Arkansas Blog

There is no doubt about Hillary's qualifications, but some doubt about Obama's will to give her direction for a basic change in foreign policy seems legitimate. Gary Kamiya had a column in Salon on the 25th in which he suggested that Obama needed to declare an end to the "war" on terror -- that a mere shift of military assets from Iraq to Afghanistan, albeit with an emphasis on rebuilding Afghanistan, suggests that the Bush Administration's idea that terrorism can be defeated largely by military means is to be continued. Kamiya adds: "Further doubt about whether Obama intends to fundamentally change Bush's foreign policy have been raised by his choice of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State."

The very idea of staying in Afghanistan at all, much less surging with increased troops, no mission, no nothing... well it's dumber than Bush's original idea of invading Iraq.

Have we (US Citizens) no decency, no humanity. no F*****g conscious at all?!!!!

are you conscious.....get off the blog and watch the news. any network. look for India related stories.

I am not even sure what you are getting at.. little red. Personally, I watch Indian television coverage on the net. US coverage is all about US to a fault.

And what does that have to do with our continued needless barbaric war in Afghanistan? If anything our actions over there exacerbate the terror problems.

Eureka Springs,

Sorry to disagree with you, but both Afghanistan and Iraq are part of the Pottery Barn scenario.

Bush bought into them. He or 'his boys' broke them with no plans and poor execution and now we have to pick-up the shards, piece them together with glue and find a way to place the repaired pottery back on the shelf with a reasonable chance of staying together for a while.

I don't think you will find any surge or military action in Iraq or Afghanistan happening without a clear goal from the CinC and an achievable plan from the JCS and Centcom.

We should have never been in Iraq. But I'm not sure that we could have ever gone after the Al -Qaida bases and training areas without removing the Taliban from control. In any case, I hope Obama's goal is stability for the countries we have occupied and denying of Al-Qaida and associates safe haven for a long, long time.

You can't begin to buy the pottery until you stop breaking it.... and by the way.. let's be very clear broken pottery in this case is blown up human beings... tattered lives... and wasted billions of dollars... for nothing... not even pursuit of Osama, truth be told... I mean it's been over 7 years. We failed miserably.... no victory can be wrung out of that blood stained situation... certainly not from us.

Same goes for Iraq... we are the unifying force which unifies Afghani's and Iraqi's against us.. all their other feuds will have to be settled in spite of us or after we are gone.

When is the last time a foreign occupying force won over there? Can we say NEVER. There is nothing to win... except for the likes of AL Q, Taliban... and our Military Industrial Complex... they are the only winners...as long as we let them have our soldiers blood and all our treasure.

The U.S. has not suffered a major attack by international terrorists for the past seven years. That will be the benchmark for judging Obama's and Hillary's policies.

The Brits attempted to occupy Ottoman Empire, mostly Iraq-Turkey for over 20 years and left in
defeat. Then came the Russians and they learned Osama loves nothing better than to fight in his own back yard, esp with U.S. aid.

What had better be watched is an outbreak of nuclear war between Pakistan and India. Hopefully Mrs Clinton will keep a close eye on it but I have doubts it will be avoided. This past week's incidents in Mumbia should be considered the opener.

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If you allow that to be the benchmark... you are a fool.

Did you ever for a moment ask yourself why folks like Osama wanted to attack us in the first place.

There are no guarantees... but I can guarantee you very few of the 50 million Iraq's or 27 million Iraq's have a bass boat (or air force or Navy) big enough to circle the globe and take us out.

Think!

ANd btw, we are going broke financially.. along with any moral credibility around the globe for our behavior.

The bottom line is that we need out. We need to be out, now. We especially never should have invaded Iraq. But the correct analogy is not necessarily Pottery Barn, offered by Colin Powell. A better analogy is a tiger by the tail. We need to let go, it's wearing us out in terms of lives (not just American) and treasure, but we've got to consider what happens when we let go. If Iraq and Afghanistan become safe havens for terrorists after we leave, we will only have made a really bad situation worse. Before 9-11 there were safe havens in Africa, Pakistan, and Afghanistan for terrorists. We can't let them be restored and add Iraq to the list. We have to come up with a long-range solution that cuts off their resources and denies them safe havens without continuing these senseless wars. And that fact that that is an incredible conundrum is why we haven't already solved the problem. It's not just that the Bush administration is clueless. This situation is similar to Vietnam, but not identical. All we lost when we left Vietnam was face. We could have left years before we did and had the same political result with fewer lives lost. This war's not the same. If we leave without some kind of solution, we are at risk. We've got to let go of the tiger without being clawed, bitten, or eaten. Easier said than done.

I correspond with a friend who is deployed via European forces in Afghanistan. You cannot begin to comprehend how despicable we are in the eyes of our allies.. I seriously doubt the likes of 45 million pastuns in Pakistan and Afghanistan will ever come to terms with us... And they have hundreds of years to wait, if need be. It's what they always do.

ES,
Let's not forget Disaster Monkey has signed a pact with Iraq (and their parliment(?) approved it
Nov 25 to withdraw major combat forces from Iraq by mid 2009 and an unconditional withdraw of all U.S. forces by 2011.

Of course it's a time table-something which all the Rwingnuts said should never be done.

I cannot imagine the huge multi billion dollar U.S. embassy complex which is being constructed in the center of Baghdad being void of U.S. forces.

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Well... the SOFA agreement... who really knows what it all says. Only 24 pages have been translated by McClatchy... FROM FARSI. And it reads like every other Bushco Bremmers agreement.. like a bunch of high schoolers wrote it.

We never had a stated mission...and now no one in AMerican media has an english version of the SOFA agreement... and yet some people... even on the AR blog think we should stay.. or have anything close to a noble purpose.

Has three *exit by* dates on our part. No telling how many exit by dates on the Iraqi's part. And claims we will give them all our building for free. I don't know if that means the green Zone too... much less all our (50) bases or the 21 mega bases.

Let me quote myself and finish my earlier post.

"We've got to let go of the tiger without being clawed, bitten, or eaten. Easier said than done."

But do it we must.

I'm coming late to this battle, but we must remember what happened to the USSR when they were in Afghanistan. They got their ass handed to them. We've been all into the war in Iraq and I think most Americans who bother to think about our future think if we get out of Iraq, Afghanistan will be a piece of cake. What a foolish thought.

Bush did break it and I don't know how to fix it. The truth is....there probably isn't a fix, just more disaster to match the disaster we've had from day one. Leaving suddenly is the cowards way out, but that may be the only choice we're given. Staying and killing an endless number of Afghans and US soldiers to no good end is the worst idea of all. I'd rather be a live coward than a dead believer in an end that can never be achieved.

The only hope we have and it's mighty slim is negotiation and nation building. We cannot do anything but dig ourselves deeper by using military force. We're in pickle of Cheney-Bush makings. No matter what there will not be a happy ending to the Afghanistan story.