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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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 Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2009 8:57 pm Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
| Destroyed what country? It never had anything to destroy in the first place. That's kinda the problem. |
Ok, point taken. But billions of dollars, and many innocent lives later, what's changed? Bin Laden's probably shaved his beard and is sipping Daiquiris at a luxury penthouse somewhere, and the country is still ruled by thugs. Only now the opium is guarded by our troops, and flowing out like never before. |
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Tiger Beer
Joined: 07 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2009 9:13 pm Post subject: |
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AFGHANISTAN. This is where the war's main focus was supposed to be in the first place 8 years ago.
Is anyone REALLY surprised with this? We've had 8 years of Republcans being gung-ho for war...and 8 years of Democrats saying they are also for war but will be better received.
If anyone heard Obama say he wasn't going to be in Afghanistan...they were drinking extreme rightwing or extreme leftwing kool-aid. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Wed Dec 09, 2009 11:03 am Post subject: |
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| asylum seeker wrote: |
| visitorq wrote: |
| bacasper wrote: |
| asylum seeker wrote: |
| visitorq wrote: |
| youtuber wrote: |
| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there. |
Obama's first mistake is believing that the mission can be "won". |
The "mission" already has been won. The troops are literally sent to guard the poppy production, and the CIA gets to launder huge amounts of money each year from smack smuggled into the US. The drug trade is now worth a cool $500 billion. That's mission accomplished. |
Wow. Is there any conspiracy theory which you do not believe? |
Wow. Do you ever actually investigate anything you call a "conspiracy theory," or are you one of those whose mind stops as soon as he hears that epithet?
You mean to say you have never heard of Iran-Contra? Look it up. It was in all the papers. 
The former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Judge Robert Bonner, told Mike Wallace on CBS' nationally syndicated 60 Minutes that the CIA smuggled a ton of cocaine into the country and was among the biggest drug runners in the country. OK, that may be wrong. That is all that the joint DEA-CIA undercover operation uncovered. Other investigators have claimed a total of 27 tons, or half of all US cocaine consumption.
So now CBS and the DEA are conspiracy theorists, too? You can't get much more mainstream than that. Have the inmates now taken over the asylum, seeker? |
Come now, poppy production has 'only' increased a few hundred percent since US troops started guarding it (surely a mere coincidence)... and the CIA has never been involved in illicit activities around the world. Everybody knows that. |
I'd be interested to know what Gopher and the other conservatives here think of these allegations. |
OK, now that he has chimed in, he has, not surprisingly, sidestepped the issue. Knee-jerk American apologists are incapable of handling criticism of the USA, so they merely sidestep, and deflect with paraphasic responses.
However it does not change the fact that the CIA is among the largest drug runners in the country. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Wed Dec 09, 2009 11:16 pm Post subject: |
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Solid refutation of the view that the military was the only party considered.
McChrystal tried to keep State out of it, but Eikenberry came back with a vengeance.
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Coming nearly on the heels of McChrystal's misstep, the Eikenberry "low-end" option made a huge difference, coalescing opposition to McChrystal's call for a high-end flood of more troops and a full-blown counter-insurgency campaign. "McChrystal's gaffe gave Eikenberry his opening and he took it," a well-placed senate staffer says.
Eikenberry's cable exploded like a bomb inside Obama's NSC and reinforced Biden's skepticism over McChrystal's plan and strengthened the voices that believed McChrystal's plan should be ratcheted back and that the US should be provided with an "off ramp" - a way out of the country if the plan didn't work. Eikenberry's meeting with Obama and the NSC team also cast broad doubt on whether what the US faced in Afghanistan was a full-blown insurgency: doubts that persist despite Obama's acceptance of an increase of 30,000 US troops. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Fri Dec 11, 2009 9:45 pm Post subject: |
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Just like I'm not sure what success would look like, I'm also bewildered as to what failure would look like, at least in Afghanistan. I guess failure for the US would resemble two planes plummeting America's symbol of economic power into the ground. But this failure for the US is unlikely, even with a full immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Admittedly, I think negotiations with the Taliban must ensue at some point. And I'm not entirely won over by our philosopher-king's musings at least as Afghanistan is concerned. But Afghanistan is more like Korea than Vietnam: with all of NATO involved, the US cannot just simply leave. And if the US cannot simply leave, then why not wind up for a final climactic push before an early deadline?
At any rate, those decrying the expense of Afghanistan (and it is expensive) need to put it into perspective.
