Dan Froomkin on the mythical 2011 withdrawal from Afghanistan:
“All of these benchmarks are designed to pacify onlookers on the Hill, help to justify our presence in the country, and set unrealistic goals that everyone knows are not going to be met,” said retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor, a respected military strategist and author. “You’re never going to achieve them. None of this is aimed at extricating American power and forces from anywhere.”
So, asked for an exit strategy, the administration instead offered up guidelines for an endless occupation.
And then last week, in a nearly unnoticed development at an international conference in Kabul, world leaders including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed their “support for the President of Afghanistan’s objective that the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) should lead and conduct military operations in all provinces by the end of 2014.”
That’s right: The end of 2014.
“I was kind of struck that the 2014 didn’t get more critical attention than it did,” said Paul R. Pillar, formerly the CIA’s top Middle East analysis and now a Georgetown University professor. “The war will have gone on 13 years at that point.”
Awesome. The added bonus is that not only will we not be withdrawing, but the Republicans can still pretend we are withdrawing in 2011 and call Democrats defeatocrats or troop-haters or whatever it is they like to say these days.
In fairness, we do need to figure out how to feed the military-industrial complex until we can gin up a war in China or Iran, so I guess at least we save on transportation if we just stick in Afghanistan forever.
Svensker
No, no, no. You didn’t get Newt’s memo. It’s North Korean AND Iran, not China OR Iran. Silly.
Also, 13 years of war for nothing is awesome!
ThatPirateGuy
So that means that by 2017 there will be 16 year-olds in Afghanistan that were born on the first day of the invasion. I wonder if they will be with us of against us?
Hoocoodanode!
Corner Stone
Anyone who ever believed we were going to pull a significant fraction of troops out before the next Presidential election was/is smoking the crack rock.
Corner Stone
Corner Stone
@Svensker: Oh, it’s not for nothing:
US casualties in Afghanistan soar to record highs
I mean, surely there’s a reason that June and then July were the deadliest months for US forces in the ENTIRE 9 YEAR WAR.
There has to be some kind of reason for it all, eh?
wilfred
Let’s get something straight. President Obama never said that he would not change the plans for getting out of Afghanistan. Furthermore, he never said that he would not change any new changes to the previously made plan that had been changed or will have been changed at the time.
It’s all for Wikileaks anyway.
aimai
I’ve got an idea–its craaazy, but it just might worrrrk–lets transfer all our soldiers, military hardware, and experts in development from Iraq and AFghanistan to the poorest neighborhoods in the US. The soldiers can spend their money there while patrolling and shooting people, and the doctors, nurses, development experts can explain how we can build new septic tanks, foster good citizenship, hold open the polls for elections, and paint schools all right here at home. I don’t see why it shouldn’t work. We can just declare a “war on poverty” and then never pull out.
aimai
Ugh
Pretty soon it will be all sullen and surly, passive-aggressive and be out late drinking bad beer a friend’s house whose parents are away. Then, college.
Corner Stone
@wilfred: I thought this was some good shit last night.
I for one am happy to see you turning it into a franchise.
Hiram Taine
Somewhat OT but the US Senate manages to find enough bipartisanship to come to a unanimous vote, it’s only somewhat OT because this vote was also about a war that will never fucking end.
matoko_chan
The war pimps are out in force today.
Never mind that Aisha was mutilated last year with beaucoup american troops on the ground, and that we are negotiating with the Taliban, and that the Taliban IS ALREADY resurgent, and kicking our ass at a ratio of 1 Tali to 13 coalition/afghan security forces.
Refresh my memory…..why are american soldiers dying in the graveyard of empires at the cost of 25 billion per year again? To free muslimahs from the hideous hirsi ali boogeyman of al-Islam?
Wasn’t there an amnesty international study showing rape and oppression of women have INCREASED in Af-Pak since the ‘merican occupation?
The Taliban is not going away…..the Taliban is going to be part of whatever coalition of Karzai+warlords+Taliban gets us the fuck out of there.
I have faith in my president, because unlike watevah braindead retarded ‘sline penned this at Time, my president is intelligent.
The drawdown starts in July 2011.
D-Chance.
We may be there another 50 years… maybe a hundred.
/sigh
Yep, this is Bush’s Third Term.
El Cid
I think we should openly announce that we plan to be there another 30 or 40 years. Leaving any sooner would risk chaos, and we can’t do that.
wilfred
I’d like to suggest a new blog category, in homage to the old National Lampoon: “If you don’t buy this magazine, we’ll kill this dog”.
Right on cue, the NYT comes with this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/31/world/asia/31women.html?hp
Davis X. Machina
The army can’t afford it, the country can’t afford it, Afghanistan and the region can’t afford it, NATO’s already heading for the tall grass on it, the Dutch government fell because of it, Cameron’s said the UK’s commitment is within sight of its time- and resource limits.
No way there’s more than a corporal’s guard there in winter 2014-15. Three things need to happen first, and you can see the beginnings of two of them right now. Karzai’s got to get levered out of the way, and the GOP has to be implicated in the withdrawal, so they can’t run ‘Who Lost Afghanistan’ campaign ads.
