Dick Cheney continues to reinforce that America made the right decision in jettisoning the Republicans from the White House and Congress in 2008. Everything this very negative, evil, war mongering chicken hawk, paranoid, hateful, hypocritical, war profiteer spouts of out the hole in the front of his face since his party lost the national elections last year is more and more polarized, more extremist, more decisive, more guano. It helps to remove any doubt or impatience with the current administration and current Congress. His recent Politico interview (link here) is 'case in point'. Chris Matthews called him 'the troll under the bridge who comes out to bite kids in the ankle' - oh Chris! You give old Dick too much credit!
Thank you Dick. Your unpatriotic criticisms of our leaders, while America's enemies listen closely, help bring a smile to my face and remind me just how nuts and marginal your party and ideology really are. Keep speaking, as often as possible, and drag the 21% of the nation who are goaters with you (goaters = people who would continue to support Bush even if they personally walked in on him having sex with a goat).
9 years ago
With Obama having a Lyndon Johnson moment in Afghanistan, who needs Dick Cheney? We get escalation, more American deaths, more national treasure down the tubes, all to support an unwinnable war. Just without all the with-us-or-against-us rhetoric.
ReplyDeleteSorry to sound skeptical...but the shine's coming off this thing.
Afghanistan is not Vietnam. The Viet Cong never attacked the US mainland, or harboured non-state terrorists with fundamentalist ideologies who want to go back to the 13th century. In Vietnam we did not have NATO & dozens of other countries in addition to NATO in support.
ReplyDeleteI don't like an escalation either... but what Obama (& Congress) have not said, is that the covert war that is being waged by the CIA and the Pakistani ISI is in fully swing, in the FATA region of NW Pakistan. The "vacuum" that is brought up, is the "vacuum" that would occur if the US drew down forces rapidly, and left the CIA and ISI to try and take on the fundies alone, in FATA.
Reading Rashid a great deal, it's obvious to me that there's a giant lawless region, the size of Pennsylvania or Ohio, in NW Pakistan, along the border with Afghanistan. It's within Pakistani international borders, but it's NOT governed effectively by Pakistan. Picture Texas, NM, and AZ all being inhabited by paleolithic fundies who hate centralized government, don't have running water or electricity (except via portable honda generator), are armed to the teeth with machine guns and rpgs and mortars, who traffik 80% of the world's opium and heroine, AND who have BILLIONS in funding from thousands of much richer fundie extremists in the Persian Gulf states (S.Arabia, UAE, Oman, etc) who want to see a global caliphate. Picture that TX, NM, and AZ residents would kill / ambush / resist ANY federal government personnel who entered the state to enforce a law, build a school, collect taxes, arrest people, etc.. and being well funded with new Toyota Land Cruisers, non-identifiable satellite phones made in Chinese black market factories with untraceable chip sets, and more money than you and I will ever see in our lifetimes... merged with a misogynistic fundy religion that is narrowly interpreted (1000s of times worse than the Southern Baptists or Vocal Catholics could ever be).... and THOSE are the people that the ISI and CIA are targeting and bombing with unmanned predator drones, flown out of Pakistani military bases. Those are the people who want more 9-11s, anthrax or small pox attacks, dirty cobalt bombs, etc... those are people who want you and I dead or converted to Wahhabi Sunni-ism.
If we evacuated Afghanistan, all the NATO and US sympathizers would be slaughtered, just as they were in Vietnam after the pull out, AND the ISI would tell the CIA to leave Pakistan, and once again start to collaborate with the Taliban and Al Queda as they did in 2001, 2002, and 2003 - collaborate or be destroyed by, the choice is collaborate.
I see WHY there's a 2nd surge of troops going to Afghanistan. I don't like it... but I see the reasons for it. It's a bordel (French for cluster f*ck). Had Presidential Medal of Freedom winners Tommy Franks and George Tennat not screwed up the region so badly by letting Al Queda escape into Pakistan (at the ISI's and Mushariff's request) in 2002, then we'd be dealing with just the fundy Taliban, and a MUCH simpler equation. Yes, feminists hate the fundy Taliban with good reason, but the Taliban are indigenous Pashtuns from Pakistan and Afghanistan... they ain't Al Queda.
continued...
