Poor President Obama! He's getting blasted from both the Left and the Right for his speech last night at West Point. It seems only Taliban leader Mullah Omar is pleased with the president's decision. What Omar particularly likes is Obama's time table.
One thing that can be said about Islamic terrorists; they have a level of patience that is not found in Americans. The Taliban will wait out the increased American presence in Afghanistan, and then once we pull out, they will come back in full force. Thanks, President Obama, for sharing your war strategy with the enemy.
Read about how the president is setting us up for failure, via Lt. Col. Ralph Peters at the New York Post:
Setting up our military to fail
By Ralph Peters
"Just plain nuts: That's the only possible characterization for last night's presidential declaration of surrender in advance of a renewed campaign in Afghanistan.
President Obama will send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan -- but he'll 'begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011.' Then why send them?
If you're going to tell the Taliban to be patient because we're leaving, what's the point in upping the blood ante? For what will come down to a single year by the time the troops hit the ground?
Does Obama really expect to achieve in one year what we haven't been able to do in more than eight?
Adding to the confusion, Obama qualified his timeline by insisting that 'we will execute this transition responsibly, taking into account conditions on the ground.'
If conditions of the ground are key, why announce a pullout date?
And what did this 'new strategy' come down to, otherwise? More of the same, but more: More troops, more civilians, more partnership.
Well, the troops will go, the civilians won't -- and the partnerships are a fantasy.
Our president is setting up our military to fail -- but he'll be able to claim that he gave the generals what they wanted. Failure will be their fault.
He's covering his strong-on-security flank, even as he plays to our white-flag wavers. His cynicism's worthy of a Saddam.
Obama's right about one thing, though: The Afghans 'will ultimately be responsible for their own country.' So why undercut them with an arbitrary timeline that doesn't begin to allow adequate time to expand and train sufficient Afghan forces? Does he really believe that young Afghans are going to line up to join the army and police knowing that we plan to abandon them in mid-2011?
Does the 2012 election ring a bell?
What messages did our president's bait-and-switch speech just send?
To our troops: Risk your lives for a mission I've written off.
To our allies: Race you to the exit ramp.
To the Taliban: Allah is merciful, your prayers will soon be answered.
To Afghan leaders: Get your stolen wealth out of the country.
To Pakistan: Renew your Taliban friendships now (and be nice to al Qaeda).
This isn't just stupid: It's immoral. No American president has ever espoused such a worthless, self-absorbed non-strategy for his own political gratification.
On the other hand, the stage lighting and the camera angles at West Point were terrific. Our president looked good. Jaw jutting high (in his 'hope' pose), he decried political partisanship -- but spent more time blaming Bush and Iraq for our Afghan problems than he spent blaming the Taliban (check it with a stop-watch).
Nor did Obama miss a single chance to praise himself, insisting that he's already transformed our relationship with the Middle East (please notify the Iranians, al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas) and that all of his dithering demonstrated wisdom.
This guy loves to hear himself talk. The last quarter of the speech was boiler-plate rhetoric that wandered off into the clouds. And that human-rights stuff? Where was that during his visits to China and Saudi Arabia? Hypocrisy, thy name is Barack.
Above all, where was the strategy? And where are the four-star resignations over a policy designed to squander American lives just to give an administration political cover?
After eight years of failure to create effective Afghan security forces and a responsible government, does anyone believe we can do it in 12 to 18 months?
'Target the insurgency'? Does that mean our soldiers will finally be permitted to go after our enemies and kill them? Nope. Those troops are going to 'secure population centers.' We'll be passive and let the enemy choose where and when to strike.
When fighting insurgents and terrorists, if you're not slamming them up against the wall and breaking their bones, you're losing. Obama isn't sending more troops -- he's sending more targets.
How do the Marines and soldiers slated to go to Afghanistan feel today, knowing that their commander-in-chief has already declared defeat?
By the time Obama finally got to Pakistan -- the refuge of evil -- he was spouting pure nonsense: 'We are committed to a partnership with Pakistan that is built on a foundation of mutual interests, mutual respect and mutual trust.' But our interests diverge, we don't respect each other and we certainly don't trust each other.
Sounded good, though.
Mr. President, how can you send our troops to war without backing them all the way? How could you pull the strategic rug out from under them in advance? Why did you reassure the Taliban that we've already fixed a sell-by date? What's the bloody point?
At West Point last night, President Obama's delivery was superb. But what he was delivering was a funeral oration for his promised strategy."
