Helen Thomas: What Are U.S. Goals in Afghanistan?

[babylonsister]

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/40700

What Are U.S. Goals in Afghanistan?
Submitted by Chip on Sat, 2009-03-14 05:49.

What are U.S. goals in Afghanistan
By Helen Thomas | Seattle PI

snip//

There have been indications that Obama may start diplomatic overtures to the Taliban at a time when the human and financial costs of the two wars are wearing down the U.S. as it struggles with an economic depression that has no end in sight.

According to White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, the president is evaluating the situation in Afghanistan.

Obama would do well to study the trajectory that took us into the Vietnam War and the terrible price we paid there. We lost the war and fled by helicopters from Saigon.

Both Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon thought that they could win in Vietnam, but they were brought down as much by the American people -- who rebelled against the war -- as they were by the North Vietnamese.

Obama could go deeper in history and check out President Dwight D. Eisenhower's career for a lesson on how to end a war.

When running for the White House in 1952, when the American public was growing frustrated about the long U.S. involvement in the Korean War, Eisenhower told voters: "I shall go to Korea."

And he did. The Korean War ended in a standoff in 1953 -- much to the relief of the American people.

Despite some ensuing skirmishes in the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas, a truce has endured ever since.

During the 2008 campaign, Obama indicated that he was willing to speak to all parties in the military or diplomatic disputes we were involved in. He was criticized for his plan for outreach to the militants in Afghanistan.

But there is no alternative.

Sooner or later American presidents should learn that people will always fight for their country against a foreign invader. And peace should be the only goal.

[masuki bance]

1. Helen's wrong

Obama's goal is peace in Afghanistan.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

2. How so?

Where's the evidence for that?

[kas125]

8. bombing for peace?

[bemildred]

3. The goal, at this point, it to get out of it without looking like losers that wasted a boatload of

money and got a boatload of people killed for nothing. Which is a losing proposition because it is not correct. All of this is papered over, of course, with the notion that we have something at stake in Afghanistan, which is not correct, since we are never going to control the area or its hydrocarbons, and otherwise is none of our business.

[Solly Mack]

4. Ain't that the truth!

"The goal, at this point, it to get out of it without looking like losers that wasted a boatload of money and got a boatload of people killed for nothing." (and tortured and detained)

[midnight]

5. Peace should be the goal.... Let's start those talks and end the

fighting. Come on Mr. President, you can do it.

[PurityOfEssence]

6. To disprove the slur that Democrats are weak

I'm serious.

Obama's call to redirect military energy out of Iraq and into Afghanistan seems to have come from criticism on the primary trail of his being some kind of "typical" Democratic peacenik. He parried this intimation by rattling the sabre and playing tough. It also helped dispel the myth of being soft on Islamists and being some kind of stealth Muslim. The move was helpful because it tapped into primal vengeance and paranoia of the voters, and now he's pretty much stuck with it.

What is the point? Terrorist cells can connive ANYWHERE. They don't need some set of monkey bars for black-clad zealots to exercise on. The very fact that that ancient bit of footage keeps being shown should suggest that such places aren't all that necessary, and whole countries certainly aren't.

What's the objective? If we want to bring our ethics to that part of the world, we'll be up to our bloodshot eyeballs in a full-blown religious war, because the locals will shriek that we're defiling their women and trying to convert them. Nobody describes what "victory" would actually be. It's all hyperbole and blustering jingoistic vagueness.

It's a minor misstep if we gently ease our way out, but any version of escalation is disastrous idiocy that could very well lead to a fundamentalist revolution in nuclear-armed Pakistan.

It's foolishness writ large.

[MISSDem]

7. I agree with Helen. No more war.

We have enough problems of our own. Why are we in Afghanistan?