I wrote a diary yesterday about Senator Kerry's reaction to the ominous descent into chaos that Afghanistan has become
here, but lest anyone think this amounts to '08 politics posturing, or even directly with '06 politics, be rest assured this is a very real threat as
The Power and News Interest Report, a respected independent organization that analyzes open source intelligence, has come out with an alarming report.
Intelligence Brief: N.A.T.O.'s Troubles in Afghanistan Will Persist
Growing instability and a resilient insurgency in Afghanistan are putting N.A.T.O. forces under severe stress and jeopardizing U.S.-led stabilization efforts. In response, on September 9 and September 13, N.A.T.O. called for reinforcements by asking for an additional 2,500 troops.
The article goes on to discuss how Poland is the only country that can bring more troops to Afghanistan. Germany, for example, has already pledged to send 2,500 troops to Lebanon, so they are not in a position to give any more troops to Afghanistan.
So how dire is the situation in Afghanistan?
The extreme difficulty in containing the Afghan insurgency and the rapid rise of Taliban forces in the country are discouraging many N.A.T.O. members to step up their participation in the mission. Fighting is intense and is unlikely to subside any time soon. Given the premises of the 2001-2002 period, when after the Taliban defeat many thought that the most difficult task was accomplished, governments in the West fear the political consequences of sustained casualties and the costs of the mission.
And how this relates to Iraq:
The longer the ongoing conflict continues, the less politically manageable it will be, especially because it will add to the already extreme political trouble that the U.S.-led coalition has had to face in Iraq.
It follows that the United States will need to re-think its exit strategy in Iraq even more urgently, since the two fronts -- Iraq and Afghanistan -- risk converging in a ruinous way for the Bush administration precisely as mid-term elections approach.
In the referenced diary above, John Kerry had made an urgent plea in The Democratic Daily as well as in a speech at Howard University of the gravity of this matter. Most notably, he has called for the redeployment of troops from Iraq by July of next year, and to send 5,000 troops to Afghanistan, the place where the real war on terror resides. Later in the day, he responded to a comment on The Dem Daily about the role Democrats should play in this most vital matter of our national security:
This isn't just politics. We've got ideas about Afghanistan, and we have a responsibility to talk about them. That's how you earn the right to lead.
I'm so tired of Democrats who want to change the subject, and who act like security is "the other guy's issue" - not just because the other guy is incompetent, but because if we want to govern we have to have the backbone to show how we'd govern a lot better.
People won't fire the incompetents if they don't have faith in the new management team. And on Afghanistan, Iraq, homeland security, diplomacy, you name it, we know what to do.
I sincerely hope that for the sake of this nation, candidates around the country take this agressive tact of demanding that we don't let Afghanistan turn into the big mess that Iraq already is. This goes beyond politics, guys. If we don't get Afghanistan right, then these terrorists are back where they started before 9/11, with a nice base to scheme about our deaths and train their foot soldiers. Voting Democratic is not only good for progressivism, it is vital to the security of our nation.