Lots of pontificating.. but where are the solutions..

[Peacetrain]

No one wants a continuation of a war. People who are saying that are to put it bluntly.. off the deep end.

Last night the President gave a clear time line for the withdrawal start. The Afganis are going to have to step up. We are not like Russia, trying to make them part of our Union.. and we are not going to stay there forever.

Al Qaeda is as big a threat to Pakistan and Afghanistan as they are to us.

He is giving them 18 months.. and in that last 18 months, they are doing a push to the borders of Pakistan to find Bin Laden.

No one wants this..

But if you have a better idea than this to get us out.. Lets hear it.

[Teaser]

1. magic. magic solves everything. also obamasux.

got it?

[Peacetrain]

2. That has been made abundantly clear, by some..

The one thing I wanted to hear, I heard last night.. a time line. I know the right is just having a hissy fit on this.. but we have to let them know.. this is it..

[Teaser]

20. more or less I agree

it's a fuzzy timeline, but it's better than anything we've had before.

I'd still be happiest with more rapid drawdown. But I'll take progress when I see it.

Oh, also, Obamasux. Just to fit in.

[NYC_SKP]

18. lol!

That seems to be the theme...

[unpossibles]

3. I think the plan from some seems to be:

step 1: forget about how awful Bush's terms were

2: disengage from the political process and promise early in the game to only support candidates who can't win, or maybe even not vote all together since "they're all the same" (which is coincidentally exactly what the Republicans want/pay lots of money for you to believe)

3: end up with President Palin. D'oh!

4: lather, rinse, repeat.

[Peacetrain]

6. Again, how do you do this.. we heard how Obama is planning to do it

So, how would those who so hate this, do it.

I mean just saying I hate this, does not do anything.

[phantom power]

4. I know that what I want is no big mystery: I want to start leaving today.

Not 18 months from now. Assuming "conditions on the ground" permit.

[Peacetrain]

8. Do you mean.. do a Vietnam and go out on choppers?

[phantom power]

12. To my knowledge, there is no need for that...

The logistics are complicated, right? It's 100 thousand people. But the mandate is simple. Obama says "we are to begin withdrawing troops immediately." He instructs his generals to make that happen in whatever way they feel is best.

As I've said before, if the Big Chiefs said it would take a year from mandate to the last boot stepping off, it would hardly surprise me. The point is, give the mandate.

It's all about whether a person thinks that there is some achievable goal over there that is worth spending the lives and treasure we are spending. Obama seems to think so, and I think he's wrong.

[John Q. Citizen]

19. I'm thinking more like do a "Soviet Union" and leave Afghanistan. Or maybe we could do a British

Empire and withdraw.

Perhaps we could pull a Genghis Khan and get the heck out of dodge.


I'm not sure that prolonging the pain will be better in the long run. It wasn't in Vietnam. If we had left earlier we would have been far better off and so would have the rest of the world.

But somehow it seems that humans just can't stop repeating the same mistakes over and over, for all the right reasons.


Personally, I think we had a window of opportunity 8 years ago that we squandered. I think that although it's closed we just can't accept that fact. But we will have to, ultimately. Many deaths later than need be.

[Peacetrain]

25. I don't know John Q,, I don't know.. but the American people have been informed

the world informed, we are coming out of there. We need to find bin laden.. (boy was that ball dropped) but we are not going to sit there for 20 years and nation build.

One of my biggest fears is the rabid right is going to try and impeach Obama on this..just tie everything up to keep us from coming out of there.

[Richardo]

5. K&R

Thanks.

[leveymg]

7. Why add troops just to pull them out? Or, do you believe "The Surge" worked in Iraq?

There may be some case to be made for smaller increases in troop levels in selected areas of Afghanistan to provide security for international aid workers, but boosting troop levels by a third seems to invite new military offensives, which have demonstrably not worked in Afghanistan. Instead, they have been quite counter-productive, as measured by the rising levels of violent resistance. This strikes me as trying to cure cancer by bleeding the patient.

[Peacetrain]

9. Well the right is foaming at the mouth because we set a time limit ...

they are looking for every way they can to get around it. Bin Laden and company no doubt will try and wait this out.

