"You're in the Army now
You're not behind a plow
So dig a ditch
You son-of-a-bitch
You're in the Army now."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhHVMKYzG_s&NR=1

obama can get by with this because in their hearts most americans are imperialists.

we dont know we are imperialists that use any excuse to build our empire.

no we still think we are the same country that helped europe over throw hitler.

only a complete economic meltdown will bring american imperialism to a halt.

if americans are nothing else they are materialists even the religious folks.

take away their garage sales and they might just come out and protest these illegal wars.

naw they love their super power status ie ego thing.

the military giant will be brought to its knees by a country called afghanistan. ask the russians about this. naw we are better than the russians.

capitalism like communism must self destruct so few in america have any idea of that reality. so few.

power corrupts and obama is living proof of that.

and we thought he was different. think again americans.

at least mc war and the pretty dumb lady would have invaded iran by now and we could get their oil.

what is there to get in afghan? oh poppy seed to keep our war on drugs going here.

americans the fools of the world always having a war on something as profits for the few. the have mores.

I think Jon Stewart hit it dead on by calling it a catastrof*ck

Although I agree wholeheartedly with the notion that the Iraq war was a complete criminal operation, the Taliban must not regain power in Afghanistan.

To withdraw at this time and allow the Taliban a victory dance, would mean that thousands, if not millions of Afghan women would be lost to the horrific acts of these medieval monsters.

The US has lost fewer than 1/10th of what was lost on the sands of Iwo Jima or Okinawa during WWII. That does not preclude the tragedy of any loss, but we have lost total sight of commitment to human rights when we only think of ourselves in trying to support a people that need us.

I agree, that Karzai and company are crimanals and crooks of the highest order, and nothing less or more than puppets of Bush/Cheney's little rework of their possession. In addition, there is little follow-up of the real reasons we are there, the gas pipeline, and the money trail of corruption.

Al-Qaeda is a real threat to all peaceful nations and must be destroyed. If we withdraw, Al-Qaeda will regroup and take their terror to Pakistan and India, Iraq and Lebannon, Turkey and Armenia, Dajikistan and Uzbekistan, Mongolia and Tibet. You would be naive to believe otherwise. Take a look at the train disaster two days ago in Russia. Terrorists do not hesitate to kill innocents to promote their twisted, sick ideology.

Although I think the republicans would love for Obama to pull out and use it against him in a re-election, they also love the idea of war in perpetuity. It's a win-win for them all the time.

There are solutions, and I believe the Marines need to kick the Taliban hard. Al-Qaeda needs to be alienated and destroyed. Karzai needs to be replaced. Pakistan needs our support. India too.

This liberal/progressive is not in favor of pulling out of Afghanistan.

AND, another TRILLION DOLLARS bites the dust....Gotta get some more printing presses soon...OR, another credit card (As soon as China says "STOP", this will all come to an end).... AND, we'll be a 'developing, third-world country' once again....

Have fun 1!!

But Obama must listen to the generals on the ground and so forth. You know, the same generals who have accomplished NOTHING in Afghanistan over the last 8 years. Of course, the politicians wouldn't let them win! That will change though, if we just send another 40,000 soldiers there now.

(you know the article you quoted extensively but didn't bother to give a reference to) the very same Greg Jaffe who is a former Wall Street Journal Bush/Iraq war cheerleader?

Uh huh. Great source.

I'll wait for Obama's speech Tuesday before I start judging the content of Obama's speech on Tuesday. I will especially not use crap from WSJ Bush cheerleaders to form any opinions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCADDbuA_VE

This Tuesday Obama is supposed to announce his decision on troops and Afghanistan (the last guess I heard was 30,000 as opposed to the 40,000 the General asked for) and we will once again see our middle-east battle commitment increase.

But is there a reason why the President didn't turn the problem over to the State Department for a negotiated solution? Sherwood Ross in OpEdNews writes an extended article on why diplomacy wasn't even considered. here's a clip:

Afghanistan is valued today for the oil and gas pipelines the U.S. wants built there, no matter what other reasons Obama gives.

“In the late 1990s,” writes Washington reporter Bill Blum in his “Anti-Empire Report,” “the American oil company, Unocal, met with Taliban officials in Texas to discuss the pipelines" Unocal's talks with the Taliban, conducted with the full knowledge of the Clinton administration"continued as late as 2000 or 2001.” Adds Paul Craig Roberts writing in the December Rock Creek Free Press of Washington, D.C., the U.S./U.K. military aggression in Afghanistan “had to do with the natural gas deposits in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.” Roberts explains:

“The Americans wanted a pipeline that bypassed Russia and Iran and went through Afghanistan. To insure this, an invasion was necessary. The idiot American public could be told that the invasion was necessary because of 9/11 and to save them from ‘terrorism,' and the utter fools would believe the lie.” The war, Roberts continued, is to guard the pipeline route. “It's about money, it's about energy, it's not about democracy.”

