The Afghan War will nominally “end” at the end of December, at least for campaigning purposes. US troops will remain there and in combat roles “through 2024 and beyond” per a Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) they are pushing Afghanistan to sign.
Senators aren’t too happy with the idea, arguing that they should be able to at least vote on it before launching a decade-plus of additional military presence in Afghanistan. The Afghan loya jirga voted on the BSA late last year.
The plan has been for the deal to be portrayed as an “executive agreement” between the US and Afghan Presidents, meaning no parliamentary approval would be necessary. Given the enormous unpopularity of the war, voting for another decade of it in everything but name could also be a tough sell, even for the hawkish Senate.
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D – OR) was critical of the lack of a vote, saying it amounted to “military on auto-pilot.” President Obama has seemed less and less interested in Congressional authorization in recent months, however, and that sugg3ests such a vote probably won’t happen.
One often hears either in discussion or in print, that U.S. aid to the Afghan Resistance was strategized by the Carter Administration in hopes of inducing a Soviet intervention or response. What could possibly be behind the reason to purposefully induce a Soviet armed incursion into Afghanistan? According to Zbignew Brezhinski, President Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor, the motive was to provide the USSR with "their Vietnam War," a reference to the bottomless US war in Vietnam, a financial quagmire or trap within which it is difficult or impossible to extricate one's self. The view from the Carter Administration was to induce a speeding- up of the dissolution or financial decline of the USSR. It worked! The financial and empirical fallout of the USSR soon followed. The point of all this is what more can we ask of Afghanistan? They have suffered severe financial decline, have suffered the loss of two-million lives during the Soviet period, and now the US-led ISAF continues to take its toll. Let us not forget, Afghanistan had NO role in 9/11. Its time to bring the troops home and to initiate honest, nation-building aid to the Afghans.
It's a strategic location for a military base, it's next door to the Russians, and what better place to be so as to intimidate the Russians. That is why they keep issuing ultimatum to Karzai to sign a security agreement that would keep American troops beyond 2014.
It's a strategic location for a military base, it's next door to the Russians, and what better place to be so as to intimidate the Russians. That is why they keep issuing ultimatum to Karzai to sign a security agreement that would keep American troops beyond 2014.