{"id":14582,"date":"2009-09-23T09:37:34","date_gmt":"2009-09-23T14:37:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=14582"},"modified":"2009-09-23T09:57:06","modified_gmt":"2009-09-23T14:57:06","slug":"did-you-guys-know-we-left-afghanistan-in-2003","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=14582","title":{"rendered":"Did you guys know we left Afghanistan in 2003?"},"content":{"rendered":"

No? Neither did I, but the douchenozzles at VoteVets are pimping this numbuts evaluation of Afghanistan<\/a>:<\/p>\n

One Iraq analogy that does apply pretty neatly to the Afghanistan situation is that in both cases, you can count on screwball conservatives to take a debate and depict it in utterly black and white terms, no matter how nuanced, multi-faceted and careful it actually is. Ben Frumin flags Condi Rice’s latest interview in Fortune, that hot-house of crack journalism, as evidence of this phenomenon:<\/p>\n

“The last time we left Afghanistan, and we abandoned Pakistan,” she said, “that territory became the very territory on which Al Qaeda trained and attacked us on September 11th. So our national security interests are very much tied up in not letting Afghanistan fail again and become a safe haven for terrorists.<\/p>\n

“It’s that simple,” she declared, “if you want another terrorist attack in the U.S., abandon Afghanistan.”<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

If memory serves me correctly, the last time we left Afghanistan and we abandoned Pakistan, was not actually before 9\/11, but when Condi and the Bush administration invaded Iraq….But on a broader level, who exactly is talking about abandoning Afghanistan?? I’m pretty sure that for all the haranguing done by Michael, he’s not ready to call for the U.S. to start packing its bags.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh my. Where to start. For one thing, we didn’t pull out of Afghanistan. I was there in 2004-2005 (when we were allegedly gone) and I met an absolute shitload of great troops fighting the good fight, and not a single one of them was named Patrick Barry that I recall. He must have been busy in Iraq, although his Bio makes no mention of that.<\/p>\n

Second, um….are you shitting me? NO ONE is calling to abandon Afghanistan? I guess that would depend on your definition of “abandon” is, but based on your definition of “left” I think we may already have a problem.<\/p>\n

For starters, you should check out the individual pages of all the members of the “Out of Iraq Caucus” which, as the Detroit Independant Examiner noted<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A congressional caucus called the “Out of Iraq Caucus” is now looking to focus on finding ways to get the U.S. out of Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

“I think we see that we have the same problems in Afghanistan that we once had in Iraq: no end, no exit strategy, no clear end product of our presence there,” said Democratic Congressman Raul M.Grijalva of Arizona.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Further, <\/p>\n

Another caucus, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, has formed a group to investigate current U.S. policies in Afghnistan and Pakistan. Currently, the caucus attention is focused on President Obama’s request for $83.4 billion for additional funding for the two ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

This shift in concentration has brighted the hopes of anti-war advocacy groups like the Progressive Democrats of America::”We would love to see the Out of Iraq Caucus continue working.We want to focus more attention on Afghanistan. Our theme should be health care, not warfare.” said their executive director, Tim Carpenter.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Perhaps you’d like to address the views of The Nation<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In my view, there are many good reasons to support the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. But Afghanistan is not Iraq and public opinion still largely supports Obama’s escalation. (This is partly, I think, because there’s so little media coverage of what’s actually taking place in the country — recent estimates of coverage by major news outlets report that a scant 0.6 percent of reporting has been devoted to Afghanistan.) <\/p>\n

So, the first step to effectively opposing the war in Afghanistan is shifting US public opinion. That’s why a coalition led by United for Peace and Justice has organized this Thursday’s National Media Day of Action. The idea is to focus attention on all the reasons the current strategy isn’t working and to highlight positive solutions for re-shifting our priorities.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And, if abandoning Afghanistan is not the unstated goal of this video, please explain to me just what that goal actually is:
\n<\/param><\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

(Note that the video stresses the financial impact, while Patrick Barry is saying that he sees more evidence of “Calls for increased foreign assistance, channeled through Afghan-run NGOs as a means of addressing root-causes of terrorism”.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No? Neither did I, but the douchenozzles at VoteVets are pimping this numbuts evaluation of Afghanistan: … Did you guys know we left Afghanistan in 2003?<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14582\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}