Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SiouxPal who wrote (181946)	12/6/2009 5:03:00 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 361973

The latest from Pulitzer Prize Winner Clarence Page... chicagotribune.com Obama's war: Will the 30,000 troop surge lead to getting America out of Afghanistan? By Clarence Page Editorial The Chicago Tribune December 6, 2009 Generals are notorious for fighting each new war the way they should have fought the last one. President Barack Obama seems to have picked up that tendency as he ordered a troop surge in Afghanistan, a strategy he rejected in Iraq until it worked. Experience is the best teacher, but every war is different. As we became bogged down in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, I was one of many critics who called for the George Aiken remedy. The late Vermont Republican senator famously suggested early in the Vietnam War that we declare victory and bring our troops home. In Iraq, a troop surge, which then-Sen. Obama opposed, turned the tide. It gave Iraq enough stability and America enough breathing room to begin the pullback and withdrawal of our troops, which still continues. Now Obama is employing a surge of his own in Afghanistan. I hope it works. Afghanistan is very different from Iraq. Yet Obama's long-standing support for the Afghan war as "a war of necessity" moved him to give the war and the government of President Hamid Karzai another chance. Obama has called for 30,000 more troops in Afghanistan before beginning a troop withdrawal 18 months later that will be based on "conditions on the ground." But what if the Taliban simply fades back, biding time? No problem, a high-ranking White House official said in a briefing with columnists prior to the president's delivering his Afghanistan war strategy at West Point on Tuesday night. The top priority of the surge is to break the Taliban's momentum long enough to grow the Afghan military to as many as 260,000 from its current strength of 92,000. If the Taliban take a break, so much the better. Obama could have taken the Aiken route, declared victory in Afghanistan based on our rout of al-Qaida and started an immediate withdrawal. Instead, he is making the war his own at a time when public opinion, especially among his fellow Democrats, has soured on it. They have good reasons. -- The war's original purpose of capturing Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida operatives has faded. Al-Qaida leaders fled, apparently to neighboring Pakistan, where the CIA has been killing them off with high-flying robot Predator drones. -- The Karzai government is infested with corruption. While the U.S. was focused on Iraq, the Taliban have re-emerged to pose a possible threat to the Karzai government, which has little control of the nation outside the capital city of Kabul. -- Back home, Americans are dealing with more pressing matters such as jobs, the economy, deficits and the health care debate. Obama took all that into account in his notably sober, yet internally conflicted Afghanistan policy speech. This is still a war in which "the common security of the world" is "at stake," he said. Yet, he also said, if it's not working in 18 months we're going to start packing up to go home. In classic Obama fashion, he tried to include everybody's views. The result was one of the least stirring speeches with which any U.S. commander in chief has sent troops to war. Still Obama's surge could work. Al-Qaida must be denied a safe haven that the Taliban could restore if it is successful in toppling Karzai's shaky government. The same is true of Pakistan, Afghanistan's next door neighbor, which also poses a potential nuclear threat. Obama's deadline sends a signal to Afghans that the U.S. doesn't plan to stay long. A deadline also puts Karzai, who recently won re-election amid widespread vote fraud, on notice to clean up his government. Nothing concentrates the mind like the prospect of being hanged following a Taliban takeover. Whether Obama's surge works or not, America's larger war against al-Qaida-style terrorism is being fought less by the soldiers than by CIA spies. Beefed-up human intelligence collection has resulted in missile strikes by Predator drones that have killed at least a dozen al-Qaida leaders in recent months, the Pentagon said. Obama's Afghan surge includes an expanded CIA drone program in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas, The New York Times reports, targeting the hide-outs of Afghan Taliban leaders. Like his surge, Obama's secret war on terror has stirred protests on his left because of the likelihood of increased civilian casualties. On that sad score, at least drones are preferable to B-52 bombers because drones take fewer civilian casualties. A smart "war against terror" is a massive international police action against ideologically driven criminals. It must be fought in new ways unlike any war we have fought before. ________ Clarence Page is a member of the Tribune's editorial board and blogs at chicagotribune.com/pagespage Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune