When the Obama Administration was still considering whether or not to increase combat troop levels in Afghanistan, PeacePundit offered ten reasons why a troop surge would be a mistake. Seven months later, the troop surge and a massive military campaign to take back the Afghan countryside from the Taliban are well underway. How is it going?
General Stanley McCrystal has been fired for expressing pessimism about the war-effort as well as disdain for the Obama Administration. Michael Steele, National Chairman of the Republican Party, stated that the Afghanistan war is “not winnable”.
Here, supporting the pessimistic view, are four recent op-ed articles:
- Joel Brinkley: Why Afghanistan is a Lost Cause. “To win the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. must turn a nation that stands as a model of bald-faced thievery into a clean, honest institution that cares for its people, now the most neglected in the world. It can’t be done.”
- Edward Koch: June Deadliest Month for Afghanistan. “President Obama, by increasing the number of our troops in Afghanistan and making it clear that we are not committed to withdrawing beginning with July 2011, is deepening our involvement in a war we can’t win.”
- Rep. Jerry Nadler: We Must End the War in Afghanistan Now. “Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) spoke out against the war in Afghanistan, and against the war’s funding: ‘Every dollar we spend in Afghanistan, every life we waste there, is a waste’.”.
- Brian Becker: Petraeus promotes civil war in Afghanistan. “Badly losing the war in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus has decided to promote a violent civil war in Afghan villages. That is the true intent of the new so-called Local Defense Initiatives that Petraeus forced down the throat of Afghanistan’s puppet president Hamid Karzai. … The Petraeus strategy calls for putting 10,000 job-hungry Afghan villagers on the Pentagon payroll. They will be given money and guns so that they can form militias and shoot and kill other members of their village who are asserted to be either pro-Taliban or opposed to the US/NATO occupation.”.
