On July 14, 1965, as the US marched into Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson stepped into a White House staff meeting. “Don’t let me interrupt,” the American president said. “But there’s one thing you ought to know. Vietnam is like being in a plane without a parachute when all the engines go out. If you jump, you’ll probably be killed, and if you stay in, you’ll crash and probably burn.” Two weeks later, Johnson ordered 100,000 more troops to Vietnam, bringing the total number there to nearly 200,000. Within three years, more than half a million Americans would be fighting, killing and dying in what Johnson knew was a stupid, unwinnable war.
That story came to mind last week when the US, Canada and other NATO countries announced they were officially extending their war in Afghanistan for at least three more years. Bob Woodward’s latest book Obama’s Wars shows why that extension won’t work. Woodward writes that in September 2009, Barack Obama received a secret report from Stanley McChrystal, then commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan. It warned that the war was going so badly that without huge increases in troop levels, the US and NATO could be defeated within a year. “The weakness of state institutions, malign actions of power brokers, widespread corruption and abuse of power by various officials,” McChrystal wrote, “have given Afghans little reason to support their government.”
Woodward writes that other US officials also told Obama the war was a mess. Senior advisor Richard Holbrooke warned that sending more troops would help the Taliban because contractors moving supplies had to pay the Taliban protection money for safe use of the roads. Holbrooke also cast doubt on plans to increase Afghan forces to 400,000—160,000 police and 240,000 soldiers. He said drug addiction and desertion were common among the Afghan police. Twenty-five percent were dropping out every year, a figure higher than the level of new recruits. Doubling the force to 160,000 would be impossible. “It’s like pouring water into a bucket with a hole in it,” Holbrooke said. Douglas Lute, a retired army general and senior adviser told Obama even if the US spent tens of billions of dollars over 10 years, it probably could not fashion the Afghan army and police into an effective fighting force. Nevertheless, Obama has decided to press ahead with plans to train the Afghan army and police to take over the war, a strategy that failed miserably in Vietnam.
Woodward’s book portrays an American president who worries daily about a terrorist nuclear attack on an American city or a massive “cyber” assault on US banks, power grids or telecommunications lines. After his first intelligence briefing two days after he was elected, Obama told an aide: “I’m inheriting a world that could blow up any minute in half a dozen ways, and I will have some powerful but limited and perhaps even dubious tools to keep it from happening.”
No wonder Obama pressured Canada to stay on in Afghanistan. It’s supposed to be a Canadian training mission but, as military affairs columnist Scott Taylor told CTV, we should ask why, after nine years, Afghan forces aren’t ready to fight on their own. Taylor noted that foreign-trained Afghan military and police are often seen as a “monster,” shielding a corrupt central government.
“And now to hear that we’re going to create a bigger monster for a longer period of time is very disappointing,” Taylor said.
Lyndon Johnson’s presidency crashed and burned in the Vietnam war. Here’s hoping that the politicians in Washington and Ottawa will also be forced to pay for their recklessness in Afghanistan. But don’t count on it. Democrats and Republicans, Conservatives and Liberals all support an extension of the war. It is our soldiers as well as the Afghan (and Pakistani) people who will continue to pay the price for this stupid, unwinnable war.
This article appears in Nov 18-24, 2010.
Bruce, there is a fair amount of truth in what you say, and you’re not the first to say it. However, I hope you’re pulling your information from more than just HBO’s 2002 “Path To War”. The way that very first quote goes, about crashing the plane or jumping from it, it was actually confided by LBJ to his wife (and not to a WH staff meeting), and it doesn’t read quite like that in real life.
Hey Realist: How do you know LBJ said that first quote to his wife and it wasn’t exactly how I quoted it? What is your source for that?
