roachboy

what do you make of the obama administration's decisions regarding afghanistan, which were announced last night in the speech at west point?
what do you make of the speech itself?


i thought it would be interesting to start with an article that that solicited views from people in kabul:


e-Ariana - Todays Afghan News


here's a short article outlining mc-chrystal's statements this morning about obama's actions:
US General McChrystal vows to take battle to Taliban | World news | guardian.co.uk


i have pretty strong views on all this, but i at work at the moment so don't have the space to lay them out...i'll probably write something tonight.

but in the interim, what do you think the administration is doing?
do you think it will work?
how do you see this increase in troop levels? is it a phase toward a withdrawal or is it a step forward in a spiral of escalation?

and what about pakistan?
what if anything do you see happening with respect to the border areas?
(notice that obama was largely silent about this)

and how do you assess the current situation in afghanistan anyway?
where are you getting your information from?

__________________
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silent_jay

I found this amusing article about Cheney's reaction to Obama's decision.
Dick Cheney Slams President Obama Over Afghanistan | eCanadaNow

ottopilot

18 months... isn't that close to reelection time? Odd how an ambiguous open-ended withdrawal strategy starts up right around campaign time.

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Bill O'Rights

Does anyone really think that we're going to be out of Afghanistan in 18 months? I've got a buck that says we're not. War is not something that you can schedule in your day planner, like some neighborhood beautification project. I should think that Vietnam would've taught us a lesson about allowing politicians and the media dictate armed conflict. Clearly, we learned absolutely nothing.

I've always felt that Afghanistan was where we belonged. I didn't like it. Not one damn bit. I still remembered the ass handing the Soviets had given to them in Afghanistan. I knew that it was going to be a son-of-a-bitch, just as I knew that we had to do it. Iraq, on the other hand, was a huge distraction from what we should have been doing, which was concentrating on, and winning, the war in Afghanistan. Either do it, or don't do it. So, now we’re sending 30,000 more troops. Well, good for us. It's about damned time. Is it enough? I don't know. I have no earthly idea. But it's long past time for us to actually commit to doing the job, and getting out of there in a reasonable period of time. 18 months, I don't believe, is realistic.

I will anxiously await Crompsin (Plan 9) to weigh in. As someone that was actually there, I would really to like to see his view on this mess. The rest of us are going to do little more than blow a bunch of rhetorical smoke.

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roachboy

but who exactly is the war in afghanistan against?
i understood that the bush people justified the action as a response to the 9/11/2001 business, so logically the objective would have been al qeada. but somehow along the way it turned into the taliban. in that, the us and its dance partners are basically both a colonial occupation force and a war band amongst others in a civil war context that has little in the way of patronage to offer and in the main doesn't speak the languages--so is uniquely ill-equipped to play the game that it has slid into there.

now the only reason i can imagine that the united states slipped into this situation in the first place is the utter lack of clarity about what the forces were there to do from the inception of this ill-advised, ill-considered adventure.
it seems in retrospect that the bush people only thought it out to the extent that they wanted to appear to do something--but at times, particularly given what's been coming out in the investigations into the iraq war that have been carried out in the uk, some results of which have appeared in the guardian over the past 10 days, at times i think that the entire afghanistan adventure was basically a smoke-screen set up to enable the iraq debacle, which was the central policy objective of the neo-con set within the bush squad **before** 9/11/2001 (pace the project for a new american century)...

it's astonishing to me the way this afghanistan thing has and has not been carried out---the phases of official interest followed by phases of not much happening, asleep at the switch for the most part, all of which is squarely in the lap of the bush administration...

be that as it may, it still seems to me that the disasters of the bush period have really damaged the obama administration, and afghanistan is just another gift from those glorious days of yore than keeps on giving.

it doesn't help that obama basically accepted from early in the campaign the "logic" of this "war on terror" nonsense as a whole...and decided for whatever reason that afghanistan was where the "real" war on terror was happening.
it really makes no sense.

anyway, it seems to me that this is basically a face-saving move designed to enable a withdrawal without having to face a defeat--which the military command warned was most assuredly a possibility a few months ago if something were not done. given the advantages that the taliban has in the countryside (different areas) and the absurdity of the karzai "government" as a state in anything like the centralized western sense of the term (it seems more a grouping of rivals to the taliban who are now not in a position to play the patronage game effectively, so their participation in the government is self-defeating and so on)....and the fact that the united states is part of the dynamics of a civil war and not at all, except in some alternate fictional television for americans world, actually engaged in anything like the "war on terror"---the only sane option is to get the hell out. and the only way to do that is by way of some face-saving move. and the option appears to be that the face saving move is going to be kill alot of people on the way out in some vague hope that it will inflict enough damage on the taliban that they won't sweep into power directly behind the american aircraft that take folk home.

