{"id":33622,"date":"2013-01-12T20:22:49","date_gmt":"2013-01-13T00:22:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=33622"},"modified":"2013-01-12T20:22:49","modified_gmt":"2013-01-13T00:22:49","slug":"giving-up-the-ghost-in-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=33622","title":{"rendered":"Giving up the ghost in Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"

From our buddy, Kate, at The Victory Girls<\/a>, that guy we reelected as President two months ago has decided that our efforts in Afghanistan have “fallen short of the ideal”. Dan Fromkin at Huffington Post wonders, along with the rest of us “How Many Dead and Wounded Soldiers Ago Did Obama Give Up on Afghanistan<\/a>?” Fred Kaplan at Salon<\/a> reports;<\/p>\n

When one reporter asked if our accomplishments in this war had been worth all the bloodshed, Obama recalled the reason we intervened in Afghanistan in the first place\u2014the 3,000 Americans killed on Sept. 11, 2001, as a result of an attack that al-Qaida had planned on Afghan soil. Our \u201ccentral goal\u201d ever since, he said, has been to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaida while also bringing Osama bin Laden to justice. Mission accomplished.<\/p>\n

But this answer was misleading. It sidestepped the fact that, at the end of 2009, Obama sent an additional 33,000 troops to Afghanistan, a surge of nearly 50 percent above the 68,000 already there\u2014and that he did so not to go after bin Laden and al-Qaida (a task that could have been handled with far fewer forces) but rather to pursue a counterinsurgency strategy, at least in the cities, particularly in the southern districts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The CIA warned president Obama in 2009 that if he didn’t give the generals the 60,000 troops they asked for, the strategy in Afghanistan would fail. He gave them 33,000 and *viola*, the Biden robot ninja zombie strategy failed. Froomkin’s question is valid – did the Obama Administration let US troops die in Afghanistan just to portray himself as a “wartime” President for the election? You know, like he portrayed himself as a pro-gun President until after the election?<\/p>\n

During the speech from The Victory Girls’ quote, Obama goes both ways on the success of operations in Afghanistan;<\/p>\n

\u201cDid we achieve our central goal? And have we been able, I think, to shape a strong relationship with a responsible Afghan government that is willing to cooperate with us to make sure that it is not a launching pad for future attacks against the United States? We have achieved that goal. We are in the process of achieving that goal.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Emphasis is mine.<\/p>\n

So have we achieved the goal or are we in the process of achieving the goal? Which is it?<\/p>\n

I’ve been warning since 2009 that the war in Afghanistan was just another aspect of the Obama\/Biden campaign. I asked who wanted to be the last to die for Obama\/Biden 2012. <\/p>\n

So, I’m wondering why the troops are still there if the administration has given up the mission there? Why wait until 2014 – the election is over with. Jerk ’em all out now. Well, unless he’s going to fart around until after the midterm elections and secure some more seats in Congress with the blood of our troops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From our buddy, Kate, at The Victory Girls, that guy we reelected as President two months … Giving up the ghost in Afghanistan<\/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-33622","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\/33622","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=33622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33622\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}