09-01-2009, 12:55 PM | #1 |
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George Will: pull out of Afghanistan
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...083102912.html
It's really shocking to hear the dismal predictions by people re: this ignored war. You have military leaders saying things like "it's not hopeless yet." And then you have a President who is essentially ignoring the war, putting it on cruise control, and not engaging the American people and Congress on what his strategy is. Then you have this buffoon Karzai. What a mess. When both hard-core liberals and influential conservatives like Will are agitating for a pullout, you know it is FUBAR. |
09-01-2009, 03:50 PM | #2 | |
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09-01-2009, 04:30 PM | #3 |
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09-01-2009, 05:37 PM | #4 |
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Because Iraq was the only war Bush really cared about, he let Afghanistan go to hell. Now it's probably to late to salvage anything there.
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09-01-2009, 05:38 PM | #5 |
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Afghanistan was a very successful operation before the Iraq war. The taliban was nearly dead there. Then Bush moved everything to Iraq. Now the taliban is close to taking over the entire country again and has time on its side.
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09-01-2009, 06:29 PM | #6 |
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I f we had not fought Iraq, kept the pressure up and ensured the peace through collective nation building, it had a good chance of success. We diverted too many resources to Iraq, which was always going to be a mess.
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09-01-2009, 09:13 PM | #7 |
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right. I dare say now, in retrospect, many would agree. I wish this view had been more predominant back in 2002-03. It still boggles the mind a bit that so many were seduced into the idea that invading Iraq was so important. At the time, what bothered me most was that we were choosing a pre-emptive war over a retaliatory one. That still matters to me, and I remain bothered that we took on a Iraq for those reasons (totally apart from the fact that the evidence for the pre-emptive war was wrong). I wish I'd heard more of the practical reasoning you state now back then.
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09-02-2009, 02:07 AM | #8 |
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It's one thing to nation build in a place like Iraq, that has modern educated people.
It's another thing to nation build with a bunch of Asian steppe hillbillies. That was probably always a losing proposition. You can't nation build in Afghanistan unless you have a time machine that can fast-forward their cultural development by 200 years. The fact is, they are culturally closer to the Taliban that the West. American culture might as well be an alien civilization. You really can't win when there are no goals, or unachievable goals. Putting the heat on the Taliban and Al Qaeda is doable. Eliminating the Taliban, not so much. |
09-02-2009, 04:53 AM | #9 | |
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09-02-2009, 05:20 AM | #10 | |
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Juan Cole knows more about Iran/Iraq/Palestine/Afghanistan in one of his mole hairs than the rest of us know in our entire ugly bodies. Obama is squandering his political capital on healthcare reform, and I'm not sure what he's going to do to rally the troops. Certainly the right might turn against the war, solely because a democrat is running it. Look at the former Yugoslavia and Clinton. And then when the left is doing the same, and the center is really weak, I'm not sure where that leaves Obama. |
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