i mean, you can read this all over the place, but all the taliban has to do in this situation is wait in pakistan.

so it's a mess, and a bush people mess to boot.

personally, i think it's a disastrous situation no matter how you look at it, and i do not envy obama or his administration at all for being put in this position by the incompetence of his predecessor.
it's easy to say in principle get the fuck out, but were i in his position, trying to balance the various modes of deterioration of american political and economic power against the costs of basically conceding "this was a terrible idea" in afghanistan and leaving, i don't know what i would do.

but i do know that i am opposed to this move on principle.

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Derwood

I think it's a huge mistake. Where have we heard "helping the Afghan people and training them to fight against an evil occupation" before? Oh, right....

Seaver

I think for Afghanistan to be a success we MUST come to the table with the Taliban. I hate how they treat their women, how they teach the strictest interpretation of the Koran, and their mistrust of anyone outside of their immediate clans. However, they are the only way we can walk away from that country and not have it fall to shit.

By bringing them to the table, we can bring them into the fold without them simply waiting for us to leave before taking it all back. They are not interested in international terrorism, they just have their corner of the world and are content on it. If we give them a say in the government, it might be possible to fully disconnect them from Al Qaeda. We only went to war with them because they refused to assist us against Al Qaeda, the friend of my enemy is my enemy type of warfare. Al Qaeda is effectively no longer in Afghanistan, and a stable government is the only way to keep it from returning.

The government in Afghanistan in it's current state is a failure. No if's, and's, or but's.

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Willravel

The next 18 months will be a horrible waste of lives and President Obama will be responsible for them. There are less than 100 al Qaeda in Afghanistan and the Taliban was never a threat to the US anymore than anywhere else "terrorists" can train, which includes Germany and the US if we're talking about 9/11.

powerclown

Then we are fucked, because you can't bargain with religious goat-herders and druglords. You cannot. They have no interest in anything the outside world can offer. They want to be left alone to run their 11th century fiefdom, sell heroin, and kill their own women and homos for sexual misconduct and there's not a goddam thing anyone in the developed world can do about it. You are not turning Afghanistan into Singapore, not in this lifetime. Fix the goddamn ghettos, education, health and economic system in this fucking country first. This bullshit of a slow drip of lost American lives and the flushing of billions of dollars absolutely down the shitter has got to stop already. Not one more wasted life or dollar on this nonsense. I'm for leaving a skeleton crew of NATO soldiers armed to the teeth with predator unmanned drones each with 40 hellfire missiles on board...and at the first sign of any fucking thing suspicious blow it into tiny pieces and return it to the sand from whence it came.

Shauk

I think it's funny because we already have 200,000 troops committed, 30,000 is a drop in the bucket. considering we're only dealing with like something like a few thousand taliban and 100 or so al-queda from what i've read.

ratbastid

The Predator can only carry 2 hellfires and 2 stingers. Apart from that, I'm down with every word you said, powerclown.

The thing I'm glad about is that we DO have an exit strategy. As nebulous as it is, and as much as can come up in 18 months to screw up the best laid plans, at least I can now believe I have a president who's not committed to an open-ended state of war. I'm interested in that for US, not for Afghanistan. They've lived the way they currently live for thousands of years, and they've proven themselves throughout history to be AMPLY skilled at defending that way of life. There'll be no change we can bring in 18 months.

The thing that's really troubling to me about this is the way it's being spun by the left as a betrayal. Obama RAN ON THIS PLAN. Agree or disagree with it, fine, but if you're surprised by it at this point, you're just too dumb to vote anymore.

Willravel

ratbastid

I know!

filtherton

I'm just glad that no openly homosexual people will be sent over there to fight.

ASU2003

It was a decent speech, but I wonder what 'details' were left out.

I think having a timeline as part of a plan is a good thing tough, but only if it is tied to multiple factors like per capita income, unemployment, afgan military/police strength, and reduced drug production.

Cimarron29414

The only acceptable exit strategy:

Hang Osama and Omar's heads on spikes in the town center of Kabul. Put a sign on the top that says, "Leave us alone and live in peace. Try it again and the heads will be yours." Then, pack up and leave like ghosts in the night. Of course, this all should have been done in 2002. It loses it's sting when it takes 9 years.