Pakistan’s the missing piece….
K. Grant
I have asked this before, and have never really gotten a decent response, so I will give it another go.
So, how do we extricate ourselves from Afghanistan? What steps do we need to take to get out of the region? What happens to the region once we are gone?
Just to be clear, I think we should get out. I am just not sure, because the war was prosecuted so badly in its first six years, how we leave without making a perfectly miserable and dangerous situation even more dangerous and miserable. I don’t think that this is a simple problem with a perfectly straightforward solution.
Omnes Omnibus
@aimai: Republicans will filibuster it.
ETA: Ben Nelson will join in.
Omnes Omnibus
@K. Grant: Aye, there’s the rub.
El Cid
Well, we need to stay there until we can figure out how to leave and everything be the way we want. We’ll keep rotating through magical ‘new strategies’ until we find something that works and makes us feel completely safe, and until that time we have to stay there and keep trying new strategies until we find something that works and makes us feel completely safe, and until that time we have to stay there and keep trying new strategies until we find something that works…
coloradoblue
War with China won’t work since they make almost everything we buy.
And war with Iran will work only if we want $10 per gallon gas. Hmmm, since Exxon and BP and all the other
a#$h%)@s want or need even more in profits, war with Iran it is!
r€nato
@K. Grant: indeed. You don’t just pull out and then it’s like you were never there in the first place.
Amanda in the South Bay
@K. Grant:
Of course there’s an easy solution. We do what Mayor Daley told LBJ to do after the ’68 riots (iirc).
I don’t mean to be flippant, but equivocation=more long term muddling through.
Sorry, really bad week and all, plus I just read an atrocious post on LGM about why the US should prosecute Assange.
Davis X. Machina
DeGaulle got out of Algeria — which had been sovereign French territory for a hundred-plus years, with proper departements and prefectures and representatives in the Assembly, in three and a half years. Of course the OAS shot him up a couple times as a result, but out the French got.
We’ve got nothing like that level of investment in Afghanistan.
To go, all you have to do is need to go. Then it happens very quickly. We’re near that point now.
MikeJ
@Amanda in the South Bay: Agreed that the US shouldn’t prosecute Assange. Let the Afghans handle the trial.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Davis X. Machina: Remind me where the Taliban analogue was in Algeria. We leave Afghanistan, guess who’s in the driver’s seat for taking over.
John O
@aimai:
This.
Obama HAS to know it’s not a winnable situation. Has to. So the problem is political; as soon as he says we’re getting the eff out the Mighty Wulitzer cranks up and he’s political toast.
That being said, he’s a clever guy, at least politically and IMO generally, and he might know how long the American attention span is.
It would be a good bomb to drop on the base, declaring immediate withdrawl, timed right.
We’ll see. I’m trying to play 11-dimensional chess here.
John O
@K. Grant:
You’re right, there is no good way, and it is complicated, not only politically, but in national interest terms. Blowing our treasure on nothing, but stuck.
Essentially, Osama won.
Comrade Luke
Great minds.
Davis X. Machina
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-: You deal with whom you have to deal with.
The FLN was quite nasty to its own — perhaps as many as 70,000 dead in intra-Algerian violence in Algeria, as many as another 5,000 dead in intra-communal violence in France. And the fate of the harkis was grim indeed.
But France got out. You deal with whom you have to deal with. It’s what empires in decline do.
Nick
@K. Grant:
there is no good way. At some point someone has to break it to the American people that we lost. And that person’s political career would be over and his or her party will be banished for a decade.
Comrade Luke
I’m being totally serious here: I think we’ll be there until we find another country to attack. Then, magically, a fast, safe and congressionally approved withdrawal plan will materialize out of thin air and that will be that.
Davis X. Machina
@Nick: DeGaulle and his party didn’t quite last the decade (’62-’68), but he survived…
John O
@Comrade Luke:
Agreed.
I have a literally old friend who is a font of wisdom, has always been right even with the benefit of retrospection, and about 5 years ago she told me, “I think this country is going down the tubes.”
Eisenhower was spot on.
(Adding the caveat that when I say this stuff, “in my lifetime” is assumed and stipulated.)
Jim Yeager
So we’re going to fight for thirteen years in that country now.
You know, the Russians only fought there for ten. And look how that turned out for them…
Comrade Luke
@John O:
I don’t know how you can say that, when he increased our presence there to begin with.
Comrade Luke
@John O:
I don’t know how you can say that, when he increased our presence there to begin with.
John O
@Comrade Luke:
‘Cause nobody could be that stupid and idealistic? Trick question?
:-)
And I realize he’s doing what he said he would, but he seems like a reality-based dude to me, and the facts have to be making at least a dent.
Nick
@Davis X. Machina:
DeGaulle was in power four years before he pulled out…he didn’t end the war until it became crystal clear the French people had accepted it as a loss.
They had referendums on this. I would totally back a “should we leave Afghanistan” referendum
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Welcome to the Hotel Kabul-ifornia.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave!
