[…] George W. Bush never wavered. He remained resolute, his conscience clear. He knew he was doing God’s work. He was—and no doubt remains today—a true believer. The 43d president was a well-intentioned fool, who inflicted grievous harm on his country. Yet when Bush stands before his Maker (or the bar of History), he will say without fear of contradiction: “I did what I thought was right.”Barack Obama is anything but a fool. Yet when called upon to account for his presidency, honesty will prevent him from making a comparable claim. “The problems I inherited were difficult ones,” he will say. “None of the choices were good ones. Things were complicated.”
[…]The question demands to be asked: Who is more deserving of contempt? The commander-in-chief who sends young Americans to die for a cause, however misguided, in which he sincerely believes? Or the commander-in-chief who sends young Americans to die for a cause in which he manifestly does not believe and yet refuses to forsake?
I don’t know if “manifestly does not believe” is completely fair. Perhaps he believes that the war is ultimately unwinnable, but still thinks that committing some resources in a salvage operation will yield a better outcome. But I’m afraid that Bacevich is essentially right: history will be harder on the wise man who knowingly took on the fool’s errand.
Update: Larison makes a good point in response to Bacevich:
A truly morally vacuous administration would take the far easier way out, which is to have a much smaller U.S. presence augmented by steady bombardment of the countryside for years to come: there would be far fewer American casualties, the humanitarian disaster created by such tactics would be shrugged off with Rumsfeldian indifference (“stuff happens”), and each new wave of strikes would create another generation of embittered and radicalized enemies whose existence would justify continuing the war indefinitely. This would be an essentially amoral policy that takes no account of the dangers of blowback, but it would be immensely popular and politically very expedient. What should concern us is that Obama’s instinct to accommodate will eventually lead him to embrace such an amoral policy, at which point he will be deserving of the contempt Prof. Bacevich evidently wants to heap on him now.
taterstick
“history will be harder on the wise man who knowingly took on the fool’s errand.”
Aw, bullshit. What you and Concerntrolloftheday Bacevich seem to forget is that Obama was faced with the consummate no-win decision in Afghanistan. Bail out and watch the whole region implode, or go all in and bankrupt the whole country. Instead, he has done what he can to get us the hell out of there with the least amount of harm, whilst pearl clutchers on both sides whine their asses off.
Bacevich is a tool.
atlliberal
what makes him so sure Obama doesn’t believe in the mission? From the time he started running for president, he has said that since Afghanistan was where the 9/11 attacks were planned, we should have kept the focus there until Al Queda is no longer a threat.
You may agree or disagree with his policy, but all evidence suggests he believes he is doing what is right.
mr. whipple
Is this why Lebron is leaving Cleveland?
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
Suddenly, everything every republican has ever done makes sense.
Third Eye Open
This is why we can’t have nice things. I am convinced that short of apocalyptic economic or environmental collapse, and the attendant unraveling of modern society, Americans by-and-large don’t want to plan, because that requires making tough choices.
I think Obama limps along in his presidential prerogatives, right up to the point that someone tries to shoot him. Then, well…either all hell breaks loose, or we have another decade where the extreme right-wing slinks back into the shadows.
I am going to start drinking now…
PeakVT
How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?
stuckinred
@PeakVT: You say get your ass in gear trooper.
General Stuck
It’s not a walk in the park to extricate yourself from a decade long ground war on the other side of the globe. Especially one that has been botched so badly over that long period of time. Candidate Obama didn’t have the details of the situation in Afghan., and now he does, and we have an end date to said ground war. And that is what is most important right now, likely for what you state MM, the offensive is a face saving effort for the country, and possibly Obama himself to leave the Afghans with the best possible situation. But not to continue a no win land war forever.
JoePo
I guess you could wait a few years, see how things shake out, admit possibilities outside a dramatic binary. Or not. Oh well. We’re fucked.
James Hare
“Manifestly does not believe” is entirely unfair. Bacevich has no way of knowing anything about the President’s thoughts like that. One could easily make the argument that Bush’s moves in Iraq and Afghanistan were just as calculated and politically motivated. I’ve never believed the Bush-as-dunce caricature — it lets him off the hook way too much.
El Tiburon
This is the essence in why many of us are so discouraged by Obama. He simply refuses to take a principled stand and then stand behind it.
W., as foolish as he was when he opened up that filing cabinet declaring, “Ya’ see here, this here is all the gosh-darned social security IOUs we got in the entire nation, hee hee hee” at least he stuck to his guns.
I have yet to see Obama stick to his guns. Instead he seems to bargain them away before the poker game even begins. And sadly, most of the time I think he would of had the winning hand.
Aries Moon
Well… God might be harder on Obama than Bush but I don’t think history will be. A fool will still be judged a fool, no matter his motivation.
Mnemosyne
And that’s why Nixon takes way more of the blame for Vietnam than Johnson since Nixon knew full well it was a losing proposition but kept it going so he could win the 1972 election, right? That is how history looks at it, right? Hello? Bueller?
Looks like yet another manifestation of IOKIYAR. Poor George didn’t know any better than to get us into two endless wars so it’s not really his fault! But Obama’s smart, so he’s really the one to blame!
Hunter Gathers
Bachevich needs to wake the fuck up and come to the realization that the military industrial complex wants Obama gone. Or has the fact that they have already tried to fuck him over twice in 18 months not occured to him? The first two times, it was subtle. The next (when Obama refuses to ditch the 2011 draw down) will be a very public, digital lynching. And the media will lap it up to appease the teabaggers. The bullshit will not cease until Obama is either out of office, or assassinated, whichever happen first.
El Tiburon
@taterstick:
And how do you know the “whole region” would implode? And what does that even mean for Afghanistan? What would implosion even mean? That the subways would stop running? No more trash pick up? The country is already a mud-hole.
Please tell us how he has done what he can to get us out? You mean increasing the troop levels by 30,000? By stating that a lot of our troops will be there for decades?
joeyess
mistermix, this assessment should win you the internets…….. forever.
Kryptik
The problem with this whole situation is that honestly, Afghanistan is a no-win situation for Obama. The region is quite obviously too much of a problem for we alone to fix, and we alone are left to fix it because none of our pols want to actually pull the plug, for fear of being ‘soft on terrorists’. And thus the only choice is either throw more money and bodies at the problem, or be the one who gives the US a military ‘defeat’ and thus tar the Democrats (and believe me, it’ll have to be a Democrat by default in this environment) as ‘weak’, ‘un-American’, and all sorts of unflattering things that imply that only Republicans can keep us safe.
Even if Obama could draw down, in the most gradual manner, he and every single other Dem who might want to do the same thing and pull out of there, won’t. Aside from the genuine logistical problems, it’s been framed as the sadistic choice for the Dems, where no matter what they choose, they’re fucked and Republicans get rewarded.
….much like every other political issue these days.
Fuck, I need a drink.
Mnemosyne
@El Tiburon:
So, in the words of Stephen Colbert, what you really want is a president who believes the same thing on Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened on Tuesday. Who cares if it was the wrong thing or if he was a fool for sticking with it? At least he was consistent, by gum!
Brien Jackson
@El Tiburon:
And thank God. I’ll take a smart, introspective President willing to change as reality dictates over a Bush style ideologue every day.
Amanda in the South Bay
I always liked Richard Daley’s exchange with LBJ on getting the troops out of Vietnam. How do you do it? You get them on ships/planes and get them the fuck out of there (or something like that).
Maybe I’m deluding myself, but it seems as if the left was more intent on getting out of the wars we are in back when Bush was president rather than now. Or maybe rank and file progressives really do believe in a watered down interventionism.
Alas, I think liberals have so internalized Republican claims that they are soft on defense that they’d rather stay the course and drag things out rather than appear as weak to the right.
joe from Lowell
El Tib,
You sound like the people who told me that we couldn’t possibly make Iraq worse.
Things can always get worse. Have you ever read about Afghanistan in the 1990s, when there was a full-scale civil war going on? It makes the 2010s look like a golden age.
Ah, remember the good old days when announcing a timeline for withdrawal was the anti-war position?
Third Eye Open
@El Tiburon:
2025: China installs new party leader in the People’s Republic of Afghanistan…
This will not end well, mainly because there is no more “institutional knowledge” left in Afghanistan. This generation doesn’t know how to do anything except resist. At some point resistance turns in on itself if there are no leaders with a plan to build something more than tribal coalitions. Does this mean Federalism–weak or otherwise? No. It does mean someone strong enough not to get bumped off, but altruistic enough to believe that Afghanistan is more than the sum of its parts. IMHO
Just Some Fuckhead
The other alternatives are that Obama is a fool who thinks we can “win” in Afghanistan despite all historical evidence to the contrary or a monster who considers a few more thousand lives a good price to pay for a short term political gain.
fucen tarmal
i think we know that, given the basic stupidity of the american people, that the gop is counting on, their argument “we screwed up” is simply to understand and thus forgive than, “they screwed up, we tried to fix it, things got worse, but if you look at this this and this, they screwed up so much there was no way to fix it, as it turns out”
the gop is begging forgiveness, the dems are asking permission, we know which one plays better.
demimondian
I’m a little irked by the false dichotomy Bacevich presents. Obama could well believe that the current war in Afghanistan is unwinnable, while also believing that the best way to get out from under the burden would be slowly and gradually, according to the best evidence of the moment. That’s called humility, where what Bush exhibited is called arrogance and pride.
Given the choice, I’d much rather present myself to my Maker having made a mistake out of humility…
CaffinatedOne
I think that this gives far to much credit to Bush. Why would we presume that he was a “true believer”? It’s not like we mobilized as though he viewed either Iraq or Afghanistan as some sort of fundamental threat.
I certainly buy the clueless fool part, but it’s more plausible that this mess was brought about through equal parts of political calculation (“war president”) and empire building fantasy that was being spun by his neocon handlers. The “true believer” part is spin by his apologists and is probably what he tries to convince himself of so he can sleep at night.
SB Jules
@taterstick:
“history will be harder on the wise man who knowingly took on the fool’s errand.”
I’d say that’s bullshit.
General Stuck
@El Tiburon: Afghanistan will not implode, it will likely revert to what it’s been over it’s history, disparate bands of tribes and warlords fighting each other because there is nothing much else to do.
Iraq is the one to watch for implosion, or explosion. It has high stakes wealth involved and sits along the fault lines of religious sects who have been spilling each others blood for millenia , now with an Iraq cobbled together with walls and a US puppet government, and surrounded by Sunnis and Shia in other countries who will be hard pressed to not join in the age old sectarian warfare in the land of Mesopotamia.
John Cole
Can anyone point to one thing that suggests Obama does not believe in the mission? Because while I want us out and want us out yesterday, the swarthy guy has been pretty fucking clear about believing in the mission from the time I started listening to him.
I love Bacevich, but this is a cheap slur. He’s fucking mind-reading, and it is about as valid as the idiots who think they and only they know that ‘in his heart’ Obama is a closet liberal/progressive/socialist/Muslim/corporate whore/communist/anti-Christ/Kenyan.
You want to judge the man on his words and actions- that would suggest he believes in the mission. You want to judge him on your mythical bullshit about what he “really thinks?” Go for it. I’ll pay as much attention to you as I did Dr. Frist’s remote diagnosis of Terri Schiavo, and accord you the same amount of respect.
jrg
I love how “common sense conservatism” degrades into “it’s not our fault the guy we elected is functionally retarded” after 8 years of epic failure and “stay the course” rhetoric.
That said, Bacevich is probably correct. Too bad the media and the right have created an environment where making prudent decisions is toxic to a politician.
joe from Lowell
Maybe the problem is that you’re actually deluded enough not to know the difference between a just war and an unjust one.
You know, when I spent seven years screaming “Iraq didn’t attack us! Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11!” it wasn’t just something convenient to say in a debate. YMMV.
cleek
i like the guy, but it’s become pretty obvious recently: Obama’s a wimp.
when’s the last time anyone saw him step up to a problem and grab it by the neck ?
nah, he’s a natural ditherer – a regular Floyd-Steinberg. i can’t tell if he wants out of Afgh or if he’s content to stay the course. his pronouncements about starting to pull out most troops, maybe, in another year or so are so vague and qualified as to be meaningless. actions, buddy. actions, not words.
Amanda in the South Bay
I think what pisses many of my fellow liberals off about Bacevich is that he genuinely doesn’t like half assed interventionism, whether the President at the time is a Dem or a Republican.
*sighs* I’ve gotten the impression since Obama took office that, fundamentally, many on the left don’t have much of a problem with the wars. They just think they can run things a lot smarter and smoother than the previous administration (the cult of COIN, for starters).
russell
Bacevich gives Bush way too much of a pass. He wasn’t just a simple idiot convinced of the righteousness of his delusional cause. He is on record as desiring a war because of the popular and electoral support it would create for his domestic policies.
Bush is not particularly intelligent, and he’s absolutely unreflective, but he’s not an idiot. He just doesn’t give a shit. He’s a guy who takes crazy risks with other people’s lives and calls it being bold.
