White House: Leaving Afghanistan Not An Option

[Orwellian_Ghost]

White House: Leaving Afghanistan Not An Option

by Ben Feller

WASHINGTON - The White House said Monday that President Barack Obama is not considering a strategy for Afghanistan that would withdraw U.S. troops from the eroding war there.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that walking away isn't a viable option to deal with a war that is about to enter its ninth year.

"I don't think we have the option to leave. That's quite clear," Gibbs said.

The debate over whether to send as many as 40,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan is a major element of a strategy overhaul that senior administration policy advisers will consider this week as they gather for top-level meetings on the evolving direction of the war.

...

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/10/05-9

[ShortnFiery]

1. Not unlike a number of others here have typed before ...

if we are not out of both occupations, then voting for Obama in 2012 is NOT AN OPTION. :thumbsdown:

[mix]

3. +1

[sellitman]

7. If it's Obama & Palin then you are dead wrong

:think:

[SammyWinstonJack]

15. +1000. nt

[joshdawg]

2. As I've stated before,

Obama needs to bring all our troops home asap.

Let Eric Prince, with his Xe (AKA Blackwater) troops, go after Bin Laden. (snark)

[excess_3]

4. exactly right .nt

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

5. What exactly is the mission in Afghanistan? nt.

[KharmaTrain]

11. Uh Well Get Back To You On That...

We're stuck in the mess where we forgot why we went there and after years of neglect the "mission" became undefined. Now I hear we need to stay because of the "coalition" needs us and if we pull out then we lose "prestige". It's the Domino theory all over again. Now if you're a defense contractor, the mission has always been clear...make profits.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

14. Well I thought the original mission was to find and destroy Bin Laden and

Al Qaida. I just wondered, is that the same mission today? Has it broadened? Is there some finite goal that can be met to declare the mission over, or will it just become another Viet Nam type quagmire. What coalition? We're not still trying nation building are we?

My understanding of Afghanistan, limited as it is, is that it is tribal and diffuse - no "there" there, which makes almost any attempt at "unity" doomed to failure due to centuries of internecine disputes.

[KharmaTrain]

16. Bin Who???

If we based this invasion purely on getting bin Laden, we would have declared victory when he slipped from the Mountains at Tora Bora in early 2003...ever since then it's been protecting Karzai.

Ain't it a stinker as those who made big stinks in the 90s about nation building have used that as their justifications for their wars for profits in the past 7 years. Well...not quite nation building as the system is rigged to only build those part of the "nation" that serve specific interests.

Afghanistan has always been just lines on a Western map. It's a very tribal area and the geography of this country encompasses many diverse groups with agendas that are generally at odds with one another. We went in with the "global war on terrorism" attitude...a fine tuned version of the cold war where Ivan was replaced by Abdul. It's resulted with us being in the crosshairs of local turf battles...operating in a world where you have friends one day and they'll turn around and shoot at you at night. Yep, memories of Viet Nam.

The other problem was conflating the Taliban with Al Queda. Bet if you did a poll you'd find the same people who thought Iraq was a part of 9/11 also believe that the Taliban planned the attack. How ironic is all the goals bin Laden had about bringing down our economy and freedoms have worked so well.

Cheers...

[Romulox]

22. It's to give them a modern, functioning civil society.

Just like we have. Oh, wait...

[we can do it]

6. This Has To End- and Soon

[cbdo2007]

8. Obama's stance on the wars was one of my favorite things about him...should have known

he'd turn out just like the rest of them.

I'm starting to think the description "Most Powerful Job/Person in the World" should be removed from the Presidency. Even with a good person in there he gets absolutely nothing major accomplished.

[Windy]

12. He always said that Afghanistan was the war that we should have fought

instead of pulling out and going to Iraq. You obviously weren't paying attention during the campaign.

We just just wholesale pull out of Afghanistan. I am for Biden's approach.

[cbdo2007]

13. I was paying attention - that was my exact stance on the wars as well

But he did want to finish the war and get us out of there. Now they just keep pushing it back and pushing it back...and putting it off and putting it off...and shoveling more and more money into what is still a terrible war strategy.

[Windy]

19. He's been in office 9 months.. I will cut him some slack to bring a solution to an 8 year war...

This is not something that can be rushed or done without a great deal of thought and a well planned strategy.

