How could it possibly make sense for the U.S. to launch a ground war in Afghanistan right now?
Our serious enemy is Al Qaida, who are not in Afghanistan, with the exception of a very small number.
The Taliban are people with very few resources, and who pose a negligible threat to the security of the USA, although they may pose a threat to the security of Pakistan.
All of the most powerful nations in the last 3000 years have invaded Afghanistan and it has become their graveyard.
Our current President ran on a ticket of “War is not the Answer”. He proclaimed that he had voted agaisnt the war in Iraq. He was the peace guy. He was the guy to get us out of wars, not get us into them.
No Taliban effort to build any weapon or hatch any scheme in Afghanistan would be safe from our air to ground missiles. We control the sky. The Taliban have no Air Force.
Al Qaida does need to be pursued. They are in Pakistan mainly, but also in Indonesia, Mayasia, Sudan, Egypt, Europe (Germany, Sweden).
We seem to want to do something, but we don’t want to go where Al Qaida really is. How is this different from George W. Bush?
Why is Obama an improvement over George W. Bush if he launches us into another groundwar in the wrong country, which in the end will cost 5000 American lives, 2 Trillion Dollars and enmire us in the impossible task of nationbuilding in a vaste region of zealots and barbarians and outlaws.
We are already broke. The government’s committments far exceeed its projected revenues for the next decade, and probably forever.
We create serious security threats at home by creating a bankrupt nation with failing social services and failing infrastructure and terrible corruption at the top of our corporate and governmental institutions.
The service personnel we will lose in Afghanistan will not have a decent chance to prevail on the battlefield. We have no identified enemy that needs to be killed. We have no warfighting strategy. We have no exit strategy or even a criterion to know when exit is called for. Senator Carl Levin is to blame for this. He sits there for war after war, wringing his hands, but never sets any objective standards and never pulls the funding plug. This war, if we come to our senses will be a non-starter. We must have learned something from Vietnam, and from Iraq. What did we learn? Nothing? Are we crazy? Or are we too timid to just stand pat until we can figure out something rational to do. Do we have to wage this war so that Obama can be seen to be doing something? If so, Obama = Bush