Posted on 01/25/2009 11:24:43 PM PST by FocusNexus
Vice-president Biden reveals US forces will step up operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The Obama administration warned the US public yesterday to brace itself for an increase in American casualties as it prepares to step up the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan and the border regions of Pakistan.
Against a background of widespread protests in Pakistan and Afghanistan over US operations since Obama became president, the vice-president, Joe Biden, said yesterday that US forces would be engaged in many more operations as it takes the fight to its enemies in the region.
The Obama administration is to double the number of US troops in Afghanistan to 60,000 and when asked in a television interview if the US public should expect more American casualties, Biden said: "I hate to say it, but yes, I think there will be. There will be an uptick."
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
War Monger, Obama is trashing the Constitution ,This is an illegai occupation ! I support the troops but not the mission,we need to bring the troops home now where they can be safe ! How many more Troops are going to die for an Illegal war concoted in Kenya ,oops I mean Hawaii for his friends in Iran and Chicago !It is obvious Obama is not running this administration it is the evil Ballerina Emanuel who is frustrated at not being able to wear those tightly fitting costumes anymore
I wrote this in another thread, but it goes the heart of the matter of why Liberals cannot prosecute a war. The thread was about a Hirsch article in Newsweak where he described how the Obama administration is nearly trying to make George W. Bush an Unperson (in the Orwellian sense) except to use as a scapegoat.
I agree that President Bush, by and large, let the Military people run the war without undue interference from the Oval Office (One of the major exceptions in my opinion was Fallujah when the White House pulled our troops out early on when they could have rolled the place up, but he did also authorize them to go back in and clean it up even though it cost us more men)...
Notice that when Republicans enter office, there is not an attitude of “We are going to completely stop doing things the way our predecessor did them, and we are going to do them our way from now on.” It is usually a very measured approach, letting things go the way they did for a period of time before making changes, and those changes are usually incremental, not radical.
This is because conservatives understand that you do not need to re-invent the wheel. The problem with reinventing wheels, policies or anything else is that you often make the same mistakes the first inventor did, unless you take extra care to see why those mistakes occurred.
Liberals do not have the humility to understand this. It is why liberals are all socialists to a greater or lesser degree and believe in big, centralized government.
I use the analogy of a jumbo jet flying through the sky on auto-pilot, with no flight crew present, and a passenger opens the cockpit door and enters.
Conservatives would enter the cockpit, look around and take stock of the situation. They might look at the fuel gauge, look at the attitude and get a general feel of the situation. They probably wouldn’t touch anything right away, realizing that there are circumstances where doing something for the sake of doing something can be far more harmful. They might decide to put the headphones on, see if they can communicate with anyone, see if they can hear anything, and so on. They would probably try to find someone who could talk them down, and failing that, might try to figure out if there was anyone onboard with piloting experience.
Liberals would enter the cockpit, look around and scream out “Nobody is flying the plane!” They would jump in the pilot seat, grab the control stick and shout “We have to get this plane on the ground or we’re all going to die!” They might dive the plane towards the earth, looking frantically for an airport, making the assumption that of course, you could fly a plane from the sky “just by looking around, there is the airport over there, let’s get to it!” without realizing that is one of the most difficult things even for veteran pilots who might have the advantage of at least being familiar with the area and comfortable with trying to pick up landmarks from the air. They would dive the plane, then suddenly realize they don’t know how to turn the plane, how to apply rudder or lower the flaps and landing gear (probably wouldn’t even realize those were needed) and would simultaneously realize they had no idea how to stabilize the plane in level flight or re-engage the autopilot. The passengers, feeling the gyrations of the aircraft and knowing something was wrong, would begin to panic, and before you know it, there would be a huge flaming hole in the ground.
It is the same thing with a military campaign, an economic crisis, an environmental issue, solving an education or social problem, or just about anything else you can think of.
Liberals see the levers, dials and controls of something powerful and complicated, and instead of figuring out how they work or even if they work, they make the assumption that no matter what, they can control this better than anyone or anything that controlled it before. They don’t even think that sometimes putting your hands on the levers of something powerful is much, much more damaging than keeping your bloody damned hands OFF of them.
If it is a military campaign, they get in their armchairs and begin looking at the maps, targets and forces involved, pick up the phones and begin issuing orders and edicts to generals. You end up with the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, Desert One and Mogadishu.
