Re-branded PNAC's letter to President Obama about Afghanistan.

Sarah Palin, the Neocons & Howard Dean Love the War in Afghanistan

By Jeremy Scahill, Rebel Reports. Posted September 8, 2009.


<snip>

PNAC recently re-branded itself under the new name of the Foreign Policy Initiative. The three major figures behind FPI are well-known neocons William Kristol, Robert Kagan and Dan Senor. "The United States remains the world's indispensable nation," the group’s mission statement reads -- "indispensable to international peace, security, and stability, and indispensable to safe-guarding and advancing the ideals and principles we hold dear."

On September 7, the FPI sent a letter to President Obama about Afghanistan, eerily similar to the one PNAC sent Clinton calling for regime change in Iraq in 1998. It praises Obama's escalation in Afghanistan before calling on him to expand the war even further:

"You've called Afghanistan an "international security challenge of the highest order," and stated that "the safety of people around the world is at stake." Last month you told a convention of veterans, "Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people."

"We fully agree with those sentiments. We congratulate you on the leadership you demonstrated earlier this year when you decided to deploy approximately 21,000 additional troops and several thousand civilian experts ...

"Since the announcement of your administration's new strategy, we have been troubled by calls for a drawdown of American forces in Afghanistan and a growing sense of defeatism about the war ... There is no middle course. Incrementally committing fewer troops than required would be a grave mistake and may well lead to American defeat. We will not support half-measures that repeat the errors of the past."

The list of signators to the FPI letter is a predictable cast of neocon characters who somehow make a living showing how little they know about so much. But there are some new names. Perhaps most comical among them: Sarah Palin, that famed foreign policy visionary. If Palin could see Russia from her backyard, she clearly missed the part where the Red Army got chased back to the Motherland after being defeated in Afghanistan.

<more>

http://www.alternet.org/world/142488/sarah_palin,_the_neocons_&_howard_dean_love_the_war_in_afghanistan/

:wtf:

. . . any more than the president's does for his Afghanistan policy (which Dean is accused of (gasp!) supporting).

The article (and the post) makes it look like he's signed the letter or something. Here are the signers:


The letter’s signers so far are: Steve Biegun, Max Boot, Ellen Bork, Paul Bremer, Christian Brose, Debra Burlingame, Eliot A. Cohen, Ryan C. Crocker, Thomas Donnelly, Eric Edelman, William S. Edgerly, Jamie M. Fly, David Frum, Abe Greenwald, John Hannah, Pete Hegseth, Margaret Hoover, Thomas Joscelyn, Frederick W. Kagan, Robert Kagan, William Kristol, Tod Lindberg, Herbert London, Clifford May, Robert C. McFarlane, Joshua Muravchik, Andrew Natsios, Sarah Palin, Keith Pavlischek, Beverly Perlson, Danielle Pletka, John Podhoretz, Stephen Rademaker, Mitchell B. Reiss, Karl Rove, Jennifer Rubin, Randy Scheunemann, Gary Schmitt, Dan Senor, Ashley Tellis, Marc Thiessen, Daniel Twining, Peter Wehner, Kenneth Weinstein, and Christian Whiton.

. . . I don't remember Howard Dean agreeing with any of them on anything.

Here's the bulk of his comments on Afghanistan on the FOX program:

DEAN: I'm not so sure I'm the liberal wing, but I guess I'm the — I'm appointed by you the head of the liberal wing or whatever. No, I — look, I've supported the president on this one. I think this is different than Iraq. I think there are people who mean the United States harm over there.

I think — I was very pleased to say the — hear the president a few months ago say, "Look, we can't win this war militarily." He gets what we have to do here. And it is true that American public opinion is not supportive of the war effort anymore.

I think this does have something to do with security to the United States. I do believe it has something to do with the role of women in these kinds of societies. I think we ought to be supportive of the role of women and their ability to get an education and things like that. I don't think that's the only reason we're there.

But I'm supportive of the president, and I'm going to continue to be supportive of the president on Afghanistan . . .

And what's the "or something" part?

It's an article that reports on a particular set of facts from a particular point-of-view. You just don't like one or the other or both. No one's trying to pull a fast one on you.

That's what the article does. It's a good report on the similar effort by PNAC to their pre-Iraq invasion manipulations during the Clinton administration. But it's an unfair and cursory swipe at Dean for his statement of support for the president in Afghanistan at the end of the FOX program. The republican cabal is much more relevant (and interesting) than Dean's stance which has been fleshed out in more detail than what FOX was able to parse out at the end of their segment..

ever served in the military?

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” H.L. Mencken

“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy.” - Gandhi

just another "tool" in their nasty little toolbox. They want to call attention to the fact that he's "like a republican" when it comes to the war in Afghanistan.

I'd like to see him give a speech, where he tells us that he's been re-thinking that war, and after deliberation on it, he has come to the conclusion that it's the wrong war, in the wrong place, and is impossible to win. The Taliban are Afghans, and even if we "defeat" them, they will still be there, and their ideology will not change. Al Qaeda cells will still be a factor too, no matter how many soldiers die there.

The "problem" with Afghanistan is that it's a poor country, with 13th century "values" still being enforced by their various "Leaders", and we cannot force them to change.