(11 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
So in the 2008 vice presidential debate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin said:
Well , first, McClellan did not say definitively the surge principles would not work in Afghanistan. Certainly, accounting for different conditions in that different country and conditions are certainly different. We have NATO allies helping us for one and even the geographic differences are huge but the counterinsurgency principles could work in Afghanistan. McClellan didn’t say anything opposite of that. The counterinsurgency strategy going into Afghanistan, clearing, holding, rebuilding, the civil society and the infrastructure can work in Afghanistan. And those leaders who are over there, who have also been advising George Bush on this have not said anything different but that.
And you know, she’s absolutely correct. However, she is only correct because she blew the name of the commanding general in Afghanistan.
Here’s a portrait of General George McClellan taken in 1861.
Now, I’m not a U.S. civil war historian, but I suspect it is highly unlikely that McClellan ever said or wrote anything about Afghanistan. Not in 1862 when President Abraham Lincoln relieved him of command. Not in 1864 when he ran against Lincoln for president. Not when he served as New Jersey’s governor from 1878 to 1881. And, probably not before he died in 1885.
But, despite Palin being absolutely correct in saying McClellan didn’t say anything about the surge not working in Afghanistan, NATO commanding general in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan did say this week, “Afghanistan is not Iraq… What I don’t think is needed — the word I don’t use in Afghanistan is the word surge.”
Palin’s name gaffe caught Senator Joe Biden flatfooted. After she babbled off that bit of nonsense, debate moderator Gwen Ifill turned to him for a response. Biden paused and looked down to mask his disbelief. A second or two passed and Ifill asked “Senator?”
I wonder what was going on in Biden’s mind then? I think he was trying to decide if he should correct Palin or not. Ultimately he chose not to, responding — “Well, our commanding general did say that.” — and then went on to explain that like Gen. McKiernan, he and Barack Obama have been calling for “more money to help in Afghanistan, more troops in Afghanistan”.
“The additional military capabilities that have been asked for are needed as quickly as possible,” McKiernan said on Wednesday. Even with an escalation, or troop surge, McKiernan said, “ultimately, the solution in Afghanistan is going to be a political solution not a military solution.” He did not rule-out talks with the Taliban in order to resolve the conflict. “So the idea that the government of Afghanistan will take on the idea of reconciliation, I think, is (an) approach and we’ll be there to provide support within our mandate,” he said.
In his response, Biden added, “John McCain was saying two years ago quote, ‘The reason we don’t read about Afghanistan anymore in the paper, it’s succeeded.'” As Gen. McKiernan this week described Afghanistan as an increasingly “tough fight”. He and many others before him said the war in Afghanistan is not over. Obama has described Iraq as a distraction and by leading the nation into a war of choice in Iraq, George W. Bush has allowed the Taliban and al Qaeda forces to regroup and wage war in Afghanistan. As Biden said in his response, “We spend in three weeks on combat missions in Iraq, more than we spent in the entire time we have been in Afghanistan.”
Now, personally I think the invasion of Afghanistan was the wrong action to take after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. But now, the U.S. and our NATO allies are involved in a worsening war there. Obama’s strategy is a departure from the approach taken by Bush and McCain because it refocuses the American military on Afghanistan and not the distraction that is Iraq.
Palin and her running mate can advocate an escalation in Afghanistan all they want. But despite Palin hitting the McCain campaign talking points, by getting wrong the name of our commanding general there, she has proven once again that she really is uninformed and clueless. Being able to recite talking points does not make a person qualified to be vice president. Rather, that makes a person qualified to be a puppet.
Somehow, I do not believe John McCain is pulling the strings.
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Now, I feel like watching the Ken Burns documentary again.
think there were important reasons for going into Afghanistan.
(1) The Taliban was supporting al-Quaeda. Maybe not financially, but allowing it to work its will in the world.
(2) The Taliban was actively evil on the subject of women:
Women were not allowed to practice their professions, or even go shopping for food for their families without a male family representative (brother, father, husband) –and the penalty for disobeying this was often death.
(3) The burqa the Taliban ordered women to wear: I mean, forget about the fashion police: women could barely even see through the tiny eye-slits mandated by the Taliban.
Getting rid of the Taliban counts as a noble cause: even more noble than getting the GOP out of the White House.
My objection is Shrubby and his anti-Midas touch: he couldn’t win a war against an anthill; and give me a break that he has an MBA. When I was in grad school, the apartment next door was filled with MBA students.
They were all dumber than dogshit.
Palin is like a “programmed Barbie doll” to me. Note, too, that she never really answers a question!
after last night’s debate.
…is not that much better than what we’ve already seen. Many thousands more troops and no exit strategy.
I’d personally like to see more attention devoted to the kind of special-forces techniques that sends in small groups with a strong local-language element that builds trust among the people to root out the guys who are blowing up girls’ schools and otherwise making the average person’s life miserable. That is the way to capture the remnants of the original al Qaeda and capture (or kill) Osama bin Laden.
Then, in my view, we are done with Afghanistan and Pakistan military. We are left with rebuilding (or building anew) the infrastructure we promised we would but have not delivered on.
Will this help change everything? No. But the U.S. can’t directly improve life in a lot of places where life for the average person, especially women, is a mess. That has to be done by NGOs. The U.S. can’t invade Egypt just because 90% of the women there undergo genital mutilation; the U.S. can’t invade Turkmenistan because of the horrors there. What the U.S. can do is behave more as a role model for others’ behavior. Too bad that the job has been botched for so long by a bipartisan team of botchers.