Barney Frank on the Maddow Show:
Citing new polling data that shows widespread support by the American public for the peaceful, negotiated resolution of the chemical weapons crisis in Syria without having to bring the U.S. military into action, former Congressman Barney Frank made the case to that public sentiment against further U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan is even stronger […] Frank recommends that his like-minded former colleagues in Congress draft a resolution calling for an accelerated withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, targeting the end of 2013 instead of the end of 2014, and allow the will of the American public to propel that legislation into reality[…]
I’m skeptical that the “will of the American public” can propel anything through Congress as currently constructed, but let’s face it: if Obama wants a 2014 withdrawal and a 2013 withdrawal comes to the House floor, as usual there will be a couple hundred votes for whatever Obama doesn’t want. But I doubt Obama would make this some kind of last stand. He would probably show his trademark flexibility, pivot, and get behind the resolution.
For those of you who have been keeping close track of Afghanistan, what’s the downside of an earlier-than-expected withdrawal?
raven
Unass that mofo.
polyorchnid octopunch
To me, this sounds like Frank putting the House Republicans in a bind.
WereBear
Except for the Revolutionary War, when we were “oppressed,” and WWII, when we actually were attacked by a nation, I can’t think of any war we’ve gotten into that hasn’t been because of conservatives whining and calling the opposition dickless.
I think we need a new framework.
Tata
No downside. My son-in-law can come home.
MattF
@polyorchnid octopunch: But don’t forget how powerless the House Dems are– I can’t see anything with Frank’s name on it getting to the floor of the House. Or any non-warmongering proposal being widely reported in the media.
The Other Bob
I don’t see how we can just turn around and pull out in the next 3.5 months on a whim. It’s not like we just send the soldiers a bus ticket.
jon
The House Republicans would be able to run on the chaos they’d blame on the too-early withdrawal, the one the President asked for. Thus, Obama’s fault. And it’s not as is a consulate or embassy wouldn’t be targeted, thus BENGHAZI!
So the President may keep quiet about it if he wants to do it, since the Contrary Party would insist the troops stay if Obama wants them out.
Really, the only way for Obama to ‘win’ would be to resign, die of natural causes, and renounce Islam from his deathbed, at least that’s what would make the GOP happy.
Ash Can
What brings in more bucks for the MIC, leaving sooner or later? That will be what determines how these sociopaths vote in this case.
Comrade Jake
I have no idea what’s going on in Afghanistan. Seems like you have to go fishing for news on that front.
low-tech cyclist
It would be quite a feat, logistically speaking, to get out that fast. June 2014 might be more manageable. And we’d like to leave in such a way that the very speed of our departure doesn’t create an abrupt power vacuum.
But subject to that, we should get out as fast as we can manage it. We should have gotten out of Afghanistan years ago.
gene108
Logistics.
There maybe some real logistical constraints on how quickly we can pack up and leave.
Comrade Jake
OK, just did some fishing. My sense is that it might actually be difficult, logistically, to get everyone out much faster than the current timetable. Also, we’ve yet to negotiate just how many troops will stay there.
Raptorfence
There is an argument that we need to stay through at least the elections in April 2014. As I understand it, that was what drove the original 2014 drawdown.
Anonymous At Work
If Obama proposes 2014, and the resolution is 2013, then Obama gets no Tea Party votes and they propose 2015+.
OzarkHillbilly
Hamid Karzai will leave Afghanistan with his billions in the Cayman Islands and the GOP will lionize him as yet another brave freedom fighter abandoned by that cowardly Obama 12 months earlier than would otherwise happen. He will then be able to command speaking fees in the 6 figures and the Repubs won’t be able to resist giving it to him.
On the brighter side, he will probably spend most of his time somewhere in Europe.
mericafukyea
Totally irresponsible. To even suggest this and risk losing all current gains would be incredibly dumb. Very irresponsible of Frank to suggest this. The commanders are the ones setting this time table. They are the ones in theater and they are the ones who best understand what the timetable should be. Not Frank and certainly not ball juice idiot posters like muckymix.
OzarkHillbilly
@Comrade Jake: More like logistically impossible.
Will Twiner
fewer dead Americans?
Since there is nothing to accomplish there, and we haven’t been able to accomplish it (nach), The only downside is higher unemployment when those soliders don’t come back in bodybags and discover they have no marketable skills?
MomSense
There are a lot of humanitarian workers in Afghanistan caring for vulnerable populations. It would be the ultimate up yours to now say to them well this is the longest war we’ve ever waged but we’re just going to skiddaddle now and leave you high and dry without much warning.
Also too logistics.
Will Twiner
in all seriousness, this logistics talk is bullshit. It just depends on how much we WANT to leave. We could pile up everything that won’t fit on the humvees in every base but Baghram, light a match, drive everyone to Baghram, hold the airport for long enough for enough C-130s to land and pick everyone up, then torch all that equipment at Baghram too. Would it be wasteful? Sure. But not markedly more wasteful than the way we have prosecuted the war up to now.
RP
I hope this is Frank playing with the house republicans, otherwise it’s an incredibly stupid comment.