On environmental issues you end up with some kind of foreign species of fish that you brought in from South America to control some other kind of issue, and it ends up destroying the native ecosystem, or on a global scale, you destroy the ability to obtain energy for an energy dependent world because you need to save the existence of the Alaskan Spotted Lugwort. They determined through their “science” that DDT made the egg shells of predatory birds thin causing their populations to decrease, and viewing it as a canary in a coal mine, outlawed DDT, thereby condemning tens of millions of people (or over the years, perhaps even hundreds of millions) to misery and death from insect borne diseases such as malaria. Even worse, you end up with liberals trying to deliberately destroy industry and economies, an attempt to plunge the entire western world into a depression, and they base their desire to do this on “Global Warming”. To sum up this particular angle and encapsulate the liberal mindset on all these issues, but most importantly environmental ones, remember this quote from a feminist wall mural I see in Cambridge, MA: “INDICATION OF HARM, NOT PROOF OF HARM IS OUR CALL TO ACTION”. Look well upon that quote...it sums up liberalism in one compact line.
If it is a economic or social issue, they begin to make policy and throw money at it without even considering for a single damned second if what they are doing is really going to produce the expected result. If it doesn’t help or makes things worse, they simply throw more money and legislation at the issue, without bothering to dismantle the agencies or defund what they did before that failed miserably. In this, you end up with Rent Control (a liberal invention which destroys the availability of affordable housing), Social Security (a liberal invention, a Ponzi scheme on a grand scale that gave people the false security they didn’t have to save for themselves) the Great Society, Welfare, School Busing, declining ability of students and failing schools, disintegration of the family and soon, socialism and Third World Squalor.
And folks, this new President, is steeped up to his oversized jug-handled ears in the arrogance and ignorance of Liberalism. He is a racist, socialist and marxist. He believes it to the core, and he is now the most powerful man in the world.
We have a problem.
Yep, me too. Far better to fight them there than to have our cops fight them here on our streets and in our neighborhoods. Too bad the MSM is too ignorant to see the brilliance....somehow, though, I'd bet there will be an "awakening" of the MSM now that Obamalamadingdong is calling the shots.....literally.
I asked an Obamabot this very question. He replied, Afghanistan, he didnt mind going to war with it was Iraq?
Comments like this are why we need a "Print this post" option on FR! I'm going to cut and paste this into a text editor and print it out so others can read it.
“And wonder what Obama’s far left anti-war supporters are saying, is war OK, as long as it’s under a Democrat president, was it only “immoral” when Bush was waging it, to keep us safe? “
My bet is Code Pink will praise Bambi for his courage.
DUFU possibilities?
They won't. Consistency of policy just isn't a factor in their ideology. Constistency of END GOALS is all that matters.
Then he shouldn't have warned him during the campaign that he was going to invade Pakistan's tribal area, warning Bin Laden to pack up and move.
I agree with you to a point, Agree that this area needs to be delt with, but I feel we have a better chance of a long term freind in Iraq then Afganistan. If doing this cost us progress in Iraq it’s the wrong move.
I want to know what website is tracking the fatalities list for the military deaths under OBAMA (all combat as well as accident as well as disease) of deployed troops (and be sure to include those who die on base in Germany as the Left did to arrive at the 4,000 dead “Bush’s fault” list).
Obama Presidency = war, recession, economic misery, cultural decline, poverty, death.
Wow. What a hangover for the koolaid drinkers.
In Washington DC?
I agree with your comments.
Do I detect a bit of sarcasm there? LOL
Ouch, that vision of Emanuel in a tutu is going to haunt me.
Does this mean that Obama wants higher casualties to trim down our military forces. It would cut salary costs.
I thought about that too when I read about the drone strikes. Why is it Pakistan didn't want the Bush administration to strike on their soil but it's A-OK for Obama to do so.
I agree with that. We should not jeopardize the progress in Iraq.
I will say that I am leery of someone defining Afghanistan downward. We both remember a time when it was said Iraq would never be stabilized and we were the real problem there.
This person is just rolling out the old dogma in a new setting.
I do recognize a new dynamic, but those dynamics exist in Iraq in certain areas. My guess is we have had to tackle some of this already, in Iraq.
Thanks for the kind words, jellybean.
These are difficult times...
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