Obama's Afghanistan Strategy: The News is Bad

[tekisui]

Source: Common Dreams

WASHINGTON - While U.S. officials insist they are making progress in reversing the momentum built up by the Taliban insurgency over the last several years, the latest news from Afghanistan suggests the opposite may be closer to the truth.

Even senior military officials are conceding privately that their much-touted new counterinsurgency strategy of "clear, hold and build" in contested areas of the Pashtun southern and eastern parts of the country are not working out as planned despite the "surge" of some 20,000 additional U.S. troops over the past six months.

Casualties among the nearly 130,000 U.S. and other NATO troops now deployed in Afghanistan are also mounting quickly.

Four U.S. troops were killed Wednesday when Taliban fire brought down their helicopter in the southern province of Helmand, the scene of a major U.S. offensive centered on the strategic farming region of Marja over the past several months.

That brought the death toll of NATO soldiers just this week to 23, including 10 killed in various attacks around the country on Monday, the deadliest day for NATO forces in two years.

(snip)

According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Thursday, 53 percent of respondents said the war in Afghanistan, which last month, according to most measures, exceeded the Vietnam conflict as the longest-running war in U.S. history, was "not worth fighting". That was the highest percentage in more than three years.

The same poll found that 39 percent of the public believe that Washington is losing the war, compared to 42 percent who believe it is winning.

While public skepticism about the war appears to be growing, the foreign policy elite, including within the military, also seems increasingly doubtful for a number of reasons.

more: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/06/11-3

[NRaleighLiberal]

1. mission accomplished....for bin laden. He wanted to draw us into a quagmire a la the USSR,

and he succeeded brilliantly. Hair trigger reaction by Bush and the scared shitless congress here, and in Iraq, were horrendous decisions that have no good possible outcome.

[janx]

3. I'm inclined to agree with you, but damn, I want to find that

insidious moron. Can you imagine being born into such wealth and influence...and spending your time duping religious people into something like that?

It still burns me.

[NRaleighLiberal]

4. that he has been free for all this time is a huge shame on this country.

and a huge sham for Bush ( I still think there is loads we don't know about what transpired). (and probably never will)

[golfguru]

2. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it

That applies totally to Afghanistan. That country is made of tribes
who pride themselves in being fiercely independent. Most men carry
rifles and the country is mountainous & deserts.

Based on history, no one will subdue and transform the Afghans.
US effort is blood and treasure down a rat hole.

Iraq has a chance to transform itself mainly because it has many
more educated people and a history of existence as one nation ruled
by a single government.

[Skittles]

5. gee, who could have known?

I am disgusted

[Rosa Luxemburg]

6. I still don't know why we are in Afghanistan?

Al Q aren't there. The whole thing makes no sense except we just found $ 1 trillion of mineral wealth? Didn't the US fund the Taliban a few years ago?

[PurityOfEssence]

7. Besides the fact that we've never even described what "victory" is,

it's historically hysterical to even think of beating the locals to prop up a foreign-created regime.

It's breathtaking in its stupidity and arrogance: the locals will even prefer the truly detestable Taliban wackos to infidel foreigners, and this is absolutely consistent with history.

What a blockheaded bit of folly.

[bigdarryl]

8. Wonder if we will hear from those rethugs that said

Obama give McCrystal what he needs to finish the war

[Bragi]

9. Of course the news is bad

I remain unsurprised. What is happening now is just the inevitable result of Obama's foolish decision to adhere to his foolish campaign promise to escalate Bush's tragic and pointless war of aggression. Why would anyone expect any different outcome?

[FlyByNight]

10. We're never leaving

Now with the disclosure of an internal Pentagon memo of, perhaps, a trillion-plus dollars worth of mineral wealth within Afghanistan, there's more to be had. Of course, this mineral wealth will lead to continued Afghan impoverishment. It's not just about pipelines and poppy plants.

Predatory, western-based industries will fall upon them like locusts. They'll buy off the locals, extract every last fucking gram of mineral wealth possible, destroy the local ecologies, stick Afghanistan with national debt and, finally, impose an IMF/World bank austerity plan.

Meanwhile, the republic continues to bleed red (blood) and green (money) with very, very few restraints upon the MIC (or most other politically-connected industries for that matter).

We're doomed.

:grr:

[amborin]

11. news is VERY BAD; and, more US deaths each recent month than ever before

[nichomachus]

12. Well, that would explain the "breaking news" about the mineral deposits