all I know is once obama furthered bush’s fascist rhetoric and used the term “homeland” two things happened

1) he skeeved me out and if my ancestors heard him they returned to their grave just to rturn over

2) he lost any credibility I had left remaining for his “good intentions”

if you missed them go to the transcript, hit control button + f, type in homeland and hit enter to find how quickly into the speach he used it, then peppered it in here and there a few times total

He will not be the one to dismantle the industrial military complex

After he lied about his support for FISA and Telecomm immunity, BEFORE he was elected, I never thought he would be the one to take on the powers that be.

FDR took on the powers that be; Obama, first and foremost, accommodates them…

Fetish.

Obama uses a Shrub gambit to shield himself from criticism by addressing captive military audience (mostly in their 20s). For the same reason he delivered a speech on belligerent foreign policy to an audience at the Naval Academy some while ago. On the other hand, he adopts the military salute to uniformed personnel from Ronald Reagan. The comparisons to LBJ are more far-fetched. The Cold War™ has been replaced by the War on Terror™, but the aims are similar in terms of geo-politics and jockeying for position in strategic areas of the world. It also feeds the MIC forever at the trough since the Civil War. The pressure on LBJ, however, had built up quite a lot of steam. Too many people still remember the lessons of the Cold War and should know better. That is the difference and that is why the comparison with LBJ is not valid.

Biden on CBS…certainly speaks well.

democracynow is doing serveral segments on the speech. Bacevitch is one of the guests, Nir Rosen is another, can’t remember the third, but also high quality.

Well, Biden and McCain all over….

Kucinich up on democracynow.

Who the hell are we supposed to be fighting anyway. I’m confused. I thought we went there to get Bin Laden and defeat Al Qaeda, now I’m hearing The Taliban. Doesn’t matter anyway, I guess. Defense contractors get filthy rich[er], people die, and we become more broke.

Three thousand people died on 9-11 and Mr. Transparency continues the folly of the Bush administration. 45,000 people die very year because of lack of health insurance and he can’t be bothered to get his hands dirty or grow some semblance of a spine.

McSTAIN STILL PLAYING REPUBLICAN LYING POLITICS ALL OVER THE TUBE..this is shocking, and when we are at war.

there was a time politics ended at our nations shore (NOT the homeland’s shore, that’s at the edge of germany)

The Homeland. The Fatherland. The Motherland. Why do all these fascist terms for nations remind me of a very big, very dysfunctional family? You know, the kind that eats it’s own?

Mornin’, BT, pups

Waist Deep in the Big Muddy

All of Obama’s rationalizations for troop escalation are bullshit.

We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace! White Rose (non-violent resistance movement in Germany July 42 – Feb 43)

I can’t wait for the warmonger commenters to show up and we’ve got a few. I want them to prove to us just how essential this war is.

War is good for the Afghan women. /s

One reason I initially liked Obama is that he seemed too humane and too intelligent to try to make points by “punching a hippy in the face” (or punching Don Siegelman in the face). It’s not the first time I’ve been wrong.

I’m too old, too pissed and too damned stubborn to let this keep me from voting for my local non-fascists, but I fear the effect it will have on younger people.

Many people are shocked by the Kos poll showing 40% of Democrats saying they’re probably or certainly not voting next time. I’m afraid it would be even more shocking to see those numbers broken out by age group.

Bacevitch coming up on democracynow.

Sounds like this troop move was the best arbitrage deal our Harvard Law
President could get with the national security apparat. That is his training after all, he can evoke at times of his choosing the brave sentiments of a more progressive spirit, but he cuts deals cold and plays
the game by their rules. Not gonna get no different…

Bacevich views O’s speech as a squandered opportunity. Oh how familiar we are with those.

That’s the rationale I’ve seen from one particular commenter here.

Bacevich sez Johnson was just as reluctant to go more deeply into VN, and just as reluctant to admit failure as O is wrt Afghanistan.