Although for space reasons I didn’t give it, I have an excellent source for the quote. On August 21, 1988, the New York Times published excerpts from a book by Richard N. Goodwin who served as special assistant to LBJ in 1964 and 1965. The Times headline was, “President Lyndon B. Johnson: The War Within.” It’s a long article, but at the top of pg. 5, Goodwin’s book says:
On July 14, Johnson walked into a staff meeting, took a seat, listened a while, then said: ”Don’t let me interrupt. But there’s one thing you ought to know. Vietnam is like being in a plane without a parachute when all the engines go out. If you jump, you’ll probably be killed, and if you stay in you’ll crash and probably burn. That’s what it is.” Then, without waiting for a response, the tall, slumped figure rose and left the room. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html…
I make it clear in my editorial that most of my information came from Bob Woodward’s new book, “Obama’s Wars”. I also quote what Scott Taylor said to CTV.
Scott Taylor (spent a few years in the army as an infantry Private), now there’s a military wizard. The difference between Afghanistan and Vietnam is that Vietnam never attacked us.
On the other hand Al-Queida, with the Taliban supporting and harbouring them, did attack us, and I mean the World. The buildings may have been in the US but citizens from many countries (including Canadians) were killed and injured from these attacks. How convenient that the Left has forgotten this. Now oh great Bruce and Scott, what should have the response been? Just forget about it or maybe impose one of those powerful UN sanctions?
If Scott had any real knowledge, he would know it takes a long time, at least a generation to establish a military from nothing. There is little, if any infrastructure (ie proper bases), no true officer experience, no cash to speak of, etc. Now I know you’re going to say that Canada and other countries were able to recruit large militaries for WWI and II, but we also had enough EXPERIENCED personnel to pass it on and a wealthy population.
I thought Taylor was a corporal? And what, like 15-20 years ago? What a joke. He’s no Victor Malerek but with today’s new standards of journalism, who cares?
Bro Tim and Cranky: You guys are unreal — literally unreal because you enter the debate in disguise. You know what? I’m really tired of your same old, same old way of arguing. Instead of responding to what Scott Taylor says, you suggest he has no right to criticize the powers-that-be because he was either an “infantry Private” or a “corporal…like 15-20 years ago?” If you consult any text book on logic, you’ll see that this is called an “ad hominem attack.” Simply put, you attack the person making the argument, instead of the argument itself, although to be fair Bro Tim does feebly argue that it takes a long time “to establish a military from nothing.” Well Bro Tim, no need to worry about the military prowess of Afghans. They’ve been defeating foreign armies for millennia. They hardly need training from us to do it. The point here is that the Afghans have no reason to fight on behalf of foreign occupiers.
Bruce, I ran across quite a few articles that mention LBJ confiding this to Lady Bird, for example:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html…
and
http://www.newstatesman.com/international-…
and
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/11/01/…
The last 2 links make it quite clear that Lady Bird put this in her audio diary on July 8, 1965.
I don’t doubt for a second, now that you have elaborated, that LBJ liked this analogy so much that he re-used it, with slight changes in wording, at a staff meeting about a week later.
I don’t think it much matters when he said it first or to whom, since in both cases it was to a closed audience, not for public consumption. And like I said, I don’t disagree with much of your editorial.
For what it’s worth, the large majority of the best military affairs and technology commentators and analysts have limited or no military background; most have always been civilians. Contrary to popular belief, as evidenced here, being in the military (except at the very highest ranks for substantial periods of time) doesn’t set anyone up with expertise in military affairs, and not much in technology. If you see a respected military affairs analyst that does happen to be a retired officer or something, he very likely picked up most of his knowledge *after* retiring or leaving…just like Scott Taylor.
No disrespect intended to any serving military personnel. I used to be one myself, for close to ten years. But active duty military focus on doing their jobs, and those jobs very rarely involve understanding current affairs.
Realist: Thanks for those links to the Johnson quotes. It does appear that Johnson was re-using the analogy to explain his predicament. I lived through that period and believed at the time that Johnson, McNamara et al were gung ho about the buildup in Vietnam. Their public statements were full of optimism and even as the war was going badly, they continued to claim that victory was just around the corner. Yet, we now know that in private, they were pessimistic as hell.
