Skip to main content

Admiral Mullen on Afghanistan: Taliban stronger, public support weaker, we'll keep throwing resources into Saigon--er, Kabul

This is actually remarkable in its brazen departure from common sense [or any sense of history and/or irony]:

“The Taliban insurgency has gotten better, more sophisticated,” the Admiral conceded. “Their tactics just in my recent visits out there and talking with our troops certainly indicated that.” He said Afghanistan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal would not ask for additional specific numbers of troops in his assessment, but suggested that such a request was likely forthcoming in the next several weeks.

Admiral Mullen also expressed “concern” over the flagging public support for the Afghan War, as several polls have shown that the American public is now firmly opposed to the continuation of the eight-year long war. He insisted, however, that the war would continue, because the president has ordered that it will continue.

During his Meet the Press interview, host David Gregory asked whether or not the massive escalation of the war and pledges of enormous government aid for nation-building exercises were not similar to the mission creep of the Vietnam era. The admiral insisted the mission from the beginning was to “get” al-Qaeda and that this required that the military build a brighter future for Afghanistan. He balked at questions of how much longer this would take, but said he’d have a better idea after another 12-18 months in the war.

Perhaps most incredibly, particularly since he spent so much of his time visiting Congress to defend President Bush’s assorted “new” strategies in the war, Admiral Mullen insisted this is the “first” new strategy the US has embarked on in the entire war. Whether this is selective amnesia on the admiral’s part or a concession that all the other “new” strategies he touted weren’t really new but were the same strategy of escalation and nation-building that has been failing since the 2001 invasion.


Candidate Barack Obama once said that Presidents had to be able to multi-task.

Apparently neither the MSM nor the American people can do so, as serious foreign policy debates have been conspicuous by their absence as we all obsess about what Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley are doing to health care.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Comment Rescue (?) and child-related gun violence in Delaware

In my post about the idiotic over-reaction to a New Jersey 10-year-old posing with his new squirrel rifle , Dana Garrett left me this response: One waits, apparently in vain, for you to post the annual rates of children who either shoot themselves or someone else with a gun. But then you Libertarians are notoriously ambivalent to and silent about data and facts and would rather talk abstract principles and fear monger (like the government will confiscate your guns). It doesn't require any degree of subtlety to see why you are data and fact adverse. The facts indicate we have a crisis with gun violence and accidents in the USA, and Libertarians offer nothing credible to address it. Lives, even the lives of children, get sacrificed to the fetishism of liberty. That's intellectual cowardice. OK, Dana, let's talk facts. According to the Children's Defense Fund , which is itself only querying the CDCP data base, fewer than 10 children/teens were killed per year in Delaw
18 comments
Read more

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?
Post a Comment
Read more

New Warfare: I started my posts with a discussion.....

.....on Unrestricted warfare . The US Air force Institute for National Security Studies have developed a reasonable systems approach to deter non-state violent actors who they label as NSVA's. It is an exceptionally important report if we want to deter violent extremism and other potential violent actors that could threaten this nation and its security. It is THE report our political officials should be listening to to shape policy so that we do not become excessive in using force against those who do not agree with policy and dispute it with reason and normal non-violent civil disobedience. This report, should be carefully read by everyone really concerned with protecting civil liberties while deterring violent terrorism and I recommend if you are a professional you send your recommendations via e-mail at the link above so that either 1.) additional safeguards to civil liberties are included, or 2.) additional viable strategies can be used. Finally, one can only hope that politici
Post a Comment
Read more