Doug Bandow, a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, asks the following question of our African American President with the funny name: President Obama: Why Are We in Afghanistan?
I assume Mr. Bandow, as a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute is asking this question not because he doesn’t know the answer (I will assume in this case a modicum of intelligence since this is the Cato Institute and not Glenn Beck) but because he does and just wants to bash President Obama and Democrats a bit.
So here’s the short answer you already know Mr. Bandow: We’re still in Afghanistan because George Bush went there, didn’t finish the job he set for himself (killing or capturing all the Al Qaeda terrorists who attacked us on 9/11/2001) and then authorized and extended killing spree in Iraq in which we wasted the lives of the population and our military forces to make Iran stronger and Halliburton, et al., richer all in the vain hope that his oil buddies would also make billions of dollars.
Now, if Obama leaves Afghanistan he and his party will be will be crucified by Fox, Beck, Limbaugh and every Tea Party wannabe who can hold up a misspelled racist sign as un-American, terrorist-loving, military-hating Democrats who can’t defend America from the Islamofascists. In an election year.
That would give those same neoconservative loving Republicans who created the very idea of “the long war” (the same Republicans whose donors are profiting so much from these wars) a much better chance of regaining control of Congress and endangering Obama’s own chance at a second term in 2012. In which case you better hope the people who endow the Cato Institute with all that cash so you can think those deep thoughts and ask such penetrating intellectual questions don’t decide to cut off their welfare checks donations to your employer when they realize they don’t need the cost of paying for your niche brand of conservatism anymore.
Which is not to say I don’t agree that the US should get out of Afghanistan, and the sooner the better. But you find me any Republican or Democrat, who, if President, would actually follow through on that policy prior to the November elections this year first.
Because this is the political system we have allowed our nation to be sucked into: one where no President has the power to stop the wars in which the American military industrial complex is heavily invested until the Generals and the heavily propagandized American populace are ready to throw in the towel, have George Will declare victory, and allow the troops to be brought home. To think otherwise is to believe in things like magic fairy dust and that free markets are efficient and self-regulating.
Actually, the fastest way to get the war ended at home is if the Republicans start advocating against it. If the Republicans all start rallying for an end to the “Democrat war in Afghanistan”, and started screaming about how much it was costing and how little we were getting out of it, and picked up on Michael Steele’s line about land wars in Asia … well I doubt that the war would last another year. Because Republicans actually can make it an attack on Democratic policy rather than an “attack on our troops” while Democrats are not allowed to do that by the rules that our so-called liberal media have laid down.
Would the GOP do that to win a political battle? Probably not yet. I think some of the candidates that the Tea Party has bubbled up might – they’re the right mix of isolationist and glibertarian to be against the whole “America as world cop” phenomenon. But I’m not sure that the rest of the caucus is ready to buy into that kind of attack. Plus Sarah Palin is ready to denounce anyone who might go that route – so that makes it unlikely.
But I imagine that’s exactly what Cato is setting up here – a path for Republicans to start framing Afghanistan as a “Democrat war” and giving them the ability to wash their hands of it.
But “free” markets are efficient and self-regulating! How dare you. At least they are in the conceptual dreamspace where such a thing as a “free” market roams the wilderness like a unicorn.
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For Cato Institute, Mr. Bandow has written much better articles on Afghanistan and does lay the blame on George Bush taking the eye off Afghanistan and going into Iraq. This piece you linked from Huffington Post is very incoherent to his own standard. Poorly written and quoting lots of people with no significent knowledge of the AfPak region, the Taliban and facts on the ground as Obama is trying to wedge the US and NATO allies out of security operations and leave Afghanistan to the Afghans.
Today is an unique display of an international conference held in Kabul with 40 foreign digneteries including Hillary Clinton. Setting the goal of foreign troops out by 2014 and Afghans doing the security jobs.
(Swiss Info) – An international conference on the future of Afghanistan has backed President Hamid Karzai taking greater control of the country’s affairs.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, present at the Kabul conference, said it had set out the most concrete vision for the country yet. The conference was attended by representatives of 70 states.
At the close, a declaration was issued confirming the international community’s support for several points in Karzai’s long-term strategy. It accepted Karzai’s goal for Afghan forces to be in charge of security nationwide by 2014 and backed a reconciliation plan with the Taliban.
Karzai’s peace plan foresees tapping into Taliban rebels that are fighting for money rather than ideologies, as a way out of the conflict.
Clinton Arrives In Kabul Ahead Of Conference, Meets Karzai
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I did assume he was intelligent. I suspect prior articles blaming Bush didn’t go over well with the Cato Institute’s donors.