During the summer of 2009, I listened to about six hours of the Johnson tapes edited by Michael Beschloss and was struck by how futile Johnson thought the war was. In this May 27/64 conversation with his old mentor, Senator Richard Russell (more than a year earlier than his parachute comment), Johnson agrees when Russell describes Vietnam as “the damn worst mess that I ever saw: http://whitehousetapes.net/clip/lyndon-joh…
For me, the lesson in all this is that although US presidents are not as stupid as we might think, they nevertheless get drawn into quagmires like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan where disaster awaits. Interestingly, a book that was much read and admired in the Obama White House during the early months was “Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam.” The book complements the David Halberstam classic, “The Best and the Brightest.” It seems clear from Woodward’s book that Obama and company are much more pessimistic about Afghanistan/Pakistan than they let on in public, but they do suffer from the illusion that the US and NATO can somehow stabilize the region. Their belief seems to be based on the idea that the “surge” in Iraq worked and therefore a “surge” in Afghanistan is bound to work too. The fact that Iraq is still an ungovernable mess with deadly outbreaks of violence everyday requiring a continuing US military presence doesn’t seem to bother anyone in the White House.
I see that I misread you’re earlier comment on sources for the editorial re Vietnam. I relied on Goldstein’s book as well as Stanley Karnow’s 1983 book, “Vietnam: A History.” (It’s a companion to a PBS series that I haven’t seen.) On pg. 437, Karnow shows how the US relies heavily on destructive technologies that wreak havoc, but won’t produce victory in guerrilla-style warfare:
“Vietnam also served as a laboratory for technology so sophisticated it made James Bond’s dazzling gadgets seem obsolete by comparison. American scientists created an array of ultrasensitive devices to detect the enemy through heat, light, and sound refraction, and they even invented an electronic instrument that could smell guerrillas. They produced defoliants and herbicides to destroy jungles and wipe out rice and other crops on which the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong relied for food. They perfected rockets like the ‘Walleye,’ an air-to-surface missile containing a television camera that enabled a pilot to adjust its course by scanning a screen in his cockpit. And there were bombs of nearly every size, shape, and explosive intensity, from blockbusters to phosphorous and napalm bombs that roasted their victims alive. Another devastating weapon were cluster bombs, whose hundreds of pellets burst out at high velocity to rip deep into the body of anyone within range. Designed for ‘surgical’ raids against troop concentrations, the cluster bombs were frequently dropped by American aircraft on populated regions in both North and South Vietnam, killing or maiming thousands of civilians. General Howard K. Johnson, army chief of staff, once attributed the indiscriminate casualties to a lack of precise intelligence about targets. ‘We have not enough information,’ he said. ‘We act with ruthlessness, like a steamroller.'”
Well Bruce I see that you avoided answering the most important question I asked. I’ll ask it once again. What should have been the response for the murder of over 3,000 International victims and the injuries of thousands more?
And remember the failure of Vietnam was not due to the military but rather the micromanagement and inane rules of engagement imposed by the government. Could you imagine Churchill, Roosevelt or Stalin saying you are not to bomb the enemys’ country.
I predict a negotiated end to our occupation of Afghanistan with elements of the Taliban (General Hillier’s “murderers and scumbags”) welcomed back into some power-sharing arrangement. We will sign off on such an agreement because, in the end, the powers-that-be don’t really care about all those “window dressing” rationales for our mission there, such as the plight of Afghan women and girls. The power brokers now simply want stability in the country and will support whatever strong central government can provide it, whether dominated by the Taliban or not.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise because all throughout the Cold War the West was quite ready to establish in power and support all kinds of “murderers and scumbags” as long as they were able to enforce security in their respective nations in a way that supported our larger strategic goals, in other words, as long as they were “our murderers and scumbags”.
