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Recently Sarah Palin's been attacking Barack
Obama for a careless formulation in which he
implied that all America is doing in
Afghanistan is bombing villages and killing
civilians. It's an incredibly cynical line of
attack, particularly when Palin (hilariously)
claims this "disqualifies" Obama from being
commander in chief. (Of course what Obama
meant was that an overreliance on air
strikes--due in part to a shortage of ground
troops--is causing a tragic and strategically
counterproductive level of civilian
casualties.)
Here's the question someone should ask Palin:
Does she have any idea why Obama brought this
up in the first place? I doubt it. Maybe
someone should send her this:
Like clockwork, each of these friendly fire
incidents brings about angry demonstrations
in the streets, with crowds chanting, Death
to the government — down with the foreign
troops! The latest tinder in the fire was the
killing of some 90 civilians, mostly women
and children, on Aug. 22 in Azizabad in Herat
Province. (While the Pentagon has taken issue
with the reported death count, the Afghan
government and United Nations stand by the
villagers claims.)...
The growing disillusionment caused by
civilian casualties is also driving old
friends away from NATO and American forces.
In an interview some months ago, a man who
worked alongside American forces in 2001 in
Urozgan Province to protect Hamid Karzai, now
the Afghan president, posed a staggering
question: You speak English, and interact
with foreigners, so can you swear by the
Almighty and tell me if the foreigners are on
the side of the Taliban, or of the Afghan
people?
He was hardly the exception: many average
Afghans find it hard to believe that America,
with its tremendous military power, is having
so much trouble defeating tattered bands of
Taliban warriors and dont understand why it
cant avoid continuous civilian casualties.
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stump/arch
ive/2008/10/05/palin-s-stupid-attack-on-obama
.aspx
One of the interesting points of contention
in last night's vice presidential debate
between Delaware Senator Joe Biden and Alaska
Governor Sarah Palin was on the topic of
whether an Iraq-style surge would work in
Afghanistan. Earlier in the day, Army
General David McKiernan (or, as he's
sometimes known in Alaska, "McClellan"),
commander of NATO's International Security
and Assistance Force (ISAF) had both called
for an infusion of additional troops and
equipment "as quickly as possible" and said
that "no Iraq-style 'surge' of forces will
end the conflict."
Palin saw this as a call for a surge-esque
activity: "The surge principles, not the
exact strategy, but the surge principles that
have worked in Iraq need to be implemented in
Afghanistan, also. And that, perhaps, would
be a difference with the Bush
administration."
Biden pounced: "The fact is that...our
commanding general in Afghanistan said the
surge principle in Iraq will not work in
Afghanistan, not Joe Biden, our commanding
general in Afghanistan. He said we need more
troops. We need government-building. We need
to spend more money on the infrastructure in
Afghanistan...Barack and I and Chuck Hagel
and Dick Lugar have been calling for more
money to help in Afghanistan, more troops in
Afghanistan, John McCain was saying two years
ago quote, 'The reason we don't read about
Afghanistan anymore in the paper, it's
succeeded.'"
As Ann Scott Tyson reported in yesterday's
WaPo, McKiernan said "Afghanistan is not
Iraq" but "a far more complex environment
than I ever found in Iraq." Additionally, he
very much wants to avoid a particular tactic
that was crucial to -- although many would
say incidental to or even separate from --
the surge in Iraq:
"I don't want the military to be engaging the
tribes," he said. Given Afghanistan's
complicated system of rival tribes and ethnic
groups and the recent history of civil war,
allying with the wrong tribe risks rekindling
internecine conflict, he said. "It wouldn't
take much to go back to a civil war."
Julian Barnes, writing for LAT, adds that
McKiernan is desperate more more troops and
materiel. He's called for an additional
three combat brigades and additional
helicopters but isn't likely to get more than
one brigade any time soon. "We are in a
tough counterinsurgency fight, we are in a
higher level of violence this year than we
were this time last year," McKiernan
declared.
http://www.acus.org/new_atlanticist/surging-a
fghanistan
Tags : Eugene Robinson Countdown with Keith olbermann Afghanistan Pakistan Barack Obama Joe Biden john Mccain Sarah Palin Iraq war speech interview debate oil Iran foreign policy experience bush |
