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Will Afghanistan be Obama's Vietnam?
Saturday, May 23, 2009 6:33 AM PDT
Since George W. Bush's final days in the White House and during the first days of Barack Obama's administration, fatalities sustained in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have all but slipped from the news.
On Memorial Day, it's appropriate to bring the focus back on those lost lives.
From the time Obama assumed office, an estimated 40 Americans have died in Iraq combat. The total combat deaths for Iraq and Afghanistan dating from the war's beginning, according to the Department of Defense, is approximately 4,300 and 685, respectively, with an estimated 100,000 injured.
While every single life lost in this misguided war is tragic, what could be more agonizing to a family than to learn that their loved one was killed in Iraq this week — more than six years since the pointless conflict began in March 2003?
All the rationale to support the Iraq War has long ago been exposed as a pack of Bush administration lies that was foolishly embraced by a spineless, disengaged Congress.
As News-Sentinel readers are well aware, during the Bush presidency, I was harshly critical of his Iraq policies. After Bush left office, I promised that I would take the same critical perspective on Obama, an equally untrustworthy president.
Recently, Obama, referring to it as a "war of necessity," has escalated the hostilities in Afghanistan and wants to expand fighting into Pakistan. On Capitol Hill, it's called the "Af-Pak War."
During his March press conference, Obama said:
"Al-Qaida and its allies — the terrorists who planned and supported the 9/11 attacks — are in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Multiple intelligence estimates have warned that al-Qaida is actively planning attacks on the United States homeland from its safe haven in Pakistan. And if the Afghan government falls to the Taliban — or allows al-Qaida to go unchallenged — that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can."
I tipped you off that those are Obama's words. If I hadn't, you might have assumed, because they are so similar in language and tone to Bush's, that our previous president spoke them.
Obama then added:
"Al-Qaida poses a clear and present danger to American interests and its allies throughout the world and must be dealt with by using all the instruments in our national security arsenal in an integrated manner. The terrorist organization's deep historical roots in Afghanistan and its neighbor Pakistan place it at the center of an 'arc of instability' through South and Central Asia and the greater Middle East that requires a sustained international response."
Does Dick Cheney write Obama's speeches?
Obama's saber-rattling analysis missed several key points:
On Memorial Day, Obama will make speeches filled with flowery language about the sacrifices our American soldiers have made in the many wars we have fought.
The president is right to honor the memory of our courageous soldiers.
But Obama will not likely reference his true Memorial Day message: perpetual war and more American combat deaths.
Joe Guzzardi retired last year from the Lodi Unified School District. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.
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wtf wrote on May 28, 2009 1:36 PM:
wtf wrote on May 28, 2009 1:36 PM:
An Early Call for Obama's Resignation
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/28-3 "
dogbark wrote on May 26, 2009 4:39 PM:
No need to place blame, it will happen no matter who is president.
They are a zealot army of haters who will just keep on trying. "
stantaves wrote on May 26, 2009 10:35 AM:
Gator wrote on May 26, 2009 10:12 AM:
answer, Oil, the Same reason we invaded Iraq. You mention drugs and the
growing of!! Well T&C that drug money funds the Taliban and where does
the bulk of that money come from, the good old USA. The US consumes
more heroin than all the countries of the world combined…I didn’t Vote for
Obama but after Bush he is a breath of fresh air…You rant about all the money being wasted rebuilding the country, it’s close to a Trillion dollars
Unaccounted, for try putting the blame where it belongs, right in the lap of
Halliburton and KBR… And the beat goes on!!! "
T & C wrote on May 26, 2009 8:45 AM:
"In the long run I believe the US has finally learned how to fight a counterInsurgency war. You don’t win by blowing the hell out of things and people, you win by turning the populace against the insurgents."