Davis X. Machina
@Nick: The trick was to somehow make the pieds noirs and the paras as big an enemy of la France as the FLN, and obligingly the settlers and paras, and finally the settler-para coalition (OAS), did DeGaulle’s work for him.
Comment dit-on ‘teabagger’ en français?
We don’t have referenda, but we do have war supplementals — watch and note when the votes shift not towards outright defeat of the funding, but towards domestic discussion of withdrawal.
Stillwater
@John O: I’m trying to play 11-dimensional chess here.
And playing it quite well, it seems to me. One dimension you’ve left out – that we may never really know the answer to – is why we invaded Afghanistan to begin with. I know the CW answer (to get al Queda) but at this point, I think the preponderance of evidence shows that getting AQ, or OBL, was never a very high priority.
So, take your best guess as to why we are even there, and then play 12-dimensional chess.
John O
@Stillwater:
I think by all conventional standards we “had” to go in to Afghanistan.
I could’ve lived with them being a woman hating horrible religious extremist regime until they gave ammo to those who pulled off 9-11.
And one of the things I think no President will ever let go again is the surveillance state, because they don’t want another one. So, kiss your civil liberties goodbye. This is probably my biggest O disappointment, but I can understand it in those shoes.
I still think the best war policy is to simply announce before you even strike how long you’re going to be there, and how many you’re going to kill to satiate. Then you’re set up to get out on your own timetable.
I would just announce that we’ll kill a thousand innocent civilians (or X) for every one of ours, as best we can count, as an overall national policy. But I’m weird that way, and really get reamed every time I mention it. It’s not that I’m heartless, it’s that I believe it is politically the best way to save lives in the long run.
matoko_chan
@Stillwater: easysauce.
we are there because Bush was too stupid to underatand that muslims like Islam. The Bush Doctrine, aka the Epic Fail of the Manifest Destiny of Judeoxian Democracy in MENA, was always a recipe for expensive, bloody failsauce. The Bush Doctrine is a generator for islamic states.
COIN, now, COIN was a software patch on the Bush Doctrine.
Also failsauce. COIN creates more terrorists than it destroys.
It isn’t like we are running in place even……we are running backwards.
Fareed Zacharia put it best. He said, when we don’t give the insurgents money, they turn towards the Islamists. But when we do give them money, they still turn to towards the Islamists. When muslims can vote, they for more Islam, not secularism. When Turks and Iraqis get to vote, they vote for shariah.
Muslims like shariah. it isn’t all stonings and killing apostates.
Davis X. Machina
As to why we were even there, the Taliban was considered a menace/threat/disgrace for years before 9/11. There was heavy media coverage, for example, of the threat to the Buddhas of Bamiyan in advance of their destruction in 2001. Diplomatic battles over the disposition of Afghanistan’s UN seat, and non-recognition of Mullah Omar’s government were also ongoing.
Recall too that this was the high-water-mark of liberal humanitarian interventionism — Kosovo was ’98-’99.
I suspect there was a strong predisposition to ‘do something’ about the ‘Afghanistan mess’ for years before 9/11, and a lot of it centered in liberal circles. Pipelines and minerals don’t explain everything.
demo woman
Can we have an open thread please with pictures of adorable animals and a reminder to buy Tunch and Lily stuff.
BTW ABC news mentioned that the Obama administration expected to get all the money back loaned to the auto companies. They did say that Bush gave them 25 billion with no strings attached so that is not expected to be recouped.
ALSO, TOO Ben Nelson can go fuck himself
matoko_chan
@Comrade Luke: McC and the mini-surge was a hail mary pass. it failed, and that is why McC resigned /got fired. Obama’s tacit understanding with Petraeus, Gates and Mullen, was fail==GTFO.
we are going.
the weasel wording is for retards like Froomkin to give plausible deniability.
keestadoll
To quote the roughly 19,000 hits on Google:
It’s just so fucking depressing.
jwb
@Stillwater: If you really want to play 11-dimensional chess, you could argue that being mired in Afghanistan and Iraq is keeping us too busy to be invading (or even bombing) North Korea and Iran.
Paula
Well, a significant number of so-called liberals among even the blogger set supported the Afghanistan invasion immediately after 9/11. People who knew any kind of ME or Cold War history or had any kind of exposure to anti-colonial history thought it would probably be a bad idea for entangled reasons of geography and tribalism. If any of them are “sad” now … well, I’d tell them that they should have cracked a book or two 9 years ago.
Davis X. Machina
@Paula:
Doing something multi-lateral, aimed at the worst theocratic and mysogenistic warlords and at the Taliban — focused of course on nation-building and pulling Afghanistan out of the 13th century, and not conquest-and-occupation had its supporters before 9/11 – and they weren’t all neo-cons.
Stillwater
@John O: I think by all conventional standards we “had” to go in to Afghanistan.
I still think that by the arguments Bush/Rummy/et al provided, the choice of Afghanistan as one the nations we chose to ‘annihilate” (RUmmy’s words after 9/11, the exact quote (I still remember it because of the pluralization) was “we will annihilate nations”) is pretty arbitrary. 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. There was no substantial Afghanistan connection, except that they ‘harbored’ AQ, or provided a ‘safe haven’ in a region effectively removed from governmental control or influence. So, the idea that we ‘had’ to invade/carpet-bomb Afghanistan for political reasons is – in my view – subject to dispute.
