"DGDevin" wrote in message
m...
"David Nebenzahl" wrote in message
.com...

I'll buy that (your response), on the grounds that the wise, prudent and
long-range thing to do would to have never set foot in that place in the
first place.

I feel the invasion was justified (which is not the same thing as wise) in
that Bin Laden was operating from there,

Would that justify invading the area of the US that Timothy McVeigh operated
from? Of course not, and when framed that way, the invasion of Afghanistan
makes equally little sense. More than Iraq, I suppose, but not very much
more. We didn't learn much from fighting in Vietnam or Korea. At least
Vietnam ended up as a stable country without nukes. We didn't fare as well
with the truce in Korea. We'll be revisiting that war soon, I'm afraid.

although it's notable that when he
was cornered at Tora Bora the pleas of the CIA/Special Forces team leader
to
have Army Rangers dropped in behind Bin Laden so he couldn't escape to
Pakistan were ignored by Washington.¹

Remember that history, as told by participants, hardly ever paints said
participants in the dark colors that others might use. It's why
Presidential memoirs are often so saccharine that you get diabetes reading
them.

However I see little chance of a
stable democracy being established in Afghanistan in the foreseeable
future,

So then what's the fV(I*ing point? Wars should have clearly defined goals
and exit strategies. They've taught that at all the military schools since
'Nam but it seems like the entire DoD developed amnesia after 9/11.

maybe it would have been different if the resources poured into Iraq had
gone to Afghanistan instead. But then there is the problem of leaving
Afghanistan putting more pressure on Pakistan, and Pakistan has nukes we
don't want kicking around loose.

The lunacy of the whole situation is that we somehow believe that we have a
crystal ball and can determine what will come of our actions. We were
convinced that all of Asia would fall under the thumb of Red China via the
"domino theory." We were 100% wrong.Throughout history, only the Romans
seem to have been able to overcome the prejudice that people felt about
being invaded by weaving them into the Roman conquest machine. They had it
easy, though. They never pulled out. When you got conquered, you stayed
conquered so no one thought "what will it be like when the Romans leave and
the people we helped them decimate turn on us?" In that sense, they were
somewhat smarter than we've been because we've been around this block with
the Hmong, the Kurds and many, many more. We were utterly convinced all
Cuba would rise up and join the rebellion we would start at the "Bay of
Pigs." Wrong there, too.

But now, of course, Obama has made it *his* war. It's no longer Bush's
folly.

Indeed. Sooner or later they'll have to pretend things are stable enough
to
pull out, that constant drain of blood and money can't be sustained
forever.
Among other things it's too bad they backed a national leader for
Afghanistan who is massively corrupt and apparently a bit crazy.

He was the BEST they could find. Read the CV's of some of the other
candidates and you'd think they graduated from a college designed to teach
James Bond's villians. Drugs, murder, mutilation, slavery, double and
triple crossers and much, much more. Reminds me a picture I saw once of
Geronimo in a top hat and tails. He's still Geronimo under that civilized
clothing. Same with Karzai. As soon as the US muscle backing him is gone,
he'll be, too. His paranoia eclipses even Saddam Hussein's. He knows his
time might come long before the US exit.

Of course if Obama had ordered an immediate withdrawal when he took office
the right would be screaming that he had abandoned Afghanistan, that the
war
could have been won if only he'd shown more guts and so on.

You got that right. He was damned either way, so he might as well have made
the people that elected him to end the war happy. The escalation of the war
and caving in on the public option have doomed him. There's only a slim
chance he's re-elected because he's so clearly guilty of the sin of
overpromising. In that respect, I believe Hillary actually waged the more
honest campaign.

Once they get those dire military briefings that outline the terrible things
that would happen when we pull out, Presidents are stuck between a rock and
a hard place. There is not one soldier I have talked to that believe the
Afghan police are likely to *ever* be ready to take over from the US troops.

So it comes down to taking the kick in the pants now, or betraying the
people that voted for you and taking the kick in the pants later, after a
few more tens of billions of dollars are burned up. All to please people
that wouldn't cross the street to whiz on him if he were on fire. Bringing
bi-partisanship to people uninterested in compromise is as futile as
bringing democracy to people who couldn't care less about it. It's clearly
Obama's fatal flaw. You can't change water into wine unless you're named
Jesus. Still, he keeps trying . . .

I can't help
but think of Nixon, who inherited a war he was eventually smart enough to
get out of but only after long years of more slaughter.

I had hoped Obama would have realized that the prolongation of the Vietnam
war served no useful purpose and that prolonging the AfRaq wars will bring
pretty much the same result. But we won't think of Obama as a dirty coward,
just a dirty, life-wasting liar. (I voted for the SOB and I feel betrayed.
YMMV.)

The worst part? We've cried wolf so often that the public will have little
taste for another war, even though Iran is developing into the most serious
threat of Middle East. When we need to exert military force the most, we
may find ourselves out of money, out of will, out of faith and out of luck.
If Korea, Taiwan and Iran all "light up" at the same time we're still busy
in AfRaq, we'll find out how seriously drained our military has become.

--
Bobby G.