Karzai Rots.
Fred Thompson addressed his radio audience (above) with a concise and entirely accurate measure of the Obama administration's incompetence with regard Afghanistan. POTUS has stalled and manipulated the McChrystal request for additional resources, and this peculiar commander-in-chief conduct has exasperated the public and puzzled the politicians. Why did POTUS call Afghanistant a "necessary war" as recently as August and as early as March of this year? Why has he allowed the soon to be eight strategic reviews to linger in the headlines? Why the clumsiness and tardiness? There is an explanation. What Fred Thompson says is correct. We have lost Afghanistan. Lost it to whom? Not the Taliban. Not to Karzai, whose sour second inauguration this news cycle was attended in aa surprise by HRC as if the Secretary of State was calling on the rotting regime of an enemy. Not to Pakistan. We have lost it to the Wahhabists. It is the House of al-Saud who bought Afghanistan twenty years ago, and it is the House of al-Saud that has now renewed its lease on the Pashtuns. The north and west of Afghanistan is in the hands of the Tajiks, and they are indifferent to the Wahhabists and the Saudis. Only the Pashtuns of AfPakia and the Northwest Provinces are impressed by the Wahhabist cash and temperament. Saudi Arabia has repurchased its lease on the Pashtuns. The status quo ante is to keep the Taliban attacking the Kabul government, aiming to reconvert the provinces to Sharia law. Meanwhile the Taliban from the Northwest Provinces will keep on agitating for their independence from the Pakistan army. None of this has anything to do with stability in Kabul or good government in Islamabad. It is not about democracy and transparency. We have lost Afghanistan to the savages who never really lost it to us. Did POTUS lose Afghanistan? Sure, that is, it is his watch, and he talked of a new and smart way during the campaign, and he spoke of Afghanistan as critical to his foreign policy. POTUS believed the false-tongued and deeply insane King Abdullah when he visited with him last June; he believed that the Saudis could write a check and the Taliban would obey a three-dimensional chess game that only Mr. Spock could solve; he believed that once the Taliban warlords took money, they would behave as stake-holders in Cook County real estate. All rookie mistakes, all avoidable, all ruination now. The worst damage is political here in the West. The Pashtuns knew it would end with the Pashtuns back in control of their mountains. The question now is can POTUS retain control of his administration and the Congress as the price of losing the war comes home.
ALL this as juxtaposed against the WW II special on the History Channel.. as it plays for all to see,, in color and HD.
How sad it has all become.
This is an example of events overtaking (best) intentions. We can't really blame POTUS. He just happens to be there at this moment. Clearly, he doesn't know what to do. Would anyone? It might be nice if someone told us the truth.
It's difficult to mesh reality with campaigning. It's much easier to promise something (anything) that will make the people vote for you. Winning in Afghanistan was one such (to my ears, unambiguous) promise. Come to think of it, there were many others involving both foreign and domestic goals. We're still waiting, Mr. President.
So far, I would say, we’ve gotten nothing for our unbridled optimism and support. Many of us have even lost jobs, homes, retirement savings or savings in general. We’ve lost our faith, M. President. We no longer think you can handle the job. Your now famously ‘fuzzy math’ has been exposed as fraud. I guess you never thought that we would see through all that; that we were smarter than what any of your ivory tower cronies gave us credit for.
What now, Mr. President? At some point you’ve got to start leveling with us; at the very least, treating us as equals; let us know in no uncertain terms what’s up and what your plans are. Can you really blame some of us for calling you a ‘Marxist’? You yourself have often enough stated that you want to redistribute our nation’s wealth. Your associations and appointees seem to be totally okay with that – some more so than others. Tell us how that’s not Marxism.
We understand how you like to play with the language. You might point out that Karl Marx has been dead for some time. Therefore, Marxism cannot be said to exist except as a vacuous but deliberate slur – like the word ‘terrorism’ (which must never be uttered again particularly as it relates to the Islamic sort). Fair enough.
All this can be argued (as long as we’re permitted to argue); shades of meaning; what the definition of ‘is’ is. But Mr. President, we beg you, do not refer to ‘recession’ as ‘recovery’; job losses as gains (or ‘saves’); losing as winning; etc. All these are direct opposites. Not even the slowest learner in the class would fall for that.
http://peterkoelliker.blogspot.com/
"Not even the slowest learner in the class would fall for that." Wrong, Peter. There appears to be a sizable portion of the electorate who fall for this (literally) double speak.
You see, if the messiah says it, it must be true. Then you begin the process of constructing some sophistry to validate it. or just call it cognitive dissonance working itself out. It seems not unlike the contortions various religions go through to explain away why a presumably beneficent god would, say, allow 3000 people to die on 9/11 or an innocent child being abused. Believers are capable of stunning feats of mental gymnastics.
Thank goodness we are blessed with a President who has the energy, stamina, and fortitude to take the American case to the world. We have never seen such dedication and resolve. He should be admired and we should all be proud to have the PotUS making the proactive and personal commitment as America's representative. Shame should befall on any and all who profess to have America's interests at heart while they lambast, fabricate, insinuate, and denigrate this fine man and his family.
As for Thompson, i guess he's just not receiving the memos that are developed and interpreted by the people who really matter.
You are right: we never held anything but Kabul. The Taliban and their Sharia Courts still ran the villages, hence, most of the country.
What can be done?
GEN McCrystal's troop request is necessary but insufficient. The rest is the hard part: diplomatic; political; CT in Pakistan; countering the Taliban at the village level, etc.
The problem is a balance needs to be found between "Act in haste, repent at leisure" and "Paralysis by analysis."
Spencer:
What color are your glasses?