Whether it is a concerted attempt to make the president’s Afghan drawdown look bigger than it really is or is simply a testament to how trivial the Pentagon wanted the drawdown to be, top officials seem united in publicly complaining about the plan.
Gen. David Petraeus, the outgoing commander of the war in Afghanistan, said the pullout was far more aggressive than the one he recommended and echoed yesterday’s claims by Admiral Michael Mullen that the move was “risky.”
The commanders were quick to point to the 33,000 figure announced for the overall drawdown, despite the fact that the vast majority of those troops won’t be leaving this year and the impending drawdown could be only about 10% of that. They also emphasized that Obama “overruled” the military leadership on the war.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates too was critical of the move, saying he thought it was dictated by “political sustainability here at home” rather than the situation on the ground. The war has been hugely unpopular in the US, and that unpopularity is increasingly seeing presidential hopefuls openly criticizing it.
Anyone have a graph of troop levels with projections into the future, best a series of graphs showing how the levels and projections evolved over the last 10 years? I can't make sense of all the contradicting statements.
It should be obvious to everyone that these very limited action wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are popular with the military brass, because limited action war is a helluva lot more rewarding than running mickey mouse exercises at some place like Ft Hood in Texas. In Afghanistan or Iraq you use real ammunition against real human targets. The danger to our troops is only moderate, and the experience gained in actually "killing the bad guys" is invaluable. The troops don't mind too much – promotions are good and combat pay is attractive and being in Khandahar probably beats standing in some unemployment line back in Weirton, WV. And the biggest beneficiaries, the defense contractors, are in 7th heaven with limited wars. If it is up to the Pentagon, we will be occupying and killing third world folks until our last nickle is gone.
Is there any war that is not popular with the military brass?
I watched a bit of the hearing with Mullen and – “Gag me with a spoon” as kids used to say – all the fawning over his “service” and how wonderful and the best in the world our military is. In 10 years, spending half a trillion dollars, they want another half trillion and another 20 years to fight 25,000 “Taliban” (read tribesmen who don’t want Karzai and foreigners ruling them) and a couple hundred “Al Qaeda” (who are/were WHAT? We still don’t know.)
Nothing makes any sense except that we – the American public – have been deceived and robbed and a lot of people who never harmed us have been killed and injured.
The rationale that we have to stay in Afghanistan or else another 19 hijackers who aren’t from Afghanistan will go to Afghanistan and meed somebody there and set up training camps where they climb monkey bars —- that is a crazy rationale.
What changed that our media is starting to notice that the whole thing is crazy? The fabulous (fabulously incredible) bin Laden raid? Otherwise it would have made sense to stay there and throw another half trillion down the bottomless pit?
Lots of medals on that guy's jacket.
After Vietnam, does he have any there for wars that weren't embarrassingly one-sided?
Pushing around 3rd World weaklings deserves SOME credit, right?