I think the bigger motive behind the invasion of Afg, as well as Iraq, was the reason any nation has been invaded throughout history: projection of power for material gain. In this case, access to oil/gas by US, and prevention of oil/gas going to China (this hypothesis actually has the merits of evidence on its side: attempting to prevent a Chinese acquisition of the remaining Eurasian energy reserves was the primary international policy prerogative championed by PNAC and the Bush administration).
But to get back to the point of previous posts: I agree that there will come a day when COngress and everyone else agree that it is time to cut our losses in Afg. I just think one of the dimensions left out of most people’s calculus is the interests of the big financial players – the oil and gas industry, reconstruction contractors and the MIC. When those guys lose the ability to sway Congressional votes in favor of refunding, it’s because public sentiment will have blown the lid off the charade. For the time being, the charade continues.
ETA: the phrase “championed by PNAC and the Bush administration” is confused. Rather it’s the view of members of the Bush admin. while they were still members of PNAC.
jwb
@Paula: What you can say about Afghanistan is that, compared to Iraq, there was at least an argument for going in. I also believe it was winnable in the narrow sense before the clusterfuck in Tora Bora and the Bush administration getting distracted by Iraq and completely losing interest. At this point, however, I really see little point to our being there, but I’m not at all certain how we extract ourselves without making matters worse for all involved.
Patriot 3
war, what is $27,000,000,000.00 good for?
absolutely something if you happen to a bong expert
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MZWPCrI4RU&feature=player_embedded
El Cid
We need to be in Afghanistan until we get it right. If we leave too soon, we won’t have gotten it right.
Davis X. Machina
@jwb:
Watch the ever-peaceful Barb at Mahablog wrestle with the question.
My sister works for a health-related NGO with a big footprint in Afghanistan. They’re all very conflicted as well.
Paula
Well, you think that the Afghans could then/now intellectualize how this is different from “invasion and colonization”? Or for that matter, US troops?
I’m not looking to start a fight here. I’m just pointing out that if some sectors of the left wanna bitch about the military-industrial complex, they could at least look at the inconsistency of their own positions first. (That’s not necessarily about anyone here, mainly because I haven’t taken a poll.) And then maybe get some history. I was a useless English major and even I knew this shit.
That being said, I get the feeling that many in the more excitable portions of the A-list blogosphere are a bit young in that their main point of reference is stuff George Bush Jr. did.
debbie
@ Davis X Machina:
Wasn’t the U.S. also supporting Massoud and the Northern Alliance as they fought against the Taliban?
Davis X. Machina
@Paula: Oh, absolutely. Google on “Blair Doctrine” — there was a bit of fist-pumping in liberal-interventionist circles right after the (very equivocal) success of NATO in Kossovo. Granted, Blair was a leftist the way Velveeta™ is cheese, but there it all is.
El Cid
@Davis X. Machina: You’re not allowed to express any ambivalence on the Kosovo military actions, because that means you loved Slobodan Milosevic and want to have his babies. Watch yourself.
Davis X. Machina
@debbie:
Massoud’s better — hey, everything is relative — record on things like the education of women is one of the reasons why he was considered respectable enough to be invited to address the European Parliament in Brussels in ’01, before 9.11. US support for Massoud came late, only after the USS Cole bombing. India was his big backer, because Pakistan had thrown in with Hekmatyar, and then Omar.
Enemy-of-my-enemy stuff. IIRC we really liked Dostum.
BBC World Service was chock-a-block with this stuff for two-three years before 9/11.
Stillwater
@Davis X. Machina: Pipelines and minerals don’t explain everything.
Personally, I’m inclined to go with the ‘pipelines and minerals’ explanation most of the time (I’m biased that way), but I think you’re correct that humanitarian issues usually also come into play. In that sense, the causal justification for an invasion is usually overdetermined. Interestingly, the two-dimensional justification maps on nicely to the US electorate: liberals like to use power to promote a ‘social justice’, conservatives like to use power to eliminate threats to our ‘way of life’ (which includes acquiring resources). .
General Stuck
Wow. What a coincidence. I’m having chicken entrails for dinner. Fry up gooood.
Davis X. Machina
@Stillwater: I’ve reached the age where some mono-causal explanations of real-world historical events are coming around for the third time. I had my American Revolution first from a rabid follower of Charles Beard, e.g., then from Boorstin devotees, where ideology did so matter, and round again, and round again, to the point where I suspect everything is overdetermined. Coalition governments more or less create an overdetermined causality for their acts.
Except Bucky Fucking Dent, who singlehandedly and alone sunk the Sox in ’78.
Bill Murray
@El Cid: I think Davis X. Machina used to be Arkan T. Tiger — well not really but I do like to use T. as a middle initial for the, as it brings out the mst-y in me
Davis X. Machina
@Bill Murray: All the Serbian I ever knew, I learned from Albert Lord and Milman Parry.
Corner Stone
I am enjoying the delicate sensibilities of mantis in the Chump Change thread and now K. Grant in this one.
