Bush delayed doing anything about Afghanistan for 7 years.

And after all that delay… he did nothing…
On neither a policy nor political level do you gain anything by whining about Obama taking his time to decide what to do about the mess Bush made and did nothing about for 7 years.

(By the way, if you want to be intellectually honest about this, you might at least mention the fact that there was a highly-contested election in Afghanistan that surely threw a kink into the plans they had formulated.)

orange on November 12, 2009 at 1:15 PM

Too bad you didn’t have any facts to back up your talking points from Puff Ho…you know, as a matter of “intellectual honesty”…

What Failure in Afghanistan?
By Fareed Zakaria
Monday, October 12, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/11/AR2009101101552_pf.html

At the heart of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s request for a major surge in troops is the assumption that we are failing in Afghanistan. But are we really? The United States has had one central objective: to deny al-Qaeda the means to reconstitute, to train and to plan major terrorist attacks. This mission has been largely successful for the past eight years.
*Al-Qaeda is dispersed, on the run and unable to direct attacks of the kind it planned and executed routinely in the 1990s.
*Fourteen of the top 20 leaders of the group have been killed by drone attacks.
*Its funding sources are drying up, and its political appeal is at an all-time low.
*All this is not an accident but rather a product of the U.S. presence in the region and efforts to disrupt terrorists, track funds, gain intelligence, aid development, help allies and kill enemies.
Of course, all this has been set back, thanks to the dithering of Osh*thead.
MEANWHILE OUR SOLDIERS ARE DEMORALIZED AND DYING…

Obama is stalling lying while soldiers are dying.

shick on November 12, 2009 at 11:51 AM

FIFY!

What are his choices? Send more troops – may work, may not, would it bring about Obama glory, not good enough odds. Pull out altogether? Would only bring him glory amoung the far-left anti-war folks and jihadist Muslims everywhere, who will have won. His third choice, the one he’s made, is to stall until something else comes along (jobs summit?) or some tragedy happens to distract everyone from his inaction.

The most incompetent, inexperienced, ignorant, corrupt president – ever.

This entire delay is NOT because he can’t find the answer. It’s a delaying tactic, hoping public support for the Afghan effort will drop through the floor. The White House wants to withdraw…and they’ll drive the poll numbers down to give them a fig leaf for doing so.

If you don’t believe me, think about this: how long has it been since you heard Obama say ANYTHING good about Afghanistan? We’ve heard endless whining about corruption, Karzai, Pakistan, etc. But have you heard ANY praise of our troops? October saw the highest losses to date in that conflict….did Obama address this? No. All we got was a photo op at Dover airbase…where he didn’t have to speak.

He has done nothing to keep the public supportive. Nothing.

My only hope comes from the fact that public disapproval of that conflict hasn’t come as fast as I think they anticipated. (Thus, he has to delay some more.)

Let me repeat that:

Roosevelt delayed doing anything about Japan for 4 years.

And after all that delay… he did nothing.

So why complain about the fact that Truman is trying to actually think this through and get it right?”

A little context is not a bad thing. Sure Bush did little in Afghanistan for most of his Presidency. There was little to DO in Afghanistan for most of those seven years, and by the way, relatively few troops were engaged in combat thre for most of that period. After the invasion of Iraq, Al Qaida moved its ops to Iraq, where it got chewed to little militant bits. The “militants” retreated to Afghanistan, and it is time to go kill them there.

Let me repeat that:

Bush delayed doing anything about Afghanistan for 7 years.

And after all that delay… he did nothing.

So why complain about the fact that Obama is trying to actually think this through and get it right?

I mean, no matter what happens in Afghanistan, it’s not going to end up being all flowers and pretty music any time in the next several years. Even if we make the least-bad choices, there will still be serious negatives. So gear up to blast him for those, once they’re apparent.

On neither a policy nor political level do you gain anything by whining about Obama taking his time to decide what to do about the mess Bush made and did nothing about for 7 years.

(By the way, if you want to be intellectually honest about this, you might at least mention the fact that there was a highly-contested election in Afghanistan that surely threw a kink into the plans they had formulated.)

