Arianna Huffington is an ass! Read her long blog, up now, recommending Joe Biden
resign and lead Democrats into a stronger anti-Afgan position. She is badly wrong.
And at times, she acts like an ass, yes she does!! Read below.
If Obama has any hope of making a widely effective first term, he will remove American military operations from Afghanistan, and in due course General McChrystal will take retirement and enter banking or pharma, where he will make millions.
About the General I care not. About Biden, I care a lot. He is a real Democrat, and I agree with his stance on the futility of military engagement in Afghanistan, and I would say in the mid-east in general.
There is no war to be won in Afghanistan. It's not a country, it's not a society, it has no real or effective central government; it is a vast geographic area, a region, and it is politically non- existent in the sense of an organized nation. You can fight there for decades and have nothing to show for it, and the past centuries of British and Russian and so-on experience there prove this point -- and present-day, failed American involvement proves it.
So, Joe Biden's counsel inside the White House is not only correct, it is irrefutable and indispensable. Obama is said to be smart, he is said to listen and learn. Let's hope that is right. I consider Obama a sure bet for re-eleciton, almost regardless of what happens, so why not take a big "political risk" (as some would deem it), and just get entirely out of Afgan, setting up in our wake a humanitarian mission, perhaps via United Nations, or perhaps direct -- that would do the best that can be done for the Afgan victims of our warring. And that's about it; that's all you can do. And that's a lot.
McChrystal is wrong wrong, but what do you expect; he as a general sees a military problem to remedy. There is NO military problem in Afghanistan, it is a political problem, if that, and for sure humanitarian problem. If Obama has all those smarts from Harvard and his innate genes, well it's time for him to use them, and let's hope he does.
In summary: The problems in Afghanistan are political -- not military. They will not yield to a military
solution. TTGO -- Time To Get Out. Eighteen months from now, we are all gone.
Meanwhile, Arianna, Joe Biden stays where he is and supports Obama in his enlightenment -- Obama
is too new too green too inexperienced not to need an old hand like Biden to help him. Reform from within. Only way it will happen. I am still neutral on Obama -- he can do it right or he can do it wrong -- but Biden is right so leave him there to help. The only thing Obama has gotten really badly, wickedly wrong so far is how he handled the big banks with such kid gloves; we should long since have had heads chopped off there, and today's press tells us Goldman Sachs is preparing to pay record bonuses. That is stupid, it is criminal, and if Obama had more experience and more cojones he wold stop them! I hope Biden weighs in on that one!