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As we continue to get bad news from Afghanistan the American people have turned sharply against the war in the past few months. Overwhelming the American people think we should no longer be fighting the conflict. From New York Times:
After a series of violent episodes and setbacks, support for the war in Afghanistan has dropped sharply among both Republicans and Democrats, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
The survey found that more than two-thirds of those polled — 69 percent — thought that the United States should not be at war in Afghanistan. Just four months ago, 53 percent said that Americans should no longer be fighting in the conflict, more than a decade old.
It is way past the time for us to get out of Afghanistan. We are not going to win the hearts and minds or build a nation state from scratch in our own imagine. After a decade there is zero reason to think another 3 months, 16 months, or 16 years will make any difference. All that continuing this war does is needlessly waste Afghan and American lives and billions of taxpayer money.
The American people want us out now. When will President Obama finally listen? How many more lives and billions are going to waste on this war the electorate is against?
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We have occupied too long for any good we may be doing.
Or, to be accurate, for all of the bloody, astronomically expensive, misery we are doing.
No.
Here’s what the “leaders” of the people think.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXnJVkEX8O4
Obama’s problem is that inevitably the place is going to revert to a collection of regional warlords, with the Taliban re-taking some areas…at which point the republicans will be shrieking about his “losing” Afghanistan.
If he’d done this in his first year or so in office he had the clout to pull it off and the voters would have supported him enthusiastically for his courage in doing it. Instead, as with so much of the savage idiocy of Bush and his warbots, Obama sustained it to the point where it’s now his war. What’s left when we leave isn’t going to be user-friendly to the Fortune 500. Given Obama’s inherent corporatist DNA, when, and IF, we leave, is very much up in the air, regardless of any PR “schedule” that he’s dangling in front of the voters.
Like Bob Dole says, “The time to go has come.”
More excellent analysis, Jon, even if the political class will not listen or the President care to hear or honor it.
More posts along these important “lines”, please, even if they are not “red”, they will be read.
Thank you, Jon.
If posts might be recommended, then I would recommend this one.
In fact, I shall do so anyway, even though this post is, most necessarily and properly, front-paged … I recommend it to the thoughtful consideration of everyone at FDL.
No more war.
(No war but class war … as one of my favorite Dragons, daily, doth say.)
DW
Unfortunately, the folks prosecuting this war do no give one shit what the American people think.
And there’s still the pipeline to be built. And the surround-Iran-militarily objective. And then all those bases that U.S. military are in charge of and can’t get promotions if there aren’t enough bases to be in charge of.
It’s past time for the free people of the united states to leave the killing behind.
It’s never that time nor will there be that time ever for the military to leave the killing behind.
What kinda military doesn’t produce dead bodies ? Non military.
Time to cut our losses and the military budget. We could downsize the military by two-thirds and invest in the people and infrastructure and prosper. After all, isn’t the goal of the repubs to cut the government. Why not start with the most expensive program first?
It is long past the time for getting out of Afghanistan.
I will offer no defense of President Obama on this. His Afghanistan policy has been a complete failure.
The Nobel Peace Prize Committee
really pulled a blooper with this guy.
Yes. To Whom?
There is a joke: An engineering joke.
What do mechanical Engineers build? A: Weapons.
What do Civil Engineers build (for example: pipelines)? A: Targets
If one builds a pipeline in Afghanistan, every warlord along the pipeline has to be bought off, because a pipeline is not defendable.
Not that this would prevent our military spending bundles of money and getting promotion trying…
Excellent point.
In October 2002, and then again in January, 2003, George W. Bush showed that a U.S. President could safely ignore the will of millions of people and go to a war they opposed. Obama has learned from this and will also continue to ignore what we want, as he has on nearly every other issue: single-payer health care, the Keystone XL pipeline, slowing catastrophic climate change, bailing out banks, not prosecuting the banks which committed fraud & caused the Great Recession, not following the law and his oath of office to prosecute the Bush war criminals, and signing away habeas corpus in the 2012 NDAA last New Year’s Eve.
The recent overwhelming passage of HR 347 (out of 435 Representatives, only 3 Republicans opposed it!)and Obama’s resurrection of a Korean War-era law which puts the U.S. into a Permanent War Economy and gives the President (so he claims)authority to conscript anyone to work in this “national emergency” in which even “The Homeland” is part of “The Global Battlefield” in the endless “War on Terror” show how the U.S. is now a totalitarian state (but with a smiley face).
The Empire will roll on and over us, regardless of which figurehead is in the White House, Obama, Romney, or any other imperialist. That’s why the entire SYSTEM of Empire must be dismantled as soon as we can. How? is the problem we face, not when or why.
As Hannah Arendt warned us long ago: “Empire abroad entails tyranny at home.”
The more it has to be built, then rebuilt, then… and the more U.S. soldiers it takes to guard it, the better.
I’ve often wondered, but not seen the calculation done, how much U.S. taxpayers pay/gallon of hydrocarbons, once one adds in the military expenses of securing it. Double? Triple? Quadruple? ? ? ? In fact military portion of cost dwarfs the HC industry subsidies.
Eh? Didn’t I hear-tell something-or-other about the sorta-kinda re-resurrection of Dick Cheney & his big fake black heart?? Hey as long as the Big Swinging Dick is “alive,” that’s who Barry 0 will listen to, my friends. Big Dick? He loves him some Afghan “conflict.” From your pocketbook to Cheney’s overflowing
coffins, cough, coffers: CHA-CHING!!!!!When we can provide him with more campaign graft than the military-industrial complex.
Which is to say: “Never.”
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
My sources tell me that his new heart, like his old one, is actually quite tiny. That’s the reason it took them so long to locate one for him: they couldn’t find a heart that was small enough.
Every gallon of gas or heating oil we use, it took a gallon of oil burned by the military to insure delivery.
The military burns one half of what we burn every day but the flyovers at football games and nascar races are so cool.
As I remember, The NY TImes, CBS, ABC, CIA, probably AARP, and all the other opinion makers encouraged the wars. They also lied about the wars. They continue to present a false narrative that the White House and Pentagon dictates. They lie about how these wars were manufactured. The President protects war criminals and torturers which makes him a war criminal. The US armies of occupation are oppressors in Irak and Afghanistan. The US government similarly oppresses US citizens.
Stop the wars now. Put the war criminals on trial , not Bradley Manning.
But where will we go to get the flowers and candy Bush and Cheney promised?
We are not going to leave until the next war starts. How else can you launder money and have theft on a huge scale without control? Our establishment is in dire need of income. Are you trying to destroy its livelihood? Do you think they lard Washington for no reason?
Why is it that OUR government can’t LEARN tha the people get really tired of fighting wars we CAN’T win.
Guess we won’t be buying any more “Mission Accomplished” banners any time soon.
I hink you mean…WAR = Halliburton + NO BID contracts.
But Obama said he’d do the correct thing if we made him do it. What % of the population is required to force him to order the military out of Afghanistan?
I don’t suppose that even 99% opposition to the occupation would be enough pressure to overcome the desires of the infinitesimal % that want the TAPI Pipeline and war profits.
Public opposition didn’t end Vietnam or Iraq (the Iraqi government did), and as Captain Kirby suggested it won’t affect Afghanistan either. What is needed is resistance in the ranks, which is what ended Vietnam.
General Allen is (unintentionally) working on it.
Mar 26, 2012
DOD News Briefing with Gen. Allen from the Pentagon
General Allen on green-on-blue: “we should expect that this will occur”