A USA Today/Gallop poll released early this afternoon shows that 51% of Americans support the president's decision to increase troop levels in Afghanistan. I am one of those Americans and I am not ashamed to say so.
I trust our president to make the right choice given the options presented to him. If I didn't trust him I wouldn't have voted for him. He never said even once that when elected he would end the Afghanistan conflict. On the contrary he stressed its strategic importance and promised to resolve the issue with the best interests of the American people at heart. So, the decision is made and the relentless whining needs to end. It is time to support our troops and their mission. The whining can begin again if we are not out of that dark hell by the deadline so don't lose all hope of exercising the right to whine.
It is not enough to say that you support the troops but not the mission. Our young men and women need their country to believe in what they are doing. They need to know that what they do has meaning, and it does! So stop saying you support the troops but not the mission.
In the meantime pray [in your own way] for the safety of the brave men and women serving in our armed forces and the armed forces of our allies. Let them know that our thoughts are with the families of those serving in combat. They give so much of themselves in support of those who fight in this vital and necessary war waged to protect the interests of the United States and the rest of the world.
I am confident that the mission will be accomplished in an honorable and just manner as can only be expected from free and democratic nations.
We are America. The fool of a Bush is gone and there is a new sheriff in town. So, even though you don't always agree, let us support him in the job he is sworn to do. He is, after all, our sheriff.
Oh! One final thought before I go:
Death to the al Qaeda murderers and those who support them! God bless America and may every Allied bullet travel straight and true into the black hearts of our enemies!
Cross posted at MadMikesAmerica
Frank Rich magnificent this morning~~~
ReplyDeleteThe New York Times
December 6, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Obama’s Logic Is No Match for Afghanistan
By FRANK RICH
AFTER the dramatic three-month buildup, you’d think that Barack Obama’s speech announcing his policy for Afghanistan would be the most significant news story of the moment. History may take a different view. When we look back at this turning point in America’s longest war, we may discover that a relatively trivial White House incident, the gate-crashing by a couple of fame-seeking bozos, was the more telling omen of what was to come.
Obama’s speech, for all its thoughtfulness and sporadic eloquence, was a failure at its central mission. On its own terms, as both policy and rhetoric, it didn’t make the case for escalating our involvement in Afghanistan. It’s doubtful that the president’s words moved the needle of public opinion wildly in any direction for a country that has tuned out Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq alike while panicking about where the next job is coming from....
Obama’s failure illuminated the limits of even his great powers of reason.
The state dinner crashers delineated those limits too. This was the second time in a month — after the infinitely more alarming bloodbath at Fort Hood — that a supposedly impregnable bastion of post-9/11 American security was easily breached. Yes, the crashers are laughable celebrity wannabes, but there was nothing funny about what they accomplished on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Their ruse wasn’t “reality” television — it was reality, period, with no quotation marks. It was a symbolic indication (and, luckily, only symbolic) of how unbridled irrationality harnessed to sheer will, whether ludicrous in the crashers’ case or homicidal in the instance of the Fort Hood gunman, can penetrate even our most secure fortifications. Both incidents stand as a haunting reproach to the elegant powers of logic with which Obama tried to sell his exquisitely calibrated plan to vanquish Al Qaeda and its mad brethren....
If the enemy in Afghanistan today threatens the American homeland as the Viet Cong never did, we should be all in, according to Obama’s logic. So why aren’t we? The answer is not merely that Afghans don’t want us as occupiers. It’s that such a mission would require a commensurate national sacrifice. One big difference between the war in Vietnam and the war in Afghanistan that the president conspicuously left unmentioned on Tuesday is the draft. Given that conscription is not about to be revived, we’d have to spend money, lots more money, to recruit the troops needed for the full effort Obama’s own argument calls for....
Americans want our country to be secure. Most want Obama to succeed. And so we hope that we won’t get bogged down in Afghanistan while our adversaries regroup elsewhere, that the casualties and costs can be contained, that the small, primitive Afghan Army (ravaged by opium, illiteracy, incompetence and a 25 percent attrition rate) will miraculously stand up so we can stand down. We want to believe that Obama’s marvelous powers of reason can check a ruthless enemy and reverse decades of tragic history in one of the world’s most treacherous backwaters.
That’s the bet Obama made. As long as our wars remain sacrifice-free, safely buried in the back pages behind Tiger Woods and reality television stunts, he’ll be able to pursue it. But I keep returning to the crashers at the gates, who have no respect for our president’s orderliness of mind and action. All it takes is a few of them at the wrong time and wrong place, whether in Afghanistan or Pakistan or America or sites unknown, and all bets will be off.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/opinion/06rich.html?th&emc=th
This is a well written piece Jazz, although I find his logic to be self-serving. Frank has long been an opponent of war, as am I and most everyone I know. The fact is the decision has been made and the commitment is now at DOD and there is no turning back. As a result I am going to think not with my heart but with my head. I am going to support the mission, albeit for the time being. Thanks for reprinting this by the way.
ReplyDelete“Obama’s failure illuminated the limits of even his great powers of reason.” Frank Rich.
ReplyDeleteBut what Obama didn’t satisfactorily explain was the logic of sending a hundred thousand troops to chase a hundred members of al Qaueda, who can pack up and move elsewhere. Who don’t have to play our game.
What Obama didn’t satisfactorily explain was how the US and NATO would establish a stable state without nation building in a year and a half. Can anyone believe that’s possible?
I suspect American pride is more engaged in this than American reason. It is so, so difficult for national leaders, in any time and place, to admit they’re wrong. We’re there in Afghanistan and we can not leave until we have made everything right.
This truly is a tar baby situation. Because we’re there we can’t leave. Would we invade Afghanistan today if none of our troops were there? That seems unlikely. I wish Obama had listened to Biden.
So, like Mad Mike, if I interpreted his words accurately, we have nothing left but to hope for the best. Our minds reel at this adventure. We know there will be suffering, many dead and much more destruction. For what? Not, certainly, for the safety of our nation.
Frank Rich, with his cry of the heart, nicely expresses the tragic nature of this situation. And its final illogic.
I must admit I read the Rich column before reading Mad Mike's initial entry above.
ReplyDeleteAs much as I respect Mike's opinions I can't buy his argument that we should all stop thinking. And that expressing our doubts and concerns is "whining."
Frankly, I wouldn't be too surprised if today's Rich column isn't seen in future years as prophetic.
Yes, we can support the troops by opposing the mission. For why send them to be needlessly killed on a misconceived mission? And let's not go too far with confusing the mission with the troops less we slip into jingoism. Empty flag waving. For, after all, the best way to support the troops is not to needlessly kill them.
No Mike, we can't stop thinking merely to boost morale among the troops, especially if we know, fully believe, that they are being killed needlessly. Then what would that make us? Murderers of our own troops?
I didn't mean that we should stop thinking Quinty although it may appear that way. I would never subscribe to anything but intelligent discourse. I was trying to say that I am going to try and step back and view our actions in Afghanistan without the emotional baggage. I guess I need to figure out a way to reword that head and heart thing.
ReplyDelete