Posted on 07/03/2010 8:29:03 AM PDT by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
Liz Cheney is awesome
***Steele and Obama were picked for the very same reason***.
You could be right - and if calls for Steele’s resignation are based on his poor performance - that CAN NOT be considered racist.
Similarly, calling for BO’s impeachment should be a slam dunk!
He shouldnt have said Afghanistan was Obama’s choosing. But, the land war in Afghanistan is not going well. Not because our troops can, but because the command structure wont. The only way to take over a nation of tribes is to obliterate it. And we are not.
I don’t see where he said anything wrong. I would like to see a poll of Republicans on this issue. Obama is getting our guys killed because he is running the war as a campaign war and not a serious one.
Define "victory" and "prevail".
Hussein already is set to bug out in a year, either commit to being there for 50 plus years or don't bother wasting the lives and body parts.
Two word solution.....KEN BLACKWELL!
He should have been hounded out a year ago after the debacle in 2008.
On this issue however, I can't see where he is off base.
There will be no victory in Afghanistan unless the US is prepared to stay there until the place is westernized. That could take a century.
Hussein intends to leave next July.
Why should we listen to the Cheney clan’s defense of Obama’s war. Cheney, Kristol, and company were the ones who led the GOP to disaster. Steele is right. Let’s unite against Obama’s War and act like a true OPPOSITION party.
We should protest in front of the RNC...soon.
Exactly right. I normally don’t care for Steele but on this issue is absolutely right and should be defended. The fact that Billy Kristol hates him is a chief argument on his side.
frankly, this is much ado about nothing. many reasons why he should step down, but some out of context remarks on the war aren’t one of them. I looked up the remarks and what I found wasn’t that bad. looks again like the GOP has a circular firing squad. shut up about it already. it’s just making a bad name for all of us. there are ways to work around steele........Sarah Palin manages just fine. I no longer donate any money to them, so I don’t care much what he does.
Neither Michael Steele or Liz Cheney are competent to make strategic determinations about the war in Afghanistan. Instead, the conduct of the war should be very clear about the harsh realities.
Afghanistan is an artificial country. Its northern half is stable, and the US is building a $100m base in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, because it is near the Afghan border with the nations of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and a small connection to China. A great place to be to gather intelligence.
However, the southern half of Afghanistan shares half the national border with Pakistan. Ethnically, it is controlled by the Pushtun tribes, who are the largest minority in the country, and thus usually control the country, but don’t get along with anyone. Their tribes overlap into Pakistan, and they cross the border freely. Only two of the Pushtun tribes openly support the Taliban.
All the NATO forces are less than 150 thousand, and there are about 100 thousand ill-capable Afghan army. But there are 30 million Afghans. This means that NATO cannot occupy any significant part of southern Afghanistan, and as soon as they leave, the Taliban can return.
Next door is Pakistan, with 177 million people. It is a broken country, with several near-autonomous enclaves run by groups opposed to the central government. One of its biggest enterprises are its system of thousands of “madrassas”, religious schools that train most of the religious students in all of Islam.
Most of these madrassas are run by the Wahabbi sect of Islam, which are very radical by Muslim standards. But this gives that sect control over most of the Muslim pulpits in mosques around the world.
These madrassas also often provide terrorism training. And this is why we can never “win the war in Afghanistan.”
At any given time, there are probably on 50,000 or so Taliban. NATO regularly culls them as well. However, because of these Pakistani madrassas, they can always fill their ranks with replacements.
We can’t do that.
From the moment we entered Afghanistan, we should have replaced their stupid government with a western-style system. But we didn’t do that, out of stupid “cultural sensitivity”. So we trimmed up the cancer and made it look nice, and sewed it back into the body.
This means that the Afghan government won’t be able to control things once we leave, either.
So the best we can hope for is to get out of there, and in such a way that at least the Taliban and al-Qaeda won’t immediately take over.
Fears about them doing what they did before, in 9-11, are almost silly, because the number of radical Pakistanis willing to do that is a hundred times greater, and there is not anything we can do about them.
Plus the fact that the 9-11 terrorists all came from Saudi Arabia.
The only reason we are still there is because of that military base. And our enormous airbase at Bagram, which menaces Iran.
Reminds me of JC Watts announcing on Hannity’s radio program he was voting for OBOZO because it was historic - a brother as President regardless of the fact he’s a radical socialist.
The initial comment that this is Barry’s war of choice is right on. But the crack about defeat is assinine at best and sounds like the things the ‘rats say.
The majority of voters have no idea who Steele is, I believe Steele does these thinks for attention.
Voters will not care in Nov what Steele said or who is in charge of the RNC. I never give to the RNC and would not give to the RNC no matter who is in charge.
First, Steele is in there because the GOP needed to show “See? we have a black leader too”. He’s the affirmative action GOP leader.
That being said, he is correct in his assessment about Afghanistan. It’s a waste to remain there, in lives and in money. Our initial mission was to go there get Bin Laden and the Al Qaida leadership and get out. Instead Bush broke his campaign promise that he would out engage in nation building. We will have achieved nothing. As soon as we leave the rats will take over the place and control it just as they had before we got there. We ought to concentrate on the original mission, target the leadership of the Taliban and Al Qaida, kill them all and get the hell out of there. Give the Pakis 72 hours to round up our list and turn them over to us or we nuke their major cities. Of course that’s a fantasy. In an ideal world that is exactly what we should do. But we have become too civilized for war.
We also need to be clear on one thing. We are at war with Islam in it’s entirety. The whole religion needs to be wiped out. They need to be shown they believe in a failed belief system. It gives them no power, does not raise the standard of living and will not let the survive in the modern world. Islam is our enemy, Bin laden was merely a symptom of the disease. The sooner we admit this and realize it the better.
I remember one Sunday when Steele was running for the Senate, he appeared on FOX News Sunday.
My impression after the interview was that he was totally ignorant and not very bright.
But, by dint of his skin color alone, with Republicans always believing they have something to prove, he became the Party’s great Black hope.
If we are not Liberals and Democracts, we really should judge people on the merits.
On the merits, Steele doesn’t merit.
It is the likes of Billy Kristol (a former Democrat) who are support the “Liberals and Democrats” in maintaining Obama’s War. By opposing this war, Steele has taken a stand against the “Liberals and Democrats” on that issue.
Obama may make fun of Steele in public but in private he makes fun of the “useful idiots’ in the GOP who support his war in Afghanistan.
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