afghanistan

One Republican presidential hopeful today:

Newt Gingrich said it is impossible to “fix” Afghanistan and suggested the U.S. should to tell Afghan citizens to “figure out how to live your own miserable life.”

Speaking at a Republican luncheon here on Monday, Mr. Gingrich amped up his criticism of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan after a string of attacks by Afghan soldiers on American troops. ”We’re not going to fix Afghanistan,” the former House speaker said. “It’s not possible.”

His prescription:”What you have to do is say, ‘You know, you’re going to have to figure out how to live your own miserable life… Because you clearly don’t want to learn from me how to be unmiserable.’”

So we can't "fix" Afghanistan? What kind of message does that send to our troops fighting over there and the families of our fallen soldiers?

It sounds like Newt is wanting to cut and run. Wouldn't this give a clear message to the terrorists that they have won?

Now do I believe these notions? Absolutley not. I am simply repeating the very same lines of attack that the Republicans used against anyone who questioned our involvement in Iraq or Afghanistan. This was the sickening way that the Republicans used war to divide our country and now they are sitting on the other side of the fence. Even worse is that it comes from a bunch of chickenhawks, who did anything possible to get out of putting on the uniform.

Yup - here you have today's GOP.

Warren Buffett has a great op-ed in today's Times, in which he says it is time for Washington to extend the "shared sacrifice" we hear so much about to the rich, including himself:

OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.

Buffett doesn't hide anything either. He breaks out the raw numbers. Last year Buffett paid 17.4% in federal taxes, while the employees in his office paid an average 36%.

Stop and think about that for a moment. The tax burden for the richest people in this country is more than 1/2 of what the bottom 99% of this country carries. Not only that, but we have a big name in the top 1% here saying that it isn't fair to the rest of us and must be changed.

Perhaps a good place to start looking at government waste is in the military contracts, specifically those tied to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan:

A new report from a bipartisan commission set up to scrutinize the unprecedented use of contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan concludes that the United States has wasted tens of billions of the nearly $177 billion that has been spent on those contracts and grants since 2002.

The report, titled "At What Risk? Correcting Over-reliance on Contractors in Contingency Operations," said its estimate may even understate the problem because it may not take into full account ill-conceived projects, poor planning and oversight by the U.S. government, as well as criminal behavior and blatant corruption by both government and contractor employees.

"For many years," the report says, "the government has abdicated its contracting responsibilities - too often using contractors as the default mechanism ... without consideration for the resources needed to manage them."

And I’m sure the number is higher. I wonder if they even considered the $9 billion that went missing in Iraq in 2003-2004? You know, that money, which whenever Democrats brought up the Republicans didn’t want to hear about it.

How can we even begin to talk about “financial responsibility” when this gross lack of oversight/accounting can continue to go on in our government without any talks of reform?

Just got this breaking news alert from the Washington Post:

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, fell ill at the witness table during a Senate hearing Tuesday and had to be escorted from the room.

Petraeus was listening to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) express concern about the direction of the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan when he appeared to faint. Aides immediately rushed to help him, and he was led out of the hearing room.

Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) said, he 'appears to be doing very well.'

Hopefully he is doing well, but I would be amiss if I didn't point out the irony that he fainted while listening to John McCain speak. That is priceless.

I noticed a general message giving birth today – that we should have started focusing on Yemen back in the beginning of the whole war on terror. I can’t say I entirely disagree with that, but what makes it post-worthy is that I am hearing this argument from a lot of GOPers, the same ones who were cheerleading for us to go to war in Iraq.

Given the fact that fighting Iraq stripped our resources from Afghanistan, a fact that is extremely obvious, wouldn’t it have been better for these former Iraq cheerleaders to speak up back in 2002? Instead they took to backing the Bush administration, no matter what. I can only assume that is because “you don’t question the commander in chief at a time of war”, yet that is exactly what they are doing now.

So would someone in the media please ask these people when they spin this whole “we should have been in Yemen for years” mantra, why didn’t they push for this instead of Iraq? Also ask them if they think we could have fought Yemen, Afghanistan and Iraq all at once.

We are talking about terrorism and people’s lives, so it’s time to stop the bullshit talking points game and actually address the situation. The best people to do that is the media and after they were accomplice number 1 in lying this nation into war with Iraq, they sure as hell better stand up now and do their jobs.

What happened in Iraq last year, and last month particularly, was really good news. We can’t let that over shadow the bad news that has come out of Afghanistan. 2009 was the deadliest year for U.S. forces in the 8+ year war:

This is something I never thought I would see:

Senate Republicans said Thursday that they would try to filibuster a massive Pentagon bill that funds the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an unusual move that several acknowledged was an effort to delay President Obama's health-care legislation.

Late into the night, Democrats emerged from a huddle confident that they would muster the 60 votes needed to thwart the GOP effort at blocking the military spending bill as an antiwar liberal said he would set aside his reservations and support choking off the filibuster in order to keep the chamber on a timeline of holding a final health-care vote before Christmas. The vote on the defense spending bill was to occur after 1 a.m. Friday, too late for this edition.

So they are willing to hurt our troops and our fight against terrorism because they don’t like health care reform?

They are willing to cause a terrorist attack on this nation because of this?

Don’t the Republicans take the war on terror seriously? Sounds like they are living in a pre-9/11 world.

Table turning is fun in a sad sort of way, but the filibuster was busted at about 2am this morning by a vote of 63-33. Sorry Republicans – our troops will get their money no thanks to you!

“The 30,000 additional troops that I am announcing tonight will deploy in the first part of 2010 – the fastest pace possible – so that they can target the insurgency and secure key population centers. They will increase our ability to train competent Afghan Security Forces, and to partner with them so that more Afghans can get into the fight. And they will help create the conditions for the United States to transfer responsibility to the Afghans.” 

“Because this is an international effort, I have asked that our commitment be joined by contributions from our allies. Some have already provided additional troops, and we are confident that there will be further contributions in the days and weeks ahead. Our friends have fought and bled and died alongside us in Afghanistan. Now, we must come together to end this war successfully. For what’s at stake is not simply a test of NATO’s credibility – what’s at stake is the security of our Allies, and the common security of the world.”

“Taken together, these additional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011. Just as we have done in Iraq, we will execute this transition responsibly, taking into account conditions on the ground. We will continue to advise and assist Afghanistan’s Security Forces to ensure that they can succeed over the long haul. But it will be clear to the Afghan government – and, more importantly, to the Afghan people – that they will ultimately be responsible for their own country.”

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