3 Choices in Afghanistan

There is a time and a place for politics. There is also a time and a place for leadership. Unfortunately, President B.H. Obama is locked in eternal campaign mode. He has only one pair of glasses and those glasses see absolutely everything in terms politics. Whether it is choosing what type of beer to drink with a Harvard professor and a policeman, to his economic policies, clear through to his macro-strategy for winning the war in Afghanistan, his glasses are political and his mind-set is that of a third world Marxist.

In 2007, he actually began running for President in February of 2006, outlined his plans for the war in Afghanistan. He would put however many boots on the ground to win it, up to and including the overthrow of the Pakistani government. Now, that is dedication to the cause...tearing down our allies in a blind effort to grapple with an implacable enemy.

In February 2009, BHO appoints General McChrystal to head up the operations in the Afghan theater of operation. One must understand that the top layer of our military is very much 'in-tune' with the politics of the civilian administration. They know that getting a star, or the next star on their shoulders comes from a recommendation of the President and approval of the Congress, so military appointments by a sitting president tend to reflect the politics of the current administration. So, that being said, General McChrystal is Obama's man. He is sent over to the Theater of Operations and told to evaluate current operations and to formulate a military solution that will allow the US to declare victory and come home. From February to August, General McChrystal met with his field commanders, the political and military powers in the theater and determined that in order to stabilize the nation, train the local police and military members to fight the war themselves. He then put a very comprehensive report together and told the president that to carry out his orders, orders given to him by the President himself, he would ideally need 80,000 additional soldiers deployed in a 'surge' strategy reminiscent of the Iraqi operations. At a minimum, he would need between 50,000 and 60,000 troops, though the operation would have a narrower margin for success.

So then, while the report sat on the president's desk, he was out playing golf, meeting with SEIU, meeting with hundreds of community organizers, playing basketball, going out on dates with his wife, taking a vacation every other week, and shaking his pom poms at Congress cheering for Cap and Tax, Nationalized Health Care, Net Equality, and a host of other Marxist legislation.

Weeks and months pass and finally, BHO meets with the General on the runway in Denmark (he found the time to run an errand for the Mayor of Chicago) for 20 minutes and then sends him off without making a decision. Weeks and months go by until finally BHO says that the General's strategy is, essentially, incorrect and that he has worked on a better plan.

During this time, American soldiers have been fighting and dying with no clear goal in sight. Does the president's new plan include a plan for victory or is he just trying to triangulate on this like Clinton triangulated on everything? Is he trying to keep his far left base happy while minimizing the outrage of the right? Who knows, but for right now it looks like his plan is not making anyone happy on either side. The only people who are happy right now are the insurgents in Afghanistan. If for no other reason other than he has given a time table for our withdrawal.

The insurgents can just melt into the background for the next 18 months, give the illusion of peace and stability, all the while infiltrating the civil and military infrastructure of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Things look fine and dandy, BHO declares victory and pulls out. Then the two countries melt down in the next year and all the blood we have spilled has been for nothing.

BHO seems to think that he can do anything. If I had his press coverage, and actually listened to it, I'd think I could fly to the moon under my own power simply by declaring that I will. He has decided that he can run the banking system, the financial sector, Wall Street, the automotive sector, and control the very weather itself (not to mention the ocean levels).

President Obama has essentially said that General McChrystal is wrong in his assessment of the situation on the ground (from his office in Washington). The President has determined that 80,000 is unnecessary and that 30,000 (dribbled in piecemeal) is more in line with his personal assessment.

The arrogance. Whatever General McChrystal's politics, he is practitioner of the Art of War first and foremost. He has dedicated his entire life to practice of waging war. He comes from a military family, his father was a general, his siblings wore the uniform as well. He graduated from West Point in 1976. It is safe to say that he has been learning the art of war since at least 1972. I think he knows what he is saying when he feels that he needs 80,000 men, surged, not dribbled, into the theater of operations.

In his time, I'm sure he saw what the Vietnam War did the officer corp and the elisted ranks. He lived through the mental and material rebuilding of our military in the 1980's. He was among the deployed officer core in 1991 when the soldiers of my generation tore through the 5th largest army in the world in under 100 hours of ground combat. President George HW Bush let his generals carry out their orders without interference from Washington. Well, up until he put the leash and muzzle back on our men short of total victory, but that is another blog. He served all through the 1990's and was deployed to Iraq again where he is credited with killing one of the worst dirtbags in that country. Now he finds himself in charge of the entire theater with instructions to write a report for his new civilian Commander-in-Chief.

