Only Obama, it seems, fails to get the message that we’re losing Afghanistan

Published on Saturday, September 19, 2009 by The Independent/UK

Everyone Seems to Be Agreeing with Bin Laden These Days

Only Obama, it seems, fails to get the message that we’re losing Afghanistan

by Robert Fisk

Obama and Osama are at last participating in the same narrative. For the US president's critics - indeed, for many critics of the West's military occupation of Afghanistan - are beginning to speak in the same language as Obama's (and their) greatest enemy.

There is a growing suspicion in America that Obama has been socked into the heart of the Afghan darkness by ex-Bushie Robert Gates - once more the Secretary of Defense - and by journalist-adored General David Petraeus whose military "surges" appear to be as successful as the Battle of the Bulge in stemming the insurgent tide in Afghanistan as well as in Iraq.

No wonder Osama bin Laden decided to address "the American people" this week. "You are waging a hopeless and losing war," he said in his 9/11 eighth anniversary audiotape. "The time has come to liberate yourselves from fear and the ideological terrorism of neoconservatives and the Israeli lobby." There was no more talk of Obama as a "house Negro" although it was his "weakness", bin Laden contended, that prevented him from closing down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In any event, Muslim fighters would wear down the US-led coalition in Afghanistan "like we exhausted the Soviet Union for 10 years until it collapsed". Funny, that. It's exactly what bin Laden told me personally in Afghanistan - four years before 9/11 and the start of America's 2001 adventure south of the Amu Darya river.

Almost on cue this week came those in North America who agree with Osama - albeit they would never associate themselves with the Evil One, let alone dare question Israel's cheerleading for the Iraqi war. "I do not believe we can build a democratic state in Afghanistan," announces Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who chairs the senate intelligence committee. "I believe it will remain a tribal entity." And Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, does not believe "there is a great deal of support for sending more troops to Afghanistan".

Colin Kenny, chair of Canada's senate committee on national security and defense, said this week that "what we hoped to accomplish in Afghanistan has proved to be impossible. We are hurtling towards a Vietnam ending".

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/19

and to make matters worse, he is vacillating on upping the number of troops in Afghanistan. The issue we face is either we send reinforcements to assist our over-stretched troops, or we pull all the troops out ASAP. Waiting for a message from Heaven, or maintaining the current course, is a recipe for disaster.

Obama says he will be making a decision soon. I don't envy his position one bit. It looks like a lose/lose to me. The overstretched troops have been that way for over 8 years. I think that they can handle another week or two. Your comparison to Dunkirk in another thread is complete bullshit. We may not be making great progress there, but we certainly aren't losing with our backs up against a wall either.

The part of all of this that is most important is Pakistan. We can not let the Taliban make in-roads into that country, period.

In questions today, Gregory and Stephanopolis both spoke of the military trying to push a decision. Obama is saying we need to get the strategy and policy right first. That means he has not yet determined them.

I agree that the foreign policy team he picked, other than Susan Rice, was more hawkish than I would have preferred. Both Biden and HRC were considerably more hawkish than Kerry and Rice, who were the two main foreign policy surrogates in the election. I hope Obama is having someone monitor the SFRC hearings.

who supports either of these wars. We need to end them.

http://rethinkafghanistan.com/

I had a thread linking to it this morning but hardly anyone saw it:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6585627&mesg_id=6585627

I am e-mailing it to my friends. A must see film!

Out of Afgahanistan NOW!!!

USSR and all of the other "empires" have been invading Afghanistan to occupy/rule it and if that was what we were trying to do, then yeah, I'd say it would be very foolhardy. Based on my understanding why we're over there right now, I'd say that that's not the case.

There is no major power providing support to the Taliban as the United States provided support to the rebels fighting the USSR.

If the native Afghani's are having this much success on their own, then what does this tell you about the futility of the war? To me it means that Afghani's really, really, dislike being occupied and will fight to the death out of principle. If, for example 55% of the Afghani's are against their own current government, and are willing to die to overthrow it, does that mean we have to kill or contain 55% of the population indefinitely?

The objective should've been simple: "Get Osama bin Laden". Get him and go home. He's not there? Then just go home.

