I don't really care how the NY Times has decided how Obama made his decision to continue a losing war in Afghanistan.
I really sorta doubt that he, or Gates, or Hillary Clinton watched this video:
These are the Afghan soldiers that we're "training" to stand up so we can stand down.
It's not working.
The soldiers sit around smoking hash and opium all day long, then laughingly waste all the ammunition. It's 120 degrees in the shade and they're constantly bringing in more ammo and water, and there's never enough of either.
The Taliban just sends a few bullets their way and sits back and waits for the Afghan "soldiers" to unload all their ammo shooting willy-nilly into the air and elsewhere.
Then the Taliban can just move in and kill them.
The Taliban can fight forever. They don't care how long it takes. It costs them nothing and they know how much it costs our side.
There is simply no way this will ever work.
Which makes me wonder if we're even there to "win" or for some other purpose. Because it's pretty obvious there's no "winning" here.
Shades of Vietnam.
And Vietnam is only one lesson of history that is being ignored.
Did anyone catch Alan Grayson on the very concept of "Afghanistan" as a nation?
I think that the basic premise that we can alter afghan society is greatly flawed. Afghanistan is simply the part of Asia that was never occupied by the Russians or the English in the Great Game. It's not a country; it's not even a place. It's just an empty place on the map. It's terra incognita. People who live there are a welter of different tribes, different language groups, different religious beliefs.
All over the country you find different people who have nothing to do with each other except for the fact that we call them Afghans, and they don't even call themselves Afghans. They're Tajiks or they're Pashtuns, or they're Hazzaras or someone else. The things that hold them together are simply the things that we try to create artificially.
You won't catch that on your CNN, your Muzak of Information.
But hey, if you want "your President" to keep fighting Bush's war, well, that's your deal. Just don't blame me when the country is bankrupt. Which it may be already.
ON EDIT: hat tip to TheMomCat, who posted this here:
http://www.docudharma.com/...
I basically stole it.