McChrystal’s conundrum
AntiWar.Com
by Justin Raimondo
09/23/09
McChrystal himself fails to grasp the essential fact about the country he is invading and occupying, which is that Afghans — like people everywhere — hate invaders and invariably resist occupation. Just ask the Russians or the British. The reason for the insurgency isn’t because the Afghan government is any more corrupt than governments in that region of the world generally tend to be: it’s because President Karzai is an American puppet who was installed because we invaded the country and continue to occupy it. Without U.S. military support, the Karzai regime wouldn’t last but a month or two, at most — and the same is true of any regime we support, no matter who is at the head of it. The general, of course, cannot acknowledge this, since it would sink the whole COIN doctrine he and his co-thinkers at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) are pushing...
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/09/22/mcchrystals-conundrum/
The Pentagon is bankrupting us
Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G. Hornberger
09/22/09
Why can’t the American people recognize that that’s precisely what is happening in the United States today? The U.S. military — euphemistically called the ‘defense’ establishment — or as President Eisenhower described it, the ‘military-industrial complex’ — is a monumental burden that is bankrupting our country, especially in combination with the ever-increasing burden of the domestic welfare state. First, it takes tax dollars to support soldiers. That’s a burden — a drain — on the private sector...
http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2009-09-22.asp
Afghanistan: the West has defeated itself
Spiked
by Mick Hume
09/22/09
The top secret (ie, leaked and published) assessment of the Afghan War sent to President Barack Obama by General Stanley McChrystal, top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, apparently runs to 64 pages. Yet to judge from the published excerpts its underlying message can be summed up rather more succinctly: ‘We’ve lost’...
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7425/
A war too rough
The American Spectator
by George H. Wittman
09/22/09
It is well understood from the experience of the last several years that the creation of a cohesive national Afghan military force has little chance of coming to fruition in any reasonable time frame. It is not revealing classified information to state that the initial efforts to establish an Afghan Army have been hindered by the traditional rivalries among the various Afghan tribal and clan groups. This all-encompassing socio-cultural clash is augmented by the overwhelming illiteracy of the eligible manpower. What is driving American policy in Afghanistan is the inability to conceive of a way to avoid appearing to quit the field with the war still at hand. The plan of creating an Afghan Army to take over from the U.S. and NATO is simply a device to allow the West to get out of a place it long ago had decided was a losing proposition strategically even if it was relatively successful tactically. As the situation stands, it would take many more years to weld together such a unified Afghan fighting force — and even that appears problematical...
http://spectator.org/archives/2009/09/22/a-war-too-rough
No more troops to Afghanistan
Boston Globe
by H.D.S. Greenway
09/22/09
On an autumn night in 1415, in their anxiety-filled camp on the ‘vasty fields of France,’ the English waited for the dawn that would bring them to battle at Agincourt ‘upon St. Crispin’s day.’ The king’s generals feared they could not win without more troops. Shakespeare has the earl of Westmoreland say: O that we now had here/ But one ten thousand of those men in England/ That do no work today! But Henry V answers: No my fair cousin � God’s will I pray thee, wish not one man more. The king, in the most memorable call to war in all literature, says he does not want his ‘happy few,’ his ‘band of brothers,’ to have to share the glory, but the truth was he hadn’t more troops to spare. Henry’s admonishment to the earl was recalled some five-and-a-half centuries after Agincourt when another general, William Westmoreland, wanted to throw more soldiers into Vietnam. He, too, was turned down. With General Stanley A. McChrystal’s report calling for additional troops now public, President Obama will soon have his King Henry moment; whether or not to send more troops into the ever-worsening war in Afghanistan. Much depends on his definition of the mission...
http://tinyurl.com/nsjnoa
One Afghan, one vote
The Weekly Standard
by Richard Williamson
09/22/09
Will the Obama administration give Afghanistan a pass on credible allegations of material fraud in its recent election? We don’t know yet. But it shouldn’t. In Afghanistan’s recent Presidential election there have been credible allegations of voter registration cards for sale, stuffed ballot boxes and other irregularities. The European Union has said up to one-third of the ballots may be tainted. America should not demand that we find a Thomas Jefferson amongst the chaos in Afghanistan. We’re still looking for another Jefferson in America. But the human right of self-determination and the rule of law are abandoned at our own peril...
http://tinyurl.com/mmcp59
Lost in Afghanistan?
Mother Jones
by David Corn
09/21/09
The United States has been prosecuting the war in Afghanistan for nearly eight years — and still doesn’t know what it’s doing. That’s the basic message of the assessment submitted to the Pentagon and the White House by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan. � That is some admission. US forces have been engaged in Afghanistan for longer than the length of US involvement in World War I and II, and they are still essentially clueless. And the insurgents, he adds, ‘out perform’ Kabul and the ISAF at information operations...
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/09/lost-afghanistan
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Afghanistan
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=McChrystal
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Karzai
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=industrial+complex
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=raimondo
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Jacob+G.+Hornberger
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Mick+Hume
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=George+H.+Wittman
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=H.D.S.+Greenway
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Richard+Williamson
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=David+Corn