Belafon
The one thing I disagree with Franks analysis is that you really shouldn’t read in one conflict what the public wants in every conflict, even at the same time. If the Germans had not declared war on us so soon after Pearl Harbor, I doubt the public would have joined in the European part of the conflict.
hoodie
Hard to say if that’s a good idea. I could see how it might put the GOP in a bind, but I doubt it would get far because more isolationist Paulite types don’t have that much visibility or sway in the House and and dem Senate leadership would probably be too risk averse to bring it up. They’d rather go with Obama’s current plan. US casualties are down for 2013 and will probably go much lower as forces consolidate in 2014. Obama also needs time to fail to reach a status of forces agreement to our liking, thus justifying getting completely out of the place. Replay of the Iraq exit.
Citizen_X
@WereBear: Well, in the Civil War we were attacked by a nation.
The Conservative Nation, that is.
negative 1
…and next the ‘will of the American People’ will repeal that horrible food stamp bill, and pass a jobs bill. As a matter of fact one might wonder why we’re debating the timeline for withdrawal yet the ‘starve the poor’ bill gets next to nothing for attention, especially from dems.
WereBear
@Citizen_X: I believe their thinking now is: Ya can’t lose if you don’t admit it!
With the current plan to turn most of the population into wage serfs; Hey, you don’t have to feed and clothe them like slaves! You barely have to pay them!
PaulW
The downside would be the same, only quicker: the current regime falls quickly to the Pakistan-backed Taliban, with the Iranian-backed tribes pushed back to how things were in 2001 when we went in.
In short, nation-building there will be impossible until we moderate Pakistan and Iran.
Also, the women of Afghanistan are gonna go back to being prisoners in their own homes.
Jamey
This has nothing in actual fact to do with the withdrawal from Afghanistan. And comments on Syria merely reflect the majority in polling results. Former Rep. Frank is betting with the [actual] House’s money. Nothing he says is binding, nor will house Dems be associated with Frank’s comments (other than by the likes of Chuck Todd…). However, some GOoPers will not be able to resist charging headlong at Frank’s comments. “Something” about Frank makes the GOP irrational, and it’s a joy to behold this effect.”
I loves me some “Barney Fag,” and I don’t care who knows it!
mai naem
I know it sounds callous, i just don’t see what difference we are going to make to a fucked up culture that does not want to progress. I am sorry for the way women are treated. I have no idea what you do beyond dropping setting up free satellite wifi, laptops and power generators with (instructions in their languages) from the sky in super well packaged boxes so the stuff doesn’t break. and hope they move into the 21st century(IOW bring the intertubes to them.) Way cheaper than the billions and billions we’ve spent.
Soonergrunt
The biggest constraint is logistics.
It takes a long time to inventory that property, determine what we should keep, what we should gift to the Afghan National Army and the Government of Afghanistan, what should be destroyed, and then locate and secure shipping containers, properly pack and move those containers to a port (in Pakistan, most likely) and find international shipping to move those containers back to the United States, and then stateside shipping to move it all to the final destinations.
different-church-lady
Ah, it appears some front pagers are capable of learning.
Of course, what would probably happen instead is he’d feel, for functional reasons, that ’13 was too soon, stick to his ’14 plan, everyone would freak out and scream this means HE’SNEVERGOINGTOPULLOUTPERPETUALWARISWHATHEWANTS!!, the pull-out happens on schedule in ’14 and all the emo-progs pretend it never happened that way.
doug r
@different-church-lady: Once Syria and Iran start coming around, we gotta have SOMETHING for the purity types to rage about. They do know even if the troops leave in 2013, there will still be DRONZ! there?
COB
The downside? Maybe a reduction in profit and disposable income for the many corporate grifters sucking from the taxpayer teats that are up for grabs in the Afghani nation-building boondoggle. That’s one of the few “downsides”.
kindness
Maybe if Obama proposed staying Republicans would insist we leave now.
Robert Sneddon
@Soonergrunt: There was a bad accident back in April this year when a cargo 747 crashed on takeoff from Bagram airbase. There’s footage of the actual crash from someone’s dashcam on Youtube. The cargo (armoured vehicles, probably MRAPs or the like) broke loose and shifted back and the plane went nose-up and stalled out, according to the NTSB reports on the incident. Seven crewmembers died.
It’s safer, cheaper and easier to move these sorts of items out of Afghanistan by road but due to guerrilla problems and the relative lack of friendly transport routes airlift is being heavily used instead. This limits the total tonnage of gear that can be moved and costs more at which point the decision to take, leave or destroy anything in particular becomes more complex. In addition the logistics people have to keep on supplying the airfields with lots of avgas, spares, personnel etc. to operate the airbridge which given they are trying to get stuff out of Afghanistan seems counter-intuitive. Just don’t call it a “surge”.
Belafon
@COB: This is the kind of comment that deserves the ridicule that gets thrown at Democrats.
nineone
Didn’t he, like, quit? ‘Cos this probably would have been more powerful coming from the inside.
Ben Franklin
@Soonergrunt:
11.000 MRAPS currently, 2000 simply cannot be returned because of the logistics. At a million each that’s $2 Billion dollahs to save shipping costs by air transport.