But we just cannot sit in there for 20 years.

That really is how we got into Vietnam.. incrementally with no end date.

[leveymg]

I have no problem with a timetable. Al-Qaeda is not the problem - only 100 in Afghanistan, and

some 300 in Pakistan.

If we hadn't escalated beyond the 30,000 troops that were there in 1963, the Vietnam War would today be another forgotten intervention, like in Lebanon in '58 or the Dominican Republic in '65.

[NoSheep]

16. I believe 2/3rds are going to train Afghanistan people in security

[Peacetrain]

23. Yep that is what I heard.. and part to watch own backs as we come out of there

[NoSheep]

28. I think it's pretty simple. Not as exciting as accusing him of being Bushlite.....

I just cannot believe how much people are havng to make stuff up to support their sensationalism! Like tea-baggers!

[leveymg]

30. Combat is an inherent part of training in such operations.

Most of those new U.S. troops will be seeing combat. Some of them will be casualties, and will be making Afghan "martyrs" by a more than 10/1 ratio. It's the martyrdom aspect that will create long-term problems for the U.S. This escalation is unnecessary and counter-productive to withdrawal, if that is indeed the objective. An escalation also is counter-productive as far as immediate costs are concerned, which are running at least half a million dollars a year for each additional soldier we put into Afghanistan. Or, doesn't that matter?

[CK_John]

10. There is a way to win that only Chenney would support. Every General knows but is too polite to

say, every zone where we have a casualty drop a 20kilo ton nuke.

That is the only military answer, they all know it but it's impossible to do because....

[John Q. Citizen]

11. The time line is an illusion, just like the public option is and was. The facts on the ground

are not connected to the illusion.

So that is a problem with your premise.

I have to say, that I personally have a hard time with any option I can think of. When the Soviets just pulled out and allowed our Islamic Fundamentalist Allies to take control of Afghanistan they acted very irresponsibly, apparently, according to those who would support the Obama plan.

I'm not sure we are in any position to help, though. We might be fooling ourselves here.

[Peacetrain]

14. What would you do? I am not trying to start a circular argument..

[John Q. Citizen]

31. I think I might pull the troops and send lots of aide and aide workers. I think

we have already failed and we should admit our mistakes and quit repeating them.

I think we should offer the ability to emigrate here for any Afghanis who want to. I think we should start dropping seeds and clothes, and tractors.

We should pull the CIA out to help solve the heroin problem.

We should give out money and assistance primarily to women.


I think we should try something new, since what we've been doing so far hasn't worked very well. I think re-doubling our efforts is the wrong move. I think it's just digging a deeper hole.

[NoSheep]

13. Oh...oooh-oooh magic! I'll just use magic!

[OneGrassRoot]

15. I wish I were as brilliant as so many here....

In a perfect world, there would be no war, no poverty, no inequality....no Cheney, no Palin, no Limbaugh, no Beck....but I digress.

We all knew Iraq was bogus and saw through the smokescreen BushCo was throwing out.

I am admittedly one of "those conspiracy people," and therefore view all things through the prism of it likely being caused by, or specifically benefiting, those who wield most of the power and money.

But with Afghanistan, I just don't know the truth enough to KNOW anything. Sure, I want our troops home, I want the Afghan people to have a more peaceful existence. But I don't know enough to say without hesitation that us pulling out NOW won't have more negative consequences than remaining another 18 months. Is Obama full of shit about this? Is it about a pipeline and not about humane issues and/or national security at all? I don't KNOW anything for certain. I don't know how anyone here DOES.

So, I continue to try to learn and weed through the cesspool of opinions, which are conveyed as though they are fact, and do my best to remain open to and support any positive developments this administration, as well as our citizenry, can achieve, while simultaneously remaining skeptical... conspiracy theorist that I am.

Hello to you, Peacetrain.

[NoSheep]

17. The sanest post I've read in some time.

[OneGrassRoot]

22. It seems we're neighbors :)

[NoSheep]

26. Really?

Close or just NC?

[OneGrassRoot]

27. Apex...

Very close!

