. By By fellows! Write if you get work. Say hi to all the Taliban fighters, killers and wife beaters. Enjoy your return to the stone age.
If these people don’t want to defend themselves, let them live the life they choose. Just keep the blood of American men and women out of their country, and back on the American highways where it belongs.
What I find LOL funny is that just three short years ago the Obama regime was calling General Petraeus “General Betray Us.” It’s also funny how silly this administration looks once the light of day is allowed to shine brightly.
General McChrystal knew exactly what he was doing…write a book-and enjoy private life General.
Hope and Change…making Jimmy Carter look decent one day at a time!