In short, he’s an entitled fuckwad, and IMO history will judge him as such.
It seems to me that Obama is completely supportive of the mission in Afghanistan, and has always been. He inherited the situation when it was already FUBAR, and he’s trying to salvage what he can of it.
I have no idea if that’s a good idea or not, and I have no idea if he would have done a better job than Bush had he been driving the bus from day one. I suspect the answer to the second point is “yes”, because he’s about a million times more competent than Bush, mainly because he gives a shit.
But net/net, I think Bacevich’s analysis is crap. I like a lot of what Bacevich has to say, and I think he’s a smart guy, but in this case I think it’s horseshit, and I think he knows it.
Brien Jackson
@Amanda in the South Bay:
It seems to me that progressives were fine with the idea of timetables for withdrawal while Bush was President, but not so much now that Obama is in office.
General Stuck
@John Cole:
Believing in the mission and believing the mission can succeed are two different things. I think the former is an affirmative, and the later not so much, given he has bucked the military establishment, not to mention the neo cons, and announced an end to ground fighting with an exit date.
joe from Lowell
Regardless of what you think we should do from here in Afghanistan, regardless of what you think about how Bush handled the situation, the decision to attack al Qaeda and their close allies in Afghanistan was just and necessary, and the decision to attack Iraq was neither.
Of course leftists are going have a bigger head of steam over Iraq than over Afghanistan. One of those wars is evil to the core, and one is not, so obviously decent people are going to view them differently. Even the ones who decide that the non-evil war isn’t a good idea.
Brien Jackson
@Amanda in the South Bay:
I don’t see much evidence that Bacevich is pissing anyone off, so much as people are pointing out that this is baseless nonsense.
Emma
I doubt that. History is a complicated thing, and it keeps being rewritten. But there is no way in hell, short of a massive worldwide dose of retcon in the water that anyone will be able to rewrite the history of the Bush presidency.
Citizen_X
@James Hare: What you said. Bush, whatever his many faults, was a canny politician. Bush and his advisors were in awe of the political capital Thatcher earned with her little escapade in the Falklands, and wanted to replicate that in the middle east. Or, as Ctheney (same ref) said, “Start a small war. Pick a country where there is justification you can jump on, go ahead and invade.”
atlliberal
@Amanda in the South Bay:
I think that’s because there is a plan. Iraq is going according to plan, we’ll see about Afghanistan. The president isn’t saying we’ll stay there for 100 years. He’s saying we’ll start withdrawal next year. I’m probably the most antiwar person I know, but even i understand why we can’t just pick up and leave with 100,000 troops over there. It takes time and planning, particularly if you want to take all that expensive equipment with you.
Brien Jackson
@joe from Lowell:
Just? Maybe. Necessary? Absolutely not.
That said, it’s silly now to act like there was massive liberal opposition to attacking Afghanistan. Most liberals thought it was fine, the UN sanctioned it, and liberals even held up the need to pursue it as a reason not to divert resources to Iraq.
Paul in KY
In no way do I give GWB a pass for being a ‘true believer’. He ‘true believed’ in sticking it to Democrats, being a 2 term President, & enriching his base.
To use an Enron analogy, he was Ken Lay & Darth Cheney was Jeff Skilling.
He ‘true believed’ he was heading towards 1 term land (pre-911) & that he couldn’t be a ‘War President’ for more than 2 months if we’d stomped on Afganistan like we went into Iraq.
Pres. Obama’s achilles heel (IMO) is that he cares too much what the villagers think of him. Plus, he’s wanting to be re-elected & being tough on brown people is a no loser for that.
Kryptik
@Amanda in the South Bay:
Honestly, my motivation is just sapped, because I’ve accepted that the current environment simply doesn’t allow a Democrat or a liberal to get away with anything but the hollowest of victories, and it’s a reality we have to operate in. Drawing out of Afghanistan has become unviable and simply toxic to even consider, because military operations are sacrosanct, and the merest idea of shrinking any sort of military budget or operation ends up with shrieking harpies from both parties and the media. And any genuine anti-war voice will never, ever get taken seriously, just compare the Tea Party protest coverage to Anti-War protest coverage, and you can see that.
If it’s anything like I’m feeling the anti-war side of things has just sunk into depressed resignation that they’ve lost, no matter what happens.
joe from Lowell
Third Eye Open
@El Tiburon:
2025: China installs new party leader in the People’s Republic of Afghanistan…
I wish!
But there’s no way the Chinese would be that stupid.
Amanda in the South Bay
@joe from Lowell:
And why do you think I believe the war in A-stan is unjust? But after almost ten years, I don’t think healthy democracies can keep up these types of occupations. Sometimes cutting and running (oh no, the R’s will paint the D’s as pussies. Oh the horror!) is in the best interests of our country, not basking in the glow of righteousness of 9/12/01.
PeakVT
@Amanda in the South Bay: Alas, I think liberals have so internalized Republican claims that they are soft on defense that they’d rather stay the course and drag things out rather than appear as weak to the right.
Liberals haven’t internalized the claim; moderates have.
Brien Jackson
@Kryptik:
Which is why the candidate who opposed invading Iraq in 2002 lost to all of the candidates who favored invasion in the last Presidential election. Or something.
scav
Belief justifies nothing. Zilch. Nada. 2 year olds sincerely believe they can live on nothing but cookies and ice cream and most crooks no doubt sincerely believe that they have a right to the stuff in your house. To think that acknowledging the world is bloody complex and that most concrete decisions have to be a generally unhappy compromise between competing and irreconcilable goals is seen as a weakness. Jesu nomine Christi sometimes this country deserves everything and anything that happens to it.
DJShay
Oh Brother… I thought better of this place.
joe from Lowell
This isn’t actually true. Obama is flying in the face of public opinion on Afghanistan. He is paying a political price for not bailing ASAP.
The politics of national security are different in the post-Bush world. This isn’t 1988, and it’s not 1980.
WereBear
Yes, this. When should Bush’s “sincere belief” have wavered? When he was joking about looking under his desk for WMDs?
J.W. Hamner
I ask this honestly: Is there evidence that public opinion has soured recently on Afghanistan? That large swaths of the populace want every troop home ASAP? Maybe it’s biased news coverage… or biased by the places I consume it… but I don’t get the impression that people outside of dKos/FDL count it high on their priority list.
It seems like it would have to much more important to the Average Joe to doom Obama’s presidency or his place in history. Right now it looks like the economy is going to do that.
Bill E Pilgrim
@John Cole: Cole channels Tom. Or the other way around, whatever.
On the other hand, some of the commenters here are channeling the character in the most recent cartoon, Chuckles the Sensible WoodChuck:
This has been your all This Modern World comment, yes, I’m using cartoons to make my points now. Soon I shall devolve to hand puppets. Reenacting John Cole’s midnight dog vomit slide in hand puppets should be a tour de force, don’t miss it.
Oh and may I just add that the idea that history will be kinder to Bush because he was too obtuse to know that there was more than one viewpoint about most things is er, wrong, would be a mild term for it.
I’ll go try to find a cartoon that makes that point also but in the meantime had to resort to actually writing it in my own words. Strange sensation.
joe from Lowell
Amanda,
I didn’t mean to suggest you did.
You asked why leftists are not as furious about Afghanistan under Obama as they were about Iraq under Bush, and I answered: because the Iraq War was evil to the core, and the Afghan War, at least initially, was not.
Sometimes cutting and running (oh no, the R’s will paint the D’s as pussies. Oh the horror!) is in the best interests of our country
And sometimes fighting is in the best interests of our country, and sometimes a slow drawdown is in the best interests of our country.
Once again, Obama is taking a political hit for staying in Afghanistan. The theory that he’s doing so for domestic political consumption or to avoid a political hit is anachronistic nonsense.
demimondian
@joe from Lowell: What planet is your Lowell on?
CalD
LOL. So while the president may or may not “manifestly” believe this is a fools errand, it’s still manifest somehow that he does in fact believe this, manifestly or not? :-b
Kryptik
@joe from Lowell:
That’s the problem here. I’m not talking about public opinion. I’m talking about the only thing that seems to matter any more in these kinds of political situations, which is ‘political opinion’ (i.e. what the Washington Bubble thinks) and ‘media opinion’ (i.e. what the media decides are kosher opinions and which are batshit leftie dreams).
No matter what the ‘public’ wants, whether it’s out of Afghanistan, more stimulus or unemployment benefits, gay marriage, etc., those two spheres of opinion combined seem to be enough to break the bank electorally, from what it looks like. And it’s a depressing thing to see.
General Stuck
@Bill E Pilgrim: By all means, let’s not get sensible here. geesh.
Nellcote
@Emma:
The MSM already has and the goopers are deep into (“Miss Bush Yet?”) BushAmnesia.
Amanda in the South Bay
@joe from Lowell:
Well, A-stan is still a shithole after 9 years, and regardless of how much I thought the war was a good and necessary thing in 2001. 2002 or 2003, doesn’t mean that I still believe that. Ultimately there are tradeoffs to occupying a country for over a decade, and I really don’t see much relevance to what we are doing now to the original justification for invading-wiping out the perpetrators of 9/11.
Shrillhouse
If America is going to leave Afghanistan anyways, why not leave now? What does anyone think is going to be different a year from now? Will Karzai become a re-born populist and a paragon of integrity? Will the Aghan National Army re-invent itself as a cohesive and effective fighting force?
Either the war in Afghanistan is vital to America’s stategic interest and to the maintenance of global security….or it isn’t. If it is, America can’t leave until the war is decisively won. If it isn’t, why is America still there? So Obama looks tough? So the GOP won’t call Democrats “weak”? It’s an endless, pointless bloodbath. And it’s indefensible.
Third Eye Open
@joe from Lowell:
If the shite hits the fan, where are the ethnic minorities going to go? They will rush back towards enclaves in neighboring countries. This will have the inevitable outcome of destabalizing the recipient nations. Who is the regional power that can actually quell the friction that will come from a diaspora that could reach 1/3 of the population (10-million people)?
joe from Lowell
demimondian,
The one where Obama won the presidential election by running against McCain’s plan to extend the Iraq War. You know, the real world – the one were politics aren’t eternally stuck in 1968.
mistermix
@General Stuck: I agree with this.
It’s pretty clear from Obama’s actions that he doesn’t believe there’s a real win in Afghanistan. By announcing a withdrawal date when announcing the surge, he basically admitted that he’s committing to shoring up the Afghan Army as best we can before we leave.
The reason Bacevich sounds so harsh is because he won’t concede any legitimacy to this view. For Bacevich, if Obama doesn’t believe in “the conflict”, he needs to get out, now. Belief in a conflict implies belief in total war to win the conflict.
I get that imputing beliefs isn’t fair without evidence, but there’s evidence for at least a softened version of Bacevich’s argument.
joe from Lowell
Bill E. Pilgrim,
I stopped reading that idiotic comic strip you linked to when the writer stated that Obama hasn’t even begun the withdrawal from Iraq.
Kryptik
@Nellcote:
It’s either that or re-writing history to paint Bush as a far-out lefty progressive whose footsteps Obama is just following in. Which would be laughable if it wasn’t gaining as much purchase as the ‘We want Bush back!’ line was.
Bill E Pilgrim
@General Stuck: I’ll respect your right to be sensible but please tell me that you don’t actually have fur.
cleek
@Shrillhouse:
if you already knew the answers, why did you have to ask ?
:)
Hunter Gathers
@cleek:
Of course he is. Remember when Mullen and his cronies demanded that he send 60,000 + troops to Afghanistan? They got what they wanted, right? Or When Good Soldier Stanley talked trash to the press, and Obama was too much of a wimp to shit-can him, right? Or when Obama wussed out and went for the smaller health care bill, right? Or when he cancelled the Iraq withdrawl timetable, right? Can he do right by any of you fucking cracker ass crackers?
joe from Lowell
@Amanda,
Ditto. Still, you can understand the difference in passion between people shouting “This war is evil!” and people making your point. For one thing, changing your mind in the middle of a war, even if you are right, doesn’t make the president who took over in the middle of the war quite as much a subject of hatred. People, even the ones who feel strongly he should end it, are naturally going to give him some latitude about what to do from here.
General Stuck
@Bill E Pilgrim: I will respect your right to be nonsensible, but please tell me you are not really stuck in time.
Bill E Pilgrim
@joe from Lowell: Okay. Well, thanks for letting me know.
sparky
@John Cole: agreed, which is one reason i am not buying into the “exit date” notion. come that date there will be some reason for keeping a nontrivial US presence. oh, and anyone who thinks Obama is bucking the National Security State is not paying attention.
incidentally, what is the last line of the post here? really elaborate sophistry (snark)? a malapropism? a Palinism?
that is, it seems rather peculiar to posit that a wise man would take on a “fool’s errand”. either it’s not a fool’s errand, or the individual is not wise. given this rather nice turn of phrase in defining “fool’s errand”–
which fits US policy on Afghanistan rather nicely, it appears that the elegance of the posted phrase depends upon what we might call a logical impossibility, namely, that a wise person would do something stupid and foolish. perhaps intelligence rather than wisdom was the intent here, but intelligence and wisdom are not now nor have they ever been synonymous. consequently, it appears more sensible to simply deny the premise, namely, that Obama is wise.
edit: linky messed up
russell
I believe your impression is wrong.
