Funny You Should Mention It ...

22 Sep 2009 10:19 am

The Case For More War

Les Gelb puts the case succinctly:

Even though I strongly believe that the United States does not have vital interests in Afghanistan, I also believe that Mr. Obama can't simply walk away from the war.

Note that Gelb strongly believes this war advances no real vital interests for the US. And yet he wants to send thousands more young Americans to fight there. He recommendsVietnamization Afghanization of the effort. Like we haven't tried that already. And then he simply splits the difference between what's really needed (long-term neo-imperial occupation) and what can be gotten past the American public. I.e.: two or three more years to save face.

If this is the best the pro-war forces can do, we should leave very soon.

Earlier today we'd been thinking that very thing. Yes, yes, certainly we should leave, although we had actually been thinking (as a result of listening to the war-lover Frank Gaffney today on Hardball)
that the United Snakes should bloody well occupy Afghanistan, if they can't even vote themselves a legit pres. During the Iraq adventure there was a certain amount of "We made Japan & Allied-occupied Germany into stalwarts of democracy & bulwarks against communism" crap floated, but in those nations there were some (admittedly rather abused) democratic traditions & institutions, & the U. S. was in fucking charge, not playing pretend democracy games w/ semi-elected puppets. Gaffney on Hardball can be heard squawking that he doesn't want an occupation, & then that the U. S. should "hook up w/ the Afghan people, although how we do that w/o a legitimate gov't. is a little beyond Old Fool Frank.

More sense from Sullivan (He's made sense that we felt was worth the theft twice today, so we'll give him a break on this load of codswallop.)

But doesn't this beg the question of why Pakistan cannot hold together and resist this kind of insurgency from a backward country on its borders. Why exactly is it America's job to prevent two vast countries and millions of people from saving themselves from Taliban extremism? At what point does anyone actually have the gumption to say: this cannot be done.

We are treating these countries like welfare recipients. And we clearly need welfare reform.

We know how seriously Andy takes welfare reform ("None of my money for those Bell Curve rejects!") so this must be important.

Annals of Threat Escalation:

Note that Sen. Hutchison, (Dim-TX) on yesterday's Hardball war segment went on & on about "The Taliban & Al Qaida," barely mentioning one w/o the other. It would appear that the Taliban are back as boogiemen, in a desperate attempt to keep the war going. Note also Gaffney's widening of the THREAT from mere radical, fundamentalist, extremist Islamists to SHARIA adherents. Meaning, we guess, that now all Muslims are in Frank's sights, not just the Islamists.