bobdina
12-04-2009, 03:08 PM
Canadian troops will have company when they leave Afghanistan in the summer of 2011: U.S. troops who will be withdrawing almost as soon as they arrive.
That's the Afghanistan war according to U.S. President Barack Obama, who has his eye unerringly fixed, not on the instability and conflict that will ensue throughout the vital region but on his prospects for re-election in 2012.
It was an impressive -- even stirring at times -- speech he gave Tuesday night at the West Point military academy.
He recognized head-on that the conflict with religious extremists in Afghanistan grew directly out of the 9/11 terrorist attacks eight years ago on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon -- and almost the U.S. Capital. He directly linked the war in Afghanistan waged by the United States, Canada and other NATO and non-NATO troops to U.S. and international security.
Without naming Canada -- whose troops' long struggle to secure the key Kandahar area, the home base of the Taliban, has been virtually ignored by U.S. media -- he praised U.S. allies in Afghanistan.
And although he fell short of the military's expressed need for 40,000 more troops, he said 30,000 more would start deploying in January, on top of the 67,000 already in Afghanistan.
But then Obama neatly turned around and announced that U.S. forces in Afghanistan would start getting out in July 2011, about the same time that nearly 3,000 Canadian troops have long been scheduled to leave.
If abrupt U.S. retreat is not cutting and running, what is? Eighteen months is not nearly enough time for a counter-insurgency "surge" to work, as it did in Iraq.
U.S. cabinet members have since tried to hedge on the 2011 date, but Obama is clearly calculating that the buildup and the standdown will look good to American voters in November 2012 -- if much of Asia isn't in chaos by then.
What he apparently doesn't realize, in dismissing his own words about international security, is that Afghanistan is the pivot of Asia. But the Taliban and al-Qaeda -- now virtually indistinguishable -- and the Pakistanis and the Chinese do realize the historic importance of the rugged, remote country of Afghanistan.
With the Taliban insurgents coming back into Afghanistan from their sanctuaries in Pakistan as U.S. and NATO troops leave, many of the vast majority of Afghans who welcomed foreigners for the first time in their invasion-plagued history will give up to Islamist crazies.
The military-influenced government of Pakistan, which did its best as a phoney "partner" of the United States to stop any U.S. buildup now -- at least Obama did not call Pakistan an "ally" -- will have to wait only 18 months to start reasserting control of Afghanistan through the Taliban it created.
And China, Pakistan's closest ally and nuclear supplier, will expand its growing empire by supporting benighted Taliban rule, as it once backed the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
India, a strategic ally of the United States, cannot and will not tolerate an Islamist power on its border backed by China. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh certainly conveyed this message to Obama during his recent visit to Washington.
Afghanistan as the historic gateway to the Indian subcontinent will take on greater importance than ever if it is free to build its own democracy with the military and economic help of western democracies -- or if it is abandoned to the mercies of forces with little or no interest in democracy and self-determination.
If U.S. and NATO troops give up a long-term, difficult mission after a last hurrah, the much-maligned government of President Hamid Karzai -- unavoidably reflecting the corruption and warlordism of Afghanistan's tribal society -- will be forced to negotiate sharing of power with the Pakistan-backed Taliban as the first step toward much wider disaster, including a possible nuclear exchange, to which Obama alluded in his address.
But the world and the Afghan people learned in 2001 and the years since that there is no such thing as a good member of the Taliban. And the forces behind the Taliban are even more dangerous.
It's not too late to decide, at the appropriate time, that the NATO troops in Afghanistan or on the way -- including Canadians -- will finish the job instead of quitting.
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Obama+headed+chaos+Asia/2301015/story.html
That's the Afghanistan war according to U.S. President Barack Obama, who has his eye unerringly fixed, not on the instability and conflict that will ensue throughout the vital region but on his prospects for re-election in 2012.
It was an impressive -- even stirring at times -- speech he gave Tuesday night at the West Point military academy.
He recognized head-on that the conflict with religious extremists in Afghanistan grew directly out of the 9/11 terrorist attacks eight years ago on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon -- and almost the U.S. Capital. He directly linked the war in Afghanistan waged by the United States, Canada and other NATO and non-NATO troops to U.S. and international security.
Without naming Canada -- whose troops' long struggle to secure the key Kandahar area, the home base of the Taliban, has been virtually ignored by U.S. media -- he praised U.S. allies in Afghanistan.
And although he fell short of the military's expressed need for 40,000 more troops, he said 30,000 more would start deploying in January, on top of the 67,000 already in Afghanistan.
But then Obama neatly turned around and announced that U.S. forces in Afghanistan would start getting out in July 2011, about the same time that nearly 3,000 Canadian troops have long been scheduled to leave.
If abrupt U.S. retreat is not cutting and running, what is? Eighteen months is not nearly enough time for a counter-insurgency "surge" to work, as it did in Iraq.
U.S. cabinet members have since tried to hedge on the 2011 date, but Obama is clearly calculating that the buildup and the standdown will look good to American voters in November 2012 -- if much of Asia isn't in chaos by then.
What he apparently doesn't realize, in dismissing his own words about international security, is that Afghanistan is the pivot of Asia. But the Taliban and al-Qaeda -- now virtually indistinguishable -- and the Pakistanis and the Chinese do realize the historic importance of the rugged, remote country of Afghanistan.
With the Taliban insurgents coming back into Afghanistan from their sanctuaries in Pakistan as U.S. and NATO troops leave, many of the vast majority of Afghans who welcomed foreigners for the first time in their invasion-plagued history will give up to Islamist crazies.
The military-influenced government of Pakistan, which did its best as a phoney "partner" of the United States to stop any U.S. buildup now -- at least Obama did not call Pakistan an "ally" -- will have to wait only 18 months to start reasserting control of Afghanistan through the Taliban it created.
And China, Pakistan's closest ally and nuclear supplier, will expand its growing empire by supporting benighted Taliban rule, as it once backed the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
India, a strategic ally of the United States, cannot and will not tolerate an Islamist power on its border backed by China. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh certainly conveyed this message to Obama during his recent visit to Washington.
Afghanistan as the historic gateway to the Indian subcontinent will take on greater importance than ever if it is free to build its own democracy with the military and economic help of western democracies -- or if it is abandoned to the mercies of forces with little or no interest in democracy and self-determination.
If U.S. and NATO troops give up a long-term, difficult mission after a last hurrah, the much-maligned government of President Hamid Karzai -- unavoidably reflecting the corruption and warlordism of Afghanistan's tribal society -- will be forced to negotiate sharing of power with the Pakistan-backed Taliban as the first step toward much wider disaster, including a possible nuclear exchange, to which Obama alluded in his address.
But the world and the Afghan people learned in 2001 and the years since that there is no such thing as a good member of the Taliban. And the forces behind the Taliban are even more dangerous.
It's not too late to decide, at the appropriate time, that the NATO troops in Afghanistan or on the way -- including Canadians -- will finish the job instead of quitting.
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Obama+headed+chaos+Asia/2301015/story.html