The United States is considering pulling out all its troops from Afghanistan next year, U.S. officials said, amid tension between the President Barack Obama’s Administration and Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government.
(Reuters, July 9, 2013)
I am pleased to see President Obama finally coming to his senses. But this raises the question: what has he accomplished by surging more troops into Afghanistan three years ago, instead of doing back then what he’s considering now?
After all, some of us warned that he was just putting the blood of more American soldiers on his hands:
America’s legacy there will be distinguished either by a terminally wounded national pride as American forces beat a hasty retreat in defeat (following the Russian precedent in Afghanistan), or by thousands of American soldiers being lost in Afghanistan’s ‘graveyard of empires’ as they continue fighting this unwinnable war (following America’s own precedent in Vietnam). More troops only mean more sitting ducks for Taliban fighters…
Obama would be well-advised to cut America’s losses and run ASAP; let the Afghans govern themselves however they like; and rely on Special Forces and aerial drones to ‘disrupt and dismantle’ Taliban and al-Qaeda operations there.
(“‘Without (or Even With) More Forces, Failure in Afghanistan Is Likely,’” The iPINIONS Journal, September 23, 2009)
There have been 2,083 American deaths in Afghanistan since 2001. But almost 70 percent of those deaths occurred not on George W. Bush’s watch, but on Obama’s. Why Obama, why?
I do not see how Obama can possibly justify the loss of life and waste of money that will occur over this period just for him to end up doing what President Nixon did in Vietnam: i.e., declaring victory and going home….
(“Obama Escalates Afghan War; the ‘Die’ Is Cast on His Presidency,” The iPINIONS Journal, December 2, 2009)
Enough said?
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