War costs, while high, are a small part of the budget deficits
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Obama last week said he would deploy an additional 30,000 to 35,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. This year's expected $30 billion to $40 billion price tag for that should boost the total cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan past $1 trillion over the last nine years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). |
Compare that to $12 billion/month spent in Iraq in 2008 (presently spending on Iraq has winded down to $7.3 billion/month). Afghanistan is not even our most expensive war. But lets look at national defense as a whole.
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National defense spending accounted for 20.7 percent of the federal budget last year. While that's higher than peacetime lows of around 16 percent in the late 1990s, it's less than the 26-28 percent annual shares between 1975, when U.S. involvement in Vietnam ended, and 1992, when first the Cold War and then the 1991 Gulf War ended.
What's driven the bulk of this decade's deficit boom has been spending growth in programs such as Medicare and Social Security. Human resources, which include those and other domestic programs, consumed 63.8 percent of the budget last year, compared to only 49 percent as recently as 1990.
The antidote to high deficits, say independent experts, is making tough choices on domestic spending and taxes. |
Right. I'm not thrilled with the costs of Afghanistan, either, but lets keep it in perspective. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Fri Dec 11, 2009 9:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
| ...the US cannot just simply leave. And if the US cannot simply leave, then why not wind up for a final climactic push before an early deadline? |
I agree. I also would remind you that this was exactly how R. Nixon and H. Kissinger approached Vietnam in 1972.
As I have said before, people's thinking on Afghanistan, especially people who claim to have fresh approaches to old problems, sound an awful lot like either the Nixon and/or the W. Bush administrations -- especially ironic given people's claims to be so different... |
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chickenpie
Joined: 24 Dec 2008
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| Posted: Fri Dec 11, 2009 11:15 pm Post subject: |
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Basically nothing has changed in terms of the us's international policy.
Still the biggest wankers in the world. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Fri Dec 11, 2009 11:20 pm Post subject: |
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| chickenpie wrote: |
Basically nothing has changed in terms of the us's international policy.
Still the biggest wankers in the world. |
Thanks for your opinion. But you've wandered out of the Off-Topic play-pen, again. Crawl on back now. |
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chickenpie
Joined: 24 Dec 2008
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| Posted: Fri Dec 11, 2009 11:39 pm Post subject: |
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| I'll leave you to carry on your us circle jerk. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2009 11:14 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
Kabul -- U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates ended a two-day trip to Afghanistan on Thursday, telling a group of Afghan soldiers that America will maintain a presence beyond the troop pullout set to begin in 2011.
"While we hope to transfer power in July 2011, we will have a large number of forces here for some time beyond that," Gates told the group at Kabul International Airport. "This is the first time in Afghan history when foreign forces are here to help, and we intend to be your partner for a long time..."
Afghan officials thanked Gates for President Obama's new plan for Afghanistan, which involves the deployment of an additional 30,000 U.S. troops.
They also expressed relief over Gates' pledge for troops to stay beyond 2011. |
CNN Reports |
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Tiger Beer
Joined: 07 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2009 11:13 pm Post subject: |
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| If I remember correctly back to the election...it was increased presense in Afghanistan, and flirting with the idea of knocking on Pakistan's backdoor as well. |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 2:50 am Post subject: |
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It's true, it's no surprise that Obama is continuing this war. It's not going back on any promises he made.
It's still the wrong thing to do. I don't care what he said he'd do, that doesn't change my view of what should be done, and of course I'm going to judge his choice based on my view of the correct path of action, just like anyone would.
He can be governing exactly how he said he'd govern and still be wrong. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 12:06 pm Post subject: |
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| Tiger Beer wrote: |
| If I remember correctly back to the election...it was increased presense in Afghanistan, and flirting with the idea of knocking on Pakistan's backdoor as well. |
| Fox wrote: |
It's true, it's no surprise that Obama is continuing this war. It's not going back on any promises he made.
It's still the wrong thing to do. I don't care what he said he'd do, that doesn't change my view of what should be done, and of course I'm going to judge his choice based on my view of the correct path of action, just like anyone would.
He can be governing exactly how he said he'd govern and still be wrong. |
You are both absolutely right. In fact, I pointed out Obama's such war-mongering over one year before the election, well before his nomination, in the Will a Republocrat save us? thread.
I put "anti-war" in quotes in the OP because that is how he was being sold by the mainstream media on and to the Left. It was very easy to see through if people only would have looked. |
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