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Why do people think Obama is a socialist?

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Kraichgauer
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09 Mar 2012, 11:24 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
blauSamstag wrote:
techstepgenr8tion wrote:
In my infinite ignorance I'd argue that they weren't then and aren't now. Afghanistan's looking like it will be more of a headache to try and clean up or stabilize anymore than it is but things are pretty much the same and Obama, even if he might have traded numbers for strategy on the last troop surge, didn't pull out and let the whole thing unravel.


I'd argue that unless we're prepared to install an oppressive occupying force in both countries for the next 50 years or more, both of them will devolve into a mess roughly similar to what they were before we went in.

They are both vietnam in the sense that they are soverign nations that we have no business "liberating" - who's people will never be free as long as they live with our military force, and won't recognize freedom when they see it after we leave.

With Afghanistan we were kind of backed into the wall with 9/11, and with our memories of how we bungled the situation with the Mujaheddin vs. Russia I don't think we wanted to walk out the same way. Iraq's a story that'll likely be debatable for the next twenty or thirty years - did we know that he had/didn't have WMD's? Did something get fabricated and forced through Colin Powell? Did Saddam pass off and bury his stuff in Syria? Lots of big mysteries, then again going forward we have a better shot of stabilizing that than Afghanistan.

Really I'm not sure what we can do, "Pull out - its easy" isn't the answer. perhaps ramp down and keep training their public police and military to have some type of well-formed layer of civil servants as well as institutions to anchor the hillside in so to speak but aside from getting them on their own feet we've got nothing. S Korea though is another example of where, technically, we never left.


I think there will be no question about Iraqi WMD. The verdict is - and always will be - that they were non-existent, save in the Bush administration's minds. And they even knew those collections of poisoned gas and munitions, and the like, never existed, but proved to be a convenient lie to get us into war.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer



enrico_dandolo
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10 Mar 2012, 1:49 am

Afghanistan is a defeat, at least on the grand strategic level: it is a costly war in a landlocked country which only supports a weak government that will probably fall the minute the coalition leaves, if it doesn't become unfriendly or hostile. It may have been a blow to Al Qaeda, or it may not, but they are the tip of the anti-American iceberg, and I doubt the presence of nearby occupying forces will help warm up relations with Middle East countries and peoples. Actually, I don't think any other result was plausible, but anyway. Luckily, Irak absorbed all the internal dissent that could have gone into Afghanistan, so it could have been worst.



Jacoby
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10 Mar 2012, 2:51 am

You can't win or lose in Afghanistan, it's about as pointless as "war" can be. If we were to leave the country, the national security of the US wouldn't be effected at all. It's not even a real war, it's an occupation. Al Qaeda isn't even active in Afghanistan anymore, they all in Pakistan or in Libya and Syria(the guys we want to give weapons to now lol).



simon_says
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10 Mar 2012, 1:01 pm

It's very hard to strategically lose afghanistan. The Taliban never controlled the country and even if we left we could financially aid their rivals, hit them with predators, and generally prevent them from getting too far. Plus AQ is ravaged, I doubt they'd set up camps there when they have a different type of franchise strategy these days. Plus 1990s style camps would be torn to shreds by predators. Technology advances.

Iraq was a mistake. I thought it was clear at the time and still do. And the lies they told about the cost? Unbelievable. The war will ultimately cost trillions.