War in Afghanistan

[Jefferson_Clinton]

I definetly support Kerry, but I was wondering, what do you think about liberating Afghanistan.

I mean its pretty obvious that OBL was in there and in fact we shoulda focused on that instead of Iraq

However some other fellow democrats ive talked have disagreed, using good points of course, since dems actually think

but i think that there isnt anything wrong with whacking the guys who whacked us on 911, even if bush is leading it


but what do you think?

i shoulda installed a poll, but sorry

[jjmalonejr]

1. I think the War in Afghanistan was given the short shrift...

...because the Administration was so focused on getting in and out and moving on to Iraq.

As a result, we failed to get Osama bin Laden, we allowed hundreds if not thousands of Taliban and Al Qaeda escape into Pakistan, and we are left with an enormously unstable Afghanistan where warlords rule and terrorists move about with impunity.

I wouldn't call it a liberation exactly.

[Jefferson_Clinton]

2. in all honesty

it is better for those people that taliban is gone

things arent much better, but they couldnt have gotten much worse

i dont wanna sound like ari fleicher, but i think bush did make the right choice going in, but we shoulda gotten the guys who got us

[jjmalonejr]

6. Gore would have done the same thing

I don't disagree with the decision to strike at those who struck us.

What I disagree with is executing a half-baked plan which lets the chief bad guys get away and then charging off to Iraq without a serious effort to make sure Afghanistan doesn't descend into failed statehood again. Failed states breed terrorists.

[tabasco]

8. The taliban isn't gone.

MSF (Doctors Without Borders) just pulled out of there because 5 of their people were killed by taliban forces. I met MSF people during my military career and I know when they pull out, it's a bad situation. They are some brave folks.

[MichiganVote]

3. Nice crop of poppies still growing. Taliban and warlords

still in the country. Elections haven't been held. Other than some lightening up socially,where exactly is the liberation?

Seems to me that capturing or killing OBL was never part of the equation.

Why is it that Americans cannot see that these two areas, Afghanistan and Iraq were "liberated" for strategic purposes?

[tabasco]

4. I believe there was a just cause for Afghanistan.

But we are failing the mission there because from the beginning we did not dedicate sufficient ground forces. We sent in 10th MTN DIV (+), SF units, USAF, and recruited warlords from the "Northern Alliance." I thought it should have been a US infantry division on one end of Tora Bora to seal it off from Pakistan and send a light inf bde up the valley. Instead we relied on the Pakis to seal off Tora Bora. Big mistake.
- The unjust and unnecessary war in Iraq has been the downfall of the mission in Afghanistan.
- Now both places are going to hell in a handbasket.

edit typo

[Yupster]

5. I think Afghanistan is in about

the best situation we could get.

We chased away the bad guys without using many US troops.

Lots of people say we shorted Afghanistan, but I find it hard to believe that lots of US troops in Afghanistan would make things better there.

The Afghans hate foreignors, especially infidels, always have and always will.

If there were tens of thousands of US troops visible in Afghanistan, all sides there would be implacably united in getting rid of us.

With a few thousand troops, in the mountains and the hinterlands, far from population centers, I think we're pushing things about as far as we can.

[mike_c]

7. the Afghanis are not "the guys who whacked us on 911...."

Those were mostly Saudi's, including OBL. I'm no fan of the Taliban, and I could recognize some good effects from the attack on Afghanistan if ousting the Taliban had led to improvement of Afghani civil society, but it has not. Religious extremism and tribal warlords still rule Afghanistan.

We killed a lot of people in a collective spasm of revenge directed, as usual, at poor brown people half-way around the world. They weren't even the right poor brown people.