Posted on 08/31/2009 2:17:28 PM PDT by OldDeckHand
George F. Will, the elite conservative commentator, will call in his next column for U.S. ground troops to leave Afghanistan, according to publishing sources.
“[F]orces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent special forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters,” Will writes in the column, scheduled for publication later this week.
Obama ordered a total of 21,000 more U.S. troops into Afghanistan in February and March, and casualties have mounted as the forces began confronting the Taliban more aggressively. August saw the highest monthly death toll for the U.S. since the invasion in 2001, the second record month in a row.
Will’s prescription – in which he urges Obama to remember Bismarck’s decision to halt German forces short of Paris in 1870 - seems certain to split Republicans. He is a favorite of fiscal conservatives. The more hawkish right can be expected to attack his conclusion as foolhardy, short-sighted and naïve, allowing, potentially making the U.S. more vulnerable to terrorist attack.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Will can be exasperating with his pomposity and willingness to go easy on radical liberal actions, and he is too fond of showing off his historical knowledge. Here his historical acumen is is so far off base as to make him appear historically illiterate re the Franco Prussian War and dangerously nive re. Afghanistan and al Queda.
I actually agree with Will. If you are not there to win, Obama has stated that he is not there to win, then get out of there. We are not there to prop up the democrats as far as looking a little hawkish. They are tying the troops hands behind thir backs. Time to get the ground troops out.
We will never nation build Afghanistan.
I saw on Fox that outspoken special forces guy who said Afghanistan is totally different than Iraq and war cannot be fought the same. Like Will suggests, he said use special forces and kill Al Qaeda everywhere; in Afghanistan, Pakistan and any other country. That is who we are at war with and we shouldn’t put our soldiers at risk trying to protect and build a country where one can’t be built. Just kill the bad guys.
Obviously ole George did not learn anything from Clinton’s mistake in Mogadishu, Somalia. If we pull out this will give Osama the same excuse he used to attack us on 9/11, that we do not have the guts to fight and we are a “paper tiger”.
The “Boy Wonder” is managing to screw up the war in fine shape. How does he plan to shift the blame to Pres. Bush when this Humpty Dumpty wall “falls down”?
I believe his conclusion as foolhardy, short-sighted and naïve, allowing, potentially making the U.S. more vulnerable to terrorist attack.
Way to provide Obama cover to give yet another gift to his Islamist friends, George.
Sheesh. GOP stuck on stupid as usual.
George Will pulled out of common sense twenty-five years ago, but he might be right about this.
Did you know Cindy Sheehan camped out in Martha's Vineyard for Obama's vacation just as she used to in Crawford? Weasely Charles Gibson's response - "Enough already!"
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/ABCs-Charles-Gibson-to-Cindy-Sheehan-Thanks-for-your-sacrifice-Now-get-lost-53803917.html
What a phony.
Give Cindy her due. She's not a political hack. Even if you are 100% pro-war, you've got to respect her. Unlike those "anti-war" dems who shut up on January 20.
We shouldn't have any interest in occupying Afghanistan. Our sole interest in-country is a.) the Taliban and b.) bin Laden and al-Qaeda.
However, as it is, we are fighting three or four diverse factions -- aside from the Taliban (who number maybe 5,000).
It would be a simple enough solution to simply buy the loyalty of the other tribal warlords and loose them on the Taliban, as well.
Once the Taliban is exterminated, our mission is completed. We will have made our point -- harbor our enemies and we will grind you into a fine powder.
Then, we leave. But we keep hunting for bin Laden -- with mission-appropriate forces...
Nation-building was an appropriate -- even visionary -- strategy for Iraq. Not Afghanistan. The Bush administration understood the difference. The Obama administration does not.
Would someone tell George that one cannot have an ANTISEPTIC war?
your analogy needs to have the fly destroying large numbers of the traps while they are there...
the whole purpose of the wars in iraq and afghanistan is to disrupt and destroy the numbers so they won’t hit us at home...
the limited numbers in iraq in the beginning were to insure that wmd wouldn’t take out large numbers... dampening our resolve.
gwb executed the war well in my opinion
*All so confusing*
Yes, and throw in those poppy fields and that’s why there will always be someone who takes an interest in that fubar’d country.
That post about the cavemen with AK-47s, coupled with a very tough terrain, makes it a difficult aittuation.
Either pull out or stop fighting to lose.
We will never win in Afghanistan until we get the tribes 100% on our side (or at least, anti-Taliban). The tribes, being tribes, have survived for generations by never taking sides against their interests, and by switching sides whenever convenient.
And, as the English found out with the Scots after 1745, a nation cannot be unified and pacified until its tribalism is destroyed.
So we need to
1 ) show the tribes it is in their interest to oppose the Taliban;
2 ) erase or ignore the imaginary border between Pakistan and Afghanistan (which is not a tribal border) and fight the enemy wherever they are found, with no sanctuary;
3 ) and (if you really want to build a nation) destroy the tribal divisions in Afghanistan and render the people all “Afghans” (just as the English made the people all “Scots”)
Absent that, choose one tribe, arm them with everything we leave behind, and get out.
Excellant post.
I think I was merely going through in my own mind the sheer difficulty of Afghanistan...You are right on all counts.
And I fully and proudly agree that Bush did unbelievably well in Iraq!
Will is not trying to divide the Repubs, he is frustrated that the current Afghan strategy is obviously not working, and that there is or will be very little stomach to seriously increase the number of US troops in Afghanistan necessary to credibly stabilize the country. He also sees NO additional help coming from the euroweenies, in fact many German are now calling on Merkel to pull all German troops from Afghanistan. Cowards.
Republicans/Conservatives are not unified on Afghanistan.
I myself have been saying we need to leave Afghanistan, and burn the poppy fields and destroy what little infrastructure is there on our way out.
And we will need to bomb from 10,000 feet every decade or so to keep it that way.
Afghanistan is an arid desert with no water and no resources. It is of no use to civilized people. It is and always has been the wild west. It is ungovernable, and thus, there is no exit strategy. Our choices are to cut our losses and leave now, or stay there forever as a police force with targets on our backs. We should only be involved in wars that we can win, such as Iraq.
This is the view of many conservatives and Republicans.
Supporting the war effort is right and good, but only to the extent that we have a strategy and a purpose for being there.
I agree entirely with you. But, I'm reticent to engage many of our fellow posters who've expressed a counter opinion. Not because I believe that they are baseless in their position, but because I believe they do have some foundation upon which to build their argument. And, unlike some of their liberal counter-parts, I don't believe that they are expressing a desire to withdraw merely because they hope it will damage their country - quite the contrary.
But, irrespective of Obama's ability to either understand the war in which we're engaged, or the importance in engaging and winning such a war, I believe that a pullout - even a partial pull-out - will embolden our enemy more than most can imagine.
There probably is some justification in looking inward and re-articulating what "victory" in Afghanistan would look like, and what it will take to get there. But, defeat is much more clearly understood, at least from my point of view - horrible for America, our allies and our national security and safety.
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