The only logical reason I can see for us going into Iraq in the first place was to have a standing army to the west and east of Iran. Whether that is the "real reason" for this ostensively inane clusterfuck or not...we will never know.

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kutulu

That is one of the most retarded things I've read here. If the threat of death was such a great deterrant we wouldn't need to fight this war.

dksuddeth

the war on terror will never be won. It's not meant to be won. Fanaticism cannot be bargained with nor can it be defeated and the powers that be in our government know this. They are using this knowledge to promote their constant interference in the world markets to benefit themselves and it's a damn shame that so few people can actually see this for themselves.

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

The_Dunedan

Back during the Lebanese civil war, several local morons made the terminal error of taking several Soviet hostages.

A few days later, the son of a prominent cleric who supported the actions of the hostage-takers was found dead. Well, his torso was "found," his head (with the genitals stuffed down the throat, courtesy of the Spetsnaz) was delivered to the family, with a warning that such would be repeated and escalated if the Soviet nationals were not released. The Russians got their people back in short order, and the entire region has cut them a -very- wide berth ever since.

kutulu

Agree 100%. It is too bad that so many people think that this is just because they "hate our freedom"

snowy

I heard a piece on NPR this morning full of liberal Californians bitching and moaning about all the work they did to get Obama elected and now they feel betrayed. I thought it was pretty rich, given that Obama made it perfectly clear during the campaign that it would take us a while to get out of Afghanistan.

I have to agree--I am just glad we have an exit strategy. I'm taking a wait-and-see approach to this, I guess.

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kutulu

Anybody who thought Obama was going to make getting out of Afganistan quickly wasn't listening to him. He made that promise on Iraq and is following through but he continually said he thought Afganistan was important and that we needed more troops there.

powerclown

I think its a sign of how crazy politics in America have become. The Left is moving Right, the Right is going Independent...nobody in government has the balls to lay out a clear and decisive foreign policy, so we as a country are forced to slog through this garbage heap of poor decision-making and poor leadership.

Cynthetiq

this just trickles down... it's apparent in pretty much every aspect of our country at the moment, from families to corporations.

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powerclown

Michigan is pretty much fucked right now, it might as well be Siberia or Zimbabwe...people are begging for longer hours at work on a daily basis and I've heard stories of employees giving their less well-off colleagues free food, canned goods etc for the holidays. Is it time yet to give Chrysler/GM their monthly Billion dollar 'stimulus check' (aka corporate toilet paper) to help them to continue to build absolute crap?

Cimarron29414

Sorry I went full retard on you. I should have never gone full retard.

Obviously, this doesn't deter the people who value death more than life. I would call you "uninformed" to imply EVERY person (or even a majority of people) in Afghanistan values death more than life. The point is that we went to that country to catch or kill those responsible for 9/11 and those who harbored them at the time. Osama and Omar are all who are left of that goal. The rest of my grandstand is merely a show of resolve and strength. - two things that people in tribal cultures understand and respect. We will never win hearts and minds, all you can say is "don't fuck with us or we will destroy you."...then let them live however they want.

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Slims

No, we went to Afghanistan to kill/capture those responsible AND prevent Afghanistan from ever again being used as a safe haven for those who would do us harm.

We have accomplished much of the first and are on the way to the latter....provided we are allowed to fight this fight like a true counter insurgency.

The Taliban has a near complete shadow government up and running across Afghanistan complete with courts, shadow sub-governors and people to handle the issues common to a normal government. It's success or failure depends largely on our ability to provide support to the Afghan People while simultaneously beating back the Taliban presence and (slowly) building capacity within the Afghan Government.

If we simply leave we will betray the hundreds of thousands of friendly, committed Afghans who have been working to rebuild their country and by doing so have entrusted their lives to our success. By pulling out and allowing the government to collapse those people will be executed, along with many of their families. Women will no longer be allowed to attend school; homosexuals will be tortured to death; radio, television, soccer, toys for children, phones, internet will all be banned; and Afghanistan will rapidly descend into the cesspool it was during the Taliban Regime.

If we stay and put forward a half-assed effort we will only delay the inevitable while US Soldiers continue to die.