I have to wonder what General McChrystal was thinking or feeling when he found his report going largly unread by his Congressional overseers? I wonder what he was thinking when he realized that the orders he was given in February needed to be rewritten? I wonder what he thought, months and months later, when President Obama notified him (largely through the media) the number of troops he felt were needed to secure victory.

While General McChrystal was honing his skills in the Art of War, young Barry Obama was getting high on dope and drunk in college dorms. He actively sought out known Marxist professors so he could take their classes. While Obama tried to look like he knew what he was doing as the Editor for the Harvard Law Review (though there are no documents with his name on it...so I don't know what he actually "Edited"), General McChrystal was living and breathing the Art of War. While Obama was teaching ACORN activists to circumvent the law and taught the organizing techniques of Saul Alinsky, General McChrystal was learning the Art of War.

President Obama is not fit to shine the shoes of General McChrystal let alone come to the decision that his assessment of material needs on the ground is incorrect.

I have to remind myself that, essentially, President Obama is not really disagreeing with General McChrystal's assessment. It all politics. Its always about the politics. Obama voted against every bill funding or expanding the war when he was in the House and then Candidate Obama ripped President Bush repeatedly for not being agressive enough in Afghanistan (focusing mainly on Iraq at the time), he finds that he must support the effort in Afghanistan. His Marxist base is howling in his ear that we need to leave now, while the right is telling him to win or get out. So he did what a politician always does. He has tried to make everyone happy while really making no one happy. He split the difference and told the Left that he didn't give the warmonger what he wanted while telling the Right that sending troops is proof that he wants to win the war. Plus, he even gave a date for withdrawl. Meanwhile, the general that had asked for a tool box full of tools gets a tool belt with a hammer and a screwdriver. Insufficient to do anything other than bleed out our troops and keep the war going forever. This must have General McChrystal having visions of Vietnam push forward in his brain. God help him and the men under his command.

In the end, there really are three choices. Only one of which is correct, I feel.

Choice number 1: pull out. No matter the amount of money spent and blood spilled, just pull out. The Left wants this because they feel we should not have been there in the first place. The Right sees this as a way of protecting the lives of our soldiers who are fighting and dying without victory as their stated goal. The dead will be mourned and the waste of there future potential to society will long be remembered.

Choice number 2: compromise. Send just enough men to chop the visible weeds down (which of course just grow right back unless you kill the roots), prune the influence of the insurgents back into the caves and back alleys of the big cities. Stand around for a few months while enemy activity is visibly absent, call it a win and come home. Then watch the place burn and crumble with more loss of life then what happened in Vietnam and Cambodia when we pulled out of there.

Choice number 3: win. Go in there with everything we can spare. Raise the internal temperature of every hiding spot for the insurgents to an average of 2,000 degrees (F or C does not really matter here). If they go to ground, give them no ground to go to. When they are in the open, destroy them. If they hide in villages, cordon it off and sort out the population...ditto for the cities (do you remember Faluja). Those that don't belong become POWs (not criminals, stupid). If they are in a mosque, give a single warning and then destroy it. Contrary to popular belief, the local population does not want the Taliban or Al-Qaeda there and will quietly turn them in if given the chance. It will be over in less than a year. Get the job done and get our boys and girls HOME.

We don't conquer, we liberate. We don't occupy, we turn over. Our people have families and lives to come home to. We have no interest in staying there forever. It's just not what we do.

Our military has only two jobs: kill people and break things. They don't deliver food and they don't know how to build a nation. It is not what they are trained to do. That is the job of civilian population.

In reality there are really only two choices. Most things in life seem to boil down to two choices. Win or don't win. As with all choices there are consequences. The US winning in Afghanistan and by extension Pakistan has more positive consequennces than pulling out. Not winning in Afghanistan will prolong the agony and allow radical Islam to spread like a malignant cancer. It will continue in its stated purpose. Convert the world by the sword. They will not stop and you can not reason with them. They must be destroyed root and branch.

--Zavost