Just trying to short circuit the discussion. *g*

Doesn’t work with me.

BTW, apparently Code Pink is now also in that category. Gotta stay in Afghanistan until women’s situation is improved. Now to give a little subtlty to CP’s position, they think less military, more nonmilitary personnel. As if the U.S. had enough people of any sort who could understand Afghanistan and “do the right thing.”

Heh. democracynow is playing a whole bunch of Johnson clips.

Nice tee.

I have this one. Gonna wear it today.

I heard them yesterday say they were going to be at the protest at West Point. Guess I’d best go check their site.

Obama has always embraced the bipartisan fettish of Pax Americana. He will not be the one to dismantle the industrial military complex.

It’s called staying alive. Remember JFK.

Bacevich deeply regrets prez using U.S. military as props. Thinks it started with Reagan.

CodePink. Doesn’t look like support for the war to me.

Code Pink want more civilians, not soldiers. But U.S. stay. Or maybe they’ve changed their minds again. Last I heard was a month or two ago.

The first thing that came to my mind was Robin Williams’ voice sying “Good morning, Vietnam!”
Yahyahyah, I know BO explained why they weren’t parallel but futile is futile.

I heard the head of CP interviewed by Scott Horton (the other one) on antiwar.com. The distinction that is not apparent on the page you linked to, but that came out in the interview, is that they think the U.S. is responsible for reestablishing civil society and has to stay until that happens. Fewer soldiers, more civilians. But as I said, I don’t know if they still hold that untenable position.

Obama has always embraced the bipartisan fettish of Pax Americana.

I’m not sure it’s a fetish. The reality is that the current mutual security architecture globally depends on the US to be the sole major enforcer. And it depends on international institutions to provide decisions of legitimacy to enforcement actions. Bush did not like the latter reality and tried to destroy international institutions because they had the possibility of calling him to account, if only through surrogates.

This is the reality that resulted from the security architecture that FDR designed for the post-World War II era and that Harry Truman put into place. With the end of the Cold War, the US achieved that part of FDR’s vision. And then squandered it. So for now we are stuck with a default mutual security structure that depends on the US and acts through NATO, the UN, and bilateral security treaties. There’s little that Obama can do to change that in ten months, especially when he needs to gain some authority for handling national security and foreign policy well. We will see shortly whether this decision shuts down the Republican fearmongering about Obama’s weakness.

To get out of the Pax Americana security framework requires the vision of a new framework of mutual security. No one has yet proposed one that has the consensus of the major global powers. Strengthening the effectiveness of the Nonproliferation Treaty and US-Russia negotiations to build down a large portion of their remaining nuclear arsenals are a move in the right direction. For now, the very technology of conventional war is a bit of a deterrent, however unsatisfactory, to conventional wars. Which leaves asymmetric warfare of various sorts the remaining battleground that can actually force political changes (Clausewitz: “War is politics by other means” still being true.)

A workable mutual security framework allows politics to play out without requiring “other means”.

There is a second set of issues in a Pax Americana that revolve around the definition of US interests. Obama appealed to the stability of a nuclear state, Pakistan, as being in US interests and requiring action in Afghanistan. The statement of interest in the stability and sanity of nuclear-armed states is correct in the short term. The discussion has been whether the military and diplomatic actions that the Obama administration has taken is sufficient to ensure Pakistani stability. Down the road, achieving energy independence makes oil states less essential to US national interests and power; indeed, being able to run the military without fossil fuels would almost eliminate US interest in oil-rich countries. Paying off the national debt that the Republican administrations from Reagan through Bush II left behind is in our national interest and could very well require cuts in foreign economic and military aid. At what point does this impact the blank check that we have provided to the Likud government of Israel? And at what point does the necessity to pay down the debt create the politics that even the military-industrial-complex is reduced? Clinton’s unpardonable sin was that he reduced the growth in the military in response to the end of the Cold War; so unpardonable that it spawned a bloodless coup carried out by five members of the Supreme Court.