“I wish I knew how to quit you.”
HyperIon
@Amanda in the South Bay:
I read that, too, and was puzzled.
People keep bringing up Ellsberg and the Pentagon papers.
Using that analogy, isn’t WikiLeaks the New Your Times?
The guy(s) who gave Wikileaks the material is Ellsberg.
Plus I keep seeing squishy language: “might have harmed”, “might lead to harm”. This was definitely not the intent, right? Kinda like friendly fire.
I hope I am interpreting your comment correctly….
Corner Stone
@HyperIon: Well, I’ve been reading the CNN article that cites both Mullen and Gates saying that Assange “may have blood on his hands” and his actions have caused other countries to “possibly” not trust the US.
All part of the full court press. Anything to distract from the message.
HyperIon
@Davis X. Machina:
I visited friends in Amsterdam last month and they mentioned that a big debate is going on there also. But they have no troops (or very few) and are discussing whether the government should continue to support humanitarian efforts.
HyperIon
@Corner Stone:
Like we haven’t provided lots of reasons recently NOT to trust the US.
And dare I say that the US military also has blood on its hands? But they obviously have better better PR than Assange.
matoko_chan
Well we can’t prosecute Assange….got no Secrets Act.
@Stillwater:
Because Bush was a stupid WEC.
Like I told Brachiator, muslims like shariah.
When muslims get to vote, they vote for shariah law.
Can we go home yet?
Nick
@matoko_chan:
well, you pointed out a problem. Pakistan wants sharia law, Pakistan has nukes, I think we can all agree a country with sharia law and nukes is a bad thing…for our lives.
So what do we do? Just accept our fate?
mclaren
I’ve offered a standing bet that American forces will have not been drawn down in either Afghanistan or Iraq by the end of 2016, at Obama’s 2nd term (if he gets one).
“American forces” total of mercs + troops. Obama or congress may of course play number games and reduce the number of troops while adding mercs. That’s just gamesmanship designed to obscure the reality that just as many U.S. military forces are in Afghanistan now as were 8 years ago.
So far, nobody has taken me up on my bet.
You know why.
Nick
@mclaren:
because mercenaries get to stay there as long as they want?
Actually, I’m pretty sure we’ll have a lower number of troops in both countries, if not no troops, by 2016.
Bob Loblaw
Regime change now, regime change forever!
Wait, what? There are people still trying to figure out our “Pakistan problem?” What’s your plan this time Herr Wafflemeister? More occupation, or just more bribes to the ISI? Or maybe neither, or maybe both? Maybe we can find a new Musharraf or two? We just know it’s a problem and needs to be solved, like immediately, probably. We think.
matoko_chan
@Nick: yup.
we don’t have a choice. we can’t go in there and occupy and reconstruct. impossible. :)
n/e ways you completely don’t understand shariah law.
we have shariah in the US….DOMA.
shariah is just religious doctrine encoded as national law.
n/e ways, wtf has pak nukes got to do with afghanistan?
i want to go home from afghanistan.
Pakistan had nukes under the dictator Musharaff.
we will be fine if we stop the war on al-Islam.
matoko_chan
and i don’t think a country with shariah and nukes is necessarily bad for us. as long as we arent strafing them with drones and trying to impose dictators on them.
And…..as long we respect their right to choose their religion and not try to terraform their culture with democracywhiskeysexy and and armies of WECbot missionaries.
You don’t really understand how obscenely revolting muslims find xian missionaries.
JWL
So much is so obvious. And yet, terrified people still endorse the increasingly bankrupt rationale of there being a “lesser of two evil” party when they decide how to cast their ballot.
K. Grant
@Corner Stone:
You are decidedly lovely, really. You are especially lovely because instead of actually addressing the rather sticky question of how one leaves, you simply snark at the ones asking for an answer. Good work. Top notch stuff.
You want to actually step to the plate and try to answer the question? Because I truly don’t know how to do it. So enlighten the knaves. Show us how easy it is.
Paula
@K. Grant:
“Show us how easy it is.”
Heh. Anyone remember Bill O’Reilly saying something like “It’s so easy” re thinking about Iraq and then David Letterman answered, “It’s not easy for me because I’m thoughtful” … ?
Corner Stone
@K. Grant:
This is the same old dodge dressed up in a new sundress.
It’s bullshit. It’s a way to delicately equivocate for the status quo, while schmearing the fancy patina of high conscience all over yourself. You god damned coward son of a bitch.
You set a plan in place for withdrawal and you execute it. You don’t SURGE 30K more troops in there and you don’t approve $34B more in funding for an untold amount of contractors to be added.
Logistics dictate a certain timeframe for withdrawal. Nothing more and nothing less. Not some god damned fake fucking Mayor of Kabul, not some stupid idea we can give a multi-billion dollar bribe to Pakistan officials in the guise of “infrastructure aid”, and for fuck sake not the boogeyman’s ghost’s cousin’s murderous ex-girlfriend’s idea that the Pakistan nukes are going to be controlled by the ghost of Ayatolla Khomeni if we leave.
