Unlike Rush, Bill Maher, Palin, Mittens, or Newt the Afghan War is not a popular subject at DU
Democrats trust the President, Sec Panetta and CIA Director Petraeus have all the plans in place to successfully end this war sometime in 2014 (or ten years after that).
The fact that billions more will be spent, an unknown number of American, NATO troops, and Afghans will die or be wounded is not important. The mission is to carry on until it's over. Trust the leaders, ask no questions - in fact, unless you have a loved one in the military, put the whole messy war out of your mind and carry on - life is good, right?
Most readers will simply ignore this post and move on to the more entertaining ones, but for those who might have a few moments, the article below is worth reading and giving some thought to.
Tomgram: Ann Jones, Playing the Game in Afghanistan
Posted by Ann Jones at 9:34am, March 8, 2012.
How primitive the Afghans are! A New York Times account of faltering negotiations over a possible “strategic partnership” agreement to leave U.S. troops on bases in that country for years to come highlights just how far the Afghans have to go to become, like their U.S. mentor, a mature democracy. Take the dispute over prisons. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been insisting that the U.S. turn over its prison facility at Bagram Air Base to his government. (The recently burned Korans came from that prison’s library.) The Obama administration initially refused and now has suggested a six-month timetable for such a turnover, an option Karzai has, in turn, rejected. No one, by the way, seems yet to be negotiating about a second $36-million prison at Bagram that, TomDispatch recently reported, the U.S. is now in the process of building.
The Times’ Alissa Rubin suggests, however, that a major stumbling block remains to any such turnover. She writes: “The challenges to a transfer are enormous, presenting serious security risks both for the Afghan government and American troops. Many of the estimated 3,200 people being detained [in Bagram’s prison] cannot be tried under Afghan law because the evidence does not meet the legal standards required to be admitted in Afghan courts. Therefore, those people, including some suspected insurgents believed likely to return to the fight if released, would probably have to be released because Afghanistan has no law that allows for indefinite detention for national security reasons.”
Honestly, what kind of a backward country doesn’t have a provision for the indefinite detention, on suspicion alone, of prisoners without charges or hope of trial? As a mature democracy, we now stand proudly for global indefinite detention, not to speak of the democratic right to send robot assassins to take out those suspected of evil deeds anywhere on Earth. As in any mature democracy, the White House has now taken on many of the traits of a legal system -- filling, that is, the roles of prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner.
Six months to learn all that (and how to burn Korans, too)? I don’t think so. Or how about a really mature plan that, according to an Associated Press report, top Pentagon officials are now mulling over: to put whatever U.S. elite special operations forces remain in Afghanistan after 2014 under CIA control. The reason? Once they are so lodged, even though their missions wouldn’t change, they would officially become “spies” and whoever’s running Washington then will be able to swear, with complete candor, that no U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan. Even better, the CIA is conveniently run by former Afghan War commander David Petraeus and the U.S. public would no longer have to be informed about “funding or operations” for those non-troops. Now, that’s how a mature democracy makes the trains run on time!
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175513/tomgram%3A_ann_jones%2C_playing_the_game_in_afghanistan/
= new reply since forum marked as read
...that the only reason we don't see more discussion of Afghanistan is because we have a Democratic President? And that moreover, the attention paid to the topics previously was only because we had a Republican President?
I think most DUers would disagree with you. A great deal of attention gets paid when there are important developments, otherwise what is occurring is not partisanship, but war fatigue!
DU is primarily driven in it's topic of conversations by the mainstream news cycle. When the media covers it, DU discusses it. For example, there has been extensive discussion of Afghanistan recently over the Koran burnings and other our accelerated plan to get out of Afghanistan. The reality is though that the media is not covering the blow-by-blow of the Afghan war like it did Iraq. Moreover, since we are in our 11th year of war people truly are fatigued.
Don't suppose this is some sort of scenario where DU does not have "outrage and discussion" when the issue is broached. If you doubt this hypothesis I suggest you start an OP in favor of staying in Afghanistan for 5 more years and see what response you get. Consider that before you accuse DU of partisanship in regards to war, and moreover, consider the fact that compared to the last year of conflict the level of domestic gun violence is substantially higher and that gets only a modicum of attention.
To accuse DUers of partisanship in regards to war is silly and reflects a lack of time spent on this board. 