Obama is not stupid; he is going to tread carefully here until he has some way to deal with the issue of redefining the US national security structure, a job that hasn’t been done since the Truman administration. But to do that, he has to “successfully” end two wars.

There is a lot of discussion that we could have about what that national security structure needs to look like–less bloated, less invasive of civil liberties, more accountable to Congress, less supportive of unchecked executive power, to be sure. But what are the institutions required? What provisions have to be made for a rapid response besides a large standing army and a permanent military-industrial complex?

And there is a lot of discussion that we could have about what a global mutual security structure looks like. How should international institutions be reformed from their FDR-era structures? How do you have an effective multi-polar security structure? What role do the major powers–US, NATO, BRIC, Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and other multinational alignments play in this?

It is vision more that kvetching that will begin to move us away from a Pax Americana system of national security.

I’ve been a member since the beginning and I’ve never heard that. Was it Medea Benjamin being interviewed? I find it hard to believe she said anything like that.

“Oh, dontcha know Vietnam never attacked us. Dontcha know.”

/911 Serial Theme

I supported the Afghanistan invasion from the beginning and was disheartened when it was all but abandoned for the Iraq debacle. The fact is that Afghanistan under Taliban control harbored and abetted al Qaeda in every possible way. When asked told to hand over bin Laden and his boys, they did what everyone in the Middle East seems to do when offered a deal, agree one minute and then add new clauses the next. If you could strike a deal with the Taliban now to end the BS over there, they would agree with huge smiles and then be back to their business the second you looked elsewhere. This is their idea of diplomacy: Delay, delay, delay while they plan their next atrocity.

The approach now should be straightforward (at least to me). Troops to secure the country and take back areas back under Taliban control and keep it that way. Put the lean on Karzai and Pakistan to clean up their respective messes. Pakistan needs to make a choice. They can be all gooey and nostalgic about their brethren in the tribal areas or they can clean it up (and I can look the other way while they do so in any way they choose but do it they must). Also, those folks in the ISI (Pakistan security service) who see eye to eye with the Taliban and al Qaeda need to go. A series of terrible and coincidental accidents might remind the ones who remain that behaving is the better option. Karzai has to be reminded that he is more replaceable than a roll of toilet paper. His liking the analogy is irrelevant. The corruption has to be stopped even if that means the family members who benefit from it have to meet the fate of the aforementioned ISI miscreants.

Big talk, keyboard warrior.

he noted that he had opposed the war in Iraq from the start

Damn it I hate when he tries to play this card. He wasn’t in the Senate to oppose it from the start, later admitted if he was he doesn’t know how he would’ve voted, and when he did get in the Senate he had a hard time finding a Iraq War spending bill he didn’t like. Dennis Kucinich is an Iraq war opposer. Ron Paul is an Iraq war opposer. Sir, you are no Iraq war opposer, you just play one on TV.

Loved Obama’s comment that we’re not as “innocent” as in those FDR days. Heh. That was a hoot. Of course, we weren’t so very innocent afore dat neither.

After volunteering, writing checks and voting for Obama, the sight of him today makes me sick. He wants Afghanistan to hold accountable corruption and illegality but refuses to hold accountable the illegality and corruption of the previous administration in the “homeland.”

Nir Rosen sez if the U.S. stops killing Muslims, then Muslims will stop killing Americans. Works for me.

Yes, Medea. I’ll see if I can find the link.

Yep. Lead by example seems to be void in his approach.

Karzai will just laugh.

Here’s the link. It was October 7, so she could certainly have rethought it by now. I don’t follow Code Pink closely.

The pols and military have these grand schemes that will turn Afghanistan into a corruption-free, democratic country, whether the Afghans want it or not. They ignore the history and culture of the country. It’s a tribal culture. Inhabitants of one valley don’t take kindly to those from another valley coming into their territory. That is never going to change.

Troops to secure the country and take back areas back under Taliban control and keep it that way

Do you have any idea what Afghanistan is like?