If it were framed in just the right way, an issue of “national security” for example, I could even see the U.S. government entering into a long term agreement to provide economic and military support to a Taliban-dominated Afghan government, long after NATO has officially packed up and gone home. In fact, if they were able to guarantee an Afghanistan free of al Qaeda insurgents, I think Western governments would gladly fund such a government regardless of whether they were stoning women to death under some odd interpretation of Sharia law or chopping off the heads of adulterers in a public square. Saudi Arabia is such a place and they don’t suffer much approbation from Western governments for this kind of thing because, of course, they bring to the table something we want and need. The human rights of Saudi citizens are secondary. Obviously our morality has well-defined price.
The negotiated end to hostilities and the NATO pullout will cause some hand-wringing in various quarters. There will be those who say “we never lost a battle” but somehow “lost the war” and they will most likely place the blame on those back home (governments included) who never really “got behind the troops” and didn’t give their wholehearted support to the mission. There will be those who demand to know why their government is actively supporting a regime which doesn’t accept our definition of “human rights” and treats the entire female population as chattel and these folks will be dismissed as “trouble making protesters”.
Finally there will be those Canadian families who have lost loved ones in Afghanistan and they will be scratching their heads and asking themselves what it was all for. I think all that will be left for them is to do as American families have done for decades and that is to buy into the comfortable illusion that in sending troops to fight and die in far off places whose names nobody can pronounce they are somehow fighting for freedom and democracy, not only abroad but here at home as well.
That’s only my prediction, but I’ve seen a lot of this happen before. Time will tell.
Bro Tim, I have never believed that defining the spectacular, 9/11 terrorist attacks as acts of international war made sense. George W. Bush deliberately converted attacks by a group of murderous thugs (most of whom hailed from Saudi Arabia by the way) into an occasion for immediate state-to-state warfare and a longer-term “war on terrorism.”
As is well documented in Bob Woodward’s book, “Plan of Attack,” Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were already intent on an invasion of Iraq. Woodward writes that on Nov. 21/01, just 72 days after 9/11, Bush directed Rumsfeld to update plans for an invasion of Iraq. (pg. 1) The 9/11 attacks were their “Pearl Harbor” and they seized on them to justify carrying out the schemes already set forth in the mid 1990s by the Project for the New American Century.
(Bush was not alone of course. For the first time in its 50 year history, NATO invoked the Treaty of Washington defining the 9/11 attacks as military attacks that required all NATO members to come to the aid of the US.)
This history is not controversial. Your notion that the US invaded Afghanistan simply as an act of retaliation for the 9/11 attacks oversimplifies and thereby distorts this history. Many books document it, but I’ll quote just one by the Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, who considers himself a friend of Hamid Karzai. (Rashid is far from a radical.) In the introduction to his 2008 book, “Descent into Chaos: the United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia,” Rashid writes:
“The anger, grief, and rage felt by many Americans after 9/11, and the determination to hit back under any circumstances, was the perfect playing field for the neocons, who were to exploit retaliation for 9/11 into a much broader foreign and domestic agenda. They saw the war on terrorism as a means to fulfill a long-desired venture to remodel the Middle East, starting with destroying Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, securing more of the region’s oil fields for American companies, and propping up the state of Israel. At home they saw the war as a means of carving out greater presidential power by ignoring legal constraints and the checks and balances of the U.S. political system. The neocons were to use 9/11 as justification for making themselves exempt from American or international law.” (pg. XLVII)
But, just for a moment, let’s accept your naive premise that an invasion of Afghanistan was aimed at destroying Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda while punishing the Taliban for harboring terrorists. If those were the American goals, their state-to-state war neither captured bin Laden, nor eradicated Al Qaeda. The Taliban were kicked out of power, but the ongoing war hasn’t prevented them from coming back.
So what should the US have done after 9/11? I’d say that instead of defining the attacks as international warfare requiring a massive, expensive and ultimately self-defeating military response, the US should have seen the attacks for what they were, criminal acts perpetrated by international thugs. Criminal acts require a co-ordinated international policing and intelligence response to apprehend the criminals, destroy (or at least, disrupt) their organization and prevent further attacks. Not only is this, more limited response likely to be more effective, it would not result in the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent civilians, nor would it generate support for anti-US terrorism. As Rashid writes:
“Naming the adversary as ‘terrorism’ enabled the neocons to broaden the specific struggle against a bunch of murderous criminals (al Qaeda) into a global conflict with Islam. The neocons identified ‘state sponsors’ of terrorism such as Iraq and Iran, who suddenly became part of the al Qaeda network, even as they overturned international law in the process. All this tapped into the fear and anger of a largely ignorant and accepting American public still in shock over how easily a small group of terrorists had destroyed so many lives on American soil.”
