Afghanistan debate: Sarah Palin's stupid attacks on Obama/Biden

Recently Sarah Palin's been attacking Barack Obama for a careless formulation in which he implied that all America is doing in Afghanistan is bombing villages and killing civilians. It's an incredibly cynical line of attack, particularly when Palin (hilariously) claims this "disqualifies" Obama from being commander in chief. (Of course what Obama meant was that an overreliance on air strikes--due in part to a shortage of ground troops--is causing a tragic and strategically counterproductive level of civilian casualties.)Here's the question someone should ask Palin: Does she have any idea why Obama brought this up in the first place? I doubt it. Maybe someone should send her this:Like clockwork, each of these friendly fire incidents brings about angry demonstrations in the streets, with crowds chanting, Death to the government — down with the foreign troops! The latest tinder in the fire was the killing of some 90 civilians, mostly women and children, on Aug. 22 in Azizabad in Herat Province. (While the Pentagon has taken issue with the reported death count, the Afghan government and United Nations stand by the villagers claims.)...The growing disillusionment caused by civilian casualties is also driving old friends away from NATO and American forces. In an interview some months ago, a man who worked alongside American forces in 2001 in Urozgan Province to protect Hamid Karzai, now the Afghan president, posed a staggering question: You speak English, and interact with foreigners, so can you swear by the Almighty and tell me if the foreigners are on the side of the Taliban, or of the Afghan people? He was hardly the exception: many average Afghans find it hard to believe that America, with its tremendous military power, is having so much trouble defeating tattered bands of Taliban warriors and dont understand why it cant avoid continuous civilian casualties. http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs... of the interesting points of contention in last night's vice presidential debate between Delaware Senator Joe Biden and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was on the topic of whether an Iraq-style surge would work in Afghanistan. Earlier in the day, Army General David McKiernan (or, as he's sometimes known in Alaska, "McClellan"), commander of NATO's International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) had both called for an infusion of additional troops and equipment "as quickly as possible" and said that "no Iraq-style 'surge' of forces will end the conflict."Palin saw this as a call for a surge-esque activity: "The surge principles, not the exact strategy, but the surge principles that have worked in Iraq need to be implemented in Afghanistan, also. And that, perhaps, would be a difference with the Bush administration."Biden pounced: "The fact is that...our commanding general in Afghanistan said the surge principle in Iraq will not work in Afghanistan, not Joe Biden, our commanding general in Afghanistan. He said we need more troops. We need government-building. We need to spend more money on the infrastructure in Afghanistan...Barack and I and Chuck Hagel and Dick Lugar have been calling for more money to help in Afghanistan, more troops in Afghanistan, John McCain was saying two years ago quote, 'The reason we don't read about Afghanistan anymore in the paper, it's succeeded.'"As Ann Scott Tyson reported in yesterday's WaPo, McKiernan said "Afghanistan is not Iraq" but "a far more complex environment than I ever found in Iraq." Additionally, he very much wants to avoid a particular tactic that was crucial to -- although many would say incidental to or even separate from -- the surge in Iraq:"I don't want the military to be engaging the tribes," he said. Given Afghanistan's complicated system of rival tribes and ethnic groups and the recent history of civil war, allying with the wrong tribe risks rekindling internecine conflict, he said. "It wouldn't take much to go back to a civil war."Julian Barnes, writing for LAT, adds that McKiernan is desperate more more troops and materiel. He's called for an additional three combat brigades and additional helicopters but isn't likely to get more than one brigade any time soon. "We are in a tough counterinsurgency fight, we are in a higher level of violence this year than we were this time last year," McKiernan declared. http://www.acus.org/new_atlant...

Channel: News & Politics
Uploaded: January 1, 1970 at 12:59 am
Author: AntiConformist911

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