Yup. Kind of you know like the Golden Rule.

Here is Juan Cole on Obama’s speech.

Two very thoughtful pieces. The top ten are nice summaries. His Salon piece is outstanding.

The reality is that the current mutual security architecture globally depends on the US to be the sole major enforcer

You make it sound like the solution to every international problem is military, and that the U.S. must be involved in every military action. Think that’s exactly the Washington consensus. And that’s the problem.

I once called into a wnyc discussion of OT, NT, 10 commandments, etc., and asked the guest why didn’t we just scrap all that and the religions associated with it and just go with the Golden Rule. (Her answer was that there was a lot of truth in what I said, which was the appropriate answer because it is true but it’s never going to happen.)

FDR did not create the National Security Act of 1947 or its Wall Street
branch, CIA. Col. Wilkerson has said the National Security Act was created
to make another FDR impossible, that is actually President and not some
hired gun. Look up Dull, Duller, Dulles and leave FDR out of it as Obama
should have.

Future historians will likely be writing that the seeds of the ultimate collapse of the American empire began with the funding and arming of radical Muslim extremists waging a guerrilla was against the Soviet Union. The chickens have come home to roost and no one in the oligarchy or plutocracy ot whatever you call the forces of the status quo, has the power to change a damn thing.

Had to look up the quote just to make sure I heard it right:

“As a country, we are not as young — and perhaps not as innocent — as we were when Roosevelt was president.”

What a piece of balderdash.

Besides a desire to wring the last dollar out of the system, no member
of it is willing to risk their life to change it, simple cowardice posing
as culture.

New post upstairs…

Obama is a cynical hustler like his dreamy father.

Horton: So we need occupation, but without soldiers.

Benjamin: Where are you getting that from?

Horton: Well, I mean I’m just trying to understand. Because you’re saying we need to build up their court system and we need to do all these things to have a proper exit… a responsible exit strategy rather than just leaving and letting them call their own shots, work out their own problems. And I just wonder how these things all go together. We’re supposed to occupy the country, but without killing anybody. And we’re supposed to have soldiers to protect women’s rights, but not to, whatever it is that they’re actually doing there, which of course has nothing to do with women’s rights in the first place. You follow me?

Benjamin: Yeah. I don’t think the soldiers are protecting women’s rights. We did hear a lot of people say that they fear the Taliban coming back in. We spoke to a lot of women who lived under the Taliban times who couldn’t go to school, who couldn’t do their jobs, were stuck inside their homes. And I think we have to recognize that. But on the other hand there is supposedly only about 5 or 10% of the Taliban that are ideologically motivated. So my point is that we have been shoring up the Taliban with their policies of occupation, that as part of an exit strategy has to be peace talks, that women are at the table, and they have to figure out how people who have joined the Taliban out of economic desperation and joined the Taliban out of revenge because their loved ones have been killed by foreign forces, how they can be brought back into their villages and live productive lives.

[snip]

Horton: Yeah, but that’s no different is it than the National Review saying, you know, Saddam Hussein was really bad to the people in Iraq. I think this is why all over Facebook today they’re saying, “Ha, ha, and again, for those tuning in late, she did say, it’s Medea Benjamin from Code Pink. She did say the Christian Science Monitor’s reporting was not altogether accurate here. But all over Facebook they’re saying, “Ha, ha, I guess she’ll have to apologize to Condoleezza Rice now. And “Ha, ha, I guess this proves that obviously that McChrystal is right. If Code Pink and McChrystal both agree that the occupation has got to be better in order to quell the violence, then by golly we know it’s right.” Like when Bill Clinton and George Bush agree about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction.

Benjamin: Well I think it’s just full of distortions, because what we say is we want a responsible pulling out of U.S. troops and we certainly are against what McChrystal is calling for. We’re against sending in more troops, we’re against troops being visibly present in the villages because we think their presence is more of a threat to people there and puts them at risk. And we want our troops to pull out. We just want to do it in a way that is not going to lead to a Taliban takeover that will put women back inside the home.

