President Barack Obama made his first military move yesterday when he announced that he would be sending 17,000 additional US troops to Afghanistan in response to a request from General David McKiernan for 30,000.
The situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated since early 2008 when Radical Islam acknowledged defeat in Iraq and shifted its focus to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Since then, the force of 38,000 American soldiers has been hard pressed to counter the resurgence of fanatical fighters in the region. Recent developments in the political arena of Pakistan have added salt to an already open wound when the Pakistani government agreed to supply the Taliban with an uncontested refuge in the Swat Valley.
I am a firm believer that the people should stand behind the leadership in military matters and as such I support the President’s decision to send reinforcements. I do however wish that he would do more.
Although I wish the President would have given General McKiernan all of the 30,000 troops he asked for, this does present the President with an opportunity to win at least some political favor with me, a diehard conservative: Produce the 13,000 more troops needed from our allies in Europe.
Many European countries have cited Iraq as an excuse to ignore the situation in Afghanistan and have done little if anything to quell the violence in the unstable region. It is no secret that President Obama is seen in a more favorable light by our allies in Europe than President Bush was and Obama ran on a promise of improving our relations with these nations.
So here is your chance Mr. President. Meet the needs of your commanders in the field and give our troops the reinforcements they need. Find 13,000 more men among our allies in Europe who are willing to fight alongside our troops against Radical Islam.
~Man Overboard
Image used in this Post
United States Marines photo courtesy of Flickr user Sister72 published under the CC license.
11 Comments
Iraq was never really the problem. Afghanistan has always been the real problem, we just lost site of that, I’m not pointing fingers, it doesn’t matter. But that’s where our problem lies and that’s where we need to be our best.
It’ll be great when we can pull all of our troops out of Iraq and send them to Afghanistan and finish the job we started almost a decade ago.
Iraq was a major distraction. If we had focused all our energy and troops on Afghanistan from the beginning we might not have had to witness the 40% rise in civilian deaths caused by the Taliban in 2008.
Don’t you think that might have had something to do with Pakistan providing the Taliban a safe haven?
What about all the other NATO countries who have not sent even a small force to aid our soldiers in Afghanistan?
Just because we are leaving Iraq as victors does not justify the massive waste of time, money, and troops that resulted from focusing on a country that wasn’t al Qaeda’s home.
I firmly believe we wasted a decade by overextending our ambitions and resources. We are going to end up victorious on both fronts because thats just what we do, but did it have to take this long?
It just seems like poor military strategy.
This not an argument about Iraq. Bin Laden himself admitted that Iraq was the central front in the war on terror.
We won in Iraq, they lost. Get over it.
Afghanistan is next.
On the positive side of things…
We should be looking forward to increased enlistment numbers now that the military is offering citizenship to immigrants.
1) This has nothing to do with being liberal or conservative. It has to do with facts.
2) You obviously don’t like admitting you are wrong…
Bin Ladin made those statements after we had already begun our activities in Iraq.
Now if you were the head of a huge terrorist organization and you saw the opportunity that was presented by our decision to invade Iraq and upend its old order, wouldn’t you make the same exact comment?
It became a central front AFTER we invaded.
And that’s why it was a military blunder and huge waste of money, time, and troops.
If we had lost you would be right. But we didn’t. We kicked their asses and showed the entire world that when given a chance, people will chose freedom over extremism.
That is also why they abandoned their ambitions in Iraq and doubled down in Afghanistan.
Amen, Iraq most certainly showed al Qaeda that they are no match for us…especially under the leadership of Petreus.
However, it is because of our victory in Iraq that I am all the more convinced we could have achieved all the same results in Afghanistan in half the time it is currently taking us had we never entered Iraq and drawn al Qaeda into a new front.
And it is still important and relevant to discuss the alternate ways we could have approached the War on Terror. After all this was a new kind of war for our nation, and I don’t see why it is unAmerican, or liberal, or whatever, to criticize military strategy.
After all, we only learn how to more efficiently use our military by reviewing the past.
I am currently singing the Team America reprise.
Heck yeah Obama…beat some Afganistan anus!