On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 8:45 PM, Kevin M. <drunkbastar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> My view not withstanding, I believe his explanation is incomplete. It > is akin to Bush saying (and I'm paraphrasing) that we needed to go to > Iraq before Iraq came to us. President Obama is making these > assumptions based on what? At least Bush had the tactless sense to > convince Colin Powell to present false evidence. Obama is telling us > we'll be safer if we take care of Afghanistan, but isn't giving us any > concrete evidence of that. But, back to my view, I believe there is > greater evidence that Al Queda isn't nesting in any single location. I > believe a stronger case could be made for widespread deployment of > special forces teams throughout the region to target Al Queda cells, > but that would be an unpopular decision both at home and abroad, and > apparently our safety is less important than our popularity. I guess we have reached that famous point where we will have to agree to disagree, since all I can think to do here is repeat not only what I wrote earlier, but what is in the speech verbatim. He specifically explains why (in his view of course, and he may be wrong, and you may be right) US troops are needed in Afghanistan. Some of the people who planned 9-11 are there, and there are lots more who have already tried to do something similar, and will keep trying. In recent years these people who taken over control of more and more of Afghanistan (which previously they used to train terrorists to attack the US). They are also working to overthrow the current government of Afghanistan, which, if they are successful, would give them control over the entire country. If these people are killed or captured they wont be able to do any of these things (I don't think you need any evidence to support that assertion). I am not sure what evidence you are calling for - I assume you are convinced that al Queda are bad guys who mean to kill Americans. It is also beyond any reasonable dispute that there are a lot of al Queda in the highland borders between Afghanistan and Pakistan. I think what we see here is one more pernicious consequence of the Iraq invasion - that action, unjustified and poorly executed, has undermined the credibility of any other military action taken by the US government, regardless of its justification or competence. Again, Obama has been clear for 7 years now that he was opposed to war in Iraq, but in favor of war in Afghanistan. This was part of his regular campaign speech in both the primaries and the general election. He won the general election. He is now doing what he said literally every day for 11 months he would do if he was elected president. The nice thing about being an American is that you are free to disagree with him, but I don't think you can fairly say this action has been a surprise, or unexplained, or somehow forced on him by his generals. Of course there currently is a widespread deployment of special forces teams throughout the region (that is, the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan). As Obama said in his speech tonight, this has had some real success (by which he means they have killed some high ranking al Queda terrorists). Most military experts (and I am not one of these by a long shot) have come to the conclusion that this kind of action alone is inadequate - mostly because the Taliban is able to both threaten and intimidate locals to support al Queda actions, and because the Taliban often is the most organized and competent source of basic social services and stability. The US Counterinsurgency strategy is to kill as many bad guys as possible without killing regular locals, and offer enough protection and services to the locals that they will not feel the need to support the bad guys. This strategy has been shown to be effective, but requires more boots on the ground - hence the surge. I too would like a solution that requires much less US troop presence on the ground, and I had imagined for a long time the kind of clean, surgical strikes against identified targets, either with special forces teams or some kind of long range bombing (I don't know why you think this would be unpopular - this would be the most popular thing they could possibly do. The part that would be public would be pretty "clean" and the part that would be dirty would be pretty secret. But for the reasons noted above and included in the President's speech tonight, this approach is not sufficient. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to tvornottv@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to tvornottv-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