DHS just bought 2700 for domestic use. It was a bargain because they didn’t have the air-freight bill.
How’s that for logistics?
gwangung
In all seriousness, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Details matter. Waving it away is like modern CEOs trying to run a business—you don’t understand what you’re doing when you’re rushing pellmell for your goal.
Frankensteinbeck
@Ash Can:
This has been proven incorrect. Oh, it used to be the Law Of The Land. It’s why even the Obama Haters thought the military budget part of the sequester would be reinstated, but not the social cuts. Instead the lunatics showed they have the power and the will to fuck over the MIC if they think for a moment it matches their dogma. More evidence – when the intervention in Syria came up, the House did not leap all over passing it, and in fact looked like they wouldn’t pass it. The MIC no longer rules the roost. I would assume they’re freaking out over that.
Senyordave
I’m not sure we would have ever had a Civil Rights bill were it up to the will of teh American people
different-church-lady
@nineone: Isn’t he, like, 73 years old? Didn’t he serve, like, 32 years? Don’t people, like, deserve to retire at some point?
cleek
catastrophic loss of credibility
jayackroyd
@Will Twiner: it always amazes me that deployment takes a fraction of the time that is supposed to be absolutely necessary for withdrawal. I suppose this might not be the case if you accomplished your objectives but then there’s the German and Japanese counterexamples.
different-church-lady
@jayackroyd: In the same way smashing a vase takes vastly less time than gluing it back together.
scav
@jayackroyd: One is generally less worried about the collateral mess when going in. (plus, I suppose, a good part of the going-in readiness is generic and ticking over all the time).
hoodie
@jayackroyd: You’re easily amazed, then. You have to be able to deploy in an emergency. A lot of the gear is prepositioned and ready to go. Before withdrawing, you have to prep for transport, decide what to leave behind and process that, etc. A lot of that stuff is already done before deployment, at least for a lot of the initially used gear. In addition, you don’t deploy everything at once, stuff builds up in waves. The US has been in Afghanistan a long time.
Villago Delenda Est
@raven:
Just this.
Also, too, the downside is reduced profit for DoD contractors, but I’m perfectly willing to let that happen to bring our soldiers home, and out of harms way there, and into the NRA’s ‘armed society is a batshit insane society’ here.
Lee
@mai naem: I’ve always thought we should just immigrate all the women and kids to a country of their choice. The problem solves itself in 20 years or so
Jeremy
I rather stick to the timeline laid out by President Obama. We need to make sure the transition is smooth. You can’t just pull out of a country abruptly.
Hawes
I think Obama would be fine with a December pull-out. (I read something somewhere about how he can’t come up with a justification for staying since Karzai keeps shitting all over us.) At this point, the Generals are opposed to a precipitate pullout because they worry about all those lives being for naught if the country collapses and having to go back in by 2020.
Going to Congress would simply inoculate Obama from the backlash when Afghanistan becomes a hellish, medieval backwater drenched the blood of innocents.
You know, like always.
cckids
@The Other Bob:
This. Rachel Maddow did a show (early this summer?) about how it is a full time job for ?? how many people, just packing up the important shit over there & getting the ship/aircraft space to get it back home. And that doesn’t count, mostly, the larger stuff like trucks, which are getting left there. It was amazing; they had these huge, at least 5′ x 7′ containers, FULL of stuff like night vision goggles, stuff that cost thousands of dollars each. And there were HUNDREDS of the containers. It was blinding, the money it all represented. And the waste & opportunity cost.
Edit to add: And she mentioned, that, even going all-out & using all the available space, they probably won’t make the 2014 pullout date – there is too much crap over there. Not to mention the troops. The logistics were mind-bending.
burnspbesq
@The Other Bob:
I think the idea (to the extent there is one) is that we would either blow up or abandon all of our gear and just fly the troops home. Great for defense contractors, great for al Qaeda and local warlords who can scavenge the leftovers. Not so good for anybody else.
ETA: And when the Taliban shoot down a planeload of our troops using a shoulder-fired SAM that they scavenged off one of our junkpiles, it will of course be Obama’s fault.
Quaker in a Basement
Downside?
More of this.
Trollhattan
Much the same way Walter Cronkite lost Vietnam for us (thanks a lot, Walter) pulling out too soon will mean the Democrat Party loses Afghanistan, just as we were “turning the corner.” Or is it just as we were “winning The Surge”?
Do it tomorrow; do it in eighteen months, the outcome is the same. We can only affect the “when” of the outcome at this late date. Which makes doing it tomorrow seem rather attractive.
Let’s sequester Afghanistan.
mclaren
What hilariously deluded naifs.
America will not withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014, 2024, or 2040. The war will go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on through presidents, global warming, the rise and fall of sea levels, submergence of continents, geologic ages of erosion, and the replacement of humans by a new dominant lifeform on earth (probably cockroaches.).
mclaren
@The Other Bob:
It’s easy.
Step 1: Leave all our shit on the ground, drop it and walk away, wherever it falls, that’s where it stays.
Step 2: Run like little girls for the nearest chopper or C-5a galaxy and leap onboard. Close the doors, take off for home.
Step 3: Done.