Sorry for the length, mods.

Medea’s trying to mix ideology with reality and where Afghanistan is concerned that’s a tough nut to crack.

Well, more dead women due to US “precision bombing” and a bunch of shoot-em-ups improves Afghan women’s situation. A dead woman cannot be abused, beaten, stoned, raped, etc.

So, yeah, increasing the war pace and size in Afghanistan MUST be a good thing ™ for Afghan women.

How about we simply offer Afghan women a VISA to live in the USA as we withdraw? As women flood out of the country to leave only a nasty, brutish, primitive, backwards, ignorant population of men to diddle themselves and each other, they may actually change their tune and join at least the late 20th century.

Yep and we’re still funding them but will be surprised when they turn the weapons on us anyway.

Off to swim in the great capitalist cesspool.

US KIA Irak: 4,367

US KIA Afghanistan: 930

US MBS 2009: 41,540

Be good to yourselves, and all other living things.

Namaste

She’s completely befuddled.

“reassuring Pakistanis of American solidarity”

snort. after they’ve fucked us over and over. i really resent my tax dollars being spent on them.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/10/06/us_aid_to_
pakistan_a_shell_game/

well said. absolutely agree with this.

That’s not just the Washington consensus. Right at the moment that is the global consensus, willingly or unwillingly. And that is indeed the problem. We are the hired security forces for a fair part of the world.

The solution to every international problem is not military. But the architectural relationship among the world’s militaries is a very significant international problem that wastes trillions of dollars of wealth every year. And we don’t deal with that by unilaterally stepping back without some system of mutual security in place. Eisenhower and Kennedy understood this, but succeeding presidents not so much–although Carter was stumbling along in this direction.

To deal with this problem, you have to wind down the nuclear-threat level, the conventional-war level, and the asymmetric-war level. The US has stabilized the first two by spending more than every other country combined; that solution is not permanent both for strategic and fiscal reasons. The US has attempted to deal with asymmetric warfare by trying to force it into conventional warfare, where the US has an advantage. That has not worked so well. Asymmetric warfare ends when a political settlement has been reached between the weaker and the stronger power that recognizes some of the interests of the weaker power. And politics has been the weakest suit for the US in these situations. The cloud of the exceptional success of an “unconditional surrender” strategy in World War II hangs over discussion of national security in the US. Folks don’t realize how exceptional World War II was in having so clearcut an end.

The military focus of my discussion was not because it’s the solution but because it is the problem.

There was a certain innocence that was the mood, not the reality, of the World War II generation. I think Obama was trying to speak to those sorts of people and let them know that Afghanistan is not the great crusade for good that they think it is. It is these folks more than any other that make realism about US national security difficult.

This was a political speech for multiple audiences, not a detached analysis.

Exactly, see “Charlie Wilson’s War” for an easy-to-digest summary of that stupidity (funding the Talban & giving them weapons to fight off the Rooskies).

I didn’t watch THE SPEECH last night because I just didn’t want to; more bullshit from Barack. I guess he’s remembering JFK or whatever, but really this is stupidity on steroids. We’re not gonna “win” anything; we’re not gonna “show” the Taliban; we’re not even gonna protect whomever or whatever from the nooookes in Pakistan; yadda yadda.

The CIA is getting rich per usual on the war lord drug trade; various gigarich Republics (and possibly the Obamas) will get rich from the MIC no-bid contracts (where Halliburton goons can gang rape all the women they want with no consequences, except for the women… so much for “looking out for” Afghan women).

Dems of various age groups will sit out the 2010 elections in sheer digust, depression and despair. And so-called, purported “Democratic” congressfarts will shift ever more rightward, whilst their snouts are firmly embedded in the public titty trough.

And so it goes… thanks for nothin’ Barackstar.

