GoldbergBlog

Change We’re Dejectedly Forced to Accept

Obama has announced his grand plan for Afghanistan and I refuse to believe this was the least bad option.  Maybe someone with a degree in International Diplomacy and Military Operations can convince me why Obama’s “Nine Points” is the best choice our President could have made.  Convince me why sending 30,000 more troops (all fine, upstanding heterosexuals) over the next six months with a drawdown three years from now is beneficial for the American people.  Of course it’s beneficial to Obama; he gets to take troops out of Afghanistan when he’s running for re-election even though he put those new troops there in the first place, therefore bringing us back to the place he started when he was first elected and doubtful he’ll have made any more progress.  Of course, there is no firm timeline for withdraw and the pace of the pullback will depend on conditions on the ground.  Translation: three years is an arbitrary deadline which we can change whenever we want.

Some U.S. troops would provide a supporting role similar to what the U.S. did in Germany, Japan, and Bosnia.  What does a “supporting role” in Afghanistan mean?  Who knows.

But the “main mission” of the new troops will be to “reverse Taliban gains and secure population centers” in the southern and eastern parts of the country,” and thus the mission is already a failure.  How can you support population centers and not leave the country?  Sure, we’re going to train Afghan troops (because it’s not like we didn’t do that for the last eight years) and ask the Karzai government is they could pretty please with sugar on top to stop being so corrupt and serve the interests of the people.  What makes Obama think that 30,000 more troops can permanently solve this problem?  It’s the Iraq problem all over again.  We can’t leave or the country will collapse.  Meanwhile, our country is having its own kind of collapse but instead putting money into helping the U.S., the Obama administration thinks that money would be better spent on a country that we can’t force to change.

Sure, we’ll make small gains, but nothing that will last.  How much money will we spend, how much further in debt will we sink, and most importantly, how many American lives will we lose in the next three years.  What do we get in exchange?  A turbulent three years in a country which is known as the place where empires go to die.  We won’t defeat the Taliban.  Cockroaches always come back.  We won’t be defeating Al-Qaeda or Osama Bin Laden because they’re in Pakistan and I doubt we’ll hear that country mentioned once in tonight’s speech.

As Keith Olbermann repeatedly said in his Special Comment last night, “We cannot afford this.”  I don’t even know why we’re trying to buy it in the first place.

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