George Will on Afghanistan: Get Out


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George Will on Afghanistan: Get Out

Post by SandRider »

Thought I was losing my mind.
Considered calling my doctor.
Thought my local paper had just fucked up the by-lines again.
George Will in the Washington Post wrote: Time to Get Out of Afghanistan

By George F. Will
Tuesday, September 1, 2009

"Yesterday," reads the e-mail from Allen, a Marine in Afghanistan, "I gave blood because a Marine, while out on patrol, stepped on a [mine's] pressure plate and lost both legs." Then "another Marine with a bullet wound to the head was brought in. Both Marines died this morning."

"I'm sorry about the drama," writes Allen, an enthusiastic infantryman willing to die "so that each of you may grow old." He says: "I put everything in God's hands." And: "Semper Fi!"

Allen and others of America's finest are also in Washington's hands. This city should keep faith with them by rapidly reversing the trajectory of America's involvement in Afghanistan, where, says the Dutch commander of coalition forces in a southern province, walking through the region is "like walking through the Old Testament."

U.S. strategy -- protecting the population -- is increasingly troop-intensive while Americans are increasingly impatient about "deteriorating" (says Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) conditions. The war already is nearly 50 percent longer than the combined U.S. involvements in two world wars, and NATO assistance is reluctant and often risible.

The U.S. strategy is "clear, hold and build." Clear? Taliban forces can evaporate and then return, confident that U.S. forces will forever be too few to hold gains. Hence nation-building would be impossible even if we knew how, and even if Afghanistan were not the second-worst place to try: The Brookings Institution ranks Somalia as the only nation with a weaker state.

Military historian Max Hastings says Kabul controls only about a third of the country -- "control" is an elastic concept -- and " 'our' Afghans may prove no more viable than were 'our' Vietnamese, the Saigon regime." Just 4,000 Marines are contesting control of Helmand province, which is the size of West Virginia. The New York Times reports a Helmand official saying he has only "police officers who steal and a small group of Afghan soldiers who say they are here for 'vacation.' " Afghanistan's $23 billion gross domestic product is the size of Boise's. Counterinsurgency doctrine teaches, not very helpfully, that development depends on security, and that security depends on development. Three-quarters of Afghanistan's poppy production for opium comes from Helmand. In what should be called Operation Sisyphus, U.S. officials are urging farmers to grow other crops. Endive, perhaps?

Even though violence exploded across Iraq after, and partly because of, three elections, Afghanistan's recent elections were called "crucial." To what? They came, they went, they altered no fundamentals, all of which militate against American "success," whatever that might mean. Creation of an effective central government? Afghanistan has never had one. U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry hopes for a "renewal of trust" of the Afghan people in the government, but the Economist describes President Hamid Karzai's government -- his vice presidential running mate is a drug trafficker -- as so "inept, corrupt and predatory" that people sometimes yearn for restoration of the warlords, "who were less venal and less brutal than Mr. Karzai's lot."

Mullen speaks of combating Afghanistan's "culture of poverty." But that took decades in just a few square miles of the South Bronx. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, thinks jobs programs and local government services might entice many "accidental guerrillas" to leave the Taliban. But before launching New Deal 2.0 in Afghanistan, the Obama administration should ask itself: If U.S. forces are there to prevent reestablishment of al-Qaeda bases -- evidently there are none now -- must there be nation-building invasions of Somalia, Yemen and other sovereignty vacuums?

U.S. forces are being increased by 21,000, to 68,000, bringing the coalition total to 110,000. About 9,000 are from Britain, where support for the war is waning. Counterinsurgency theory concerning the time and the ratio of forces required to protect the population indicates that, nationwide, Afghanistan would need hundreds of thousands of coalition troops, perhaps for a decade or more. That is inconceivable.

So, instead, forces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent Special Forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.

Genius, said de Gaulle, recalling Bismarck's decision to halt German forces short of Paris in 1870, sometimes consists of knowing when to stop. Genius is not required to recognize that in Afghanistan, when means now, before more American valor, such as Allen's, is squandered.

georgewill@washpost.com

now while I happen to (sort of) agree with George here,
I have to wonder : what would this column have said if
John McCain was president ?