Agreed about the much clung to innocence of the WWII generation. I saw that so much in parents, and looking through my Dad’s paperwork, I see how naive, trusting and ultimately DUPED he was. That generation still clings to the notion of Big Daddy, who will take care of your every need (well, it did mostly work that way for them) as long as you “obey the rules.”

It sounds like BHO tried to push that meme last night. Nice going, dude. Not gonna work on this crowd, and the Republics & teabaggers hate you, no matter what you do. So trying to appeal to them is really dumb at this point. I am so OVER BHO’s insane need to push for some sort of bipartisanship or collaboration with conservatives. Really I don’t get where Rahm is at on that one, other than that he’s getting paid some big bucks to keep pushing this b.s. on a daily basis. Blind Bob can see it’s not working.

“This is their idea of diplomacy: Delay, delay, delay while they plan their next atrocity.”

So, they’re Republicans then?

I’m wearing my “I voted for change and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.”

Same source.

What is this mish mash you are talking about. First of all define security?

If it means aything at all it means for every country to feel secure within its borders. There are international laws that codify that. For instance:

You are not allowed without provocation to infringe on the integrity of a country, because that is a crime against the peace. Neither can you threaten a country with violent action, that is also a crime. It is also the case that an occupying force has no rights but only obligations and can therefore not infringe on a country’s laws and you hace to take care to assure its safety. Neither can you engage in collective punishment.

Let’s leave aside the flagrant violations of every one of these laws in the unprovoked invasion of Iraq and in the threats against Iran. Please delineate for me how many of the above laws is the US in compliance with as pertains to the country of Afghanistan?

Keep in mind that the US is an accupying force there and has abolutely no rights within that country only obligations to be mindful of not vilating the stipulated laws. For example what obligation does it have to target ill defined targets and kill civilians while doing so. Or bombing ambulances that are in the process of rescuing the wounded. Or for that matter for taking it upon itself to increase troops on its own say so.

Lastly, if these laws are being violated why are they not being tried.

All the structures you cite for assuring international security were created for the benefit of all countries, not only the US. How is the security of Afghanistan being assured by the ongoing US occupation of that country?

I think you have a pretty clear understanding of what national security means.

I’m not sure where your understanding of international laws comes from, but they are not as restrictive of national action as domestic criminal laws are for individuals.

Under international law, the United States has a right of defense. On 9/11, the reality was that the US was attacked as a nation (it wasn’t just some personal revenge thing). The intelligence analysis of the the attack, with which apparently most other nations agree, pointed to the origin of the attack as a group that had set up a base with the protection of the Taliban government and operated under the name “al Quaeda”. I do not have the evidence that proves whether this was true or untrue. I suspect we might find this out either during the trials of the five detainees in New York or when the records of this period are declassified.

The US asserted the right to attack both al Quaeda and the groups that provided them safe havens. On this basis, the US drove the Taliban from power, using the forces of the Northern Alliance and other groups that had been fighting the Taliban in a civil war.

The UN pursued restarting the talks that had begun years earlier in Bonn on November 27, 2001, and an agreement was produced by December 5, 2001.

The Bonn Agreement provided for the formation of an interim administration that would be required to convene a Loya Jirga within six months. The Loya Jirga would be responsible for choosing a transitional authority that would be in charge until a fully representative government could be elected in free and fair elections held no later than two years after the establishment of the transitional authority.

The Loya Jirga was held, and Hamid Karzai was elected head of the transitional government. A constitution was ratified in January 2004 and an election held in October 2004 in which Hamid Karzai was elected president of the constitutional government.

In 2002, the UN sent an assistance mission to Afghanistan. This development aid was hampered because although Karzai had been elected titular head of the country, the regional leaders (dubbed “warlords”) had not integrated their forces into the national army as was expected in the Bonn agreement. As a result, there were significant security and corruption issues in these regional areas, which hampered deliver of aid. The failure to deliver promised aid allowed a resurgence of the Taliban in the south, beginning in 2005. When the US involved NATO in Afghanistan under the clause in the NATO treaty that an attack on any member of NATO will be considered an attack on the alliance, the NATO countries got authorization from the UN. So at that point, US and NATO presence was authorized not by international common law but by the UN.