Your points regarding Team Obama’s unpreparedness, underinformed, and lack of clarity of the meaning of COIN are incontravertably true. After supposed thorough analysis and selection of COIN as the way to go last March, and susequent reversal of that analysis, there is the implication by your piece that this does not make a lot of sense. That there is a contradiction between Team Obama’s actions, or lack there-of, and their stated ambition’s to arrive at the optimum outcome in the Af-Pak theatre.

A wise and now seemingly sage philosopher once wrote that, “Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong”. I think which premise you will find wrong is the understood definition of what is commonly considered optimal and what Team Obama deems optimal.

As one who worked since 12/26/07 building oppo-research files in connection with one of the presidential election campaigns, my familiarity from that work on Mr Obama is fairly extensive. We are all familiar with Mr Obama;s ties to ACORN, Working Family’s Party, SEIU, AFSCME, etc. What is not as widely known is that the pivotal players in these Org’s as well as substantial others in key positions that helped bring Mr Obama to power, all came out of one original organization back in the 60′s. The Student for a Democratic Society (SDS), and the Weather Underground (WU). Though I have exchanged some terse discourse with former member, Carl Davidson over the joint categorization of the SDS/WU in the comments section after I wrote this article;

http://papundits.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/the-obama-economic-medicine-triage-or-euthanasia/

I liken the relationship between the SDS & WU as that of the IRA & Sinn Fein, one uses direct violence to acheive it’s goals, the other indirectly supports it. Note that Davidson did not dipute the facts those listed were part of the Obama presidential effort, or their stated ambition to over the Democratic Republic of The United States and replace it with Communist rule.

A wise woman once wrote, that; “Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.” The contradiction in this case is your premise that our Af-Pak egagement results in successfully carrying out our “stated goals” there, and re-establishing con fidence among our allies and the rest of the world that we are a reliable partner. I would posit, given those that brought him to the dance and those that are currently twirling about the floor with him have distinctly differnt ideas.

This comment has sparked a stream of conciousness that I can see as the basis of my next article, almost all which seem to originate from my dialogue here on HA, and so will close with the list below. It is an incomplete list of SDS/WU members off the top-of-my-head as the drive with the data on this subject isn’t with me, but all of the listed are directly either part of Obama’s election and/or his coterie of advisors counseling him now. I would list all of their affiliations, except as we have seen with ACORN and it’s appendages they are constantly shuffled around between them, but a simple Google search will reveal their inter-connections. Some you may recognize, others not so much.

Mark Rudd, Carl Davidson, Todd Gitlin, Marilyn Katz, Tom Hayden, Steve Tappis, Andy Stern, Howie Machtlinger, Dale Rathke, Wade Rathke, Paul Booth, Heather Booth, David Fenton, Jeff Jones, Jim Jacobs, and of course Bill Ayers & Bernadine Dorhn. My memory is failing me right now, but if I remember correctly I had positively ID’d 27 that meet this criteria, though I sure there are more that I’ve yet to track down and/or place.

Sounds like Barry doesn’t want to commit more troops till the Afghan government is clean of corruption. Should be a winner. Think it’ll happen before the midterms?

a capella on November 12, 2009 at 10:41 AM

Government clean of corruption? Like in Chicago, you mean?

Obama spotted at Waffle House.

Syrupy speech at 11.

The leaks don’t just show dissension among the President’s staff, which always happens, but flat-out ignorance of what COIN meant, a point the Washington Post confirmed a month ago.

To McChrystal, Obama’s hand-picked general, the meaning of COIN is winning muslim “hearts and minds” and not be “pre-occupied” with protection of our own forces.

Sure he has. He has stated that the Afghan war is one we must win, but he is uncomfortable with the word victory or some such thing.

Thats about as strong a statement as you will get with this guy.

sonofdy on November 12, 2009 at 10:41 AM

This statement, notably “we must win”, makes perfect sense if our CiC is a Manchurian candidate…

As we learn that there is a substantial increase in the number of troops being wounded in Afghanistan, the news broke last night that Barack Obama had rejected all of the options presented to him on how to proceed in Afghanistan. Appropriately, John Bo…

The Bolton approach is essentially to send troops onto battle with no idea what they’re fighting for or how they will win.

[...]He also has not learned the lesson of Vietnam and Iraq, which is that simply sending more troops in doesn’t work.

Bleeds Blue on November 12, 2009 at 10:20 AM

Heh. So you’re a military expert too. Whatever would we do here with out your brilliant insights I just don’t know.?