Bad things will happen when we leave. Bad things will happen if we stay. I choose to ask my government to stop their folly. If after 9 years we have been unable to both stop the flow of war making materiel, as well as the ability for our ill-defined enemy to make war against us such that we have suffered the two highest death totals in back to back months ~ then what the fuck have we been doing and how could staying another 1 year, 2 years, 4 years make a difference? Have we just now learned some vital lesson?
But to some how make the anguished argument that “Oh, I do so want us to leave but I just can’t see the path!” is the absolute height of moral cowardice.
Nick
@matoko_chan:
Or sending money to Israel…or India. Neocons are not right that they “hate us for our freedoms,” but liberals aren’t right when they say “if we just leave them alone, they’ll leave us alone”
There are a lot of reasons while Islamic fundamentalists hate us…top of the list is Israel, then India, and then for more than we’d like to admit, it’s because we’re not Muslim.
K. Grant
@Corner Stone:
The world you live in is so wonderful. It is so easy. Those who agree are thoughtful, wonderful people, the rest (especially the nasty ones asking questions) are cowards.
Congratulations, Secretary Rumsfeld. Or VP Cheney. Or Pres. Bush. Good work. It is also so ridonkulously easy.
Just pull out.
Like good Catholics and the rhythm method. Nothing bad could possibly happen if we just pack up and leave.
No muss, no fuss, just set a date and yank the troops. Don’t worry about what you leave behind. (Oh, that’s right – you actually admit that there is some possibility of difficulty when said pull out happens -but hey, at least we won’t be directly responsible for people dying.) Don’t worry about anything because the world is black and white, we are all Manicheans now, and we just have to stop acting like the guy in the black hat and do the right thing.
I love people like you, with everything that I am, because you are so dear and so precious. Just do it. Nike would be proud.
It is easy. And those asking about the murk are just cowards. That makes perfect sense. Enjoy your utopia.
matoko_chan
@Nick:
nope, we are cool with the people of the book. we don’t actually give a shit about what you believe…..we don’t like that you want to make us believe it too.
we don’t like meddling…..like Operation Ajax, propping dictators, missionaries, the British Raj, destroying our infrastructure to “save” us, fighting proxy wars with the sovs on our turf, bombing our cities with carcinogens……etc.
Israel isn’t even the top of the list.
for Pak, maybe India is up there– the US and India are BFFs.
we gotta watch our backs.
matoko_chan
@Corner Stone: right now, the Talis are giving us a horrendous asswhupping on a 1 talib to 13 coalition and afghan security forces ratio.
that girl on the cover of Time got her nose cut off last year–right in the middle of 100k american troops.
it isnt going to get any better, no matter how much blood and treasure we pour in there.
and even if we stand up a government the people will just vote for shariah like the Iraqis did.
Game ovah.
Can we go home NAOW?
mclaren
@Corner Stone:
Fuck planning. Just leave.
The United States military couldn’t plan its way out of a pay toilet. Why start now?
Seriously…the fools and incompetents and overgrown frat boys who run America’s army and Navy and Air Force haven’t got the planning capacity of a sow bug. In the 1950s they were planning for the USSR to come barreling into West Germany with 30 armored divisions champing at the bit to overrun Western Europe (the USSR actually wasn’t), in the 1960s they were planning to invade Cuba because everyone knew Cuba didn’t have missiles with warheads set up and ready to fire (Cuba actually did), in the 1970s the U.S. military was planning to deal with a first strike from the massive Soviet missile superiority (which actually badly lagged us in number and accuracy of missiles) and in the 1980s the American military was planning for the Soviet Union to outpace us economically and militarily (when the Soviet Union instead collapsed and ceased to exist).
Right now, the American military has prepared its navy to fight the second Battle of Midway, its air force to fight another Battle of Britain, and its army to fight another Battle of the Bulge. The U.S. military is run by fools who couldn’t find the butts with both hands in a hall of mirrors, so planning is a waste of time. The Three Stooges can plan all day long and it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference, so planning is a pointless waste of time for the two million Stooges currently in uniform or in military reserve.
Just declare victory and get the hell out.
Corner Stone
@K. Grant: Sigh. It’s a nice try to deflect from the cowardice your equivocation manifests.
I have made a choice. I don’t hide behind some bullshit dodge like you are doing here. It’s a dodge. There’s no other way to describe it. You now want to come back and mamby pamby your way through this because this is exactly what people like you do. You want to deflect from the actual situation.
You support the status quo, you cite some nefarious dangerous outcomes as if others don’t struggle with them, and then you snark your way into the sunset. As if anything in your response is anything other than a straight dodge because you don’t have the ability to just come out and admit where you stand.
It’s not nuanced. It’s not thoughtful. It’s nothing but a dodge we here can all see right through.
You want to support the status quo but for some reason can’t just come out and admit it.
Nick
@mclaren:
you can just move 100,000 men and equipment out of a country in the middle of night. You’re right, the military is run by a bunch of trigger-happy incompetent fools, but if that’s the case, I’d rather not have them “just leave”
Nick
@matoko_chan:
I’m sorry, are you an Islamic fundamentalist, because that’s who I was talking about. Not “generic muslim”
If all the muslims were fighting America, we’d be stomped like a bug.
