Afghanistan

After dithering in Afghanistan for over eight years, during which Dick Cheney and his assistant, George W. Bush, denied the necessary forces to achieve progress there, and during which they negligently let Osama bin Laden escape capture in Tora Bora, Cheney had the effrontery to criticize President Obama for carefully reviewing the strategic situation before ordering 30,000 additional troops to the area.
Instead of concentrating on Afghanistan where al Qaeda and the Taliban were located, the Cheney/Bush Administration attacked Iraq, where there were no al Qaeda, no Taliban, no Osama bin Laden, and no weapons of mass destruction. It was like the embarrassment of a police drug squad that mistakenly raids the wrong house only to find nothing there and to learn that the actual drug house is next door.

During the 2008 election campaign, Barack Obama claimed that we should get out of Iraq and concentrate on our real enemies in Afghanistan. His decision to augment troop levels in that country is consistent with his campaign rhetoric. Any delay in making a decision pales in comparison with the eight-year delay of the Cheney/Bush ditherers.

Contrary to the whining of Dick Cheney, President Obama acted within the framework of time suggested by the commanders on the ground. On December 1, 2009, in his speech at West Point, the President said: “Let me be clear: There has never been an option before me that called for troop deployments before 2010, so there has been no delay or denial of resources necessary for the conduct of the war.” The President assured the nation that “The 30,000 additional troops that I am announcing tonight will deploy in the first part of 2010 — the fastest pace possible — so that they can target the insurgency and secure key population centers.”

The President also responded to the claims that we are escalating the fight in the same manner as was done in Viet Nam. He said: “Unlike Vietnam, we are joined by a broad coalition of 43 nations that recognizes the legitimacy of our action. Unlike Vietnam, we are not facing a broad-based popular insurgency. And most importantly, unlike Vietnam, the American people were viciously attacked from Afghanistan and remain a target for those same extremists who are plotting along its border.”

The President could have added that this war in Afghanistan is completely unlike the Cheney/Bush war in Iraq. America was not attacked by Iraq. In fact, even under the vicious dictator Saddam Hussein, America was never in danger of attack by Iraq. Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. The only reason we attacked Iraq was the bellicosity of Dick Cheney, the thirst for Iraqi oil, and the embarrassment of George W. Bush at his father’s failure to eliminate Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War.

President Obama has described an exit strategy for this nasty conflict in Afghanistan, something that was not done by Cheney and Bush in Iraq for over seven years. He will come under criticism by the Republicans for doing so. He has made clear, however, that getting our forces out of Afghanistan by 2011 will not be an abrupt abandonment of the people of Afghanistan: “Just as we have done in Iraq, we will execute this transition responsibly, taking into account conditions on the ground.”

The political Left will oppose the President’s plan, but I feel that his steps are necessary to protect America. I hate war of any kind. It is a monument to humanity’s failure to evolve from the instincts of lower animals. But we do not live in an ideal world. Some barbaric people in this world think that God wants them to fly airplanes into large structures and slaughter thousands of people. We must resist and fight such people, or surrender our civilization to the forces of chaos.