So your plan was to ask the government of Afghanistan to have their police force go and get Osama and turn him over. Now who is naive. First of all there was no effective police force in Afghanistan unless you call improsoning and executing people for no reason effective. What part of harbouring a fugitive do you not understand. They were asked to do this and they refused. Second of all you have no concept of what the mountain terrain is like. You can hide for long time in an area like that. It’s not a house, it’s a huge inhospitable area to get into.
As for Iraq, I don’t really care except that the job was not finished in 1991. Of course we can conveniently forget the mass murders of Kurds by use of WMD, ie poisonous gas (outlawed by the Geneva Convention) (also reminenesence of another mustachioed dictator, actually a few of them) not to mention the murders of countless other Iraqis who were against Saddam who were tortured by means that make waterboarding look like a walk in the park, left languished in arcanian prisons or even fed to lions.
My real question is why are you not outraged by these atrocious acts and demand justice?
But you are right there were Saudi terrorists involved and *gasp* also Canadian terrorists involved in these henious acts.
Remember that quote:
“All that’s necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing.”
Sir Edmund Burke
So your plan was to ask the government of Afghanistan to have their police force go and get Osama and turn him over. Now who is naive. First of all there was no effective police force in Afghanistan unless you call improsoning and executing people for no reason effective. What part of harbouring a fugitive do you not understand. They were asked to do this and they refused. Second of all you have no concept of what the mountain terrain is like. You can hide for long time in an area like that. It’s not a house, it’s a huge inhospitable area to get into.
As for Iraq, I don’t really care except that the job was not finished in 1991. Of course we can conveniently forget the mass murders of Kurds by use of WMD, ie poisonous gas (outlawed by the Geneva Convention) (also reminenesence of another mustachioed dictator, actually a few of them) not to mention the murders of countless other Iraqis who were against Saddam who were tortured by means that make waterboarding look like a walk in the park, left languished in arcanian prisons or even fed to lions.
My real question is why are you not outraged by these atrocious acts and demand justice?
But you are right there were Saudi terrorists involved and *gasp* also Canadian terrorists involved in these henious acts.
Remember that quote:
“All that’s necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing.”
Sir Edmund Burke
Bro Tim: Once again, you’re looking at everything simplistically instead of taking history into account. For example, you write: “So your [my] plan was to ask the government of Afghanistan to have their police force go and get Osama and turn him over. Now who is naive.”
You do not seem to know that the Americans and the Taliban had been talking about turning bin Laden over for three years before the 9/11 attacks and then again, afterwards. Here are excerpts from the Washington Post, Oct. 29, 2001 published under the headline:
“Diplomats Met With Taliban on Bin Laden
Some Contend U.S. Missed Its Chance
By David B.Ottaway and Joe Stephens
“Over three years and on as many continents, U.S. officials met in public and secret at least 20 times with Taliban representatives to discuss ways the regime could bring suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden to justice.
“Talks continued until just days before the Sept. 11 attacks, and Taliban representatives repeatedly suggested they would hand over bin Laden if their conditions were met, sources close to the discussions said.
“Throughout the years, however, State Department officials refused to soften their demand that bin Laden face trial in the U.S. justice system. It also remained murky whether the Taliban envoys, representing at least one division of the fractious Islamic movement, could actually deliver on their promises.
“The exchanges lie at the heart of a long and largely untold history of diplomatic efforts between the State Department and Afghanistan’s ruling regime that paralleled covert CIA actions to take bin Laden. In the end, both diplomatic and covert efforts proved fruitless.