Are you insane? Israel is what started everything.
So do we, India is a major US trading partner. Now do you think Islamic fundamentalist Pakistan with nukes isn’t a threat? There are millions of Americans living in India.
mclaren
@K. Grant:
Since when did it become America’s business to prevent something bad from happening in every third-world hellhole on the planet?
This is your great plan, Braniac? Next we invade Yemen, because they’re still doing female circumcisions there?
At some point the hubris of people like K. Grant reaches such a fever pitch of insanity you just have to stop and gape, open-mouthed, in disbelief.
Earth to K. Grant…come in, K. Grant. News flash: America is not God. We can’t stop “something bad” from happening in third world countries. We couldn’t even if we sent in the peace corps and civil engineers, and we sure as hell can’t stop “something bad” from happening when we send in a hundred fifty thousand 19-year-old frat boys to blow shit up and gun down 14-year-old girls at checkpoints.
I got news for ya, K. Grant. If you want to avoid “something bad” happening in Afghanistan, here’s a suggestion…stop playing video game war with unmanned drones that blow up wedding parties because Mister Lance Corporal Metal Gear Solid thought that indecipherable blob of pixels on his computer monitor was a Taliban bomb intead of the bride’s flower bouquet.
mclaren
@Nick:
American troops are going to “just leave” one way or the other. Either clinging to the skids of helicopters in hysterical panic a few years from now, or abandoning our equipment in chaos and disarray today.
Barack and Hamid’s Excellent Adventure will not end well. By the time this thing winds down, you’re gonna see more news footage on TV of aircraft carrier crews pushing helicopters over the side to make more room for the evacuees.
K. Grant
@Corner Stone:
And for his next trick, Corner Stone reads minds.
Just not very well.
I want us out of Afghanistan. Today. Even if we had the best intentions going in, any good that we might have done is long since gone. We will be doing no more good there. Obama tried a surge, it didn’t work. It wasn’t what I would have done, but there you are, I am not the President. I thought it didn’t make any sense because the country has been so thoroughly screwed up internally and externally that additional troops wouldn’t make any difference. They didn’t.
You want to make this simple, and are willing to browbeat anyone who disagrees with you by tossing about language that would make the right-wing happy (the whole cowardice bit is just so damn tired), I am simply arguing that it is not. If you want to make me the bad guy, because I would like to find a way to get out that might actually not make things worse in the long run, that is your prerogative. If it helps you sleep at night knowing that you can blame people like me for this country’s ills, go for it, but it won’t make the problems go away or become any easier to actually solve.
Just leaving, without at least addressing the issues of Karzai’s knavish regime, the Taliban, human rights issues, the Af-Pak border, whatever is left of Al-Qaeda, is what you want (screw the Afghanis, we have been doing it for years, why even bother to worry about them now, right?), but is that right? We can’t win. It cannot be done. There is no victory to be had in Afghanistan.
But I fear we could actually make it worse by pulling out without thinking through our exit.
That is all that I am saying. Is that really all that difficult to fathom?
K. Grant
@mclaren:
.
No shit. So glad that you are around to enlighten us knaves. We never would have known without you to tell us.
Everyone knows it has been a disaster. We screwed up. The war cannot be won.
That said, does that mean that we should not even try to ameliorate our ham-fistedness on the way out?
Nope, guess not. Screw the Afghanis, we have been monsters the last six years, might as well make it a perfect run.
Corner Stone
@K. Grant:
Excellent! Then we agree.
The rest of your paean is snot nosed driveling nonsense, so let’s just cut it at the high point.
K. Grant
@Corner Stone:
Careful there, man, you are starting to go all soft. People might start to think you aren’t a raging egotist who can’t see the impact of his actions on others.
Scamp Dog
@Nick: Yes. The more we’ve tried to “improve” our fate, the more we’ve messed it up. If we sit on our hands for a while, we’ll stop doing more damage, both in Afghanistan and (financially) at home.
Nick
@mclaren:
whose advancing troops are we going to be running from in a hysterical panic? Is Ho Chi Minn going to suddenly advance an army on Kabul?
mclaren
@Nick:
Mobs of Afghan citizens enraged by their daughters and wives and sons getting murdered. When U.S. troops run out of bullets and the Afghans are climbing the razor wire around our bases, our troops will get airlifted out in panic.
You really don’t get it. We’ve been defeated. This is what happens to defeated armies.
Stillwater
@K. Grant: But I fear we could actually make it worse by pulling out without thinking through our exit.
So, I take it that the ‘thinking through’ is the crucial part, not the exiting so much. Let’s run down the list:
Karzai’s knavish regime, the Taliban, human rights issues, the Af-Pak border, whatever is left of Al-Qaeda,
After a lot of thought, I wonder how any of these things actually improve if we stay.
Corner Stone
@Stillwater:
And I wonder how someone who uses the word knave or knavish so much actually reconciles the fact they are in the 21st Century.