Another military viewpoint from Blackfive, via Joshua Pundit.
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9 comments:
You know, it's sickening how the rightwingnuts can't be satisfied with ANYTHING this President does. All the naysayers are hammering him for laying out a timeline to BEGIN the withdrawal of our troops.
So what's your alternative, big mouths? Are we supposed to keep our military forces in Afghanistan indefinitely? This "war" is already the longest war in American history, and you'd like to keep it going indefinitely.
Why?
One of three reasons, or a combination of any of the three:
1. Wars cost money. Tax dollars spent on something "worthwhile" like a war means that fewer tax dollars to spend on useless frivolous benefits, like Medicare, Medicaid, SocialSecurity, etc etc etc "Starve the beast" is what the neocons call it.
2. The goal of Religious Rightwingnuts is to eliminate Islam from the face of the earth, so the longer we stay in Afghanistan and the more Muslims we kill, the happier they'll be.
3. The Religious Rightwingnuts won't be serving in Afghanistan, and neither will their kids (who will lead a privileged life and therefore won't be forced to consider the military as the only viable career option) so who cares how long it taes, and how many Americans are killed?
No, we don't have to keep our troops there indefinitely, but you certainly don't tell the enemy your plans so they can adjust accordingly.
In case you haven't noticed, we have an all-volunteer military.
Spare me your whining about how poor Obama is getting picked on. You seem to have a short memory. Eight years of Bush-bashing. You guys can dish it out, but you can't take it.
The question remains: WHAT'S YOUR ALTERNATIVE?
You glibly say "we don't have to keep our troops there indefinitely" but you offer no alternative. You rightwingnuts desperately want a "win" but what IS a win?
All the liberal does is whine and cry, help me, help me, the sky is falling, blah blah blah and it’s nauseating.
I'm inclined to agree with Dr. Lyle Rossiter determination in regards to the liberal mind.
Acclaimed, veteran psychiatrist Dr. Lyle Rossiter book "The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness." stating the liberal agenda preys on weakness and feelings of inferiority in the population by: creating and reinforcing perceptions of victimization; satisfying infantile claims to entitlement, indulgence and compensation; augmenting primitive feelings of envy; rejecting the sovereignty of the individual, subordinating him to the will of the government.
The roots of liberalism and its associated madness can be clearly identified by understanding how children develop from infancy to adulthood and how distorted development produces the irrational beliefs of the liberal mind," he says. "When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains and seeks above all else to run the lives of persons competent to run their own lives, the neurosis of the liberal mind becomes painfully obvious."
Dr. Rossiter has concluded what conservatives have been saying for a long time, that liberalism is nothing more than politics practiced by someone with a mindset of a five-year-old, immature and emotional.
By the way Diogenes, we still have troops in Germany and Japan in a defensive posture to protect those countries.
A war cannot be ended, a war is either won or it’s lost, simple as that.
Now you can go back to sucking your thumb!
Let's keep our troops in Afghanistan until the Taliban is defeated. Right now, the Taliban has a stronghold in much of the country.
If we give it our best shot and strive for complete victory, we can defeat them, but not if we go about it halfheartedly with our eye only on exiting.
Hogwash. The Taliban doesn't have a stronghold in much of the country. They're barely surviving; they're hiding out, for the ost part, in Pakistan. So how will we "defeat" the Taliban in Afghanistan? How would we know we "won"? What's the metric?
Now, oh Not-So-Wise Anonymous, you're great (once again) at slinging BS and complaining, but you never seem to get around to answering any questions or proposing positive solutions.
You said "A war cannot be ended, a war is either won or it’s lost, simple as that." yeah? If it's that simple, please enlighten us: HOW DO WE "WIN"?
It's only simple for simpletons.
Diogenes: In the context of the sentence "simple as that" refers too the perception that even a child can comprehend there’s no gray area in war, either we win or we lose.
The word "simple" has nothing to do with achieving the ultimate goal of war.
How old are you?
You can go back to sucking your thumb now!
And I repeat, since you danced all around it again, O Anonymous Fountain of BS:
If even a child knows that you have to either "win" or "lose" a war, please tell us what a "win" in Afghanistan is supposed to look like.
We're not fighting a nation-state that can surrender and sign armistice papers. We're not fighting a nation-state that we can fully conquer and exert control over for time immemorial.
So, simpleton, HOW DO WE WIN?
(And you may want to ask your shrink about this whole thumb-sucking thing you have going on in your head. It's probably got some Freudian connotations that you may need to address in therapy.)
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