Afghanistan

When you ignore Afghanistan for 7 years then you never get stories like this:

The Taliban’s top military commander was captured several days ago in Karachi, Pakistan, in a secret joint operation by Pakistani and American intelligence forces, according to American government officials.

The commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, is an Afghan described by American officials as the most significant Taliban figure to be detained since the American-led war in Afghanistan started more than eight years ago. He ranks second in influence only to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s founder and a close associate of Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mullah Baradar has been in Pakistani custody for several days, with American and Pakistani intelligence officials both taking part in interrogations, according to the officials.

This is a great accomplishment for the military and administration, but for some reason I feel Dick Cheney will consider it a major failure.

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.

I been meaning to post about the whole notion the wingnuts (including Lieberman) have been pushing; that we should go to war in Syria. Let’s think about this for a minute. The war started in Afghanistan. That then pushed the terrorists in Pakistan. We are fighting some in Pakistan and now they are moving to Yemen. This is the problem with fighting a war on an ideology – it’s very mobile.

So if President Obama decided that we are going to start fighting in Yemen, then where will the terrorists move next? Maybe Syria or Nigeria. Will we then expand the war into those countries? If we had President McCain right now, I’m sure we would already be in those places. We would be stretching our military so thin that Afghanistan would again descend further and we have to start all over again.

The focus to fight terrorism shouldn’t be the brute force of the military, but rather the surgical approach of law enforcement and intelligence.

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:

Hopefully be the end of 2010 I can do Afghanistan as a good news post. The increase in numbers reflects the fact that we are actually fighting the battle now, instead of ignoring it like Bush did.

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!

We thought he was lost, but at last he was found:

"In his speech to the nation last night, President Obama claimed that 'Commanders in Afghanistan repeatedly asked for support to deal with the reemergence of the Taliban, but these reinforcements did not arrive.' Such a bald misstatement, at least as it pertains to the period I served as Secretary of Defense, deserves a response."

"I am not aware of a single request of that nature between 2001 and 2006. If any such requests occurred, 'repeated' or not, the White House should promptly make them public. The President's assertion does a disservice to the truth and, in particular, to the thousands of men and women in uniform who have fought, served and sacrificed in Afghanistan."

Well geez Don – I’ll do you one better. Remember when you said reducing troops in Afghanistan wouldn’t hurt security there?

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said a planned reduction of U.S. troops in Afghanistan would not weaken the country's security. Mr. Rumsfeld made his comments during a joint press conference in Kabul with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismissed suggestions that the U.S. troop reduction would affect the hunt for Osama bin Laden and other terrorists.

That was in December of 2005. How about now Don? Or how about in May of 2003 when you said combat missions were ending, despite the warnings by NGOs that there was a serious security issue?

We can also talk about your retaliatory behavior towards our commanders when they said there was a need for more troops. Hell – one of them now servers in the Obama administration (see Eric Shinseki). Your tenure at DOD was marred by nothing but incompetence, incompetence that came with one of the heaviest price tags – the lives of our soldiers. Now crawl back under you rock.

Once President Obama announced a timeline to start drawing down troops in Afghanistan we knew that the right would start attacking it. Right on cue we have John McCain telling Good Morning America that the timeline will “embolden” the enemy:

"I trust his [McChrystal's] judgment enormously but I also understand that both our enemies and our friends will hear the message that we are going to be leaving at a certain date. That was unnecessary," McCain said. "I'm confident we can succeed but when you tell your enemies there's a date and you're going to start leaving, it emboldens your enemies and dispirits your friends."

We have heard this same argument time and time again when it comes to trying to end a war. John McCain would rather see us stay in Afghanistan for the next 100 years than try to come home. It’s funny how these so called fiscal-hawks never have any problem throwing away billions upon billions of tax dollars in the name of  war.

It’s also really interesting the way McCain is trying to dance around supporting General McChrystal. Whenever the left criticized one of our commanders, people like McCain would come out swinging. McChrystal has very publically supported President Obama’s plan, so why can’t McCain? Is John McCain trying to undermine the leadership of the military now? It sure sounds that way. We even have General Petraeus saying that this timeline is very ‘realistic’:

During last year’s campaign, McCain continually held up Petraeus as being the authoritative answer on the wars. Now McCain wants to disagree with him? Thankfully this is Senator McCain and not President McCain, or we might also be talking about the Iran war right now.

Last night Chris Matthews referred to the former veep as a “troll”. I will give tweety credit on this line, as it was funny, as compared to his comparison of West Point as the “enemy camp”

And so I present us with the official Dick Cheney troll doll:

Last night Sean Hannity went on a tirade complaining that President Obama took three months to decide on his troop increase and even said that this is the first increase the President has committed to Afghanistan.

Hannity somehow seems to forget the 17,000 additional troops that were ordered to Afghanistan only three weeks into the Obama presidency. That’s really supportive of our fighting men and women to just totally ignore their efforts. That’s Sean Hannity – troop hating douche bag.

Tonight in his post speech analysis, Chris Matthews declared Obama "went to maybe the enemy camp tonight" at West Point. The reactions to this senseless comment have been very strong. The left and right have been tweeting up a storm about it and Matthews better retract that statement or face certain outrage from not only the political junkies, but also the military.

Now that the speech is done and we know the plan we can now take a look at the new site launched by the Department of Defense, Afghanistan/Pakistan Policy.

“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.”

source

As the hour of President Obama’s speech approaches we are starting to get leaked details. In those details we find out that he will be sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan over the next 6 months. He is also calling for an end to the war within three years. Hopefully that is an obtainable timeline, but we can plan on the GOP attacking as just that – a timeline. So with this news we can plan on a bigger war here at home also.

Very powerful, especially this line:

With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics

I have always broke with the rest of the left on Afghanistan, but I do believe that the situation requires less troops – not more. This is a perfect situation for highly trained strike forces to go in and take out terrorists, not a situation for nation building. History alone will tell you that any attempt to restructure the country of Afghanistan has been a major failure. Of course we might have had a different outcome if Bush didn’t ignore the war to invade Iraq.

Here’s Fred today:

"It really doesn't matter how President Obama divides the Afghan baby, how he splits the difference between McChrystal and Biden. Because the war has been lost," Thompson said on his radio show today.  "I say this because of one sad and simple fact. The president does not have the will and determination to do what's necessary to win it. His heart's not in it, and never has been. The Taliban knows it. Al Qaeda knows it. Our allies know it. And the American people know it.

"Our enemies are now emboldened and our friends are discouraged. We cannot prevail if the American people are not willing to make the sacrifices necessary for an extended effort. The case has not been made to them to justify this effort. The case can only be made by the president. This president is unable or unwilling to make that case," Thompson said.

Anytime a Democrat said anything close to the about Bush then the right went into full “they are siding with the terrorists” meme. Now it’s time for Fred to face that same music. People should start calling into his show and asking him exactly why he is trying to embolden our enemies.