Hint: “the left” != Obama and his administration.
demimondian
@Hunter Gathers: Damn straight, he’s a wimp and a do nothing!
Remember when he refused to appeal the moratorium on deep water drilling? And when his FDA refused to regulate the use of antibiotics on healthy animals? And when they refused to extend PTSD benefits to all veterans? And when they put no effort into recruiting a sixtieth Democrat in the Senate?
Rick Taylor
John Cole:
Well said.
Nellcote
Maddow has been doing her show from Afghanistan this week. It’s interesting that even she finally seems to understand the point of the July 11 drawdown.
Bill E Pilgrim
@General Stuck:
No thank you for asking ;) Though actually if I may just point out it’s the rest of you who were stuck in time. Billy having come unstuck. (Edit: Oh and particularly you! Just occurs to me)
I must admit I do find myself wanting to say “so it goes” somewhat constantly, cliche that it is. Far too often, really.
david mizner
@John Cole:
There are several thing that should lead you to believe he doesn’t believe in the mission:
1) Obama, for all his faults, isn’t an idiot
2) Obama is a self-styled and in some cases genuine foreign policy realist in the mold of Bush Senior.
3) The fact that he’s long supported this war means nothing, because opposing it during the campaign would’ve precluded him from being president.
4) If you believe domestic politics played no role in his decision to escalate (twice) — and in virtually every national security decision in the history of humankind — you’re an idiot.
5) He’s been rolled by the generals several times.
6) He’s not someone who — to say the least — has exhibited a willingness to go against powerful establishments. To withdraw would’ve him required to go against at least two such establishments.
7) Obama by all accounts agreed to go along with the escalation only if he could begin withdrawing troops next summer, going so far to secure a promise from Petraeus. This fucked up escalation-withdrawal reveals him to be at the very least conflicted (and conflicted is no way to wage a war.)
DaddyJ
I think the “good question” is actually a crap question. Bush saw being a “wartime President” as being a desirable goal, in and of itself. When I read that he pumped his fist when he got his Congressional vote for invasion, I thought: that man’s a sociopath. Launching a war is not something a moral man celebrates. I dispute the “well-intentioned” part of the formulation, and I doubt Bush’s Maker will be fooled.
cleek
@mistermix:
any damned fool can “announce” any damned thing he wants.
speeches and announcements are not reality-in-waiting, they’re just words. don’t believe Obama is pulling out of Afghanistan until he’s actually doing it.
stuckinred
@Nellcote: She also is quite impressed with the troops unlike some of the knuckle heads here.
david mizner
I will say, though, that I don’t much care if he believes it in or not. Whatever his beliefs, he’s waging an immoral war. His hands will be forever stained with blood.
ornery curmudgeon
I’m waiting on evidence that Bush really was “a true believer.” Besides the propaganda chants, I mean. How about backing up THAT piece of the equation while peering into the heart of Obama and being sadly ‘afraid’ of history’s judgment?
I’m supposed to agree that an Oilman from Texas just ‘beleeeved’ it was the right thing to do to invade an oil-rich nation in the Middle East, which had nothing to do with 9/11 btw, and hand it to the Free Market(tm)? F that.
“Conscience clear” lol, try “conscience missing” which of course might seem the same to someone who claims even God cannot refute the purity of Bush’s intentions. What a thing to quote, mistermix.
Assuming you are an honest player, mrmix, at some point you have to stop following the bouncing ball. If you really want something God and history will judge poorly … the oil-spill-gusher-slick-catastrophe is still going on, it didn’t break for the news cycle.
General Stuck
I just love the reflexive mistrust of Obama. We go thru it on every issue, and he ends up doing what he promised albeit with necessary compromise in a democracy.
I love the smell of liberal hand wringing in the morning.
Smells……like defeat.
cat48
A debate about Afghanistan is ridiculous. You couldn’t have followed the campaign and not known he was going to do exactly what he did……..increase troops, etc. I’m sick of people telling me how Obama REALLY feels or REALLY thinks. There is no way for anyone to know unless he told you personally and I haven’t seen any of these wild accusations from anyone who does have personal interaction with him. NONE.
srv
What JSF said.
Obama is giving his generals their rope, and as predicted by many when he got appointed, McChrystal ran directly into the reality of how wanting COIN theory is. Now Patreaus is stuck with it, and will flail away after Obama probably gives him even more troops. In the end, Patreaus, COIN and the Republican Nation Building Experiment will receive the due respect they deserve.
Or Obama could really believe what so many here do, and the never-been-wrong National Security Staff makes a living on – that as soon as we leave, the Taliban will overthrow the 7th largest army in the world (that pays their bills), grab their nukes, and go downtown. With a magical unicorn army or something, I guess.
Yeah, he could really be crazier than a skull-fucked Krauthammer, or he could just be sucking it up and hoping for the best “appropriate interval” strategy he can get while his generals learn their lessons.
Just a few thousand lives here or there. The price of getting everyone to agree where the boundary of insanity lies.
Hunter Gathers
@demimondian: Or when his EPA told the power companies to switch to lower emission natural gas over old coal fired plants? Or made the largest investment in infrastructure, education, and technology since Ike? Or filled an post that has been vacant since 2006 by recess appointment? But nooooooo, it’s not good enough for our ‘progressive’ betters, so we should sit on our hands in November and allow the crazies to take over, because ‘progressives’ are only truly happy when GOPers are in charge.
sven
I think Bacevich is too quick to discount domestic political considerations. If I could believe that the public would see our withdrawal, a defeat by another name, as the result of Bush’s reckless adventurism then I would agree that Obama is being cowardly. Recent experience tells me that our public isn’t in a mood to be apportioning blame in a fair-minded manner. I have been shocked at the speed with which a great number of people in this country have come to blame Obama for the continuing economic crisis, all evidence to the contrary. If a U.S. withdrawal is followed by chaos I strongly suspect Obama will take the bulk of the blame. Losing an election but ending two wars would certainly be acceptable except that Obama losing also means a return to power of the very individuals responsible for the current wars.
I keep asking myself which is better:
8 years of a deeply flawed Obama foreign policy
4 years of an excellent foreign policy+
4-8 years of a Palin foreign policy
david mizner
Moreover, even if doesn’t believe in the war in Afghanistan, he seems to believe in Empire, the War of Terror, “projecting strength,” and the dirty war in Pakistan — all of which are related to the war in Afghanistan, and a withdrawal would call into question, in the minds of people he fears and wants to please, his commitment to those other things.
cleek
@Hunter Gathers:
of course he can. but that doesn’t mean i have to ignore the areas where he fucks up.
low-tech cyclist
And if his Maker in any way resembles this fella Jesus as portrayed in the Gospels, his Maker will answer, “Why on Earth did you think that killing, torturing, and lying were the right things to do? Didn’t you read the Commandments? How about the Sermon on the Mount? Remember ‘blessed are the peacemakers’? How about ‘thou shalt not kill’ and ‘thou shalt not bear false witness’? Which part of ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ did you not understand? Where did you get the idea that you could love someone by torturing him?”
J.W. Hamner
To answer my own question:
I was easy enough to find this. The most striking result being FOX/Opinion Dynamics 6/29-30 poll showing 62% approval for military action in Afghanistan… while 58% thought it was not possible to “achieve stability in the region”… which is kind of a big WTF!? but not uncommon in polling I guess.
I guess you can say he’s paying a terrible moral cost for his decisions regarding Afghanistan, but it seems hard to argue he’s paying much of a political cost for them.
Emma
Nellcote: “Miss Bush yet?” is a bumpersticker, not history. And no matter how much the MSM has tried over the years to clean up Nixon or Hoover, history isn’t fooled.
And America =/ the whole world.
matoko_chan
Wow, Bacevitch is a jerk.
Abu Muqawama–
I watched a debate between Bacevitch and Dr. Kilcullen…Kilcullen’s position was that we have a moral obligation for reparations in afghanistan. Bacevitch took the GTFO position.
and bacevitch is simply wrong. During his campaign, Obama promised to listen to his generals if elected. In order to counter McCains war-hero mil-expertise. He listened to his generals, is all. the mini-surge was a hail mary pass that failed.
pure machiavellian pragmatism.
Bush’s WEC moral compass lead him to make the grave strategic error of the Bush Doctrine……more democracy in MENA means more Islam. Because of the consent of the governed.
The people will vote for shariah, because they are nearly all muslims.
I find it incredible that Bacevitch finds Bush’s cuckoo-bananas evangelical christian compass that CAUSED all the pain and death and agony to be in any form justified.
I fully expect Bush to be tortured in gehenna until the End of Days.
perhaps the little shaitans will even waterboard him.
;)
david mizner
@demimondian:
I notice things on your list of O’s AWESOME ACHIEVEMENTS showing up all over the place in the last few days.
Where do you get your talking points?
ornery curmudgeon
So the idea is that this is Obama’s war and guilt and crime for not stopping it … but the man who actually started this war – as President – is an indictable free man because the media says he really, truly beleeeved in it?
Maude
In no way was Bush well intentioned. He was a monster with no conscience.
Bachevich is saying there’s a spot of good in everyone and making excuses for Bush’s criminal mentality. What would he say about Stalin? A bit misguided?
And to say that Bush has ever thought about anything is a flat out lie.
Obama is doing what he thinks is right.
This tells us about Bacevich and no one else. It is his personal belief system he is writing about. I wish he’d go away.
Hunter Gathers
@General Stuck:
I know, right? I want the Dems to go down so badly, when OFA gives the word, I’m going to go work for Ellsworth in Indiana to help keep that seat blue. And I personally detest and despise Ellsworth for being a bible thumping, idiot blue dog, but not enough to sit on my hands and bitch, just to watch Coates win in a walk because Obama hurt my fee fee’s by not working the bully pulpit more.
homerhk
Good grief but this is a lousy post from Bacevich and MM. I am so fucking sick and tired of the “what does Obama believe?” schtick it’s not funny. Anyone who has read Obama’s books, listened to one of his speeches or watched him in action can tell what he believes in an abstract way. He believes in bending the arc of history towards justice or to put it a less flowery way he believes in trying to find a solution to any problem that benefits as many people as possible. Let’s take the wars as an example. He believes that the US should be out of Iraq and believes that the war should never have been waged. Unfortunately, much like the magical ponies he failed to deliver, he also hasn’t invented time machine so he had to make a decision based on what the situation was as at the time of his inauguration, i.e. that Iraq was invaded, that Saddam Hussein was overthrown and that in some respects the country is now better off than it was before. So, given all of that, he makes a decision that will result in full withdrawal while doing as much as he can to preserve the benefits from the invasion (which of course there are) and to improve the shit things that happened as a result of the invasion.
On Afghanistan, he believed that for all his empathy with people there were indeed some terrible people who were given haven in Afghanistan from where the 911 attacks were plotted. He understood that the war in Afghanistan had been neglected by the Bushies and that – again given the situation he inherited at the time – there was to be one last push to see if the crap could be righted before pulling out. Agree or diasgree with him on that but that is clearly what he believes. Not only does he believe it, but he took the opportunity to thoroughly think through the various options during the review period (where he was of course criticised for dithering) and most likely picked the least bad one.
What strikes me forcefully is this: you guys (at least most of you) elected this guy to be your President. A President presides over the US not by virtue of puppet strings controlled by the base, the media or anyone else. By electing him President you reposed your trust in him to use his enormous capacity for clear and level headed thinking in making the kind of outrageously difficult decisions one has to make as President. You didn’t I hope elect him with the expectation that every decision he did make would overlap with your own decision making process because (a) that’s impossible, and (b) he’s making the decision based on the best information in the world, whereas you are probably making the decision based on a few news articles or blog posts.
This is not to say that you simply trust him blindly – it’s to say that you have to trust his decision making process to a certain extent because it is unavoidable. So far, in my view and on balance, he is doing a fantastic job.
scav
@ornery curmudgeon: Far as I can tell, that about nails it. Belief justifies everything and compromise is unamerican.
stuckinred
I never heard of this Bacevich bum?
demimondian
@david mizner: It’s called “the internet”. Some of us make a point of being well-informed about the facts.
Reality — you might want to come in contact with it sometime.
Nellcote
@david mizner:
Bullsh*t or parody?
Brien Jackson
@matoko_chan:
What annoys me more than anything about some of the criticism is the way it just ingores how Bush’s many fuck ups changed the underlying landscape. To say nothing of the apparent notion that we can just walk away from it and forget it ever happened. Bush’s policies created more unrest in two already volatile regions, and just up and walking away from it like everything will just be fine is both stupid and immoral.
