The President is finally getting bipartisanship, not on health care, but against a war that has morphed into Iraq II as George Will, no bleeding heart liberal, now says it's "Time to Get Out of Afghanistan."
With calls for more troops and casualties rising, American abhorrence of an endless bloody occupation is coalescing into a demand for rethinking exactly what we are doing in that part of the world, why and for how long.
Even advocates for staying like Andrew Cordesman concede that "any form of even limited victory will take years of further effort" while insisting that the new military-diplomatic team is "our last hope of victory.
"Yet they can win only if they are allowed to manage both the civil and military sides of the conflict without constant micromanagement from Washington or traveling envoys. They must be given both the time to act and the resources and authority they feel they need."
We have heard this song before, thousands of American lives and billions of dollars ago, in Iraq, where bloody factionalism is still alive and well to keep us bogged down for years to come.
If Barack Obama is to avoid becoming another LBJ, it's time for a hard-headed reassessment of the risks and rewards of sending more troops to die in a country that has just shown it can't have an honest popular election and can't keep enough of a lid on corruption to enlist its own people against Taliban jihadists.
Instead of hiding behind Gen. Petraeus as George W. Bush did over Iraq, President Obama will have to engage Gen. McChrystal's view that the war in Afghanistan is "serious" but "winnable" and demand a clear answer to the question of "Win what?"
No one denies that the US has to combat terrorist threats in the Middle East but, eight years after 9/11, there has to be a better way than sending our young people to die there needlessly.
Showing posts with label Afghanistan war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Afghanistan war. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Obama's Bay of Pigs?
Today's suicide-bombing of an Iraq peace conference and the American commander's warning that we are "not winning" in Afghanistan are sobering reminders that the Obama troop withdrawal plan did not close the file on US misadventures in the Middle East.
They underscore the final assessment of Thomas Ricks' new book, "The Gamble": "The quiet consensus emerging among many people who have served in Iraq is that we likely will have American soldiers engaged in combat in Iraq until at least 2015--which would put us not at about the midpoint in the conflict...In other words, the events for which the Iraq war will be remembered probably have not yet happened."
Ricks, whose new book along with "The Fiasco" constitute the definitive reporting on Iraq, concludes, "The surge was the right step to take, or more precisely, the least wrong move in a misconceived war...The surge campaign was effective in many ways, but the best grade it can be given is a solid incomplete. It succeeded tactically but fell short strategically."
His indictment of the military commanders who are now advising Obama includes the question by a retired officer. "Why did the American military establishment so fail to come up with a war-winning strategy that it was up to a retired general and a civilian think thank...to do their job? This is a stunning indictment of the American military's top leadership."
Today's Baghdad bombing with a toll of 33, along with an attack that killed 28 on Sunday, according to the New York Times, "suggest a renewed ability by insurgents to mount more effective suicide bombings, after a long period in which such attacks were relatively few and less lethal because of heavy security precautions."
With all the attention on the economy, there are sobering indications that the American Military Establishment may not have changed much since it misled another new American president into the Bay of Pigs almost half a century ago. Like Obama, JFK had the brains but not the experience to understand what he was being drawn into.
Kennedy learned fast. Will Obama?
They underscore the final assessment of Thomas Ricks' new book, "The Gamble": "The quiet consensus emerging among many people who have served in Iraq is that we likely will have American soldiers engaged in combat in Iraq until at least 2015--which would put us not at about the midpoint in the conflict...In other words, the events for which the Iraq war will be remembered probably have not yet happened."
Ricks, whose new book along with "The Fiasco" constitute the definitive reporting on Iraq, concludes, "The surge was the right step to take, or more precisely, the least wrong move in a misconceived war...The surge campaign was effective in many ways, but the best grade it can be given is a solid incomplete. It succeeded tactically but fell short strategically."
His indictment of the military commanders who are now advising Obama includes the question by a retired officer. "Why did the American military establishment so fail to come up with a war-winning strategy that it was up to a retired general and a civilian think thank...to do their job? This is a stunning indictment of the American military's top leadership."
Today's Baghdad bombing with a toll of 33, along with an attack that killed 28 on Sunday, according to the New York Times, "suggest a renewed ability by insurgents to mount more effective suicide bombings, after a long period in which such attacks were relatively few and less lethal because of heavy security precautions."
With all the attention on the economy, there are sobering indications that the American Military Establishment may not have changed much since it misled another new American president into the Bay of Pigs almost half a century ago. Like Obama, JFK had the brains but not the experience to understand what he was being drawn into.
Kennedy learned fast. Will Obama?
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