Afghan Endgame Blueprint To Be Unveiled This Week

Can you imagine what would have happened if the government had honestly told people we were going to invade Afghanistan, stay for 13 years and not even catch bin Laden?

This has got to be one of the greatest scandals of our time.

You don’t have to be as smart as Vizzini to know that one of the classic blunders is “never get involved in a land war in Asia”.

“the classic blunders is “never get involved in a land war in Asia”.
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Closely followed by don’t have it led by a liberal community activist!

Uh, free? Did Bush capture some sort of bin Laden that the rest of us never heard about?

“some sort of bin Laden”?
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No but I assure you you won’t by cutting and running. Or is that too much like questioning a liberals patriotism

free, I was sympathetic to arguments like “be patient” and “don’t cut and run” for awhile but a 13 year occupation? It’s lunacy. “Be patient” is what you say during the first couple of years. We’re coming up on a decade. Honestly, is this what you thought would happen when we invaded? Did you really believe we’d still be there spending lives and treasure, 10 years on with another 4 (at least) to go?

If Bush had instituted an income tax surcharge to pay for the war,
1. We would have had to borrow the money to buy Israeli bullets from China
2. Cheney would have made sure that was lasted 6 months or less
3. Congress would be hearing from everyone because all of us would have a horse in the race and not just the military with people going through up to 6 rotations in 6 years. It may be a “professional” army but we are sending them through a non-professional meat-grinder without adequate replacement forces due to the smaller army.
4. By now, someone would be in the street protesting how much of the money we are borrowing is actually just feeding the bottom line of corporations.
5. Maybe someone would have asked how the previous groups who attacked Afganistan did?

What I thought is that fighting a terrorist organization has no set plans. They will lay in wait and strike when we “withdraw”. Why does it always seem that for defending our country and its citizens, liberal want definitive time lines set while items like affirmative action or the war on poverty has no end? Spending continues forever and become cottage industries.

Good points at,, arttraveler. Though I would argue that there is a surcharge whether we know it or not. No coincidence that afetr a decade of constant warfare that we’re suddenly being told to expect less from the government because of our out of control deficits. This out and out failure is going to cost us in myriad hidden ways.

I think you’ll agree, free, that there’s more to fighting terrorism than occupying Afghanistan. In the sense that terrorism is really more like an international crime syndicate than it is anything else it is, as you say, a war with no end. The War on Drugs is also a war with no end. But we don’t fight it by occupying Colombia.

I bet you’re as dissapointed with all of this as I am. If somebody had bet me money that bin Laden would be free in 2010 I’d have bet against them and lost. It’s really inconceivable to me that we’re still there and never even accomplished that one very important part of the mission.

I don’t see this as so much of a left/right thing. We can’t keep this up forever, can we?

“If you must gamble, decide upon three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time.” – Chinese Proverb
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Isn’t it past quitting time for you, Freeper?

I didn’t realize that the defense of our country was a gamble?

Isn’t time you defend Rangel or one of the other FAILED policies of liberalism.

I find it greatly amusing how devoid of any real issue invades this site since the election. I guess when you whole life beliefs slap your face in a cold glimpse of reality its obfuscate and focus on non-issues.

grape you personify that view.

“In the sense that terrorism is really more like an international crime syndicate than it is anything else it is, as you say, a war with no end.”
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A war without end, it may be. Despite the denial and defense that liberals in this country have waged, there is a faction of Muslims that have as a wish to destroy the Western World and its ways.
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And if you recall 9/11 very well may have been the result of the Clinton Administration treating terrorism as a crime. He was offered bin Laden but could not figure out how he could be charged.
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“The War on Drugs is also a war with no end. But we don’t fight it by occupying Colombia.”

. No we don’t but we have let it spread by turning guarding our border and illegal immigration turn into an issue of race.

Vigilance is the price of freedom. Pretending it is hopeless or ignoring it is what drives the drug lords and the terrorists. We are already seeing an increase in domestic terrorism because we have taken the approach that we are Islamophobic and not that we are being threatened. We have become more concerned that people will no like us or that they feel targeted. Why are we more concerned about feelings of a group that has as a stated goal to kill us while US citizens can undergo a colonoscopy exam by the IRS and we don’t bat an eye?

Nation-building in hostile foreign lands forever is not the price of freedom, freeinpa.
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Occupation is not vigilance, it’s government waste.
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Real conservatives are opposed to that sort of thing, I thought.
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There’s a big difference between the government’s constitutionally provided roles of defending and building our nation, and defending and building another peoples’ nation indefinitely at unaffordable expense.
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Let’s call this thing what it is: a wildly wasteful, corrupt jobs and private investment program that earmarking GOP and earmarking Dems can agree on, and for which they never have to account to us.
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How about you break with the majority of your party, and oppose wasteful government spending, and I’ll break with the majority of my party, and oppose dishonest government policy, and we’ll demand a stop to this thing together, freeinpa?
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Isn’t that ability for us, the American people, to overcome tribal divisions, in order to make the government accountable to providing for our defense and our general welfare, the real vigilance imagined by the Founders?

Do you “recall 9/11 very well”?

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2010/10/31/trick-or-truth/

bases, pipeline routes, lithium…

Protecting you from the Bogey Man doesn’t enter into it, never has.

“The momentum of Asia’s economic development is already generating massive pressures for the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea.”

- Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard, 1997

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/the-gas-must-flow/

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2010/06/15/unipolar-disorder/

“No but I assure you you won’t by cutting and running. Or is that too much like questioning a liberals patriotism”
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It’s funny having someone with no integrity constantly question liberals integrity, moral and patriotism.

SZ;

I mentioned nothing of occupation or nation building. It is government waste and one of the areas to cut in the defense department are many of the outposts from WWII and the Korean War.
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“private investment program that earmarking GOP and earmarking Dems can agree on, and for which they never have to account to us”
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I would largely agree with you. The initial intent was a defense initiative that quickly deteriorated into pork barreling. However it is no different than nearly every agency and department in the federal government. My issue is why liberals never seem to attack these for the wasteful pits they are.
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“we’ll demand a stop to this thing together,”
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You have no argument from me on this SZ.

How about that, freeinpa?
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In an afternoon, we’ve accomplished together what Barack Obama says he blames himself for not doing in almost 2 years.
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Imagine what kind of wave it would send to Washington, if we could focus like a beam of light on these few issues upon which we agree, and then let our voices be heard in the capital –together.
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We’d either have a democracy then, or we’d find out that we never had one, in which case a lot of us movement liberals might find ourselves agreeing a bit more with movement conservatives about the American remedy for tyranny.
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We don’t have to get along, we don’t have to like each other, we can wildly oppose each other on 90% of everything else, but I’ll bet we’d have a shot at getting the 10% done right, and our country would be 10% better, which is saying a lot.