General Stuck
@Hunter Gathers: My comment was not directed at you. I should have use the term “progressive betters”, but I was trying to keep my peace leaf turned the right way this morn.
georgia pig
@mistermix: Bacevich is barking up the wrong tree. There is no moral superiority in being an idiot. I think Obama thinks the mission to be accomplished is putting the Afghan government in a position where it could retain control and prevent a resurgence of al Queda types if it gets its act together to at least some degree. The US and international forces have just about accomplished that — they and Obama can’t be held totally responsible if it ultimately fails because of Afghan dysfunction, but that mission is more realistic (and more moral) than any fantasy Bush was originally operating under in Iraq before he abdicated to David Petraeus. Moreover, Bush let Afghanistan fester for 6 years because of his infatuation with Iraq, so I don’t see how you would want to be giving him any slack. In the end Obama’s tactics may fail, but that doesn’t make him anywhere near the monster that Bush is. The thing that Bacevich fails to grasp is that the moral standing of the shitbird that starts a fight is not the same as the guy left to finish it. Fuck Bush’s intentions.
russell
Fist pump and “I feel good!” immediately before declaring the start of military operations in Iraq.
So yeah, a sociopath.
I’ve never gotten the appeal of Bush. To me the guy is, transparently, a prick.
cleek
@demimondian:
he is a wimp. but i didn’t say he could do nothing.
beware of strawmen. they’ll leave hay in your soup.
Corner Stone
Afghanistan is The Good War(tm) and we are not leaving any time soon.
We currently have some 88K troops and 110K contractors in Afghanistan. Funding has been approved to increase that by 30K troops and an undisclosed amount of contractors.
ISTM that action speaks louder than words about a timeline.
Amanda in the South Bay
@matoko_chan:
Well, obviously Kilculluen is all in favour of COIN, he makes money (i.e his book which all the fancy pants set has read) off of supporting it!
david mizner
@Nellcote:
What part of drone-attacks-secret-prisons-rendition-summary-executions-secret-war-in-middle-east don’t you understand?
Strawmanmunny
Saw this on Daniel Larison’s blog. Have to say, as a liberal, I find Larison to actually be one of the best bloggers on the net. He probably doesn’t share most of my policy ideas but he seems to be really fair and he’s not crazy like most conservatives nowadays.
http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2010/07/08/obama-and-afghanistan/
Mike Toreno
I don’t think it’s impossible to achieve a decent result in Afghanistan. I know what needs to be done to win. I don’t know how to get it done, or if it can be done, but I really think it may be less demanding of resources than what we’re doing now.
The way to defeat an insurgency is to deny the insurgents local support. The way to deny the insurgents local support is to respect the local population, to act in ways that show that respect, and to undertake actions that improve the lives of the local population.
So, quit killing people with drones, quit blowing people up from the air, get ON THE GROUND and MAKE THINGS BETTER. You can do public works that improve people’s lives if that’s your goal, rather than funneling money to Halliburton and Blackwater.
Nobody’s ever won in Afghanistan because they were out for themselves; they didn’t try to improve the lives of the people there. You do that, you get more cooperation and the project gets cheaper and easier.
I’m not happy with what’s going on, but I’m not certain the only possible approach is to just give up.
Zifnab
@cleek: He sucked troops out of Iraq to fuel Afghanistan. This could have been because he embraced the fool’s errand of dicking around in the graveyard of empires. But even if it was the pure political calculus of a President who didn’t want to take the heat for “losing” two wars, I think he’s really stepped into a nasty trap.
Getting troops withdrawn from Iraq would be a lot easier than getting troops moved out of Iraq and then withdrawn from Afghanistan.
I believe if Obama is sincere about any of his domestic agenda, he’s going to need to pull out of the Oil Wars to free up money in the face of all the deficit hawks. I think it’s less a question of whether Obama wants to leave and more a question of whether he can.
jwb
@James Hare: “I’ve never believed the Bush-as-dunce caricature—it lets him off the hook way too much.” This. Except, I would add that W’s anger made it exceedingly easy for those around him (especially Cheney) to manipulate him.
joe from Lowell
any damned fool can “announce” any damned thing he wants.
speeches and announcements are not reality-in-waiting, they’re just words. don’t believe Obama is pulling out of Afghanistan until he’s actually doing it. – writes cleek.
And, based on the bone-headed comments we’re still seeing about Obama not leaving Iraq, you shouldn’t believe in an pullout even when he’s actually doing it.
It’s funny – people told me exactly the same thing about Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq. The one that’s happening. The one that’s one schedule.
J.W. Hamner
@Amanda in the South Bay:
And Bacevitch works for free?
homerhk
@david mizner, I do find it funny that you refer to talking points while spouting shit like:
“he seems to believe in Empire, the War of Terror, “projecting strength,” and the dirty war in Pakistan—all of which are related to the war in Afghanistan, and a withdrawal would call into question, in the minds of people he fears and wants to please, his commitment to those other things. ”
What a bunch of horse manure. I love the quotes too as if those a real Obama adminstration quotes. Between you idiots on the hand with your empire talking points and the idiots on the other hand with the ‘apology tour’ bullshit talking points, it’s a wonder that the man can keep himself sane.
James in WA
@General Stuck:
Exactly. Remember Sully a few months ago, saying “health care reform is now lost, probably for a generation” or some such crap? And then they got it done.
I’ll believe all these predictions of failure and doom when, you know, Obama fails.
demimondian
@cleek: Is getting credit more important than getting things done? In politics, as in organizational dynamics in general, you often must make a choice between the two.
Admittedly, in the organizations I’ve been a part of, I’ve typically chosen the “getting things done” strategy, and so I may be biased. Ultimately, though, when measured on achievements, Obama’s first two years have been a stunning success, particularly given the environment in which he’s been working.
matoko_chan
@srv: i think Petraeus is quietly folding our tents. hes settin up talks with talis.
the Bush Doctrine was a Recipe for Fail, and COIN was an attempt to patch the Bush Doctrine.
The BD creates islamic states (not quasi-secular judeo-xian democracies) and COIN makes more terrorists than it kills.
And this is becoming obvious.
Right now 30k talis are pwning 340k coalition NATO troops and Afghan security forces….is that a “light footprint”?
It doesn’t sound like the locals are buying what we are selling to me.
Brien Jackson
And I’ll second the point about ignoring the differences between Iraq and Afghanistan, which Bacevich is clearly doing.
Hunter Gathers
@General Stuck: I was being sarcastic, mocking the so-called ‘progressive’ line about gloom and doom this November because my Princess Sparkle Pony hasn’t shown up yet. I do truly and deeply hate Brad Ellsworth, but I’d rather have him in the seat than Dan Coates, as Coates would be a vote for impeachment, which is what we’ll get if the GOPers take back control of Congress. They could give a shit about the economy. They want Obama’s head on a platter, to appease their bigoted base.
david mizner
@demimondian:
No, you misunderstood. I’m not saying anything you said wasn’t true. It is true.
But it’s clearly coordinated and sad, this effort to play up piddling accomplishments while wars wage and the economy falls apart.
Elie
The whole reason that we are in Afghanistan is not discussed in this as at least in part as assuring that certain strategic interests (Pakistan) and the role of this region in global terrorism alone makes it at least some effort to walk away from. Why isn’t that discussed in the decision making that has to enter into the go/stay decision and when? Bacevich should know this and know that its not just a “belief” issue but something much more fundamental to a number of serious and concrete concerns..
Too much bullcrap and not enough straight talk in the whole discussion about Afghanistan — which has a way more complicated rationale for engagement than has generally been laid out…
srv
@stuckinred:
John Cole’s old commander. Lost his kid in Iraq.
Pangloss
I’m darn mad at Obama for starting these wars and ruining the economy. Oh, why can’t we have the golden days of George W. Bush back again– he kept us safe, and he had a massive codpiece!
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to vomit.
Brien Jackson
@matoko_chan:
The Bush Doctrine and COIN have nothing to do with each other. They’re not even two things in the same realm. One if a foreign policy strategy and worldview, the other is a military tactic.
But hey, we all know just what to do in Afghanistan, exactly how it will affect the situation on the subcontinent, the exact geopolitical fallout that will result, etc. Right?
General Stuck
@Hunter Gathers: Ok, I wasn’t sure, but thought maybe that was what you were doing. :)
Rick Taylor
Strawmanmunny:
That’s a very nice article. I haven’t been keeping up with Daniel Larison recently, a mistake I need rectify.
Zifnab
@Mike Toreno:
If this worked domestically, the Democrats would be sitting on a 90 vote majority in the Senate and practically own the House. Simply “showing respect” and “improving the lives of the locals” isn’t enough to win hearts and minds.
Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck don’t show many people respect, nor do they improve anyone’s life, and yet the command huge audiences of faithful listeners. Meanwhile, Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton will forever be smeared as drunken, elitist, womanizers and fuck all to a legacy of legislative accomplishments that have benefited the US a thousand times over.
If we installed the Garden of Eden off the wester border of Kabul, the Taliban resistance fighters would blow it up. The chance to make Afghanis love us passed a long time ago, assuming you believe that chance ever existed. Stop pretending there’s a silver bullet that will turn the country around in less than a generation.
Uh huh
Oh dear God. And so the exaltation of Bush Jr. begins. Soon he will be the next best thing since Reagan…who we all know was the greatest President EVER…even though he laid the framework for all this shit.
Since we’re engaging in philosophical predictions let me take a shot at it: History & God will be harder on the fool that forgives a fool for his repeated and willful foolishness especially when said foolishness was clearly rooted in ego and greed and entirely antithetical to everything that God is and wants us to be and the lessons of history.
The brave stance to take would be to actually realize that:
-there isn’t a black & white quick fix answer to everything. No matter how much we want or feel we deserve one. No.
-President Obama is dealing with a boat load of mega issues that no other President has ever had to deal with before. (e.g. global warming alone would consume an entire Presidency. Then there’s the economic, social, etc, issues the country/world is facing…and Obama has to deal with these issues while fending off a group of morally bankrupt political idiots the likes of which the modern world has never seen). And he’s actually doing a GOOD JOB.
-to fix these problems means that we will ALL…at one point or another, be made to feel extremely uncomfortable & uncertain because things that we want to be done might not get done in the manner & time frame that we want it/them done (if at all). That’s life. That’s the consequence of voting an idiot into office twice. It would be easy for Obama to appease the base with fluff and surface fixes (e.g. Clinton enacted Don’t Ask Don’t Tell…ironically, the gay community seems to have forgiven Clinton for this grievance, but is pissed at Obama for taking the time to work to get it definitively repealed.) but all that would do would pass the buck on to the next generation/President to fix and we can’t afford to do that anymore. We’ve lost that luxury.
-President Obama is like the liberal version of Reagan in terms of laying the FRAMEWORK for the future. It’s not perfect, but it’s definitely a strong start, especially given that his Presidency is really just beginning. It’s part of why the Republicans and the media are trying to take him down, because if he succeeds, they aren’t just fucked for the next 10 years, they are fucked for generations, especially since they cannot come up with a legit, strong counter. President Obama has been working on fixing little things that I didn’t even know were broken, that should have never been broken, that aren’t glamorous/headline grabbing and I would never know about if I didn’t pay serious attention.
So spare me, because this excerpt from the article is basically saying that we are better of with a fool with conviction that a smart man with doubts. That we would be better off with Bush because at least he’s a Decider. Even (and maybe especially) if he’s deciding that we should all go careening into a brick wall at 100 miles an hour because at least he’s would kill us all with conviction.
Any man that does not have doubts about sending thousands of young people into war is not a man of conviction, he’s a man with no moral compass, self-respect or decency. .
This article also makes the magical assumption that President Obama does not believe this war is necessary. Well, I believe that President Obama does believe the war in Afghanistan is necessary. And my opinion is just as valuable as Joe Blow Payola Media Guy/Gal. From day 1, even as a candidate, he’s said we need get the troops out of Iraq and focus on Afghanistan and (whether you agree with him or not) that is what the eff he’s done/ been doing!
And Bush Jr. for all his conviction, sent the troops into the war without even a kind of sort-of plan, proper supplies, etc. Bush Jr. viewed soldiers as toys, not people. They were a means to an end, and that end wasn’t rooted in any moral conviction or the belief in doing God’s work, it was rooted in GREED. Pure and simple. Bush Jr. used God as a cover and fuck Bush Jr. for that.
El Cid
Bush Jr. wasn’t “misguided,” nor was Fourthbranch Cheney. They were cynical, cruel bastards who didn’t give a shit how many Iraqis or American military were killed in an impetuous, imperious war.
srv
@Elie:
You know, the guy has written about 5 books and 30 opeds about these wars. Not sure why you think he has to fit that into the 500 words they gave him here.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
Totally disagree with the premise of the thread.
Bush and Obama do not exist in vacuums, such as the vacuum of coherent thought among contemporary pundits and commentators. In reality, they exist in a continuum of American history.
Obama will be judged by the outcomes of his presidency, not by the waxes and wanes of current events and the brain farts of critics, opponents, pundits …. and bloggers. The noise of current events fades away, rather quickly as it turns out, and just about nothing being said about Afghanistan right now is going to matter in a few years. What will matter is how this current state of affairs turns out.