[NoSheep]

29. Ah...yep. Hi there!

We probably know each other LOL

[Peacetrain]

21. That is me.. If we dropped guns and just started heading to the borders, what

a logistical nightmare that would be. Better minds than mine on this, said last night, that you would need the 30,000 just to pull out of there without a loss of life, much less give a good sweep to try and have Pakistan push the Al Qaeda over the border.

Obama said he was going to finish this and come home.. and that looks to be his plan.. He sure is taking some heat from the right on this.. Cheney basically called him a traitor..

[John Q. Citizen]

34. Every right wing Senator interviewed on NPR this morning praised Obama, with

the caveat that they thought he shouldn't have said that in 18 months he would begin to start winding things down.

Every other guest said it wasn't a hard and fast date, just a goal. That's also what Gen. Patreus (sp?) said.

But the Repos are totally on board with sending another 30,000 troops and are saying so publicly.


I bet Obama gets almost unanimous Repo support in congress on his plan.

[BeyondGeography]

24. Leave the world to the wolves and dissolve Congress so we can have single payer

[ipaint]

32. We will never leave.

Garrisoning the Gulf

Even as it lurches toward a quasi-withdrawal from Iraq, the U.S. military has been hunkering down and hardening its presence elsewhere in the Middle East with little fanfare or press coverage. There has been almost no discussion in this country of a host of possible repercussions that might come from this, ranging from local opposition to the U.S. military's presence to the arming of undemocratic and repressive regimes in the region. With the sole exception of Iran, the U.S. military has fully garrisoned the nations of the Persian Gulf with air bases, naval bases, desert posts, training centers, and a whole host of other facilities, while also building up the military capacity of nearby Jordan.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175159/tomgram%3A_nick_... /

While everyone is focused on the shiny "more troops to afghanistan" trinket, we are building our military presence all over the middle east. Afghanistan is just one of many ventures. We will populate their country with bases too.

I fully expect obama to support this ongoing surge of empire into the middle east. The soft withdrawal date in afghanistan and the withdrawal in iraq are our watered down pr versions of "public options" offered by the pentagon to keep the middle class at bay and the poor signing up to man our new bases and strongholds.

It's too late for real withdrawal.

Grayson was right, the best foreign policy is just "leave them alone". We are so far past that option now. I'd settle for a president who actually tells the truth. Unfortunately we are way past that, too.

[Orsino]

33. Stop killing people.

Withdraw troops from areas where they're most likely to kill people, or to be killed.

[tekisui]

35. The time-line is optimistic, ambitious and squishy, at best.

For me, the approach should have been to start with the premise of leaving as the primary objective.

From that primary objective, the question is 'What is the least bad way we can leave?'

And, I don't accept that doubling troops force follows that rationale. It redefines the primary objective as 'defeating AQ and the Taliban'. That objective is open-ended, ill-defined and ambiguous. How do we know when AQ is sufficiently defeated? How do we know when the Taliban really are gone, and not just waiting out in the mountains.

This strategy will result in a loss. The Taliban will control our time-line. They can wait us out for years in the border mountains, like they did for about 6 years. They waited us out, and moved back into Afghanistan the past two years. They can do that again.

Or, they can destabilize the region as we approach our desired exit date. Either way, we cannot win. Obama has accepted the wrong frame and the wrong primary objective.

[TreasonousBastard]

36. I don't. Even without the pressures Obama is getting hit with...

getting out of either Iraq or Afghanistan is unscrambling the egg and there is no good option.

Bush and his masters and minions left us with a mile-high garbage pile and not even a shovel to work with. Perhaps cutting our losses and just pulling out would be the least bad option, if it were even possible at this point. After all, Afghanistan was run by the Taliban before and nobody cared enough to do anything but the usual handwringing over women with no education or medical care and ancient buddhist statues blown up.

Ultimately, perhaps the answer is to get over the Pax Americana just like we got over the Pax Britannica and let the UN become something more than a podium where various interests scramble to get their best deals. It won't happen in my lifetime, but a world government, or at least authority, with police powers and the mission to deal with with the Somalias and Afghanistans of the world is the answer.

[Clio the Leo]

37. I'm going to nominate you to be Ambassador of something....

.... where would you like to go?

As always, brilliant post.