Gen. Petraeus: Going to Be a Hard Year in Afghanistan
CENTCOM Commander Defends War, Citing 9/11
CENTCOM Commander General David Petraeus, speaking today in Charlotte, North Carolina, warned that this year “is going to be a hard year” for the war in Afghanistan.
Gen. Petraeus’ comments were the latest in a long line of comments by him and others that the record 2009 violence in Afghanistan was going to once again give way to record violence in 2010.
But Petraeus also defended the war’s continuation, even though to his own admission the military had killed “boatloads of bad guys” to little effect. He insisted that 9/11′s ties to Afghanistan made it necessary to continue the war, already nine years in the fighting, to what he assured would be a “positive outcome.”
He insisted that the key was to reduce the number of civilian deaths, pointing to the invasion of Marjah as an example of the US saving a city from complete destruction. The invasion did, however, kill significant numbers of civilians.
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NonZionist
March 4th, 2010 at 5:01 am
+( He insisted that 9/11’s ties to Afghanistan made it necessary to continue the war )+
Exactly what "ties" is he talking about? — CIA ties to Bin Laden in the 1980s and 1990s? Or is he referring to the UNOCAL plans for a pipeline through Afghanistan and the 2000 PNAC declaration that the U.S. needed "another Pearl Harbor event"?
The idea that the biggest military power in history is threatened by tribesmen in a third world country on the other side of the planet is so insane that it's hard to imagine anybody other than Americans being sucked in by it.
Shouldn't "9/11’s ties to Afghanistan" be in quotes, since these unsubstantiated "ties" are no more real than "Iraqi WMD's"? How, exactly, do these non-existent "ties" make it "necessary to continue the war", eight years later? Why only eight years? By the Petraeus "logic", it will be just as "necessary to continue the war" a hundred years from now, because the "ties" will be just as non-existent then as they are now.
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.
omop
March 4th, 2010 at 1:32 pm
As a cynic would add to the General's remark, "in 1860 the British were defeated in Afghanistan and thus began the disintegration of the Empire. In the 1980s the US supported the locals in getting rid of the Russians.
Given the potential of being also defeated in Aghanistan US Generals would have to come up with a "new and or much improved enemy" or be out of work. Again given that the past is prologue come 2080 Petraeus's offsprings will still be in Marjah.
Henry_Clemens
March 4th, 2010 at 1:43 pm
During the Reagan administration, the resistance to the Russian empire's aggression in Afghanistan was called "freedom fighters." Today the resistance to the American empire's aggression there is called "boatloads of bad guys."
donna
March 4th, 2010 at 5:13 pm
Why isn't Petraeus on the front line leading his army, instead of cowering in an office in DC? Wasn't there a time in world history when truly brave generals fought and died alongside their soldiers? The cowards that make military policy in the US are good only for mechanized slaughter of innocent civilians.
KSB29
March 4th, 2010 at 11:48 pm
Oh look, it's another "pivotal year", just like every other year since 2003, in the never ending wars. I really am staring to think these DC press releases are being written by random text generator.
Harvey
March 6th, 2010 at 2:50 pm
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