I happen to be a fan of Bacevich, but on this point, I think he is dead wrong. He is just another guy saying, if I were president, I’d do it differently. He’s at his best when he writes about policy and war and foreign affairs …. not when he is playing dimestore psychologist and commenting on presidential personality and characterization. I am not sure that he himself would stand up all that well to the kind of cheap shot scrutiny that pundits dish out to make their money.
Silver Owl
The article is about what soap opera crap will future American silly drama addicts like.
The religious nut job that destroyed and murdered 100s of thousands to get his dead ass into heaven because some religious leaders fed him their pig slop, with a homicidal megalomaniac as his sidekick or the other man that did not don a super cool cape and kick mega ass on every damn issue the American people got lazy about while congress set themselves up as the best brothel in the country servicing every rich titled john in the world.
It’s mind blowing to me that the biggest concern is who was or wasn’t dramatic enough. The American people should be ashamed of having such a infantile reputation.
matoko_chan
@Mike Toreno: yeah, the consent of the governed.
but the problem is COIN doesn’t account for either consanguinous nets or islamic nets. Petraeus could force al-Q out of Anbar, because Al-Q wasn’t local….the Talis are.
But we can’t get the consent of the governed as long as we are prosecuting the War on al-Islam……they are all muslims.
@Amanda in the South Bay: but Kilcullen and Petraeus are both on record that Anbar-style COIN can’t work in Afghanistan…….the Taliban are locals, and so COIN SNT applications generate more terrorists than get…..umm…..de-noded.
joe from Lowell
david mizner
As demonstrated by his withdrawal from Iraq, and the fact that he hasn’t started any wars…
…as demonstrated by his renunciation of the term, and his closer-focusing of our efforts on a war against al Qaeda that has nothing whatsoever to do with a global struggle to promote American power and influence…
…as demonstrated by his renunciation of bases in Iraq to replace those we left in Saudi Arabia…
Hey, you’re right about something! He supports fighting the Taliban and al Qaeda!
So…how’s that bombing of Iran going? A bit behind your schedule, isn’t it, David?
sparky
@Hunter Gathers:
people who claim criticism equals these kinds of notions could, if they wish, possibly avoid much squabbling here by admitting that criticizing the administration is not equal to wishing failure. as you may remember, the GOP used that argument endlessly during the Bush administration: criticizing the administration was wishing for failure or not supporting the troops. did you decide that since it worked so well for the Rs 2002-2005 that the Ds should use it too? is it a belief in authority? is it because a couple of people say something stupid therefore every criticism can be ignored (also a time-tested tactic of the Rs)?
i append here a civil ps to Gen et al Stuck–how about this: you keep up your reflexive claims that Obama has done what he promised and i’ll just keep up my reflexive denials of those reflexive claims, k?
Raenelle
As if the point of all history is to please some Flying Spaghetti Monster, or whatever. Politics is the art of the possible, and there are no successful politicians who disregard politics.
You have bought the Rove-manufactured image of Bush as a resolute decent man who did it all for principle. You know, I saw an egomaniac with an inferiority complex–a vindictive, sneering man, a man who tried to bully and belittle all he could.
You apparently see self-righteousness as a redeeming quality. I have always believed it to be a vice; in fact, a particularly virulent and vicious vice.
This is just more Christian clap-trap–lack of doubt as something positive, something worthwhile. Bullshit. Bullshit in the strongest terms.
Amanda in the South Bay
@James in WA:
Maybe at my ripe old age of 30 I’m forgetting something, but I’m pretty sure there were moments when it really did seem (even among serious, VSP liberal blogs) that HCR *was* dead.
cleek
@joe from Lowell:
i’ll believe it when it’s done.
@demimondian:
i’m not sure why you’re asking me.
he’s done a lot of good things. i’ve never said otherwise, and i often defend him for those things. but, he’s also done some things which range from lame to pretty fucking horrible (IMO). i see no need to pretend the good things excuse the bad things. when he fucks up, he deserves criticism for it, not a recitation of the good things he’s done.
YMMV, etc..
trollhattan
A question for the crew: If al Qaeda effectively decamps Pak-Afghan territory for Yemen or Somalia, doesn’t that significantly change the calculus of what we need to do there? Would we then be more likely to come to terms with the Taliban?
I can’t envision a way out unless something like this occurs; that or finally getting OBL (yeah, right).
Mike Toreno
@Zifnab:
1. I don’t accept your premise that the Democrats have respected the local population. Their actions in the banking crisis, for example, have been directed at shoveling money into the banks. The banking structure became unstable because the banks traded debt back and forth, building masses of indebtedness backed by the same collateral. The structure could have been preserved more cheaply than it was simply by paying people’s mortgages, but there was no notion of doing that.
2. Afghanistan doesn’t have the same kind of media complex that we do.
3. I didn’t say there was a silver bullet that would turn the situation around. I know what needs to be done, I said I didn’t know how to do it or if it could be done. All I said was, I’m not certain that it can’t be done. It can definitely be started; it’s less harmful than what’s going on now.
Brien Jackson
@cleek:
This is why the “hippy” criticism of Obama doesn’t get taken seriously.
demimondian
@Raenelle: You don’t know anything about Christian doctrine, do you?
Brien Jackson
@Mike Toreno:
You can’t seriously believe that.
matoko_chan
@Brien Jackson: COIN is a patch for the Bush Doctrine….aka “democracy promotion” aka the Epic Fail of the Manifest Destiny of Judeoxian Democracy in MENA.
surprise surprise, when the locals didn’t fall down and worship the “liberators” the dumbasses had to come up with a strat to persuade the locals to embrace western culture and reject the terrorists in their midst.
Behold, COIN was born.
Those guys aren’t neocons, they are neocolonialists.
cleek
@Brien Jackson:
me no understand. cryptic. whoosh over head.
El Tiburon
@Mnemosyne:
No, not at all. I think sticking up for things like the public option or habeus corpus are not the same as W.’s fool errand on social security.
I was only illustrating that even though W is a complete idiot, it was somewhat admirable that he stuck to his guns. My wish is that Obama would at times do the same.
El Tiburon
@joe from Lowell:
Say what? No, that is the complete opposite. We went in and totally fucked up Iraq. That country had infrastructure and water and a somewhat peaceful existence compared to what they have now.
Afghanistan, on the other hand, had nothing to fuck up. Their war lords are still in power. The Taliban is still sticking around.
stuckinred
@srv: Ah, now I get i. I take the “bum” back.
El Tiburon
@General Stuck:
Exactly. See my post above. We are spinning our wheels, and for what? All I can see it is for political reasons so Obama is not seen as the President who lost Vietnam, er, Afghanistan.
feebog
Bush didn’t invade Iraq because of some “true belief”. The invasion was calculated and timed to insure re-election in November 2004. Rummy and Evil Dick assured the Shrub that they could invade, occupy, set up a puppet government and be out, or at least on their way out in a year and a half. Both Rummy and Evil Dick were full of shit of course, but Shrub never had a clue either way. As it was, the Shrub won by the narrowest of margins, and it was soon apparent that Iraq was FUBAR.
And if you will notice, Obama is engaging in the same strategy. Pull down the troops in Iraq, with them all out by late 2011, followed by a draw down in Afghanistan in mid-2011 thru 2012. By November 2012, the plan is to be out, or close to out of Afghanistan. Obama is taking a calculated risk that the Generals can turn things around in the next 12 to 14 months. I doubt it, but thats the game plan.
catclub
No. The question we can ask is only:
Who would you rather have as president?
Contempt, mind reading, and final judgement have very little to do with actual results and consequences.
John Bird
What about the possibility that the region will implode when we leave, whenever we leave, under whatever circumstances? That, as tough as it may be to accept, there is very, very little we can do in Afghanistan using the military?
joe from Lowell
cleek,
I doubt you will. After all, just a little while ago, you wrote that you’d believe Obama would withdraw from Afghanistan when he was actually withdrawing.
Then, when I pointed out that he was actually withdrawing from the Iraq, you moved the goal posts to say you’ll believe it when it’s done.
Are you sure you aren’t just going to make up a new standard as soon as your last one is met? Again?
I can respect skepticism. Skepticism is a demand for more evidence before drawing a conclusion.
Dismissing evidence because it doesn’t fit a pre-formed conclusion isn’t skepticism. It’s just denialism.
Mike Toreno
@Brien Jackson:
Of course I believe that. Look at it this way:
Bank A writes mortgage, sells $1000 CDO to bank B. Bank B borrows $900 from bank C using CDO as collateral. Bank C borrows $810 from bank D using its obligation from bank D as collateral. Bank D buys a credit default swap from bank E, obligating bank E to pay bank D $1000 if bank B’s CDO goes bad. That’s what happened, except that for simplicity I left out the fact that banks F-Z, with no exposure to the transaction, were out there buying credit default swaps on the CDO.
Mortgage goes bad, CDO goes bad, all these banks’ obligations to one another go bad. Treasury comes in, dumps money into banks. They could have just injected money into the mortgage, would would have preserved the value of the obligation underlying all this bank-to-bank indebtedness, but they didn’t.
J.W. Hamner
@Strawmanmunny:
That’s a good post by Larison. I particularly liked this part:
I wonder how many of today’s prominent “War in Afghanistan” opponents were vocally against it in 2008? How many people who argued that Iraq war diverted valuable resources from the “real” war, are now calling for complete withdrawal ASAP?
I especially concur with his assessment of what a truly “amoral” Afghanistan policy would be, and his worry that Obama may eventually cave to it for political expediency and unwillingness to rock the boat. That seems more something progressives should be working to prevent… not railing against the fact that they never listened to a word he said about what his plans for Afghanistan were, and are surprised he didn’t whisk all the troops home with his magic wand already.
catclub
@feebog:
Isn’t it actually ‘all combat troops out of Iraq’, but
some unspecified number of
trainers remain?
I also would bet the number of troops protecting the green zone and US compound will be well above zero.
El Tiburon
@John Cole:
Again, I think this is what Bacevich and others have been criticizing Obama over. Obama was as clear as he could be about supporting the Public Option, habeas corpus, etc.
And what exactly is the mission? Is the so-called timetable have any relation to the 2012 elections?
demimondian
@cleek: What does that have to do with him “being a wimp”, as you put it above?
I suggest that he has succeeded, in part at least, because he has been willing to appear to be a wimp — that is, he traded off appearing decisive for getting shit done. I’m saying that appearing decisive would have been likely to get *nothing* done, and that his cold, calculating, cerebral, and ultimately rather uninspiring style is actually why he’s been successful in getting anything at all.
Zifnab
@Brien Jackson: Well, they’re not entirely disjoined. The Bush Doctrine is about when to invade foreign nations (answer: freak’n always!) and the COIN strategy deals with how to handle the ants once you’ve kicked over the anthill.
COIN was implemented in Iraq as an attempt to mop up the mess that the initial invasion created. Ultimately, they both try to answer the question “How do I address my problems using overwhelming military strength?” They are both aspects of the All-I-Need-Is-A-Big-Enough-Hammer world view. And they are both excuses to piss away tens of billions a month in a foreign country on justifiable genocide.
John Bird
And I guess “implode” is probably the wrong term anyway. In both Germany and Japan, we had existing or recent civic institutions, including at least pro forma democratic institutions, to work with. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the ruling structures of power are largely older, and they generally aren’t civic in nature or democratic in the least. That’s still where much of the power lies, and it seems likely that’s where it will remain barring internal revolution.
demimondian
@Mike Toreno: You don’t know what you’re talking about, sonny. I recommend that you go read up on what CDO’s actually are and are not before you start chattering.
srv
@stuckinred: He was against the Iraq war and empire before his kid went.
Brien Jackson
@Mike Toreno:
So where does the overall decline of asset value related to the bursting of a bubble fit into this scenario of yours?
stuckinred
@srv: I’m a jackass, I knew about him I just didn’t connect the name. If I had simply clicked on the article I would have realized it. He’s also from Normal, IL, just up the road from home.
grandpajohn
Well when you start with an unproven premise, you can wind up going where you wish.
For him To start with the premise that Bush is actually a born again true believer with out proof clouds and puts into question any of his conclusions
the outcome of any judgment on the day when he faces his maker will not be determined by what he thought was right but by the results of his actions as
Low tech cyclist post above so ably demonstrates
demimondian
@Brien Jackson: Oh, that’s easy — just inflate the currency to bring those asset values back up.
ktward
But I’m afraid that Bacevich is essentially right: history will be harder on the wise man who knowingly took on the fool’s errand.
Just asking: precisely which Magic 8 Ball did you–or Andy–consult?
Just thinking: isn’t 18 months into O’s presidency a little early to be speculating on the magnitude of his legacy?
Couple of thoughts:
1. While I certainly disagreed with GWB/Cheney on many policy issues, what concerned me most from Day 1 was their ideological immersion and mission: Bush with his born-again/zionist shit, Cheney with his neocon/zionist shit and the strings he was so easily able to pull with born-again Bush.