“In interviews, U.S. participants and sources close to the Taliban discussed the exchanges in detail and debated whether the State Department should have been more flexible in its hard-line stance. Earlier this month, President Bush summarily rejected another Taliban offer to give up bin Laden to a neutral third country. ‘We know he’s guilty. Turn him over,’ Bush said.
“Some Afghan experts argue that throughout the negotiations, the United States never recognized the Taliban need for aabroh, the Pashtu word for ‘face-saving formula.’ Officials never found a way to ease the Taliban’s fear of embarrassment if it turned over a fellow Muslim to an ‘infidel’ Western power.
‘”We were not serious about the whole thing, not only this administration but the previous one,’ said Richard Hrair Dekmejian, an expert in Islamic fundamentalism and author at the University of Southern California. ‘We did not engage these people creatively. There were missed opportunities.’
Bro Tim, you can read the full Washington Post report at: http://www.infowars.com/saved%20pages/Prio…
Further evidence of the Taliban’s willingness to negotiate bin Laden’s surrender after 9/11 can be found at the UK Guardian’s Website under the headline: “Bush rejects Taliban offer to hand Bin Laden over” http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/1…
You might also read investigative journalist Robert Scheer’s Los Angeles Times column of May 22, 2001 headlined “Bush’s Faustian Deal With The Taliban” which preceded the 9/11 attacks: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n922/a0…
If you are interested, you could read about the Bush and bin Laden family business ties in Craig Unger’s book, “House of Bush, House of Saud.” You can find relevant excepts at: http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2004/03…
Oh Bro Tim, and you accuse me of being naive.
It’ll probably kill Bruce to learn that not only did I not read Taylor’s comments, I haven’t even read the article/opinion piece by Bruce himself. I was just commenting on what someone else posted.
Bruce, that’s old and well known news. Imagine that, the US wouldn’t capitualte to the Taliban’s demands. I wouldn’t either, no more than I would commend the police to negotiate with the Hell’s Angels to give up one of their own. You do not negotiate with criminals.
As for returning the Ben Laden family to Saudi Arabia, big deal. So now you’re saying the family is responsible for the atrocious acts that Osama perpetrated? Well maybe we should put in jail Williams, Bernardo, Olsen’s families as well. Nice rationalization.
As for simple. Wow now that’s a bad word now isn’t it. Believe it or not some things are as they appear, but some people need conspiracy theories.
let’s see now, 2,000 plus years, and this place has never be beaten. damn, i’ll put my money on afghanistan any day. they beat back the russians, and even old ghengis khan, and the israelis too. who in their right mind, would think that this war of bush jr’s can be won by convententional means? these guys over there believe they will get 72, count them, seven two virgins when they die for their cause. what does an invading force get, a big fucking hunk of sand and rock. no oil, no water, no mineral deposits, no nothing, except maybe poppy fields. hey, maybe that is worth dying for, if you are a war junkie like the bush’s, and bareback obami. other than that, piss on them, let them all kill each other over there, why the hell should i care if some fool in a rag on hiis head, blows his own people away. maybe when they get their camels to fly, and start to drop bombs on my neighborhood, then i will worry. not that we have troubles with all the scams the u.s. have tried and are still trying to use, to suck in the fools, that believe in their leaders not lying about something. blook at all the scandels over here, can you even begin to believe one word, that any government, on this side of the water says, not this boy, not in a zillion years.
God bless you Bro Tim, like the energizer bunny, you just keep slogging on! No need to argue logically and try to demolish your opponent’s argument. Just keep on making assertions of your own as you attempt to shift the debate. For example, you try to dismiss my evidence of three years of failed US/Taliban negotiations as “old and well-known news.” Hello, Bro Tim. I’m not talking about “news,” I’m talking about your lack of “historical” perspective. Not the same thing my friend. Do you even know who Robert Scheer is? Have you read any of his books? And why the hell are you referring to the Hell’s Angels?
