The Masters Of War Have Been Embarrassed. Aw Shucks.

[poliphilo]

The US Secretary of Defence has said Wikileaks has blood on its hands. As if he doesn't. Bah!

Everybody who pays attention to the news behind The News knows the Afghan war is going badly: Trying to keep the Taliban at bay is like trying to stop the tide with a mop, civilians have been carelessly murdered, the Masters of War have been lying to us. Nothing unusual in any of this. War is hell.  All that Wikileaks has done is document the bleeding obvious.

The US Secretary of Defence is not our friend.

The BBC were interviewing a group of Afghan men in a market temporarily protected by the Brits. Asked who they wanted to see win they all said, "the Taliban". This wasn't an expression of ideological conviction. They're not stupid, they can see how things are going and they don't want their names showing up on some death list. Also they just want the war to end.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The Taliban are unutterably foul, but....

Everything points to this being an unwinnable war. And we shouldn't forget that the West armed and supported the Taliban and the Afghan warlords when they were fighting the Russians.

Besides Obama and his allies have already committed themselves to leave. The alternative is for the West to occupy Afghanistan into the far distant future- which means the fighting would just go on and on.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Announcing they would leave was unutterably stupid. If they had said Petraeus is in charge and all bets are off the war would have had a better chance of being winnable.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was very stupid. Unbelievably stupid.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

[Not too] deep inside me there's a conspiracy theories clamoring to get out. I can hear her now, saying "and just what did young Barack Obama do those weeks he was in Afghanistan in the ?late 80s? ?early 90s?"

But the rest of me doesn't think that at all. The rest of me just thinks our young president has a pernicious combination of inexperience and faith in the powers of his own oratory that will get this country in a world of hurt.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I know very little about Obama's early life, but I don't suppose anything he got up to as a machine politician qualifed him to serve as commander in chief.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Apparently he spent some weeks in Afghanistan while his mother was engaged in some species of do-goodery there.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

"Do-goodery"? How easily the conservative mask slips.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I don't understand what you're trying to say, although I gather it isn't entirely complimentary.

In the case of Mr. Obama's mother, I can't recall whether she was engaged in some kind of social service project in Afghanistan or whether it was anthropological field work. Either one qualifies as "some species of do-goodery" in my book.

I have never attempted to mask my conservative/libertarian leanings. I am what I am and they are what they are. And yes, I have more than a little contempt for feel-good do-goodery.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

The only thing conceivably stupid about saying we would leave is saying it and not doing it. Our loss in Afghanistan is inevitable. It was always inevitable and this was obvious to anyone that wasn't under the spell of militant American authoritarianism.

For what little comfort it brings me, I loudly and publicly opposed going into Afghanistan from day one. I predicted that we would arrive at precisely where we are for the very reasons that have brought us to this sorry estate.

And when I see some old devious loon gassing off about how awful the war is, knowing full well that both the war and the Cheney-Bush junta enjoyed their unquestioning support, back when the gutless cowards thought all those little brown people didn't stand a chance against our glorious legions, well, I just want to punch the nearest brick wall until the bones in my fists shatter.

I don't do it, but I want to, with every fiber of my being.