Obama: Tell Americans the Truth About Afghanistan

[unhappycamper]

Obama: Tell Americans the Truth About Afghanistan
by Eric Margolis | July 13, 2010 - 10:26am

Goodbye, fire-breathing Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and your Special Forces "mafia," who were supposed to crush Afghan resistance to western occupation.

McChrystal was fired after rude remarks he and his staff made about the White House were printed in the American magazine, Rolling Stone. President Barack Obama should have fired McChrystal when the loose-lipped general went public with demands that 40,000 more troops be sent to Afghanistan.

McChrystal was the second U.S. commander in a row in Afghanistan to be fired, an ominous sign that the war was going very badly. He will now likely enter the Republican ranks as a martyr and become a Fox TV critic of Barack Obama.

~snip~

In Iraq, Gen. Petraeus managed to temporarily suppress resistance due to a mixture of deft bribery, good luck, and Iran's orders to Iraq's Shia Mahdi Army militia to temporarily end resistance. Washington hopes Petreaeus will do the same in Afghanistan, though the two countries are very different.

Last week, the usually cautious Petraeus vowed from Kabul to "win" the Afghan War, which has cost the U.S. nearly $300 billion to date and 1,000 dead Americans (figures for Afghan dead are carefully guarded). The problem: no one can define what winning really means.

[saigon68]

1. It's a Cluster Fuck

[xiamiam]

2. k and r

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

3. We lost. Get out. Get over it.

[stray cat]

4. or at least repeat the DU mantra

[unhappycamper]

5. Thanks for the unrecs, guys!

:hi:

[readmoreoften]

6. I'm sure the soldiers and civilians slated to die tomorrow appreciate their support.

It's funny how DU'ers can rage about the calculating monsters of history but not give a second thought to the slaughter of people in the Middle East. The political monsters of history were "maniacs", slaughtering people to "bring freedom" to the Middle East is "an unfortunate necessity."

I can already here the response to this: Taliban. And when most people use this word they mean "Al Qaeda" or the even vaguer notion of "insurgent" and "terrorist." But they have no concern about the heroin traffickers and child traffickers we side with. (Another necessary evil.) Or the fact that any grassroots force to fight the Taliban is quashed by our presence.

Afghanistan is not "the good war." It's a total fucking disaster.

[Chulanowa]

7. Niced to see that forced ignorance has spread to the left, too

"The problem: no one can define what winning really means."

I keep seeing this claim, and it is utter horse shit. The author is a liar, and everyone who repeats it is also a liar. "Winning" is defined as reducing the military capability of the Taliban and increasing the ability of the Afghan army to a point where the Afghan National Army can effectively take the reins from the US military.

"No one can define winning" is every bit as stupid, disingenuous, and full of simple-minded shit as "Nobody knows how the eyeball works" - maybe if these stupid fuckers opened a book or a newspaper instead of rubbing their shorts and trying to peddle their lies as truth, they would get further.

[unhappycamper]

8. I beg to differ.

"The problem: no one can define what winning really means."

I don't agree with you, but you have defined 'winning' reasonably clearly.

"Winning" is defined as reducing the military capability of the Taliban and increasing the ability of the Afghan army to a point where the Afghan National Army can effectively take the reins from the US military.

The United States government, on the other hand, has not. They continue to spout the same bullshit spouted by the dubya administration.

So the question is: Whose definition of 'winning' should we use? Yours? The folks who are running the occupations?

I've seen these same arguments 35 years ago.