Read all about Donviti Addition, 10/11/2009

Filed in National by on October 11, 2009

The only thing you need to read this morning is this BRILLIANT Frank Rich piece that rips “wrong-way” Mccain a new pie hole.   The more and more you listen to this re-focus on Afghanistan the more it sounds like Iraq.  These guys are so full of shit and the media are more than happy to let them.  War sells newspapers. 

The rhetorical sleights of hand in the hawks’ arguments don’t end there. If you listen carefully to McCain and his neocon echo chamber, you’ll notice certain tics. President Obama better make his decision by tomorrow, or Armageddon (if not mushroom clouds) will arrive. We must “win” in Afghanistan — but victory is left vaguely defined. That’s because we will never build a functioning state in a country where there has never been one. Nor can we score a victory against the world’s dispersed, stateless terrorists by getting bogged down in a hellish landscape that contains few of them.

Most tellingly, perhaps, those clamoring for an escalation in Afghanistan avoid mentioning the name of the country’s president, Hamid Karzai, or the fraud-filled August election that conclusively delegitimized his government. To do so would require explaining why America should place its troops in alliance with a corrupt partner knee-deep in the narcotics trade. As long as Karzai and the election are airbrushed out of history, it can be disingenuously argued that nothing has changed on the ground since Obama’s inauguration and that he has no right to revise his earlier judgment that Afghanistan is a “war of necessity.”

That little nugget above is one hell of a fact to leave out of the arguement.  Sure, let’s go into war with a country that has no elected leader and a corrupt government.  We should really be able to solve this problem easily.

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  1. Rebecca says:

    Propping up corrupt dictators is so last century. I’m counting on Obama to work this one out.

  2. These neocons hawks spouting off about Afghanistan really make me sick. Afghanistan is urgent now? Who was it that urged Bush to pull those troops out to do an unnecessary war in Iraq? Afghanistan went to crap because of the neocons. They don’t get to turn around now and talk about how Obama is screwing things up!

    Here’s another recommended read for you Sunday pleasure: Newsweek has a cover story on Joe Biden. His remarks about Afghanistan/Pakistan are extremely interesting.

    Joe Biden had a question. During a long Sunday meeting with President Obama and top national-security advisers on Sept. 13, the VP interjected, “Can I just clarify a factual point? How much will we spend this year on Afghanistan?” Someone provided the figure: $65 billion. “And how much will we spend on Pakistan?” Another figure was supplied: $2.25 billion. “Well, by my calculations that’s a 30-to-1 ratio in favor of Afghanistan. So I have a question. Al Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we’re spending in Pakistan, we’re spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?” The White House Situation Room fell silent. But the questions had their desired effect: those gathered began putting more thought into Pakistan as the key theater in the region.

    Damn straight.

  3. nemski says:

    Addition? I like multiplication better.

  4. xusumo says:

    UI, I just read that Newsweek article too. This is especially timely since just this week the Taliban invaded Pakistan’s Army HQ and took hostages. This demonstrates that Pakistan’s gov’t has lost control and the country is close to chaos.

  5. Pakistan has nukes and an unstable government. We should be very worried about what’s happening there.

  6. Stinky36 says:

    They were loud, rude, ill mannered, lazy and stupid. ,