Clark Stooksbury thinks maybe yes. He cites Rich Lowry's remark:
The Left needs to favor the Afghan war for political reasons as long as it is agitating against the Iraq war. But shouldn't it oppose the Afghan war for all the same reasons it has opposed Iraq? Afghanistan is in a civil war; it has deep ethnic divisions; the war there has lasted longer than World War II and longer than the Iraq war; it has become a magnet for militants, as more and more of them are going to the Afghan theater rather than Iraq (where they have a good chance of being killed, while fighting for an unpopular cause); if Iraq was supposedly "unwinnable," Afghanistan is an even tougher proposition; etc.
Clark wonders what the US hopes to realistically accomplish in Afghanistan. Emphasis on realistically. Does anybody think we're going to stabilize Afghanistan in the long term? I'm not asking rhetorically. Does preventing jihadists from re-establishing an al-Qaeda base there require the US to maintain an open-ended combat presence in that ungovernable place? What would a US endgame in Afghanistan look like -- and what are the chances that we'll see it. Good questions.
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"If you are left for dead on the Afghan plains
before the women come and pick out your remains,
put your gun to your head and blow out your brains,
and go to your death like a soldier."
Sounds like Kipling.
Big difference between Afghanistan and Iraq. Afghanistan has no oil. It was attacked for the sole purpose of posturing - public retaliation for 911.
Iraq is an occupation. An endless occupation. The guys who are really running the show will make sure of that.
And you're paying for it with your hard-earned tax dollars. Talk about government deciding how your tax dollars are spent! But I guess you figure its worth it because they're keeping "the terrorists" over there. What a fool believes...
Clare - I seen a lot of stuff on this website in the past couple of weeks, "Christian" stuff that is so extreme it's on par with any delusions modern Islam could conjure up.
"Can someone help me out. I remember parts of a poem that I thought was by Byron or Tennyson that went something like:
If you are left for dead on the Afghan plains
before the women come and pick out your remains,
put your gun to your head and blow out your brains,
and go to your death like a soldier."
"The Young British Soldier" by Rudyard Kipling
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-young-british-soldier/
The people of Afghanistan just want to live in peace. I've never spoken with someone who has lived there, but I imagine that's what any person with a family would want. To not be bothered by foreign occupiers or local terrorists. I have a great deal of empathy for them because I can imagine what it would be like not knowing where to turn with America saying one thing and many of your countrymen saying another. How utterly exhausting. How terrifying.
But we over here talk about how it's such an easy decision to make. Just choose democracy. Easy! I mean, we make it doubly easy because if you don't, we're going to "bomb the hell out of you." What incentive is that? Maybe they want to be like America only if to get some semblance of power with which to defend themselves from experiencing more humiliation and death.
I'm not saying America was wrong to topple the Taliban, nor is it wrong in trying to construct a healthy government in Afghanistan. But I really don't think we can force the square peg through the round hole here. We need to look at root causes of terrorism in these areas and how they can best be alleviated. I imagine it won't be by using bombs.
Err, I didn't mean to add that URL. I thought it would just provide a link-back when you clicked on my name. :/
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