I don't envy his choices. I suspect that we should just leave. Surely there are better ways to invest 2 billion dollars per month. If we don't leave, then maybe a relatively inexpensive containment strategy would be best. The insurgency is almost exclusively Pashtun. The other ethnic groups have no sympathy at all for the Taliban. Maybe abandoning some Pashtun regions and ensuring security and economic development elsewhere might be the best strategy for Afghanistan as a whole. I don't really know, of course.

The hyperbole surrounding Afghanistan that I've witnessed since Obama became POTUS has been pretty astounding. Frankly, I don't envy him about having to deal with the situation that Bush left for him. Had Bush focused on Afghanistan instead of diverting to Iraq and getting us bogged down there, we might be in a better position now. The situation is almost certainly a lot more complicated that a lot of people here and elsewhere seem to be making it out to be and we all, frankly, may not even know the half of it. I don't pretend to have any answers but allowing the Taliban to gain a significant foothold in Pakistan or give them an opportunity to invite AQ back into Afghanistan seems like a bad idea to me if we can do something to prevent THAT from happening. If we can figure out a way to do those things without maintaining a large military force over there I'd be for it. Otherwise, Obama is simply going to have to finish what Bush started and then left to fester when he invaded/occupied Iraq.

Re the Cairo speech:

The President of the United States – and this was awesome – admitted his country's failures, its over-reaction to 9/11, its creation of Guantanamo which, Obama reminded us all again, he is closing down. Not bad, Obama...

....More extraordinarily, Obama reminded us that the US had connived to overthrow the democratically elected Mossadeq government of Iran in the Fifties.

...Over and again, one kept saying to oneself: Obama hasn't mentioned Iraq – and then he did ("a war of choice... our combat brigades will be leaving"). But he hasn't mentioned Afghanistan – and then he did ("we do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan... we will gladly bring every one of our troops home").

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-words-that-could-heal-wounds-of-centuries-1697417.html

Plenty of criticism in that article too, but a few DUers could learn from Fisk - while imperfect, the President isn't quite the devil incarnate. ;-)

Afghanistan has always been a tribal place..wild and virtually ungovernable, for the most part. They have had brief forays into modernity, but they prefer to be left alone.

Modernity cannot be forced onto a people., They have to want it, and be willing to fight for it themselves.

The Military-Industrial-Intelligence Complex sees only dollar signs there.

before determining the troop level. From the questions, you would get that the military is unhappy that Obama wants 4 to 6 weeks before deciding the troop levels.

The fact is that Even Feingold, in his questions at Thursday's SFRC hearing on Afghanistan spoke of NO ONE suggesting we leave right now. The fact is that Feingold, like Kerry, are arguing you need a clear policy that is linked to the goals. Watching both Wednesday's and Thursday's hearings, it is clear that many people were arguing policies that went beyond Obama's goals to deny Al Quaeda a sanctuary and not destabalizing Pakistan. Those hearings are both worth watching to understand the various strategies available. (I tried (poorly as I really can't type well to live blog both - http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=8657137 and http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=8658724 Both threads have links to statements and archived video and some articles written on the earlier one. )

Listening to Obama saying words like - not be willing to "save face" if it means soldiers dying - suggest that he is looking closely at the Vietnam example. To me, these and other comments showed echos of things said by Senator Kerry. It seems to me as if he is listening and evaluating what to do - rather than just agreeing to the increase.

The problem is that the troops we have right now in theater are not enough to do anything. They are nothing but targets to Taliban. The troops don't have Obama's luxury of mulling what to do about troop strength, they are slogging through a quagmire not of their making. We need to respond to the troops' needs today, not tomorrow or the day after. Mister law professor can run his mouth all he wants, but to the troops in the field who are serving in our name, they need help today. We owe them that much!

The issue is simple and immediate: reinforce the troops in theater, or pull them all out ASAP.

Churchill didn't delay in deciding to get every resource available to pull British troops out of Dunkirk.

what the right policy is. He is saying 4 weeks. Even Feingold was very clear that we can't leave immediately.

He campaigned on doing more in Afghanistan - the problem may be the tasks he agreed for them to do.

Without that information any opinion is no more than that, including my own. When I have some concept of what we want to do and the plan to get there then I can reasonably assess if success is plausible.