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The facts are the surge has turned the tide, at least. It's bought time for the Iraqi troops to become far better trained, so we're not carrying the whole load anymore. I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, when the Iraqi troops can hold their own without us, and then we can come home.
In this sense, I have to favor McCain in the whole argument. But McCain already sounds like a sore loser and a broken record (to mix metaphors). He's pounding Obama for being wrong about the surge. Righto, McCain, he was indeed quite wrong and we all have to question his judgment.
But Mr. McCain and Obama seem to be in agreement about escalating things in Afghanistan, which I see has a horrible mistake. Not only that, McCain talks a lot about going after the poppy crops in Afghanistan, something I cannot agree with at this time.
My view is Afghanistan is a NATO problem, not a US one. Unlike Iraq, there is a great coalition of NATO forces there and they're supposed to do the job. I see it as a Kosovo situation - NATO is there to rebuild and keep the peace. NATO isn't much without us, but to talk like McCain does about us needing a strategy there like we have in Iraq is foolish.
Afghanistan does need to be secured. We may be better of spending $50B bribing the natives and the govt. in Pakistan to work at securing the borders and close down the Al Qaeda camps. Afghanistan isn't Iraq in the sense they have a 25M population and vast oil reserves to build their own economy around. Afghanistan basically only has the poppy crops, which we used to burn to the ground until we realized it devastated the locals' pocketbooks. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't kind of thing; the better approach is to stabilize the country and spend a lot of reconstruction (not war!) dollars building them infrastructure and an economy that can survive and thrive without the poppy crops. THEN you go after the poppies.
Obama's not much better. He's got some bloodlust about escalating the war in Afghanistan, too. The worst case scenario is we end up with a USSR/Afghan kind of quagmire there and end up with a 3rd Iraq war if we remove our troops there before the job is done.
There are two truisms in McCain's sore loser rant. Obama would lose the war to win the election. Clearly. And the best thing for the country and the world is to come home from Iraq as victors; I fail to see how any other outcome can be acceptable, regardless of whether the war was a good idea or not.
The press won't talk about it much, but Obama's op-ed in the NYT makes him look far worse than Bush (if you think Bush is misguided and stubborn). He's basically made up his mind to ignore what's best, to ignore the situation on the ground, to ignore the advice of our military leaders... He wrote his op-ed before he went on his photo op trip with his press corps (otherwise known as the main stream press and media). Maybe he should have written it after he got back, so it at least gave the appearance he is open to the facts and had seen the evidence before coming to his conclusion.
In this sense, I have to favor McCain in the whole argument. But McCain already sounds like a sore loser and a broken record (to mix metaphors). He's pounding Obama for being wrong about the surge. Righto, McCain, he was indeed quite wrong and we all have to question his judgment.
But Mr. McCain and Obama seem to be in agreement about escalating things in Afghanistan, which I see has a horrible mistake. Not only that, McCain talks a lot about going after the poppy crops in Afghanistan, something I cannot agree with at this time.
My view is Afghanistan is a NATO problem, not a US one. Unlike Iraq, there is a great coalition of NATO forces there and they're supposed to do the job. I see it as a Kosovo situation - NATO is there to rebuild and keep the peace. NATO isn't much without us, but to talk like McCain does about us needing a strategy there like we have in Iraq is foolish.
Afghanistan does need to be secured. We may be better of spending $50B bribing the natives and the govt. in Pakistan to work at securing the borders and close down the Al Qaeda camps. Afghanistan isn't Iraq in the sense they have a 25M population and vast oil reserves to build their own economy around. Afghanistan basically only has the poppy crops, which we used to burn to the ground until we realized it devastated the locals' pocketbooks. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't kind of thing; the better approach is to stabilize the country and spend a lot of reconstruction (not war!) dollars building them infrastructure and an economy that can survive and thrive without the poppy crops. THEN you go after the poppies.
Obama's not much better. He's got some bloodlust about escalating the war in Afghanistan, too. The worst case scenario is we end up with a USSR/Afghan kind of quagmire there and end up with a 3rd Iraq war if we remove our troops there before the job is done.
There are two truisms in McCain's sore loser rant. Obama would lose the war to win the election. Clearly. And the best thing for the country and the world is to come home from Iraq as victors; I fail to see how any other outcome can be acceptable, regardless of whether the war was a good idea or not.
The press won't talk about it much, but Obama's op-ed in the NYT makes him look far worse than Bush (if you think Bush is misguided and stubborn). He's basically made up his mind to ignore what's best, to ignore the situation on the ground, to ignore the advice of our military leaders... He wrote his op-ed before he went on his photo op trip with his press corps (otherwise known as the main stream press and media). Maybe he should have written it after he got back, so it at least gave the appearance he is open to the facts and had seen the evidence before coming to his conclusion.
