{"id":29956,"date":"2012-05-15T10:07:06","date_gmt":"2012-05-15T14:07:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=29956"},"modified":"2012-05-15T10:24:19","modified_gmt":"2012-05-15T14:24:19","slug":"the-rush-for-the-exits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=29956","title":{"rendered":"The rush for the exits"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Washington Post<\/a> is beginning to describe the war in Afghanistan in the same terms that this blog has been using for two years. The war is no longer about COIN (counter insurgency), but more about withdrawing 23,000 more soldiers from Afghanistan this year. <\/p>\n

Instead of trying to continue large U.S. counterinsurgency operations for as long as he can, he is accelerating a handover of responsibility to Afghan security forces. He plans to order American and NATO troops to push Afghans into the lead across much of the country this summer, even in insurgent-ridden places that had not been candidates for an early transfer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Whether those Afghan forces are ready for the hand-over or not. It’s a big rush for the exits;<\/p>\n

The goal of the platoon\u2019s walk through a bazaar and meetings with village leaders, the lieutenant said, was for the Afghan government to be \u201cseen as an effective governing body that gains legitimacy with the local population.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such ambition used to elicit enthusiastic praise from visiting generals. Not anymore.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow are you going to create that as an end state?\u201d Allen asked, making no effort to mask his deep skepticism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To quote our buddy, Grim at Blackfive<\/a>;<\/p>\n

At this point the President’s wind-down strategy is untenable, though he doesn’t know it yet; the Republican standard-bearer doesn’t obviously have an Afghan strategy at all. He’s been critical of the President, but hasn’t shown much evidence of having grappled with the problem seriously. That’s not surprising: Americans are tired of the wars, and hurting at home. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, who would have thought that someone could bungle Afghanistan more than George Bush did. Apparently the answer is “anyone”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Washington Post is beginning to describe the war in Afghanistan in the same terms that … The rush for the exits<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29956","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29956\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}