George Will is the new Pat Buchanan ?
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Re: George Will on Afghanistan: Get Out

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Maybe Obama should go bow to the Taliban and offer them deals. Have a beer with them, maybe.
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Re: George Will on Afghanistan: Get Out

Post by A Thing of Eternity »

I know not everyone agrees with me, but I think that when countries go into another country and ravage it they owe it to the people of that country to help them get back on their feet. You make the mess, you clean up the mess, I learned that in kindergarten. Not that I'm saying there's no such thing as the right time to pull out before the country is safe to live in - there are probably lots of situations where it might be better for that country for us to just leave before the fight is over - but we should only leave when it is in fact better for that country (read: not better for us) for us to leave.

I think we should up the presence in Afghanistan and give them a real chance to form a stable democracy. If we don't we're just setting up history to repeat itself, and maybe the next time they launch attacks on us they'll truly be justified.
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Re: George Will on Afghanistan: Get Out

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Doesn't the US always rebuild the countries we invade (when we win)?
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Re: George Will on Afghanistan: Get Out

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you know who George Will is, right ?
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Re: George Will on Afghanistan: Get Out

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A Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper columnist, journalist, and author. That doesn't mean he's always right.
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Re: George Will on Afghanistan: Get Out

Post by A Thing of Eternity »

Freakzilla wrote:Doesn't the US always rebuild the countries we invade (when we win)?
I didn't say America hadn't (and honestly I don't know the history of what happened to every country the US has invaded after the war was over)- alls I'm saying is that now isn't the time to stop that policy.
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Re: George Will on Afghanistan: Get Out

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Freakzilla wrote:A Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper columnist, journalist, and author. That doesn't mean he's always right.

I actually think he is right, here.
Which is why I thought I was losing my mind.

I've just never known George to be a Buchanan-style isolationist.
He's not always a hard right-winger, either, like Bill Kristol,
I've always seen George Will as a mouthpiece for corporations & robber barons.

maybe that's it - Will can't see the profit-motive in Afghanistan
the way he could in Iraq. Yeah, that's it.
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Re: George Will on Afghanistan: Get Out

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I have no problem with us being isolationist, in fact I'm all for it. Stop the bombing and the foreign aid money.

But we can't start a war and then just pull out, leaving the country in ruins.
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Re: George Will on Afghanistan: Get Out

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Freakzilla wrote:I have no problem with us being isolationist, in fact I'm all for it. Stop the bombing and the foreign aid money.

But we can't start a war and then just pull out, leaving the country in ruins.

sure we can.
Viet Nam & Cambodia. 1959-1975.

doing it in Iraq right now.
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Re: George Will on Afghanistan: Get Out

Post by GamePlayer »

I actually was supportive of the war in Afghanistan. But I'm not for the way it's being fought. I don't think there's much point in being there anymore if none of our goals can be achieved. More importantly, I don't think my country should be there if there were no realistic goals to begin with. I had assumed (perhaps wrongly or naively) there were plans and legitimate reasons for fighting. Now I'm not so sure. I'm just not seeing forward progress.
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Re: George Will on Afghanistan: Get Out

Post by A Thing of Eternity »

That's pretty much how I feel about it too. But as long as we stand a reasonable chance at helping I think we should stay and fight it out.
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Re: George Will on Afghanistan: Get Out

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that's what the Soviets said.
And the Brits.
And the Hindus.
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Re: George Will on Afghanistan: Get Out

Post by Nebiros »

You are all for isolationism? But you are all FOR war with Iran! As long as you are not busy elsewhere.
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Re: George Will on Afghanistan: Get Out

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Freakzilla wrote:Doesn't the US always rebuild the countries we invade (when we win)?
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Re: George Will on Afghanistan: Get Out

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Nebiros wrote:You are all for isolationism? But you are all FOR war with Iran! As long as you are not busy elsewhere.
who the fuck are you talking to ?
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Re: George Will on Afghanistan: Get Out

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SandRider wrote:
Nebiros wrote:You are all for isolationism? But you are all FOR war with Iran! As long as you are not busy elsewhere.
who the fuck are you talking to ?

I'm sure he meant me.

I'm not FOR any war, but they are inevitable.
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Re: George Will on Afghanistan: Get Out

Post by SandRider »

we never went toe-to-toe with the Russians.

my whole life, I was told that was inevitable & we
might as well drop the First Bomb.

assholes were wrong then, too ...
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Re: George Will on Afghanistan: Get Out

Post by Redstar »

SandRider wrote:we never went toe-to-toe with the Russians.

my whole life, I was told that was inevitable & we
might as well drop the First Bomb.

assholes were wrong then, too ...
Hey, there's always hope for a second chance...
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