Substitute ‘Obama’ for ‘Bush’ and ‘Afghanistan’ for ‘Iraq’ and it will look like nothing has changed. Even Cindy Sheehan was there and was arrested. As if the far right wasn’t giving President Obama a hard time, now the anti-war protestors are getting in the act.
The protestors all wore bright orange jump suits and pretended to die on the sidewalk, acted out being water-boarded, carried coffins, chanted slogans, and carried pictures of war injured children.
According to the Washington Post:
Several of the demonstrators had T-shirts showing a missile labeled “Obomba” and the question “Is it really OK if Obama does it?”
Besides those wording changes, the only other difference was the spiffy new natural-gas-powered Metrobus that arrived to take those arrested for processing. It said “Special” on the front and, on the side, had a McDonald’s ad with the slogan “Commander-in-Beef.”
If the commander in beef had been watching from a window, he would have had reason for concern. Not the demonstrators themselves: They were Green Party types with some self-proclaimed socialists thrown in, and they had never been enthusiastic Obama supporters to start with. What the president should worry about is whether these activists are indicators of bigger things to come if he sides with his generals and decides to bulk up the U.S. force in Afghanistan
It all sounds like politics as usual. I asked contributor Kelly3406 his opinion on current events in Afghanistan. I hope he doesn’t mind me moving his response to a major post:
Our long-term security requires us to do the counter-insurgency mission proposed by MacChrystal AND the counter-terrorism mission proposed by Biden. This past weekend’s deadly battle in Afghanistan proved that the Taliban can create numerical superiority in the tribal regions where the counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism missions would be waged. This shows that we will need many, many more troops (50K). In the short term, there will be a lot more casualties
If I heard correctly tonight, that is pretty much what the president is going to do.
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Sounds like these protesters and Rush Limbaugh have a lot in common. They both want Obama to fail in Afghanistan. Most Americans support our troops and don’t want to see them killed by our enemies.
I’ve nothing against the protesters, but I disagree with their views. This is a war we have to win. George Bush failed to win the Afghanistan war, so now Obama has to try where his predecessor failed. We have a good commander in General MacCrystal and if he thinks more troops will bring victory, then Obama should provide them.
Extremism on any side is bad business.
And so is war.
StarryFlights, I agree. Most Americans want us to succeed. The cheerful gloating over our failures just to gouge the President is UN-American and disgusting.
We do have to win in Afghanistan. I am not sure how ‘win’ is being defined. I am not sure ‘winning’ has really been defined in the past 8 years other than in terms of capturing or killing Bin Lauden.
Pinko, in this case, I believe the original intent in Afghanistan was valid. The Taliban had allowed this country to become a training ground for terrorists. Very few Americans disputed that the USA needed to invade Afghanistan for that reason.
There are approximately 68,000 troops in Afghanistan. General McCrystal has told the President that he needs at least 40,000 more.
Here is a NY Times link to an interactive graphic entitled 8 Years in Afghanistan.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/10/01/world/middleeast/afghanistan-policy.html?nl=multimedia&emc=focusema1
It will be interesting to see if our NATO allies will continue to send troops.
@Moon-howler
I was just speaking philosophically and in general. As far as the details of Afghanistan, I don’t know enough about it to say whether we should be in there or not. I do know the entire Middle East conflict is so out of hand, it becomes more complicated every second–and more dangerous for our troops and civilians. There are no easy answers, and I don’t claim to have one.
No kidding re no easy answers.
Did you see Kelly’s response? I included it from another thread into this post.
No, where is Kelly’s response?
I included it up in the original post. I had asked him his opinion of the Afghanistan situation.
Today is the 8th anniversary date of the Afghanistan War.
Excellent topic, MH. I do not mind that you re-printed my response to your major topic.
The absence of many comments suggests that your assertion is not all that controversial. No one really wants to send more troops to Afghanistan, but there really is not any responsible way around it.
Thanks for bringing this up. With everything else that it is going on, a real war in which soldiers are fighting and dying sometimes gets overlooked.