I think the handwringing is ridiculous. I was in the military and I appreciate a president who makes well thought out decisions when it comes to the lives of the men and women of the armed forces and the safety and security of our country.

[mmonk]

9. So we are following the lead of the British and the USSR.

While according to plan and Afghanistan became the Soviet Union's Vietnam, it could become our second, or worse, our final waterloo bringing on further economic castrophe as it did with the demise of the USSR.

[Balbus]

10. IBTOPTAAITTTSBIWHSHWDDTPWYL

(In before the obligatory post that always appears in these threads that states "but it's what he said he would do during the primaries. weren't you listening?")

[pokercat999]

17. They can't possibly be this stupid.....can they? nt

[blindpig]

24. It ain't stupidity.....

that might be excusable.

k&r

[rusty fender]

18. We were all hoping that Obama would be like FDR, instead

he is acting more like LBJ. Obama is determined to have his own "Vietnam."

[Stinky The Clown]

20. Eight fucking years and now we are continuing even longer ..... one question: WHY?

[Orwellian_Ghost]

21. Pipielineistan- Liquid War

Liquid War
Postcard from Pipelineistan
By Pepe Escobar

What happens on the immense battlefield for the control of Eurasia will provide the ultimate plot line in the tumultuous rush towards a new, polycentric world order, also known as the New Great Game.

Our good ol' friend the nonsensical "Global War on Terror," which the Pentagon has slyly rebranded "the Long War," sports a far more important, if half-hidden, twin -- a global energy war. I like to think of it as the Liquid War, because its bloodstream is the pipelines that crisscross the potential imperial battlefields of the planet. Put another way, if its crucial embattled frontier these days is the Caspian Basin, the whole of Eurasia is its chessboard. Think of it, geographically, as Pipelineistan.

All geopolitical junkies need a fix. Since the second half of the 1990s, I've been hooked on pipelines. I've crossed the Caspian in an Azeri cargo ship just to follow the $4 billion Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline, better known in this chess game by its acronym, BTC, through the Caucasus. (Oh, by the way, the map of Pipelineistan is chicken-scratched with acronyms, so get used to them!)

I've also trekked various of the overlapping modern Silk Roads, or perhaps Silk Pipelines, of possible future energy flows from Shanghai to Istanbul, annotating my own DIY routes for LNG (liquefied natural gas). I used to avidly follow the adventures of that once-but-not-future Sun-King of Central Asia, the now deceased Turkmenbashi or "leader of the Turkmen," Saparmurat Niyazov, head of the immensely gas-rich Republic of Turkmenistan, as if he were a Conradian hero.

...

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175050

[TBF]

25. More on TAPI -

http://www.aprodex.com/pipeline-opens-new-front-in-afghan-war-1028-n.aspx

[Orwellian_Ghost]

26. This is interesting

Here are some ways pipelines are protected from attack:

Design The cheapest and most effective protection is to prevent easy access by surrounding pipelines by walls and fences, and making the pipes harder to sabotage by burying them. To further protect pipes, they can be wrapped in carbon fibre to mitigate the effects of explosive devices. Facilities that must be above ground, such as compressor and pumping stations, can be encased in concrete thick enough to resist bomb blasts.

Private armies In Iraq, close to 14,000 security guards have been deployed along pipelines and in critical installations. Companies tried paying tribes and powerful warlords to protect pipes on their territory with limited success. Rival tribes would often blow up a pipeline and then claim to be more deserving of the protection money.

Sensing Systems New technologies for seismic sensing of underground vibrations can provide early warning when saboteurs approach a protected area. Such systems may be expensive, but by making possible the remote monitoring of much of the pipeline network, operators can eliminate the need for large numbers of troops and instead rely on smaller numbers of rapid-response teams.

Air surveillance Small and medium-size unmanned aerial vehicles and unmanned helicopters can stay in the air up to 30 hours and send images to a central control station where they can be reviewed by security teams. Some defence contractors are developing UAVs mounted with automatic weapons to be used against saboteurs.

...

http://www.aprodex.com/pipeline-opens-new-front-in-afghan-war-1028-n.aspx

[SIMPLYB1980]

23. Good.nt