I fear ideologues.
Everyone else, it’s just a matter of policy opinion.
2. Goodness knows I don’t agree with Obama on every policy– on my most generous days, maybe I’m with him 70-80%. But he’s no fucking ideologue, so I fear neither him nor his admin. For that alone, he has my support.
Quick reality check:
1. When candidate O talked about Iraq & Afghanistan, Dems and Indies and many ‘Pubs rallied behind him. Simplistically: Iraq war bad from the get-go, Afghanistan war good when the original intent was to hunt down Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.
*No one* should be surprised that Afghanistan has grown exponentially more complicated, based on its history and our muddled-from-the-start presence there. I myself have many mixed feelings about it, but make no mistake, Obama *inherited* it.
Since he is no ideologue, and he is unquestionably a strategic thinker of the highest order–GWB possessed neither quality–I’m willing to give him his space to figure this shit out.
To the critics: got anyone else better in mind to handle it?
Brien Jackson
@Mike Toreno:
More simply, if simply paying off mortages in full would have done the trick, why the fuck wouldn’t we do that? Banks would get their money in full, borrowers wouldn’t be underwater, and assets would have even retained some value. Everyone would be happy! You have to have a ridiculously comical view of the world to believe what you’re saying.
cleek
@joe from Lowell:
yes, how strange that i wouldn’t believe that the future is guaranteed just because someone made a speech. i’m a maverick that way.
obviously the Iraq withdrawal can be halted or revered at any time. and even when “combat troops” are out (assuming the schedule isn’t broken), there will still be 50,000 soldiers and who knows how many contractors in Iraq. 50,000. i don’t count that as “out”. neither, i suspect, will the 50,000 troops who are still going to get shot at in Iraq.
the date for their removal is (last i checked) 2012. and i’ll believe that when i see it, too, and not when credulous Obama defenders quote qualified dates for me.
demimondian
@ktward: This is really the wrong question — and I’m a backer of this policy, not a critic.
“Who better?” doesn’t answer the core objection, which is “what better policy?” Is this policy the best one, given the situation? I think so, but that’s certainly debatable — and, for all I’ve beaten on Bacevich here, it is the *right* question.
El Tiburon
@Maude:
I don’t think so. As much as I despise today’s Republican party, I have some admiration for their ability to stay on target, even though that target is destroying this country. Especially when compared to the near total incompetence of the Democratic party.
I may not like it when that Great White Shark is swallowing me hole, but I certainly respect and admire them as a killing machine.
Brien Jackson
@joe from Lowell:
What he said.
Brien Jackson
@El Tiburon:
That’s fucking stupid.
Brien Jackson
@cleek:
And this is what I mean, there’s just nothing good enough for you, and everytime your premise is shot through, you move the goalposts. hence, why people don’t take your criticisms seriously.
joe from Lowell
@ El Tiburon,
Our decision to leave Afghanistan, and our decision about how to leave Afghanistan, are decision that will have consequences. The manner of our departure could absolutely lead to a worse situation.
As you said, this isn’t a case where it is our presence that is turning the country into a violent disaster area. Afghanistan actually became a better place to live after the Taliban were overthrown. If we leave in a manner that creates a power vacuum, or that allows the pre-2002 status quo to resume, we will have screwed that country, just as we screwed Iraq by invading.
Which is not to say we should stay. We have to leave – in fact, the promise and reality of our exit are essential tools for achieving the political progress among local factions that is necessary for a decent outcome, just as they were/are in Iraq – but the manner of our exit needs to be cautious and deliberate, to avoid making things even worse than they are now. We don’t want a return to the status quo ante in Afghanistan, because that was both a severe security risk and a humanitarian disaster.
Mike G
Rightard ideology adores stupid resolve, simplistic blind faith charging ahead without doubt like an unguided missile – Reagan, John Wayne, Rambo, Oliver North, etc.
They don’t give a shit whether the cause has any merit or if they’re headed in the right direction, only that the world can be made to seem simple and free of doubt for their stupid, fearful narrow minds.
Lacking in intellect and scared of complexity, they worship at the feet of a worldview that exalts blunt force and derides thinking.
sparky
i see a fair amount of assertions here about Obama “withdrawing” from Iraq as somehow proving some point, though exactly what that point is eludes me. by the summer of 2008 no one except mister “get off my lawn” McCain was arguing against a timed withdrawal in Iraq. as Frank Rich observed in 2008: even Bush was on board:
so claiming that somehow this drawdown is a big deal is a bit disingenuous in that it suggests that somehow Obama is doing something much more changey than what was essentially the consensus opinion in 2008.
incidentally, it turns out (surprise surprise) that this isn’t really much of a change–even the Establishment organ, the NYT, calls it an exercise in semantics:
so yeah, you all can keep on talking about Obama’s big change.* just as you were defending Obama’s decision to expand offshore oil drilling earlier this year.
*a note for the willfully obtuse who feel an urge to claim i said something i didn’t say: of course it is a good thing that there will be fewer troops in Iraq. and yes, i agree that the acceptance of this withdrawal timetable was accelerated by Obama’s campaigning on that issue, though by 2008 it was not exactly a radical position, as many Americans wanted out. still, getting out at all is a good thing.
cleek
@Brien Jackson:
oh fer fuck’s sake. we’re talking about a subject where i disagree with Obama’s approach, so of course i have few good things to say about it.
but go back to the HCR threads, or the threads about his justices, or threads about (probably) dozens of other topics and you’ll find me defending and praising him.
how amazing… it’s like i agree with him on some things and disagree on others. another one of my mavericky traits, i guess.
joe from Lowell
Like I said cleek, there is no evidence you’ll believe. No matter how much piles up, you are going to sit there and deny it, because it’s not what you want to believe.
Obama lays out a timeline with points A-G. He meets A? He’ll never meet B. He meets B? He’ll never meet C. He meets C? He’s never meet D.
And on and on and one.
Like I said, YOU laid out “when the withdrawal is happening” as your marker, and then when that marker it met, it’s suddenly not your marker anymore.
You aren’t looking for proof. You aren’t looking for evidence. You’re ignoring evidence as hard as you can, because you can’t ever admit that maybe you’re wrong, and maybe there are people who want to end the war that aren’t marching around like self-righteous prigs and demanding it NOW NOW NOW.
joe from Lowell
Like I said cleek, there is no evidence you’ll believe. No matter how much piles up, you are going to sit there and deny it, because it’s not what you want to believe.
Obama lays out a timeline with points A-G. He meets A? He’ll never meet B. He meets B? He’ll never meet C. He meets C? He’s never meet D.
And on and on and one.
Like I said, YOU laid out “when the withdrawal is happening” as your marker, and then when that marker it met, it’s suddenly not your marker anymore.
You aren’t looking for proof. You aren’t looking for evidence. You’re ignoring evidence as hard as you can, because you can’t ever admit that maybe you’re wrong, and maybe there are people who want to end the war that aren’t marching around like self-righteous prigs and demanding it NOW NOW NOW.
joe from Lowell
Let me put it this way: you have absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support your assertion that Obama is not going to keep to his timelines for withdrawal.
The reality-based community, on the other hand, looks at the relevant evidence – his actions in Iraq – and notices that he has stuck to his timelines and adhered to his announced policy, and concludes that this forced, pretend agnosticism about him is complete bullshit.
You’re believing what you want to believe, based on no evidence whatsoever, and actively ignoring evidence that refutes your preconception…and then pretending this makes you some kind of realist.
Spare me.
artem1s
@demimondian:
yes, this. once again the argument seems to be about whether having a hair trigger and the attention span of a three year old is a better PR gig than actually attempting to be a thoughtful adult who recognizes that accomplishing something is hard and takes time. this country adores the one hit wonder with a meteoric climb to fame and fortune and often ignore the individual who runs the steady race. yes, W will always have an adoring fan base who worship his ignorant habit of staying the course. BFD. this does not mean that President Obama has failed or will be seen historically as making a mistake, except in the cliff notes version of history. I’m thinking that perception isn’t all that important to the people of Afghanistan and that abandoning them once again is hardly the solution they would prefer.
joe from Lowell
sparky,
Thank you for acknowledging in your footnote that you have no point, and your comment says nothing of any significance.
Obama announced his timeline. He’s stuck to it. The evidence that he will reneg on his timeline in Afghanistan is…what? Some vague handwaving that timelines and sticking to them aren’t so important after all?
Spare me.
ktward
@demimondian:
You’re splitting hairs.
Policy comes from the White House. Bush was too long reluctant to re-shape or even re-think policy because of his ideological bent. To disastrous consequence.
O is no ideologue. He is pragmatic to a fault, if such a state can be a characterized as a fault. I’m no military wonk (my wonkish sensibilities lie elsewhere), but I at least have a comfortable level of confidence that O’s policy decisions are made with his feet on the ground, his eyes on the facts and his head in realistically viable, strategic options.
O critics can continue to moan about his policies, but I’ll ask again, Who else on the scene is better equipped to handle this particular clusterfuck?
Imagine if McCain/Palin were in office now. (Just got the chills.)
cleek
@joe from Lowell:
you seem to be claiming the ability to predict the future. interesting.
me, i prefer to see what actually happens. but that’s just me.
i’m going to need a reference for that quote. because i don’t see it here.
yes, wanting to see us actually out of Iraq before i believe we’re out of Iraq is just like believing what i want to believe with no evidence whatsoever.
WTF ?
geg6
@John Cole:
This. Totally, this.
joe from Lowell
Somebody name me one thing – one single thing – Obama has said he would do in Afghanistan that he hasn’t done.
Come one, big tough doubters. Surely, you must have something other than your gut to back up your denialism. Let’s see it.
Zifnab
@Mike Toreno: @Brien Jackson:
First Brien – Yes We Can!
Seriously, though. The Treasury bought what may be a trillion or more in toxic assets from the big banks. They had the choice to buy the mortgages themselves, but they choose to prop up the insurance markets that surrounded the mortgages instead. Had the Treasury backed up the mortgages, it would have saved the banks some pain – trillions in “bets” wouldn’t rapidly have come due – but it would have spared the mortgage holders far more financial grief than the mortgage lenders. The Treasury’s decision to fund the Vegas-style betting pools rather than the underlying assets cost it more than the assets themselves would have. When you’ve got a $250k house that’s backing up a $1mil insurance payment – on the assumption that if the house defaults the insurance pays out – why on earth would you back the insurance bet and let the house default? It’s insane.
That said: 1. Mike – we’ve had health care reform, we’ve settled an issue with women’s pay, we’ve passed multiple stimulus measures to help rebound the economy which have funded tax cuts, state aid, extended unemployment, and a multitude of public works projects. By rights, the Dems should be looking at another landslide in 2010. This is everything the Afghans could ask for, but many Americans are ready to toss it in favor of 2 more years of GOP rule.
2. The Afghans don’t have FOX News. That doesn’t mean they don’t have media or social networks. The American Revolution was launched on paper pamphlets. The South Koreans still bombard their northern neighbors with propaganda leaflets. And gossip and word of mouth are no less powerful than they were 100 years ago. Afghans get news, and that news informs their opinions.
3. Simply remaining in the country is harmful, regardless of the strategy. We are no longer welcome there, whether we are carrying bombs or bottled water.
demimondian
@ktward: I am *not* splitting hairs.
I am saying that I don’t care what McPalin would have done — they lost the election, remember? I’m saying that Obama’s got enough history now that his performance *can* be judged fairly, and that the right debate is no longer about “Speaker Boehner” or “Majority Leader McConnell”, much less “Great Leader Palin”, but about Obama’s own performance, about which reasonable folk can disagree.
danimal
The obvious strategy (to me at least) is: Stay on plan and start drawing down troops in 2011. Maintain enough presence to prevent Taliban domination of the country. Continue to work back channels, black ops, diplomacy with Pakistan and whatever else it takes to strike at the remnants of Al Queda. Kill or capture OBL. Get the f#%$ out as soon as OBL is killed or captured, declaring “Mission Accomplished” for all the world to see.
No one will care about COIN, or withdrawal plans or Karzai’s corruption or anything else if this plan is implemented successfully. Liberal cynics think that this war is about some grand geopolitical strategy, or about Obama desiring to avoid being called a pu$$. It isn’t. The war in A-stan is about payback for 9/11, and bugging out before there is a tangible positive result will NOT play well with the general public.
Mnemosyne
@El Tiburon:
I guess that’s where we part ways, because I don’t think it was admirable at all that Bush stuck to idiotic policies that did enormous damage to the country. But, then, what I want from a president is someone who thinks about things and is willing to change his mind when new facts come along, even if it means he doesn’t stick with Plan A.
Wile E. Quixote
@stuckinred:
That’s because you’re fucking retarded and ignorant.
demimondian
@Zifnab: The Treasury has also SOLD a non-trivial number of those assets.