If we do what the Commanding Officer of Afghanistan has asked, we stand a very good chance of hitting that hysteresis which allows us to build capacity in the Afghan government faster than the insurgency can tear it down...which will at first free up resources to focus on other things such as the humanitarian situation, corruption, etc. followed by the withdrawal of most of the troops which are now necessary in order to secure basic services.

The plan McCrystal has put forward is far more than a surge. It focuses heavily on engaging the local populations by providing enough soldiers to protect tribes/villages who want to stand up against the insurgents but who are repeatedly beat down when they try. Additionally, an increased presence will allow us to focus heavily on training the Afghan government, military and police while being able to better prevent corruption until the system grows strong enough to self-police.

Afghanistan will never be a shining light of democracy, and it will always be corrupt, but we can make it strong enough and 'honest' enough to function as a nation and to support basic freedoms while providing no harbor to extremists.

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Slims

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/07/wo.../07afghan.html

By MARK MAZZETTI
Published: December 6, 2009
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration sent a forceful public message Sunday that American military forces could remain in Afghanistan for a long time, seeking to blunt criticism that President Obama had sent the wrong signal in his war-strategy speech last week by projecting July 2011 as the start of a withdrawal.

In a flurry of coordinated television interviews by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other top administration officials, they said that any troop pullout beginning in July 2011 would be slow and that the Americans would only then be starting to transfer security responsibilities to Afghan forces under Mr. Obama’s new plan.

The television appearances by the senior members of Mr. Obama’s war council appeared to be part of a focused and determined effort to ease concerns about the president’s emphasis on setting a date for reducing America’s presence in Afghanistan after more than eight years of war.

“We have strategic interests in South Asia that should not be measured in terms of finite times,” said Gen. James L. Jones, the president’s national security adviser, speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We’re going to be in the region for a long time.”

Echoing General Jones, Mr. Gates played down the significance of the July 2011 target date and indicated that the United States might withdraw only a small number of troops at that time.

“There isn’t a deadline,” Mr. Gates said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “What we have is a specific date on which we will begin transferring responsibility for security district by district, province by province in Afghanistan, to the Afghans.”

In an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Mr. Gates said that under the plan, there would be 100,000 American troops in Afghanistan in July 2011, and “some handful, or some small number, or whatever the conditions permit, will begin to withdraw at that time.”

In his prime-time address at West Point on Tuesday, Mr. Obama said that even as he planned to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, his administration would “begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011.”

The president’s speech set off alarms inside Afghanistan and Pakistan, as some officials worried about an American pullout before Afghan troops were ready to fight the Taliban on their own. It also set off a barrage of criticism from Republicans that the president was setting an arbitrary withdrawal date that would embolden Taliban insurgents to wait the Americans out.

On Sunday, the administration’s top civilian and military officials marched in lockstep in insisting that July 2011 was just the beginning, not the end, of a lengthy process. That date, General Jones said, is a “ramp” rather than a “cliff.”

As they seek to explain the new war strategy, administration officials face the task of calibrating the message about America’s commitments in Afghanistan to different audiences, foreign and domestic, each of whom wants to hear different things.

During weeks of wrenching internal debate, administration officials decided on the July 2011 benchmark in part to send a signal to Afghanistan’s government that the clock was ticking for Afghan troops to take a greater role against the Taliban. The message was intended equally for domestic consumption: assuring skeptical Democratic lawmakers and many Americans that America’s military presence in Afghanistan was not open-ended.

But the White House has also faced sharp criticism from Republicans, who said it made little military sense to set a withdrawal date 18 months in the future because it handed the American strategy to the enemy.

The announcement of the July 2011 benchmark was also greeted with concern during private conversations among American officials and their counterparts in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and administration officials in recent days have acknowledged that they were surprised by the intensity of the anxiety among Afghan and Pakistani officials that the United States would beat a hasty retreat from the region.

In public statements since the White House strategy was announced, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has pledged to work with the United States to bolster Afghan forces. But he asked for patience and indicated that his country’s military might not be ready in 18 months to take responsibility from American troops.

During his recent inaugural address, Mr. Karzai said that Afghan forces would be able to take charge of securing Afghan cities within three years, and could take responsibility for the rest of the country within five years.

So officials attempt a balancing act as they sell the Afghan strategy. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of United States Central Command, said Sunday that there was a natural “tension” between a message of resolve and the message of impatience after eight years of war. But he said the twin messages were not mutually exclusive.

Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” General Petraeus said that the Obama administration was not planning a “rush to the exits” in Afghanistan, and that depending on the security conditions there could be tens of thousands of American troops in Afghanistan for several years.

