John Hannah Explains How CheneyBush Screwed Up Afghanistan
By Jason Sigger Wednesday Nov 11, 2009 10:00am
I am sure that John Hannah, former deputy national security advisor to VP Dick Cheney, didn't mean to confess how badly the Bush administration screwed up Afghanistan before it turned over the mess to President Obama, but that's exactly what his post in the Foreign Policy Magazine's "Shadow Government" blog did. Spencer Ackerman provides a very appropriate take-down of the Hannah lecture:
Wherein the former foreign-policy aide to Dick Cheney attempts to exonerate the Bush administration’s complete and total fuck-up-itude on Afghanistan. Words fail. It’s hard to excerpt. But I’ll try.
“Eight years of drift,” according to Obama administration officials seeking to explain their lengthy deliberations over strategy and troop numbers. But, as Stephens suggests, the reality is a good deal more complex. The fact is that, after a period of genuine progress following the Taliban’s removal in late 2001, the situation in Afghanistan only began to deteriorate markedly between 2005 and 2006. Suicide attacks quintupled that year. Remotely detonated bombs more than doubled. Insurgent attacks nearly tripled. And the trends have steadily worsened every year since.
Yeah, except for that, it was all going so well!
The question is why?
An ideological inability to embrace the necessity of state-building? A defense secretary who refused to allow U.S. forces to perform peacekeeping tasks? Consistent and thorough underresourcing? A president who never treated Pakistan as a theater of the Afghanistan war? Or who reduced policy in both countries to two chiefs of state? A totally unnecessary additional war that you geniuses decided to launch?
I certainly don’t have an exhaustive answer…
May I offer one?
To summarize Hannah's three points, the US advisor to Karzai left in 2005 to go to Iraq on Bush's orders; NATO took over operations, largely because the Bush administration didn't want to put more US troops in Afghanistan and it wanted European troops there; and the Bush administration didn't hold Pakistan to any accountability to hold down its side of the border. It's interesting how Hannah forgets to mention that these were all key Bush decisions.
The most ironic part of his post is the ending, where Hannah says (paraphrasing his words), "yeah, we screwed it up pretty good and now it's going to cost a lot more than we anticipated, but hey, at least we'll stop those Taliban tribes from taking over Pakistan and stealing its nukes." What an incredibly lame and useless man this is.








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"Your honor, just because my client was found at the scene with a smoking gun in his hand, the victims blood on his face, and four empty clips where he reloaded, is no reason to believe that he is in some way responsible for the victims demise."
This is . . . not the man I want as my defense lawyer.
Just sayin'
seems to be what he's admitting. even if he isn't i'll take it from his article anyway. because that's what he is. thanks for nothing, sir. and shove it.
As are the rest of the Busholinis.
People from upstairs were emptying their chamberpots onto the street
And boosh thought they were throwing chocolates.
and I can't even imagine hiring any one of these politicos for a cleaning job... No sense of responsibility, no sense of the hugeness of the ramifications of declaring war on another country, nothing but hubris and chest-thumping... it's totally demoralizing and incomprehensible to me how these fucktards can even get themselves ready in the morning. WTF?! and why the eff were they in positions of power in America?!
... doubling down on this mistake with over 100,000 troops eight years after the fact is a quagmire.
Reading and hearing all the neocon crap about how the afghan pullout will cause a domino effect in Pakistan just shows how little the neocons really know. There is NO WAY that the Taliban or Al-Qeda will take over Pakistan and that reason is India. India in no way shape or form will allow the people that want to kill them more than us, take over the country next door that has nukes, not gonna happen. We have all heard this before, Laos, Thailand and soon Australia from the Vietnam time frame. Then there was the Sandanistas who would take over Central America, Mexico, and Brownsville Texas. Dont believe the neocon hype, it is the same as the old hype except that this time instead of black pjs, they have turbans.
It's demoralizing watching Americans fall for the same bullshit over and over again. These neocon traitors count on the fact that most people are so damn ignogant about foreign affairs, geo-politics, and history in general, they will believe almost anything when threatened. It's easier than herding sheep.
And these militarist, fascist bastards do it for one cynical, awful reason:
$$$$$$$$$.
That's it. Period.
You know, the one the oil companies wanted to run from the Caspian Sea to the ocean? The one that UNOCAL wanted? The one that 'former' UNOCAL front man Hamid Karzai lobbied for before becoming 'President' of the Green Zone (and nowhere else)?
Yepper, things were going just swimmingly from the get-go...in a place that grows natural guerilla fighters as easily as it grows poppies.