So, if this is indeed WHY we are there, how long can it last?

In January, a Defense Department report stated “building a fully competent and independent Afghan government will be a lengthy process that will last, at a minimum, decades,” The Nation magazine's Jonathan Schell reports (Nov. 30). So far from defeating the Taliban are Allied forces that US military contractors “are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes,” Aram Roston writes in the same issue. “It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting.” In fact, an American executive there told Roston, “The Army is basically paying the Taliban not to shoot at them. It is Department of Defense money.”

It is Corporate concern which controls the decision making here...and, of course, we travel farther into deficit spending by pouring money into Afghanistan (and Iraq, which we are NOT remotely out of, yet.)

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs has stated that it costs about a million dollars per year for each deployed US soldier, beyond the expense of training and maintaining a security force. You can do the math: there are 180,000 troops in Afghanistan and Iraq right now... add another 30,000 and we are spending $210,000,000,000.00 per year (that's just on those troops active in the mid-east... we are also paying for the pentagon, all our worldwide bases, all the equipment we use worldwide, health recovery by the veteran's Administration for soldiers who come back wounded... not to mention the costs for those who come back dead.) The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost 768.8 billion dollars so far and by the end of this fiscal year, the price tag will approach one trillion dollars.

It's not even a number that most people can even conceive of!

Ross goes on to say that...

"...in all the recent debate in Washington, who has heard a word of concern for the impact of escalation on the suffering civilian populations of Afghanistan and Pakistan?

“ 'Our military demands ever more troops,' Veterans Speaker Alliance's founder Paul Cox said at an Oakland, Calif., rally, last week with Barbara Lee, the only member of Congress to vote against the initial Afghan aggression. 'Meanwhile, our economy is in the toilet, health care costs are out of control, and we can't afford to educate our children. But somehow, there's always money for war.' Rep. Lee called for putting 'this stage of American history—a stage characterized by open-ended war—to a close.' "

Barbara Lee, Dennis Kucinich, Bernie Sanders and a few others represent a very tiny segment of The Congress, both Representatives and Senators, who would push to get us out of the middle east as warriors.

Unless America rises up to support such a massive withdrawal, this will never even be a remote possibility. Ongoing warfare is our Heritage and our Curse.

Under The LobsterScope

Oh, I dunno if the US is failing in Afghanistan. The US officially lost the war in Vietnam but did manage to destroy the country, killing millions and poisoning the land so much that Vietnamese to this day are still dying from the effects of US chemical weapons and cluster bombs. And by destroying Vietnam, the US did prevent any other regional nations from following a similar path to that of Vietnam. Yet, the US officially "lost" that war.

Similar in Iraq: the US is said to be losing in Iraq but it has absolutely destroyed the country, hundreds of thousands of murdered Iraqis, massive and permanent US military bases all over it, millennia-old archaeological treasures and libraries wantonly ruined by the US, etc. And Iraqis, like the Vietnamese, will be dying horrible deaths from US weapons (radiation, cluster bombs) for decades to come. Yet, somehow the US is said to be failing there. The US intended to destroy the country - "That's war," say Americans.

It'll be the same with Afghanistan, only with that one the US will call it a "NATO war" or something. They may be forced to retreat, but they'll virtually wipe out the country in the process.

This may be kind of random but I've thought of the most rational idea of how to destroy the Taliban and restore a government system in Afgan:

I think we should send an overwhelming amount of U.N forces to patrol all corners of Afghanistan's boarders to cut off their ability to trade drugs and other products with other counties.

What will this do? Well from what Ive read the Taliban are getting all of their money from other counties(mostly from drug trade)so if we were to cut off their money and supplies it might make a significant decrease in their offence thus opening up more opportunities for the U.N to go offensive and reach our over all objective ("Peace" in the middle east.)

I'm just wanting to see if any of you can agree with me and im open to critics. Since we are LOSING the war our current plan is obviously NOT working and WONT work at all we need to try something new.

There is no real reason for us to be losing this war... we have the skill, we have the money, we have the support of the majority of Americans and even the support of some Afgans so if you dont agree with anything ive said, can you just tell me what we are lacking which is making us lose?