So the entry into Afghanistan was legal under the current international security framework. That “mish-mash” you are pointing out is just saying that this framework itself is a problem because it assumes US leadership on any action. The US is considered to be supporting the legitimate government of Afghanistan, created through a Loya Jirga and Constitutional Convention. It is not technically an occupying power.

The problem is that after eight years of military action and no improvement of living conditions, many Afghans have begun to see the US as an occupying power. And in the southern Pashtun areas, the Taliban has used that perception to rebuild its strength to the point that it is the local protection racket not the Kabul government forces or the US military. But there are large portions of the north of the country that never will accept Taliban return to power.

The military has been operationally stupid is carrying out its activities. In some parts of the country, it treated every civilian as a potential enemy and thus was not concerned with civilian deaths from drone strikes. But those who opposed the central Afghan government were sure to highlight these strikes as attacks on “innocent civilians”, which might or might not be true, presenting a “we say, they say” information war. Played by both sides.

The military also has not been observant of the Geneva Conventions in the treatment of civilians, prisoners of war, or detainees. And this contempt for the Geneva Conventions came from the highest levels of the Bush administration. The structural problem here is if the US is the default policeman, who is going to hold the US to account. It took a change in the government of Serbia to get Milosovich and Karadic to the Hague to face charges. If there were and international warrant for the arrest of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to stand trial in the Hague, do you think that Obama could in the current political climate extradite these two?

Until this year, the security that the US was ensuring was that of the legitimate government of Afghanistan, duly elected under the 2003 constitution. Karzai’s theft of the election called that legitimacy into question, just as the Bush v. Gore decision of the US Supreme Court called the legitimacy of the Bush administration into question. As a practical matter, the international consensus seems to be to let Karzai govern just as the world let Bush govern and continued to treat him as the legitimate head of state.

How is the security of Afghanistan being assured by the ongoing US occupation of that country?

That is really the question of the moment. Clearly, although legally there is not a US occupation of Afghanistan, there is a growing popular feeling that the US is an occupier. Obama sought to deal with that by setting July 2011 as the time to start turning over total security responsibilities to the Afghan central government. In 18 months there could very well be a new constitution of a new unity government that involves some of the folks who are currently insurgents. It’s a long shot.

And the decision to send additional troops was arrived at in consultation with the Karzai government and with the regional powers – Russia, China, Pakistan, and India.

Finally, if US forces are going to be concentrated in population centers, drones will become useless, but expect complaints about the behavior of stressed out troops, who don’t speak the language but are nonetheless expected to reduce the level of violence to a point that Afghan authorities can manage. And expect that the insurgents, regardless of their ideology, are going to be trying to draw US troops into creating those incidents of civilian casualties. That’s just the way asymmetric war works; you sucker the powerful into engaging in acts of repression that alienate the population.

You can’t feed a growing monster forever, eventually it gets bigger than the host and kills it.

We HAVE to put together a new party.

Maybe it was deliberate misinformation.

Suggesting that a “deliverable” that would allow the US to leave is capturing bin Laden is so dumb I had to shut off the video. Where do they get these people from? Why do they have an audience?

If you wanted to catch bin Laden you could catch bin Laden and you wouldn’t need 30K troops.

I didn’t see this until today and have no expectation that you’ll see this response but I find that your dismissive attitude is exactly what’s wrong with the Internet as a forum for discussion (but as a denizen of the Usenet for many years that does not surprise me much). Whether you like it or not, people are allowed to voice opinions whether they are real-life “warriors” or not regardless of your obvious Heinleinian view of who should have the right to do what. By your logic, the only people allowed to make suggestions about anything are those people who engage in those professions or activities — not practical or sensible.