And, would it really have been appropriate to bail out Toll Brothers or your favorite Miami condo-flipper for their lunacy? Because that’s what paying off mortgages would really have done.
joe from Lowell
cleek,
It’s called “drawing conclusions based on evidence.” You should try it sometime, instead of just checking your gut.
OK
That’s you, here. Please not the tense, is pulling out.
Rick Taylor
One of the things I appreciate Obama is for the most part he’s done what he said he would do when he ran. That’s not a given with politicians; consider Bush who barely breathed a word in public about reforming social security when running for re-election and then promptly made it his top priority when the election was over.
__
By and large Obama has done what he said he’d do when I wanted him to (though I do wish his administration had pushed cram down as he’d promised), and he’s done what he said he’d do when I didn’t want him to. I’ve certainly been frustrated with him. If I’d had someone I could have voted for who I’d thought was as competent as Obama and who agreed with me on everything, I would have voted for him instead, but inexplicably, no such candidate was running.
JGabriel
J.W. Hamner:
Interesting question. Also interesting – how many anti-Iraq War but pro-Afghanistan War proponents are still pro-Afghanistan War?
bin Laden, al Zawahiri, and Mullah Omar (L, Z & O, going forward) are the face of al Qaeda and the Taliban, the face of the 9/11 attacks, and the face of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. Allowing them to escape, as Bush did, sends a message that the US will not pursue enemies that kill thousands of its people, and that terrorists can get away with attacking the US because the Americans will eventually give up fighting to capture them.
So, I was always in favor of the War in Afghanistan. The question is whether that war is still worth fighting now that Al Qaeda has largely moved to Pakistan.
My take is that when we leave Afghanistan, Al Qaeda and the Taliban will move right back in to fill the power vacuum – unless we capture L, Z & O before then. Yes, there will be others waiting to step up and fill their roles, but they may not be as ideologically prone to violence as the present leaders – or as competent, we’ve already seen that AQ #3’s tend to have short life spans.
In any event, the capture of L, Z & O will send the message that terrorists who attack and kill thousands of US citizens will not get away with it, that the US will pursue them relentlessly, no matter how long it takes or the resources required, until we succeed.
Am I still pro-War in Afghanistan? Yes, to the extent we need to hold it until the capture of L, Z & O. I’m more than willing to support our more idealistic goals there through financial aid, governmental and NGO organizations, etc., but none of those goals can be achieved militarily. The only military goal should be to hold Afghanistan against Al Qaeda and Taliban re-infiltration / take-over until the capture of L, Z, & O.
I suspect Obama has come to similar conclusions, with the caveat that we can leave to seek L, Z, & O elsewhere if the Afghanis can be trained to hold their country themselves against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. That is far different than fighting “a cause in which he manifestly does not believe and yet refuses to forsake”.
.
cleek
@joe from Lowell:
“drawing conclusions based on evidence” ?
is that like waiting to see if we’re actually out of Iraq before believing we’re out of Iraq, instead of taking qualified and hedged 18-month schedules as gospel ?
ok, that quote was about Afghanistan. AFAIK, we haven’t started withdrawing anything from Afghanistan.
Brien Jackson
@Zifnab:
the problem is that you’re still operating under the false premise that unpaid mortages caused the whole mess.
mnpundit
@taterstick: What? What has been done to get us out? Nothing. I actually support continuing in Afghanistan but wtf buddy?
That said, I’m still waiting for Obama to do something because he thinks its the right thing to do.
danimal
JGabriel, you said it better than I could.
srv
It must be remembered that Bacevich is still a religious conservative, perhaps paleo-con, but does tend to be harder on the Democrats than the Republicans. He understands the ideology and crazy of the latter, and believes some of them are ill-willed, but that many are true-believers. It does gall him that many Dems think/say one thing and then are all emotive about how they were sucked into another course when it comes to Nat’l Security and FP. He’s trying to rationalize Obama’s behavior, and just can’t get it.
If you read any of Andrew Olmsted’s original blog, the same kind of reasoning was common. It was one thing for Republicans to be bozo’s, but they truly believed. Misguided faith or intent can be forgiven (at least by them), but Dems moaning about the war and then voting for war funding… that was just moral/ethical weakness to him.
I think he’d give Obama the benefit of the doubt on Afghanistan if he were still around.
Wile E. Quixote
What happens if we declare victory and leave? What would the right wing do then? Say “no, our troops didn’t win, they failed, we have to stay in the fight!”. Declare victory, pull the troops out and when the right wing bitches call them on it and point out that they never served and that their children aren’t serving and that for a bunch of chickenhawks they sure are enthusiastic about getting other people killed.
Pangloss
@ktward:
This wouldn’t have happened if we had only elected President Kucinich.
demimondian
@Wile E. Quixote: What if there really is a threat to the stability of Pakistan? Go back and read about the Taliban offensive of last summer .. in *Pakistan*. There was — and still is — a genuine threat to the stability of the Kabul government from the Taliban in the FATA.
joe from Lowell
Uh-uh. You want to see us actually out of Iraq, completely, before you with acknowledge that we are pulling out of Iraq, intend to pull out of Iraq, or will pull out of Iraq. That’s completely irrational. That isn’t a request for evidence, it’s the denial of evidence that doesn’t confirm your prejudice.
And here you go, proving my point. Sitting there, in front of your face, is the ongoing withdrawal from Iraq, and you still insist on denying that it’s happening. You have evidence, a ton of evidence, tens of thousands of troops worth of evidence, that the withdrawal is happening, but like any true denialist (global warming denialists, for instance), you just ignore that evidence, and insist that there’s actually some other level of evidence you need.
I had you pegged – that is, I drew a conclusion about you based on the evidence – and you’re just proving me right, over and over. You claim you want evidence, but when faced with it, you just change your standards so you can keep believing whatever you want.
Mnemosyne
@Mike Toreno:
I’m afraid you’ve gotten the numbers backwards. What actually happened was that Bank A sold a $810 CDO to Bank B, Bank B borrowed $900 from Bank C using that as collateral, Bank C borrowed $1000 from Bank D, etc.
The problem was not that they were constantly borrowing smaller amounts of money based on that original mortgage. The problem was that they were borrowing ever-larger amounts on the same mortgage so that eventually you’d borrowed $1,000,000 against something that’s only worth $250,000. It’s like when Max and Leo sell 25,000% of their play in The Producers, playing hot potato with the mortgage until someone gets stuck with this thing that they paid five times its actual worth to get.
Rick Taylor
cleek:
Yeah, if only Obama would grab problems by the neck we’d be so much better off. That’s all you have to do, grab problems by the neck, and filibustering Republicans and obnoxious Blue Dogs just melt like the wicked witch of the west. Jeez, if only Obama wasn’t such a wimp, we might have passed health care reform by now!
__
Sarcasm aside, I’ll admit often Obama’s leadership style of playing the adult and expecting congress to do its job does bother me; I find myself wishing he’d take a stronger hand. If we actually had a congress full of adults, I’d feel differently. But over time I have to admit it’s had some good results, and hearing Obama called a “wimp” just makes me laugh.
Gunner Billy K
What I want to know is how did this guy get the keys to the front page?
matoko_chan
@JGabriel: Al Qaeda and the Taliban will move right back in to fill the power vacuum
Dude, the Taliban are IN POWER NAOW and they will be part of the government. Karzai and Petraeus are talking to them NAOW.
Mnemosyne
@mnpundit:
He increased the number of troops in Afghanistan because he thought it was the right thing to do. Or does that not count because it’s not what you think was the right thing for him to do?
stuckinred
@Wile E. Quixote: Slow day on the date farm?
stuckinred
@Wile E. Quixote: What outfit were you in?
demimondian
@Mnemosyne: No — it’s a problem because he doesn’t think it was the right thing for Obama to think was the right thing to do.
jwb
@Rick Taylor: Larison has picked up a couple of irritating trolls in the last couple of months, which suggests to me that some in the conservative establishment are beginning to fear him a little. On the other hand, Larison himself can be very nutty on other issues. Fortunately, he has the good sense these days to recognize which of his ideas are truly nutty and avoids writing about them.
J.W. Hamner
@JGabriel:
I count myself in that camp. Though I am probably closer to Biden than McChrystal in how quickly I would like to move to a lighter footprint. I understand it is a complicated balance of moral and strategic judgments, and one that I’m not particularly qualified to argue the merits of.
I don’t mean it as a “gotcha”… but to get some insight into out how people’s concept of military action in Afghanistan has evolved. For people who are currently slagging Obama for his Afghanistan policies: were you opposed to the Dem position in 2008? If yes, what has happened in the last 2 years to make you relinquish your support?
srv
@J.W. Hamner:
Many progressives were consternated about his Afghanistan position, just check antiwar.com and the like, but Iraq was more important. It shouldn’t be surprising that the focus has changed, but that is double-edged. As others have pointed out, we aren’t really getting out of Iraq – but if you’re reading the news or blogs like this you think “out” means out. They’ve bought the spin.
If you read wingnut sites, there’s probably more honesty about Afghanistan there than mainstream Dem sites.
cleek
@joe from Lowell:
WTF??
i’m not denying that troops are being pulled out of Iraq (in fact, we’re down to 75,000 this month). i’m saying i’ll believe we’re out of Iraq (which means we do not have any troops in Iraq) when we’re actually out of Iraq. how many times do i have to say it ?
to be charitable, it looks like you’re confusing my comments about Afghanistan with my comments about Iraq.
matoko_chan
im not gonna say 11-D chess anymore…..Obama is teh Master of Quantum Game Theory.
Im very pleased with the way things are working out.
There is simply a lot of cleanup, and the conservatives will try their best to munge up the cleanup.
I think Obama might be a Quellist, too.
JGabriel
@matoko_chan:
There are varying and vying factions of the Taliban. In the analysis above, I used “Taliban” as shorthand for the faction that still follows, answers, and remains loyal, to Mullah Omar – which I would have thought was clear from the context.
I’ve seen no reporting yet to suggest that Karzai and Omar are working together.
.
Josh
Man, so much passion here.
Do you think we’ll actually be able to “pull out” before…you know…we run the risk of pregnancy?
cleek
@Rick Taylor:
for some reason, people here seem to think otherwise, but attitude actually does matter in politics. it affects your allies and your opponents, drives press coverage, affects which narratives the press runs with, etc.. and, perhaps even more importantly this year, like it or not, elections are not based on an objective tally of accomplishments and failures; how people “feel’ about the candidate is crucial. and Obama just isn’t much of a party leader, not much of an inspiration (any more). and the party is suffering a bit for it.
peach flavored shampoo
Can we get a Open Thread sometime soon?
kthxzbie
fucen tarmal
rachel maddow accidentally let some truth out into the atmosphere to be picked up by the satellites. when she was talking to a guy while walking in kabul, the guide mentioned that the 5.5. billion that is being spent on the war there is by far the biggest industry in afghanistan.
keeping that kind of fat american cash cow there as long as possible, will make for some strange bedfellows. i mean, with the goal of even the bitterest of afghani foes being to keep the cash flowing, there will never be a good time to leave.
demimondian
@cleek: Feh.
Do you want Big Daddy? Or big progress? You can have one or the other, but not both.
rootless_e
I love all the living room cowboys who say a guy who turned down a life of big money and easy work to make himself the target of most of the large US population of armed psychotics, wanna be evangelical coup leaders, and disaffected spooks is a coward.
Fuck you.
Chyron HR
@cleek:
How is that any different from the Republican attitude that “I’m not denying that Obama hasn’t tried to take away our guns. I’m saying I’ll believe he’s not going to take away our guns when he’s actually left office”?
Al
Start a war on false pretenses, cause the death of maybe a million, displace five million plus, turn the lives of thirty million into a living hell — no big deal, because he thought he was right.
Scale that down in the face of serious domestic resistance (including from the electorate itself), but not as fast or in the way that this dick wants — man, that is unacceptable. Dude should know better because he is smart.
That’s the logic of a morally deficient thirteen year old.
geg6
@rootless_e:
This, too.
stuckinred
@rootless_e: Hell yes, tell it!
John S.
Which just happens to be a requirement for the pundit class.
schrodinger's cat
Who is this Andy person and why should I care?
Mike Toreno
@Zifnab:
When I said the Afghans didn’t have our media structure, I didn’t mean they didn’t have news, I meant they had better news than we do. If the news here reported conditions honestly, the Dems would be looking at a landslide, even with their various deficiencies.
JGabriel
schrodinger’s cat:
Wikipedia:
.
cleek
@Chyron HR:
i guess the trick (and the fear) there is that Obama could, sometime in the future, take away their guns, even though he hasn’t yet said so. it’s a bet gun-lovers make based on their expectations/fears of Obama. if he does it, he hasn’t broken any pledge because he hasn’t pledged not to take away their guns (AFAIK). if he doesn’t do it, he hasn’t broken any pledge because he didn’t pledge he would take away their guns.
getting out of Iraq is something Obama pledged. he breaks his pledge or keeps it, without our having anything to do with it.
this is one of those philosophical brain teasers :)
stuckinred
@John S.: Click on his name, or better yet read the fucking thread.