Both Mr. Gates and General Petraeus also have the job of easing concerns among military commanders about rigid withdrawal timetables. Mr. Gates has said in public that he opposed firm timelines, and during the administration’s Afghanistan strategy review he insisted that any decisions about troop withdrawals be based on security conditions inside the country.

Administration officials on Sunday were also asked about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.

Mr. Gates said it had been “years” since the United States had had reliable intelligence about Mr. bin Laden, but he said it was still the assumption of American intelligence agencies that he was hiding in North Waziristan, in Pakistan. General Jones said that Mr. bin Laden was believed to cross the border into Afghanistan occasionally, but he gave no further details.










Personally I think the plan is solid, but the timetable is extremely optimistic and we will end up having to extend it. In many of the provinces in Afghanistan the Police won't go out and about without a Coalition unit out with them...they will get exterminated. To assume that in two years the threat will have changed is naive, and no matter how well we are able to train the Afghan Government, you can't make them bulletproof.

__________________
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." - Winston Churchill

"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act out their dream with open eyes, to make it possible." Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E. Lawrence

dksuddeth

The state of michigan could go a long way in to 'fixing' their state of affairs without waiting on stimulus money from the feds, if only the dems in charge up there could pull their collective heads out of their collective asses.

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rahl

How?

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roachboy

it's been kinda interesting to watch the various parameters that were put into motion through the speech getting moved around.
now 18 months is a kinda guideline for withdrawal. not to worry, we weren't quite serious about that part.
karzai comes out saying that afghanistan will require us/nato intervention for something like 13 years.

the obama administration suggests that maybe, just maybe, pakistan would do well to intensify its various internally divided not terribly co-ordinated or successful non-actions against the taliban in the border regions.
i still wonder what could possibly be accomplished by this surge without sustained pakistani co-operation, which i do not see as happening.
and maybe that's why i keep thinking of that glorious preview of this sort of escalation as a precursor to de-escalation but not really scenario--cambodia and laos.
on the other hand, assuming there's no real change in how pakistan comports itself, where's the choice in strategic terms?
such a muddle and no way around it.

i don't buy the argument above that war against the taliban followed from actions that were allegedly directed against al queada.
they seem to me entirely unrelated, and the slide from one to the other an indicator of the incoherence at the core of the afghanistan adventure from the start. this is not to say that the taliban were swell guys while in power, but it's as is always the case in the world...if a less-than-swell regime is an american friendly regime, they are always less less-than-swell than a maybe less less-than-swell regime which is not american-friendly.

so maybe this is all really about the pipeline that has been talked about for a long time that would connect the baku region and its oil to the indian ocean...

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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

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aceventura3

Interesting conclusion. How do you explain Obama's involvement? Is he a "useful idiot" or deceptively complicit?

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roachboy

i see obama as entirely boxed in by the fact of the american adventure in afghanistan.
another way: that prior involvement, a gift from the bush adminstration that, like so many others, keeps on giving, constitutes the parameters that shape all possibilities that present themselves.
so the larger objectives that may explain why the bush people involved themselves (in a manner of speaking) in afghanistan are not at this point relevant. the (largely deteriorating) situation on the ground is all that's relevant.

the pipeline has been largely discussed in literature on the geopolitics of oil, and was a topic of considerable debate/interest around the time the bush people launched this particularly unfortunate neocolonial adventure.
that there was a plausible connection between wanting to install a pro-american regime in afghanistan and plans for the construction of such pipeline(s) seems to go a lot further in explaining why the americans et al are now party to a civil war against the taliban than the other explanations that have been floated.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

aceventura3

Why or how is Obama boxed in? Isn't it his decision to set the course of action in Afghanistan? I partly agree that the situation on the ground is all that is relevant because that is what drives strategy and tactics but it assumes a need to have US military on the ground in Afghanistan - in that respect the goal or objective is most relevant. If your conclusion is correct, is it a worthy goal?