Contrary to the rules of logic, you think it acceptable to attribute positions to me that are not my positions at all. Hence you say: “So now you’re saying the [bin Laden] family is responsible for the atrocious acts that Osama perpetrated? Well maybe we should put in jail Williams, Bernardo, Olsen’s families as well. Nice rationalization.” Williams? Bernardo? Olsen’s families. And what do you mean by “nice rationalization.” Those are your crack-pot arguments attributed to me. What kind of reasoning is that?
I referred explicitly to the business relationships between the bin Laden and Bush families. (I could also have mentioned the US support Osama bin Laden received from the Reagan administration to fight the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.)
I’m trying to show that in order to understand what’s going on in Afghanistan/Pakistan, you need to know some history. That’s why I characterized your views as simplistic — which is not a synonym for simple as you seem to think.
OK, so you characterize the Taliban as criminals and you don’t negotiate with them. Maybe so. But how would you describe an American administration that flouted international law by invading Iraq and authorizing torture? Easy to throw the word “criminal” around selectively, but it can come back to bite you. Maybe you believe that when “we” do certain things they’re justified. When “they” do them, they’re criminal. (And by the way, I’m not defending the Taliban.)
Bro Tim, hope you don’t mind if I suggest you read a basic textbook on logic. It’s Lionel Ruby’s tome “The Art of Making Sense: A Guide to Logical Thinking.” It’s available at the Dal Killam Library to anyone who holds a university or HRM library card. You will see that Ruby bans the ad hominem attacks I called you out on before as well as attributing false positions to your opponents as you attempt to do with me.
No. If you want to demolish opposing arguments, you have to deal with them one by one using fact-based evidence to refute them. You seem to be unwilling or unable to do that.
Brucie, Brucie, Brucie, do you know what I love about all you left wing journalists? It’s that you call Iraq the Bush/Cheney war. That they initiated it. Well hate to break your bubble but Saddam and his WMD has been going since at least 1998 under Bill Clinton a whole two years before Bush. Clinton was even debating about flying a few sorties in. Not to mention that poor downtrodden Saddam was bragging about the WMDs that he possessed and that he gassed Kurds. Or did you conveniently forget about that too.
Historical perspective. Duh yes I knew the CIA was arming the Mujahideen against the Soviets and that *gasp* the Cold War was still going on (which the West won BTW, when the U.S.S.R. collapsed). And we all know whatever the U.S. was for the U.S.S.R. was against and vice versa. One just has to look at the hot spots (Korea Vietnam, Congo, etc). This is not news. Both these countries put their noses in where it didn’t belong. On that we just might agree.
However, with Afghanistan (the Taliban and Al Queida, not the people) the invasion, attack, or whatever you want to call it was justified. Further, NATO does not go out and purposely attack civilians or threaten them with death for voting but I wonder who does? And as explained earlier the problem with Iraq predated Bush by at least two years and the fact that Saddam was bragging about it.
Here’s a little about Bill and the Democrats about Iraq WMDs:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/wmdquot…
Bruce, your determination is admirable, but I think you should heed the words of the late George Bernard Shaw:
“I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.”
Facts, figures and documented history just won’t convince some folks.
Didn’t Iraq used to be the “unwinnable” war? Haven’t heard that for awhile. There are no “unwinnable” wars. The Afghan mission has a chance to succeed, depending on what actions we take. To deny this is just being contrary for contrariness’s sake. The people who said Iraq was “unwinnable” now all have egg on their faces.
Jesus, Brenda_K, so, who were the winners in the Iraq war? I thought Bush said it was all about democracy and freedom for the Iraqis (remember Operation Iraqi freedom?) and once the Iraqis were free, democracy would spread to the whole Middle East. Yet, Iraq is in a total mess today — without a functioning government or basic services. Hundreds of thousands of are dead, millions displaced and the violence continues on a daily basis. Winnable for whom? As Tacitus wrote of the Romans: “They make a desert and they call it peace.”
I support a continued presence in Afghanistan. 10-20-30 years if required. I am happy and satisfied the current govt in Canada recognizes this as well. It peeves me a little that the govt is forced to appease the pacifists with the political games they play (setting withdrawal and mission changing dates) but happy that overall our Government is sticking with it. What would we gain if we left now? What would be lost? Would the small gains we have made remain after our protection left?
