We have now reached the 2000 mark in our dead military personnel in Afghanistan. I have spoken to journalists who are friends and recently returned from Afghanistan. They describe a situation getting progressively worse in the country and military contacts privately stating that they have given up any notion of “winning” the war. Yet, the Obama Administration continues to pour billions into the country and we continue to lose Americans in this senseless civil war as well as Iraq (that passes this mark seven years ago).
What is most alarming are reports that I have heard from people over there that the military intends to keep thousands of troops in the country after the deadline and that the promise of a complete withdrawal is just for the public. In the meantime, we are sacrificing our soldiers and our badly needed funds because politicians do not want to be blamed for a withdrawal.
What is even more alarming is the relative lack of notice taken to reaching this dire milestone in the media.
Source: CBS
Otteray Scribe 1, June 22, 2012 at 5:02 pm
I know I would have gone.
OS, I’m so sorry for your loss and for your daughter’s loss of her brother.
My reaction to your very poignant picture is why I can no longer look at the pictures of those who have been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. Those who have been killed can no longer feel the pain, but the family and friends will always feel the loss.
HenMan,
The Iraqi government can either grant our troops immunity from Iraqi law or they get American Martial law.
That’s the way it is. Otherwise, leave.
Matt-
I heard the same thing you did.
The only reason we left Iraq was the Iraqi government’s refusal to grant our troops immunity from Iraqi law. Otherwise, Obama wanted to stay two more years (if not more).
What is most alarming are reports that I have heard from people over there that the military intends to keep thousands of troops in the country after the deadline and that the promise of a complete withdrawal is just for the public. In the meantime, we are sacrificing our soldiers and our badly needed funds because politicians do not want to be blamed for a
withdrawal.
=========
Sounds like a Lyndon Baines Johnson attitude. Just suck it up and withdraw. There is no winning there.
Patrick McDonald-
It’s too bad that we don’t have a choice in 2012 to vote for a man or woman who would enter the White House filled with anger, filled with guts, and filled with resolve- instead of filled with awe. The solutions we need will not be found in two spineless worms whose policies are determined by yesterday’s opinion poll, and more importantly, yesterday’s Presidential election poll.
We are still in Afghanistan for the same reason that we couldn’t leave Vietnam. We can’t “win”, but we can’t leave because no President wants to be the President “who lost the war.” Our justification for being in Afghanistan ended in December, 2001, when Osama Bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora. Even before that happened, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld were stripping the intelligence officers and linguists from Afghanistan for their own personal (and more lucrative) war in Iraq.
Now we stay in Afghanistan, year after year, like the Soviets. And with the same outcome- a broken government, a broken economy, and a gigantic bill for the next 60 or 70 years to care for the thousands of American men and women, broken in body and mind in two pointless wars. And if we do what we have done in the past, we will soon start cutting the V.A. budget and closing V.A. facilities because “we can’t afford this pork-barrel spending.”
“Those who cannot remember the past…..”
Don S said:
“Obama could have finessed this war, blamed it’s excesses on the prior administration, and wound it down. But he rejected that path, or any reasonable semblance, as soon as he got elected.”
Don – I’m having a hard time visualizing any newly elected President walking into a closed-door session with the Joint Chiefs and start bossing them around. I doubt that happens very often.
Those guys are career warriors; they know more about military action than anybody alive. They love their jobs and they relish their toys. And they can make any newbie politician look downright juvenile in a minute.
My guess would be newly elected Obama – like other Presidents – had precious little idea how persuasive that group can be. And Guantanamo might be an excellent example.
The common plaint in these comments seems to be “they”, “MIC”, “grey men in the tall towers”. All these exist to a greater or lesser extent but alone they’re meaningless; it takes the complicity of all of us to make their ambitions real. How? By selling us economic well-being.
Would you give up your job for the possibility that somehow a young man would not be injured? No.
Would you cash in your IRA to possibly have a trooper avoid an IED? No.
These aren’t, I know, the real choices, but they embody the sales materials for the wars and the reasoning behind them. And we buy it!
We (maybe not this particular audience) listen to people like Thomas Friedman and Bill Kristol and rub our chins and think how wise we are to understand these writers. It takes a colossal ego to know nothing about history, economics and government and then to allow this ilk of fatuous spokespeople to influence the populace.
What to do? Tell the NYT, tell, yes, even, Jon Stewart, that you disagree with them giving the stage to these people. We can’t eradicate the pestilence of Limbaugh, Bortz, Coulter et al,, but we can isolate them by objecting to the “intellectual” bridge created by these purveyors of unthoughtful perfidy.
also .. what i’ve read says the suicide deaths of our returning vets from the iraq-afghanistan theater of conflict has now exceeded the number of combat casualties ..
ergo sum .. something is very wrong … “something’s happening here ..what it is ain’t exactly clear ….”
“and when you’re lying there wounded on afghanistans’ plains … and the women come out to cut up what remains .. just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains .. and go to your god as as soldier .. ” kipling …
Half the world is speaking:
“Bring them home. Now. It is time. It is past time.
Don’t forget; their lives mattered.”
Hear, hear!
bettykath, thank you. Here is a comment I left in one of the IGTNT threads the other day. This is the link to the parent comment, but please read down through the thread following. There is a photo of my youngest daughter in the thread that may speak to you.
http://www.dailykos.com/comments/1097532/46436794#c5
Bring them home. Now. It is time. It is past time.
Don’t forget; their lives mattered.
PS: I do pilot outlines cheaply.
The ultimate strategy:
Prepare for a tri-partite world: China, Russia, us!
China will expand into Africa.
Russia will struggle to replace a command economy by
an equally dysfunctional oligarchical one.
The US will struggle to take over fully SA by using Mexican operatives and BIG-Agro.
Meanwhile toxins will take a greater toll everywhere.
Tornado alley will function year round.
You don’t really think we’re going to leave the world’s richest dust deposits to the Godless Commies, do you?
NATO not national….right you are…
AN, right you are about those not being counted. (NATIONAL is really NATO but your auto-correct did it incorrectly?)
OS, I used to read about the US military killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Looked at their faces, read the local stories about them. I can’t do it anymore.
http://www.rt.com/news/us-drone-violates-law-un-report-459/
All those dead have faces, families and friends. The dead are dead forever, but those of us who have buried our children must keep the memories alive. On the blog Daily Kos, there is a long running series called IGTNT. That means “I Got The News Today,” a reference to the dreaded knock on the door. Here is a link to the series. You can drill down through the IGTNT diaries and see every one of those faces. A story about them is posted within two or three days after the DoD makes an official announcement. Most are very young, some are middle aged. But they have faces.
http://www.dailykos.com/news/IGTNT