It really tickles me when all these Serious People who are supposed to be sooooo smart can't trouble themselves to read history books. General MacArthur warned us time and again not to get involved in Asian land wars; there's simply more of them than us. But nobody in power ever seems to listen...as the aluminum coffins roll in procession down the apron at Dover AFB because of such stupidity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8TUwHTfOOU
Who needs to be told Bush screwed up these wars? Simply because FOX and Hate radio are blaming Barack never meant Bush was off the hook. Just because Cheney cut & ran to FOX Noise doesn't mean he can't be indicted.
It's time for Barack to slap these fools silly like Bush did to Air America and Bill Maher. Afteral that's what Bush Patriot Act really was; a political tool.
Apparently, Cheney's hand will not fit up BHO's ass.
?
Exactly!
I baptize thee in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost...:
http://flewfamily.com/photogallery/funny_monk...
Very soul cleansing.
http://media.bigoo.ws/content/image/funny/fun...
I baptize thee in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost:
http://flewfamily.com/photogallery/funny_monk...
Afghanistan was left to fester because it seemed too difficult, and it was more convenient just to pass it on to the next sucker. The way they did with other problems.
Dude, it’s these feelings of senselessness of purpose mixed with equal parts introjections therapy and hamburger Gestalt Helper, now with knuckles and femurs, that like attempting logical discourse with the GOP, party of the dim and brainless, over responsibility for their failures leaves one not only with that incomplete victory dint but a plummeting of one’s hope. And just like a voyage of innovation unto unexplored territory, I remember the first time I tried to have a stab at treatise with a local inbred “teabagger” that left me with more of an absurd melancholy, as if I just opened an owl pellet. What a world of discovery! I had stumbled across a Mother lode one Fall afternoon while skipping along the banks of the river Dung, feeling sanguinity for this country. But alas, this poorly prepared dead end of humanity must have just tuned out from his local pinhead conservative commentator, because apparently this “knowledgeable” pundit has dispensed all the naughty bits of dried up illogic, and it did this disgusting and unsightly business away from the prying eyes or our lard, and the sum total of his “talking points” no more than a small pile of damp, furry boluses (soft masses of chewed food). I tried to examine each one, picking them up and carefully placing them out in the open where the light of reason (in his case – a penlight) could result in a voyage of discovery for this pathetic mug, perhaps stir the long ago stagnant synapses in his brain pan, for before that, what use had he of such underused apparatus. But my patience and carefully fostered mental powers were not tough enough to survive the long gestation betwixt intelligible talking points, and the eternal torment and suffering me and my loved ones were now damned to eternity for, as essentially I attempted to make a European carryall from the proverbial sow’s ear. But then I said screw it and put on “Cranked up really high” by Slaughter and the Dogs and awaited Sister Ann Daniel with a handy 5 iron and an uncontrollable urge to tee off her cranium, in the teabagger’s honor.
.
Anyone been looking under rugs?
New threat discovered in the deserts of Afghanistan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN5Mqr6tRlw
Who on the Left, who that can be called an Obama-ee in the senate/congress, is any less nuts? Isn't Barbara Boxer considered one of our best progressives? Look at what she said about sending more troops! She "can't understand" why the president (Obama) would appoint "this great general" (McChrystal) and then not listen to him and trust his judgement completely. She began by crowing that she had just finished voting FOR something that escalates the war in Afghanistan, I don't know or remember what, this is all too painful to watch. All they had to do to bury the "Never again!" mantra about the Vietnam war was to wait 2 generations, step right up and do it all again. People who remember Vietnam are way outnumbered by those who weren't born yet or were too young to feel the war. So, we have it again. 52% polled say Obama should do what his generals advise.
At least 52% of Americans are completely ignorant of the realities in Afghanistan.
A democracy just can't work with an ignorant poulace kept that way by a low-brow media.
These polls only says what games the Roman mob want to see in the colliseum. They say little about any intelligent conclusion our republic has come to on the issue.
That's populace.
ADHD?
Just released from the AP is President Obama will not be adding any more troops to the Afghanistan war. He has told his advisers he will not be considering any of current options on the table to add troops to the current Afghanistan conflict.
The president's decision comes after the MSM put their foot in the mouths by reporting he would come close to what his Generals requested. I recall MSNBC, from the Ed show to the Rachele Madow show, crating this lie about how the president was going to abandon his liberal base and send close to 40,000 troops. It truly points to the dynamic of creating the story before it has become a story.
Joseph
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/01/17/bush-43-w...
there you go..
Good start.
Unless we develop a comprehensive South Asia strategy, the most we can hope for is a temporary peace in Afghanistan.
What would such a strategy look like? Well, at the very least it requires some moderation of the strategic competition between India and Pakistan. Without attention to this aspect of the problem, we really are only playing around at the edges of the conflict.
For more, there's a good piece here: http://bluecontrarian.blogspot.com/2009/11/te...
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