Mnemosyne
@cleek:
I guess this is where I’m getting confused — your comments seem to indicate that you think Obama has already broken his pledge because we still have some troops in Iraq, even though we haven’t even gotten halfway through the withdrawal timetable yet.
cleek
@demimondian:
right now, we have neither.
we have no Big Daddy, for sure. and, frankly, i don’t think i want one. (but since there’s no definition of what a “Big Daddy” is, outside of BioShock, let’s not bother arguing about it).
and we have some progress. not big progress. some. yes, we probably have close to as much as was possible with the current Senate.
but, just so i’m clear: do you disagree that attitude plays a part in politics ? do you believe other politicians, the press, and ultimately, voters, are objective and rational and that they’d have the same feelings towards any Dem with Obama’s legislative / policy record ?
Zifnab
Re, Larison:
It would remain immensely popular right up until some Afghani (or for that matter, Yemenese/Jordanian/Palestinian/Egyptian/etc/etc) radical decides to crash another plane into another US sky scrapper after leaving the message “Stop Bombing Afghanistan” on his Facebook page.
Then whichever President is caught holding the bag will be a national security failure (or hero, if the right hawks are running the media), and we’ll get to dive back into another country with boots on the ground.
Either way, continuous bombing operations like this don’t come cheap. The government is still going to have to cut checks for this nonsense. So social reformers aren’t going to like it for picking the taxpayer’s pocket. And deficit hawks are going to have a hard time defending it. And anyone getting food stamps or social security cut is going to throw a bloody fit if he has to read a “Bombing missions cost $10 billion / year” headline while he’s eating cat food in his one room shack.
This will delay the inevitable, but it doesn’t fix anything. It’s just an excuse to keep buying bombs and detonating them in the desert. You’re still going to have radical extremists and you’re still going to have a budget bleeding out the anus.
cleek
@Mnemosyne:
that’s not my intent. i know what the Iraq schedule looks like, and we are currently ahead of it (last i looked). and that’s welcome news! i certainly don’t want the war to go on just to stroke my skepticism.
i’m merely unconvinced that the schedule is sacrosanct and that it couldn’t be discarded, should something come up. sure, i would understand some slip here or there – i’m not trying to be pedantic about dates. but it would not surprise me in the least to hear that the withdrawal was suspended because something happened, and that the Iraqis needed us for another 18 months.
so, when we’re out, i’ll believe it’s over. until then, i will probably remain skeptical that we’ll get out.
DaddyJ
@russell: Thanks for the link. “I FEEL GOOD” — that should be chiseled in two-foot-high roman capitals on the portico of Bush’s presidential library.
Mnemosyne
@cleek:
If something does come up — like, say, an Islamist coup in Pakistan — you really think we should continue our withdrawal from Afghanistan despite the new circumstances? We should stick to our guns no matter what happens?
I know people were worried that the generals would be able to pressure Obama to change the dates willy-nilly but, in the wake of McChrystal getting himself canned, I think the chances of that have dropped precipitously. People may not like the ways in which Obama bends but I think it’s pretty clear that where he has a line, that line is firm. His lines may not be where a lot of progressives think they ought to be, but it’s foolish to say he’s a total wimp who will fold under pressure.
ETA: Also note that Petraeus was essentially demoted — he was removed from CENTCOM and sent back to Afghanistan to clean up after McChrystal. Not exactly a sign that Obama is willing to do whatever the generals want him to do.
Barry
I’m skipping the previous 200-odd posts, so please forgive me if I’m reiterating what other’s have said.
I’ve got to call ‘bullsh*t on Bacevich here:
First, Bush is a dishonest, lying wh*reson for whom honest actions were a shock and surprise to those observing him. If he stands before a Just God, that Just God will just kick his *ss into h*ll. Remember that he moved our forces from Afghanistan to Iraq as soon as he could, and screwed up both wars.
Second, as Larison has said, Obama is not taking the nastier position here. It’d be easy to ramp up the air strikes while moving troops into more protected positions, from which they emerge only to trash some areas, racking up ‘taliban’ and ‘al qaida’ bodycounts.
Third, for those who don’t remember the last decade, Obama inherited Afghanistan. He couldn’t just switch that war off in January, 2009. As it is, I think that he’s struck a reasonable balance, giving the military more forces, but also a deadline.
NA
@rootless_e:
Thank you for saying this so sharply and clearly. Like someone who graduated from Columbia would go into community organizing because he was a wimp, an empty suit, and sought nothing more than to win approval from corporate overlords.
CalD
So in summary:
Bacevich: It is “manifest” that President [unsupported conclusion #1, implying powers of mind-reading on the part of Bacevich].
Mistermix: Well, I don’t know if “manifest” is the right word, but [unsupported conclusion #1.1 (a restatement of unsupported conclusion #1 without the word “manifest”), implying powers of mind-reading on the part of Mistermix].
Larison: Well Bacevich was wrong to assert unsupported conclusion #1 and here are some good reasons why. But while the president’s policy may actually reflect strength of character in refusing to take the politically expedient but morally wrong and potentially disastrous way out, we should still assume that the president will at some point do that anyway because [gratuitous ad hominem character slur].
Sad, what passes for critical thinking these days.
ktward
@demimondian:
Blogging quicksand: when commenters parse to death the semantic minutia of fellow commenters, to the sacrifice of constructive discourse.
This thread is largely proving (with some exception) to be just that kind of quicksand. I stand by my original post.
That said, I’ve no issue with debating policy. An altogether healthy exercise that I’m confident O and his advisors/cabinet engage in daily.
But within the context of this thread, the debate is not so much about policy but about characterizing Obama’s presidential legacy based solely on the Afghanistan War. IMHO, that’s not only ridiculously myopic, but ridiculously premature.
FWIW, I don’t agree with some here that Obama must present as an unwavering ideologue with attitude in order to be *perceived* as an effective leader. Or be remembered as one.
cleek
@Mnemosyne:
ok, we’re on Afghanistan now ? we were talking about Iraq.
but this applies to each, so, sure, let’s blend them !
no, of course there are some circumstances that would warrant ditching the schedule. crazy, emergency, call-the-UN, light the BatSignal stuff. but then there are the kinds of things that have caused the past 7 years of schedules to fall by the wayside: at this point, i don’t care if the Iraq/Afgh government would prefer a bit more time to prepare. and i don’t care if the Iraq/Afgh police force/army isn’t fully trained. and i don’t care if we haven’t been able to form a shiny western-style democracy in Iraq/Afgh. etc.. time for that has come and gone. if they haven’t got it yet, too bad. we’ve tried to fix what we broke and to fix what was broken before. but i think we’ve done enough nation building. and that’s the kind of stuff i fear will break the schedule.
Caramuru
I fail to see why the question of sincerity vs. cynicism of our leaders changes the morality of war in any appreciable way. Against the real-life consequences of their decisions, good intentions and sincere belief are pretty much worthless.
Elie
@rootless_e:
This — yes — this absolutely
les
@Brien Jackson:
I’m not convinced that the mortgage payoff plan fixes everything, but I think it’s not totally crazy. It does turn all the (U.S. based) toxic assets into performing assets…and maybe cheaper. Then, the bubble deflation isn’t as toxic–yeah, people’s homes are worth less, but they’re not underwater, being foreclosed on, walking away and ruining entire neighborhoods, etc. That huge devaluation turns into what it turned into anyway–vast piles of money in the bankers and gamblers pockets, with the taxpayers on the hook. But at least some taxpayers would have received a benefit.
les
@Brien Jackson:
Now that’s just silly. Look who was in charge, and who they cared about. Homeowner bailout makes the financial industry look like idiots, turns off the spigot for rolling over the money pile, makes investors wait decades for payoffs–instead they got their profits immediately, from the taxpayer through (mostly) AIG. In our corporatocracy, only one outcome was ever realistic. Jebus, help out tens of thousands of ordinary taxpayers instead of a handful of meg rich insiders? By an administration that had spent years not just avoiding regulating the rich assholes, but actively preventing the states from doing so as well? What country do you think we’re in, man?
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@Barry:
I noticed your first line, and did the same thing you did, earlier. There is no point in reading most BJ threads any more, they are exercises in dumbitity. More and more they are starting to look like the “threads” in the local paper’s comments section on the local paper’s website.
Car crash? Fukkin moron ran the red light! Yuk yuk! Why do they waste our tax dollars puttin up the signals when nobody pays any attention to ’em? He cooda rode the lite rail … oh no he couldn’t! Lite rail doesn’t go to Metrocenter! Duh! Fukkin waste of tax dollars! Fukkin liberals!
Fukkin war? Cooda told ’em it would end up like this! Obama is just Bush Lite. Or should I say Bush Dark? HAhahaha.
Welcome to the Balloon Juice of the future.
les
@demimondian:
Some of that. But far more of the CDO’s were standard 15 and 30 year mortgages–there’s lots more of them, and they package nicer than (typically) short term investment/speculation loans. Of course, the commercial short term paper market is (more or less) quietly crashing around our ears at the moment, too. And frankly, you present a choice between “rewarding” the retail thieves v. the wholesale thieves; at least in the former case a few regular folk get assisted.
les
@Brien Jackson:
How is that false? The (obviously accurate) perception that the mortgages would in the future fail did at least precipitate the crash. Without that, the players would have continued to pretend the game was real and find ways to suck money out.
Mnemosyne
@cleek:
If we’re talking about Iraq, I really don’t see any circumstances under which we would stop the withdrawal short of something truly disastrous, like Iran deciding to invade. But the odds of that happening are minimal so I also think the chance of the US deciding to change the Iraq withdrawal schedule are pretty minimal, too.
Like I said, not only did McChrystal get shitcanned, but Petraeus got busted back down to Afghanistan commander from being the head of CENTCOM. That’s not what a CiC does if he’s controlled by his generals, IMO.
El Tiburon
@joe from Lowell:
Who is this “we” paleface? It has never left the status quo, except the farmers and warlords are making more money off of poppy and the US taxpayers.
Severe security risk to whom? Afghanistan was never a security risk to the USA. How could it be? It’s nothing but mountains, goats and poppy seeds. We had dealings with the Taliban. That Al Queda was based there is besides the point. Is Waco a security threat because the Branch Davidians were based there? Of course not.
We all know there is no “victory” in Afghanistan. Period. And if we all know that, then it goes without saying that Obama knows this as well. So although he gives good lip-service to the entire venture, he understands there is no winning. So back to the original point, who is the bigger fool?
When we leave Afghanistan, nothing will change, nothing will happen. Perhaps in 10-15 years China will feel it is there turn to invade.
Robert Sneddon
@fucen tarmal:
This. Afghanistan welcomes free-spending invaders, always has done since the days of that idiot Alexander and his stupid elephants. The British Raj screwed up a couple of times — see the Elphinstone Expedition for a classic example of military fuckwittery but the usual methods of controlling the area worked otherwise; hold the passes and sow discord. That might be a lesson to be learned by others attempting to play the Great Game in the 21st Century (with the Bear replaced by the Chinese).
Just Some Fuckhead
Someone needs to invent a risk-style board game called Afghanistan that is impossible to win so children can learn the lesson early and perhaps avoid repeating the past over and over.
Bob Loblaw
@joe from Lowell:
Defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda. What do I win?
Wile E. Quixote
@stuckinred:
803rd Armor, Washington Army National Guard, 1983-1993. 303rd Armor, Washington Army National Guard, 1993 to 1996. 19E20 MOS and then 19K30 when we transitioned to M-1s in 1992. I enlisted when I was 17. But what does that have to do with the fact that you’re a stupid, lazy and ignorant piece of shit? Seriouisly, anyone with half a brain who didn’t already know who Andrew Bacevich was might have done a quick Google search to get some information on him. But not you, you’re a stupid, lazy, ignorant fucking piece of shit and you’re proud to admit it. Are you trying to be a caricature of a fucking arrogant boomer twat? If so you’re succeeding admirably.
Wile E. Quixote
Andrew Bacevich
And the Lord will say “Ya know George, we’ve got a whole section of Hell set aside for sincerely believing murderous fuckups. Shit, there were so many of you assholes coming up here with that ‘I sincerely believed in what I was doing as I committed the atrocities’ defense that we ended up having to add three new circles to Hell just to hold you lot and were about to add a fourth until R. Buckminster Fuller came along and showed us this really cool thing we could do with a tesseract. My biggest problem now is figuring out where to put you. I mean there’s a good case for sending you to the eighth circle with the pimps, frauds, flatterers, hypocrites and corrupt politicians or the seventh circle with the violent. I was talking this over with the Spook, Junior and Saint Peter the other night at our book club and Peter suggested perhaps that we could put you in the fourth circle where the avaricious and prodigal go, but after he had a few beers in him he changed his mind and said ‘fuck that, fourth circle would be letting that little punk off easy.’ There’s also a good case for sending your ass to the ninth circle where the betrayers are because if anyone ever betrayed and fucked over his country it’s you.”