ReplyDeleteI hope we can avoid the same mistakes the Soviets made... and I think we are trying to avoid them (not wantonly strafing villages as retribution, not raping villagers with undisciplined soldiers, actually supplying our troops with food and pay instead of telling them to live off the land as the Soviets did, etc). It just sickens me that boys my son's age are getting blown up by cowardly little piss-ant insurgents simply because "they are there".
It's not the best solution, but it's not the worst one either. We'll see how well it is implemented. It IS heartening to see the Europeans being open to sending more NATO troops, after Bush told them to F-off and spit in their faces in 2002 and 2003. Ya veramos... let's see how it turns out a year from now. Hopefully, it will be better than you or I predict... but I share your skepticism to a degree.
note: there's a 4096 character limit, to how long a COMMENT can be on Google Blogger.
ReplyDeleteSurprised that you have time to write a treatise during work hours Joe :)
ReplyDeleteIt's not Vietnam in the sense of provocation, but it is Vietnam in the sense that escalation will not resolve the situation. And in the sense that an imperial foreign power is trodding, unwanted, into what it considers a lawless region. And it's Vietnam to the nth degree in the sense that the troops will be fighting guerrilla insurgents in a land we as a people seem incapable of understanding. To Soviets found this out the hard way...do we really have to do the same?
Sure, pulling out may create a vacuum. But is that really much that much worse than the terrorist breeding ground and training school for crooked pols like Karzai that we have now? And the US' role as self-appointed world police (America, FUCK YEAH) is starting to wear the patience of the world. Oh, and the Coalition of the Wilting? That dog won't hunt, as other countries recognize the futility and pull out. I'm not convinced that US presence there deters terrorism...it may encourage it.
Then there's the fact that we, the people, can't afford continued adventurism in the Middle East. Our national treasure has already been plundered by the executive terrorists at Meryl Lynch, Goldman Sachs, etc. The billions (trillions?) we burn every year in the military-industrial-government complex could be put to much better use. It's the old guns-vs-butter debate: I say it's time to uncloak that debate from the flag-wrapped pseudo-patriotism-drenched burqa it's been draped in and get down to the real business of figuring out where the peoples' money should be spent.
A great deal can be written while waiting for a Webex meeting to start.
ReplyDeleteWe're not using the same heavy handed tactics the Soviets used, as often as they used them. Yes, some mistakes are being made, but we're learning from them.
I concur with you that we cannot afford this, and that corporate bankers have already plundered US treasure extensively. Read "Taliban" and "Descent into Chaos" by Rashid, and you'll see my point more clearly. I do not agree with all of Rashid's perspectives 100%, but he factually reports, fastidiously, enough for me to make an informed opinion.
We ARE getting the hell out of Iraq, after paying off all the guys who were trying to kill us (the Sunni Awakening, NOT the surge, sorry McCain). That's a good thing. Afghanistan is NOT Iraq, or Iraq-like, other than being a Muslim country and being mis-understood by most of the US.
My hope is that in the next 18 months, lots of ISI/CIA predator drone attacks can kill lots of America haters, and the tribesmen who protect the America haters, without generating more America haters AND without having the Pakistani mili-tocracy implode. If Pakistan's military rule DOES collapse, and the fundies take over there, I believe there will be a third world war, and I don't have enough shotgun shells to live through a Cormac McCarthy-like dystopian nightmare that a thermo-nuclear exchange can precipitate.
That's just it...nobody wins a war by remote control. And nobody wins an occupation...period. For every person (terrorist or otherwise) killed by a predator drone, five terrorists spring up to take his place. Hearts and minds my ass.
ReplyDeleteWe were able to buy off some of the insurgents/warlords in Iraq...money is probably a far more motivating tool than military occupation. But I suspect that approach may be less effective in Afghanistan than it was in Iraq (less well-established power structures, etc). And I think the effect may be temporary: when the funds dry up, so might the tranquility. Although it's probably cheaper to do a long-term buyoff of beligerents, it's still an open-ended commitment. So I imagine you can understand my skepticism.
Oh, forgot to mention: Pakistan is a different calculus entirely. More US troops in Afghanistan may mean that a nuclear-armed Pakistan gets even less stable. And the minute US actions there become more than cross-border raids and pursuits, that powder keg may blow.
ReplyDeleteno good options, maybe.