The Slow Pullout Method

[bigtree]

By NORMAN SOLOMON

{snip}

The president’s speech had little to say about the plans for escalation, but the few words will come back to haunt: “With our friends and allies, we will forge a new and comprehensive strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan to defeat Al Qaida and combat extremism, because I will not allow terrorists to plot against the American people from safe havens halfway around the world. We will not allow it.”

Obama didn’t mention the additional number of U.S. troops -- 17,000 -- that he has just ordered to Afghanistan. But his pledge that he “will not allow terrorists to plot against the American people” and his ringing declaration, “We will not allow it,” came just before this statement: “As we meet here tonight, our men and women in uniform stand watch abroad and more are readying to deploy.”

Get the message? In his first speech to Congress, the new president threw down a 90-month-old gauntlet, reaffirming the notion that committing to war halfway around the world -- in Afghanistan and now in Pakistan too -- will make Americans safer. With drumrolls like that, the mission could outlive all of us.

And so, a colossal and fateful blunder, made by a very smart leader, arguably our best and brightest, is careening forward with the help of silence that defers all too readily to power. This is how the war in Vietnam escalated, while individuals and groups muted their voices. Many people will pay with their lives.

The reasons why the war in Afghanistan cannot be won are directly connected to why the war is wrong. In essence, people do not like their country occupied for years on end, especially when the occupiers are routinely killing civilians (whatever the rationale). Monochrome words like Taliban and “terrorists” might seem tidy and clear enough as they appear in media coverage, or as they roll off a president’s tongue, but in the real Afghan world the opponents of the U.S. war are diverse and wide-ranging. With every missile strike that incinerates a household or terrorizes a village, the truly implacable “extremists” can rejoice at Uncle Sam’s assistance to their recruiting efforts.

Those who are fond of talking and writing about President Obama’s admirable progressive values will, sooner or later, need to come to terms with the particulars of his actual policies. In foreign affairs, the realities now include the ominous pairing of his anti-terrorism rhetoric and his avowed commitment to ratchet up the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan . . .


read: http://www.counterpunch.org/solomon02252009.html

[Taverner]

1. Slow pullout ends with the same results in military that it does in sex

It gets a mess all over everything

Seriously - one of the stories that came out at the end of the Soviet-Afghan war was when the Soviets were leaving, they were still being shot at, and suffered numerous casualties on their way out. When someone wants to kill you, leaving the scene of the crime doesn't exclude you from their rage.

If we just left one day, I would feel a lot safer about our troops.

[Mari333]

2. he nailed it. nt

[Jackpine Radical]

3. It sure looks like he could be digging himself in deeper. However--

This is, after all, a guy who opposed the Iraq war, and who is certainly bright enough to understand the reason why Afghanistan is called "the Empire Killer." My bet is that he is doing some maneuvering that will give him distance from charges that he "let down the troops" and all of that nonsense. I don't know exactly what his game is--I can think of several possibilities, like maybe he has some intelligence that he's pretty sure will result in nabbing Bin Long-gone, or something else that could give him a quick & clean exit route--but I bet he has plans to slip aside out of a long-term Afghan war commitment while dodging the barbs of the militarists.