Anne Laurie
@aimai:
Y’know, some tinfoil sector of my brain wondered if the H1N1 potential-pandemic was going to give the new administration a plausible excuse for starting troop withdrawal. Since the death virus fizzled on us (this time), I’ve just been afraid that certain sectors of the American ruling classes would manage to gin up the threat of OMG Messican droog smukklers! ! ! for that purpose…
Corner Stone
@Stillwater:
I think you’ve hit on it. K. Grant and his ilk will be “thinking through” how to leave for the next 10 years.
K. Grant
@Corner Stone:
You are the bees knees, Corner Stone, you have absolutely made my night.
Yep, no sense thinking this stuff through, lets just blow this popsicle stand, throw caution to the wind, and get out. Who cares what we leave behind. Good, sound, ADD thinking.
K. Grant
@Corner Stone:
Right, because no one ever uses odd or even archaic language on this blog. Ever.
Not ever.
You are too much fun.
mclaren
Avast, thou poltroon! Begone! ‘Od’s bodkin, I would as soon a fardel bear as list to thy lisping plaints.
mclaren
@K. Grant:
Avast, thou poltroon! Begone! ‘Od’s bodkin, I would as soon a fardel bear as list to thy lisping plaints.
Corner Stone
@K. Grant:
What a maroon. As usual, desperate to deflect from the fact that you have nothing but status quo.
I previously stated that logistics dictate a withdrawal. The Army has a few master badasses on staff that can choreograph how that will play out.
So stuff your stupid in a sack buster.
NobodySpecial
There’s already a plan stuck somewhere on how to withdraw right this second. Only in Iraq did they manage to miss Stage IV planning, and the shit they got from that made it doubly important that they have one for Afghanistan. Hell, they still have plans in the folder for a limited invasion of CANADA. A drawdown is simply a matter of logistics, not life and death moral questions.
Go further down the road of the White Man’s Burden, folks, and you end up with the Neocons.
El Cid
@K. Grant: Why, silence poltroons!
El Cid
The British and French could never withdraw from their African and Asian colonies due to the foreseen disastrous consequences, until they did.
wilfred
Re: Algeria. See Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, at least the first chapter, Concerning Violence, and Sartre’s Introduction.
matoko_chan
@Nick: moron.
guess what? WE FUCKING WENT OVER THERE.
Islamic fundamentalists are EXACTLY the SAME as your own rightwing fucktard WECs and pretribs in the US, and in the same proportion. The great majority of muslims simply DON’T GIVE A SHIT if xians want to believe in the risen jesus. But when the xian west tries to IMPOSE white jesus and western culture on them, you give the narrative to the Islamists. Boo-yah! Clash of civilizations.
If not for the rule of law the teabaggers would burn your unis and make bible colleges and Saddleback megachurches from one end of this country to another. Women and blacks would be virtual chattel slaves. Instead of stoning and cutting off hands they would force women to be wombs of the state and shoot illegal immigrants on sight and reduce killing blacks and homosexuals to manslaughter.
And none of that even matters.
BECAUSE YOU ALREADY LOST.
Look at the Time pic of the mutilated girl. Her nose was CUT OFF LAST YEAR in the middle of 100k american troops. The Taliban are ALREADY RESURGENT. We are cutting a deal with them right now. Right now a single Talib fighter is pwning 13 coalition/afghan security security forces. The Talib ARE NOT GOING AWAY– THEY ARE WINNING. The Wikileaks docs show exactly the same thing. WE ARE LOSING. And there is no way to win.
Even if we can stand up a “democratic” government the afghan people are going to vote for shariah and the Talibs will be part of the goverment!
So we can keep pouring blood and treasure into a black hole while you tell yourself we are protecting India or Israel or muslimah noses or w/e fucktard reasons you want to manufacture, but the truth is we are there because GW was a WEC retard that didn’t get that muslims like Islam. And all this blood and shit flowed right from that.
And I dont think one single more american soldier or one single more afghan muslim should die because Bush was a moron and his advisors were evil manipulators and we can’t bear to admit that we fucked up that bad, that we elected a man so deeply and profoundly stupid that he nearly destroyed our country. And its idiots like you that are going to let the war pimps bleed us dry so we don’t have to admit that the greatest country in the world SCREWED UP.
I’m done now.
Davis X. Machina
@NobodySpecial: In the very early ’70’s a colleague of mine worked in Army data processing, maintaining mainframes in Saigon, of all things. His outfit had in a safe plans for a 72-hour bug-out from Vietnam, and this is when there were still 150,000 US in country, or thereabouts. All ready to go, right down to requisition forms pre-typed up to draw thermite grenades from stores to blow up the hardware…..
chaseyourtail
Well, we’ll have to wait and see what happens won’t we? In the mean time, and from now on, I will avoid reading Froomkin at all costs. His bias is so obvious I can barely get through an article. The way he throws around words like “delusional” and “naive” makes me grit my teeth. Maybe it’s his writing style (or lack there of) that I find so unpalatable – his prose rings with the familiar and toxic timber of smug, know-it-all lefticism.
As for the premise of his article, it relies on a few sporadic quotes and a heaping helping of conventional wisdom from a retired Army Col.
As I said, we’ll have to wait and see.