Comments on: Dude, Where’s My Anti-War President?

By: jake brodsky

jake brodsky — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 20:31:29 +0000

This is not an act of conquest.

Alexander the Great, the Mongols, the British, and the Soviets were all interested in conquest.

The US is not.

President Obama is continuing the previous administration’s policies to get us to a safe exit strategy. Our country’s interest is to neutralize of several gangs of thugs who immigrated to the region and used that country as a base to attack us. Other than that, we have no interest in occupation.

What we’re arguing over is not if we leave, but what it will take, when, and how.

By: Arsalan Iftikhar

Arsalan Iftikhar — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:14:35 +0000

Chris…Candidate Obama never said he would be a ’surge’ president…All he said was that he would send 2 additional brigades (3000-5000 soldiers)….He already sent in 4 brigades (doubling his campaign promise) in March…

And NOW…He wants to send 6 MORE brigades (30K troops)…That’s 10 brigades (when he said he would send 2)…That’s not even a double-down…That’s a quintuple-down…

With these numbers…We will have more American troops in Afghanistan than the WHOLE Soviet Empire had in Afghanistan during the mujahideen proxy war of the 1980s…

We are just sending thousands of more innocent boys and girls into the ‘graveyard of empires’…

If Alexander the Great, the Mongols, British and Soviet empires could not pacify Afghanistan, sending even MORE troops in would constitute as a ‘dumb war’…And that is not why millions of us voted for Barack…

By: Christopher Allbritton

Christopher Allbritton — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:08:02 +0000

I don’t get you guys. Obama never claimed to be an “anti-war” president. He specifically said he wasn’t against all wars. Just dumb ones. He repeatedly emphasized that Afghanistan was the war he wanted to focus on, that it was a vital American interest and that he would wind down Iraq so he could focus on Afghanistan. He is doing exactly that.

Did you honestly expect him to just pull out in his first year? If so, you really didn’t pay much attention what he said during his campaign.

Here’s the speech: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Barack_Obama’s_Iraq_Speech

And here’s the quote: “I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.” He said it three times in that one speech.

By: Christopher Allbritton

Christopher Allbritton — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:05:27 +0000

Did you honestly expect him to just pull out in his first year? If so, you really didn’t pay much attention what he said during his campaign.

By: Arsalan Iftikhar

Arsalan Iftikhar — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:22:06 +0000

Amen, Eileen…Amen…

By: hidflect

hidflect — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:23:25 +0000

Well, they do both come out of the same party so one could expect similar results (not to be TOO snippy…)

If you had to vote (D), what was so wrong with admiring Kucinich? He looks better and better, policy-wise, nowadays. I’d rather back an honest loser than help the victory of a glad-handling gatekeeper for the rotten status quo . But then again, we didn’t know that at the time. What can you do?

By: hidflect

hidflect — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:13:10 +0000

When the US kill a simple Afghan local (accident or no), that day they’ll inherit multiple blood-sworn enemies committed to attaining mortal revenge, (legally justified in their law) from out of the plentiful pool of family and community. It’s a runaway-expanding algorithm of opponents with only 1 solution: Abandon the exercise. Even the Afghans themselves have countless local, ever-simmering blood feuds, some stretching back to reasons no even remembers anymore!

By: Eileen White Read

Eileen White Read — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:56:08 +0000

I didn’t vote for, and write checks to support, Barack Obama so that he could pull a Lyndon Johnson.

By: andylevinson

andylevinson — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 13:46:36 +0000

Well, at least karzai has 18 more months to fill his offshore accounts with OUR cash…..which is probably the only plus of Obama’s plan….

By: Michael Hastings

Michael Hastings — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 13:28:16 +0000

Besides the many differences between Iraq and Afghanistan, the “what worked in Iraq” argument also falls apart once you start looking closely at what’s actually going on Iraq now, and what that country will look like in the future. I don’t know if that’s a model we want to emulate.