Finally learned? Give us all a break! These people in Iraq and Afghanistan have made their income for a thousand years from DRUGS! Those villages depend on that money, and their life, and the lives of their families depend on their cooperating with the terrorists! Rurn against them, and they are killed. Those people are glad to take our money/Bribes.... but where are the returns for our money? Bin Laden is alive and well, LAUGHING at America! How about showing me 100 terrorist training Camps destroyed along with 5,000 terrorists in those camps!!! Then I will get on board and say we are turning the tide of insurgency by turning the population against them. Until then, we are WASTING Billions and well as the precious lives of our service men and women! "
T & C wrote on May 26, 2009 8:39 AM:
T & C wrote on May 26, 2009 8:33 AM:
T & C wrote on May 26, 2009 8:27 AM:
T & C wrote on May 26, 2009 8:22 AM:
T & C wrote on May 26, 2009 8:19 AM:
http://www.goantiques.com/detail,president-barack-obama,1874446.html "
Gator wrote on May 25, 2009 4:42 PM:
1143 wrote on May 25, 2009 12:04 PM:
Gator wrote on May 23, 2009 1:30 PM:
any and all and win over the population, you don’t win over the locals you lose.. Now to the Importance of Afghanistan, main reason it’s next door to Pakistan and they have Nukes. Next, Taliban and Nukes equal smoking hole some where in the US.. So there it is
In the simplest of terms.. Petraeus will call the shots in Afghanistan and if we fight the
Counter insurgency style of war we will prevail.. You need to learn to think like your enemy and most of all stop thinking like a westerner … The sad and sorry fact is we wasted good lives for naught in Iraq. We had Sadam in a box and had we stayed in the Stan it would be over by now, pure speculation on my part!! "
Brian wrote on May 23, 2009 9:27 AM:
Obama's saber-rattling analysis missed several key points:
First, he's introduced no tangible new evidence that ratcheting up the Afghanistan War will produce any different results than the stalemate we've been mired in for so long.
-Indeed. Many a military have eventually just walked away from Afghanistan for centuries. To say that "Afghanistan is a logistical and strategic nightmare" is an understatement. "
Brian wrote on May 23, 2009 9:19 AM:
Brian wrote on May 23, 2009 9:18 AM:
If terrorists are acquitted or released by a federal judge's ruling, the odds are good that they will go right back to fighting against us. In our book, "Fleeced," we describe some of the most egregious examples of freed terrorists' returning to their wicked ways. And former Vice President Dick Cheney in his address Thursday said that one in seven of the detainees freed from Guantanamo has rejoined the terrorists.
Consider the case of Abdullah Mehsud, who was captured in Afghanistan and, after hiding his identity as second-in-command of a Pakistani Taliban group, was freed after two years at Gitmo. Once free, he kidnapped two Chinese engineers who were working on a hydroelectric dam and killed one of them. "
Brian wrote on May 23, 2009 9:17 AM:
This raises two problems: First, if he is acquitted, where will he be released? Likely, he'll just be invited to walk out the door and onto the streets of New York. Second, is there a danger of terrorist retaliation or attempts to interdict the trial with violence?
Trying a terrorist in the Big Apple serves to paint a bull's-eye on the courthouse. The recently foiled plan to attack New York City synagogues demonstrates that terrorists have the city in their sights, as they have since the 1993 World Trade Center attack. Could Obama find a worse place to conduct a trial?
The very concept of trying terrorists under US law is a slippery slope. We specifically allow our military and intelligence operatives to proceed without the procedural safeguards enumerated in the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth amendments. Why? Because we didn't plan for trials in civilian courts, we didn't take care to see that the evidence was obtained so as to be admissible in civilian courts. "
Brian wrote on May 23, 2009 9:15 AM:
THE TERRORISTS' BEST US HOPE
PRESIDENT Obama is attacking a red herring when he defends his decision to send the worst terrorists at Guantanamo to United States prisons by saying the likelihood of escape from secure federal facilities is very low.
Of course it is. No rope ladder or prison laundry truck is likely to do the trick.
But when it comes to federal judges, we can't be so sure.
The reason we sent the terrorists to Guantanamo in the first place, rather than bring them onto US soil, was never really connected to worries that they might escape. The Bush administration feared, quite correctly, that if the inmates were in federal prisons on US territory, federal judges would take their pleas for constitutional rights more seriously.
That argument is still true, and bringing the terrorists to the United States puts us at risk that they could be freed by court order. "
OTH wrote on May 23, 2009 8:19 AM:
I totally agree with you about Afghanistan. If we had done what we should have done to begin with instead of turning the country over to drug running war lords things might be different now. The U.S. needs to win the war there from the inside out. "
Gator wrote on May 23, 2009 8:10 AM:
In the long run I believe the US has finally learned how to fight a counter
Insurgency war. You don’t win by blowing the hell out of things and people,
you win by turning the populace against the insurgents We failed in Vietnam and for a time in Iraq for failure to do just that.. As for Afghanistan we let it sit on the back burner while we fought the wrong war!! As for bin Laden I would lay odds
he is dead and Dr, ayman Al Zawahiri is running the show…Special Operations
troops are doing over 75% of all operations in Afghanistan as they should…Joe
you truly think like a westerner, we could be out of both countries and they would
still want us dead!! They hate all the westernized world not just America. It’s our
culture, our life style, our movies, TV our way of life and the hate isn’t going away… "
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