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

Derwood

He's boxed in because we're already entrenched in the conflict, which limits his options.

ratbastid

To blindly say "his decision sets the course" is only useful if you are looking to scapegoat him. He operates inside a fairly tight set of constraints--both logistical and political.

roachboy

assume that you've been appointed head vassal in some imaginary court and the queen has died.
she died during the administration of your predecessor as head vassal, who in turn was bumped outta office during the process of arranging for the funeral.
now you have to arrange the rest of the funeral.
you are boxed in by the fact of when you come into the office.
you might wonder whether the queen should have died, but basically the fact is that you are stuck in place during the funeral arrangement process and even that is not entirely under your control.

so yeah.

speaking for myself, i find that the afghanistan adventure was amazingly ill-considered even by the low standards one has to apply to the bush administration in order to get the meter of competence to bounce at all.
i don't think the united states should have gone there in the first place.
i don't see what possible end was served by it, and given the way that conflict has played out, a parallel view seems to have been held by the bush people for a period of 3-4 years, during which it was largely on the back burner while the other massive display of short-sightedness and incompetence in iraq played out at the center.
but i also don't buy anything about the "war on terror" as a rationale for anything.

but those are my personal views which i in a sense have the luxury of holding because i am not in a position of trying to figure out materially or strategically how to extricate the united states from the mess that the bush people left behind.
were i in that position, i imagine that my main goal would be to get out of afghanistan.
how exactly one would go about that is not obvious.

the obama administration is boxed in that way.

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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

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ObieX

If i were Obama i would say that i was pulling out of both Iraq and Afghanistan. Once i start the pullouts both countries will descend into violence as every baddie around would come out of the woodwork thinking this is their time to take some power. Once this starts i would make a major U-turn and bomb each of these fucks into oblivion. Then I'd really pull the troops out.

I think Obama's big mistake was to not immediately pull out of both countries the second he was put into office. To show the world that he wasn't Geroge Bush and that he really was offering change. Now he's stuck.

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aceventura3

Did he create the "box" by taking the position that Afghanistan was the "right" war when he ran for President?

If Afghanistan has become the "wrong" war does Obama have the courage to admit that it is the "wrong" war and change direction? If not is he worthy to be President in your opinion?

---------- Post added at 07:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:58 PM ----------

Isn't one of the perils of leadership to take blame for the actions taken under one's leadership?

This I do not understand, hence my questions. Obama basically has three military strategic choices, escalation, status quo, or de-escalation, so I agree that to a certain extent his broad options are limited, but given those broad options aren't his choices his own? He also defines the military goal, doesn't he?

---------- Post added at 07:19 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:03 PM ----------

You are clearly asking if I agree, and I don't. First, I have the choice of not assuming the position of my predecessor. Even to the extent "they" try to force me, I could choose death, imprisonment or some other consequence. Second, if I assume the position of my predecessor I have the option of fulfilling the queens final wishes as I interpret them. To the degree I am "locked in" I can clearly explain the circumstance and then take a new direction if I choose. With support and agreement I can change the direction of the arrangements. If I don't have support the "lock" I encounter is due to the lack of support not my predecessor. In the case of Afghnistan, I agree Bush and Congress started and continued the war for 8 years, however, Obama can immediately initiate plans to get out of the war if he chose to do so, he has not.

I think Obama is doing what he wants to do, or he is a coward bowing down to some ego driven political pressure to appear strong and the potential embarrassment of changing his mind. The thought of the second option makes me shiver given the potential consequences, but history has been defined on reasons with less reason and history tends to repeat.

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roachboy

these are kinda absurd questions, ace, which are based on some projections concerning who you are talking to and logical moves that seem to come from some private language space.

first off, speaking for myself, i never accepted the "war on terror" as a phrase that meant anything. it represented the illusion of a coherent response from the bush administration, so was a quintessential meme, something which acquired a weight entirely through repetition. apart from its rhetorical functions, there was no referent and could not have been a referent--so it's about constructing a signified and by constructing that signified providing a putative target against which the Mighty Penis of Retribution could then be smacked.
obviously and from the outset obama can on a very different platform. you'd have to have been a fool not to know his position on "the war on terror"....this is one reason i consider him a moderate and supported him with serious reservations. to my mind, he has been more or less as i expected he would be once in office---the ways in which that is not the case have almost all followed from the gifts left behind by the Magic Imploding Spectacle of the Bush People having been far more seriously problematic than i thought.

your notion of the latitude available to a Leader-type in a historical situation comes from fairy tales. anyone is shaped by the situation in which they find themselves. you seem to imagine that a Leader can somehow step outside his or her own context and make Abstract Decisions about that context as if it were someplace else, that affected someone else. i don't know where you get the idea from that this sort of thing is possible. maybe you think Presidents are gods somehow. so that kind of fairy tale, ace.

and the answer to your question of ownership of a particular decision seems to me to be so self-evident as to require no response.

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