In the grand scheme I want peace, but we were attacked, entered a foreign country and kicked the enemies nest so to speak. Do we leave now that we have inflamed the enemy? I support staying until the enemy is extinct, and the allied institutions being built in Afghanistan are able to keep them extinct.
I also see great value in maintaining a war hardened military. As our combat roles in Afghanistan diminish we should be looking for places to keep the ‘edge sharp’. If we can maintain 2500 or so combat troops overseas for 10 years, we should aim to keep deployment levels that high, there are several places after Afghanistan we should head to install western law and order.
I also appreciate the commitments of our allies – esp the Yanks and Brits. They are the best friends to have in this world, and I am proud we stand shoulder to shoulder with them. Would you rather we stood aside them? cower behind them? hmmm or heaven forbid against them?
Anyhow, bottom line, I support a military mission in Afghanistan (and elsewhere) until the job is done. I believe if you don’t support Afghanistan you are a coward and an appeaser.
Flame away, my vote is cast.
If anyone is surprised by this “extension”, let me remind you folks what was said 8 years ago when we started sending troops into Afghanistan. It was stated, and is fact, that AFTER COMBAT MISSION ENDED, that canadian troops would remain in afghanistan for an indefinite time as mentorship/training advisors. This is the sickening thing that pisses me off about editors and newspapers who keep saying this is an “extension” of the mission in afganistan. Its not, plain and simple. and any media outlet who portrays it as such, is both full of shit, and irresponsible in their coverage.
Excellent article Bruce.
It is a shame that we seem to be unable to learn the lessons of history: that intervening in another culture in order to impose western ideals inevitably results in widespread misery and failure.
It is ironic that people will put a “support our troops” magnet on their SUV, and then head to the coast comment board to argue that we should send our troops into neighbouring countries, killing thousands more civilians and sacrificing many more of our troops along the way, simply so that our military can “stay sharp”.
How little such commenters must value the life of a Canadian soldier, not to mention an Afghan civilian.
What a disgustingly perverse concept of what it means to support our troops.
I support our troops, because they have volunteered to put their life on the line for this country, and have given the Canadian people their trust in democratically (unlike Harper’s latest move) determining which conflicts are worthy of the price of death.
Afghanistan is not a mission worthy of such sacrifice. Period.
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To Brenda_K, and Walter…
You have two choices:
1. Continue to live in denial, claiming the Iraq war was a success, claiming that there is such a thing as “winning” in Afghanistan, and continue to spit in the faces of Canadian soldiers by deeming their lives to be a justifiable expense in maintaining Canada’s “military edge”
2. Own up to the claims you make to support our troops, and help the rest of us bring them home
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From now on, the blood of every one of our soldiers that dies in this stupid war (not to mention that of the scores of Afghan and Pakistani civilians) will be on the hands of all the Brendas and Walters out there.
It is people like this who allow corrupt regimes such as the Harper Administration to impose their fascist policies on innocent Afghans.
I disagree Tom,
I think it is people like you who allow corrupt regimes to oppress their people, by holding back our abilities to stop them. “facist policies on innocent Afghanis” you say we are doing, what please tell me was policy like in Afghanistan before we arrived? Would you rather live under Omar or Harper? You really believe we are the ‘bad guys’ here? Like Nazi Germany invading its neighbors yea?
Have we really killed “thousands more civilians”?
There are no magnets on my vehicle.
The service members I speak with don’t spit in my face either, we shake hands.
I didn’t and don’t support the second Iraq invasion, but I respect the Yanks determination to see it right.
I support the Afghan _mission_ and expect our country to stay and see it finished.
And I pompously declare all the Afghani blood spilled after we leave on your hands.
Walter said:
“there are several places after Afghanistan we should head to install western law and order”
Could you provide a list, please? Curious minds want to know who “General Walter” wants to invade next.
Clearly, war mongering never goes out of style.