Obama's Afghanistan Troop Announcement Helps Taliban Prepare

by JASmius

I didn't call this VA-gate-driven impromptu Whack-A-Mole sortie Barack Obama's "Vietnam Victory Lap" for nothing:

Barack Obama made a "big mistake" in announcing a timeline for U.S. troops to withdraw from Afghanistan, says Representative Peter King.

Obama said Tuesday that the United States will leave 9,800 troops in Afghanistan after this year, and withdraw most of them by 2016.

"That just gives the enemy the opportunity to plan their strategy," King a Republican from New York, said Tuesday on CNN's "Out Front with Erin Burnett."

On the one hand, yeah, it is a mistake to announce to your enemy the chapter and verse on when and how you're going to withdraw your forces from the battlefield.  On the other hand, I'm pretty sure the Taliban was watching O's similar pre-announced withdrawal from Iraq, and the attendant seizure of that country by al Qaeda and Iran, so I rather doubt that this is any kind of big surprise to them.

In much the same way.....:

King was one of many Republicans who slammed Obama's announcement. Senators John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire [the "neocon ménage a toi"?] jointly called the decision irresponsible and a "triumph of politics over strategy."

Politics?  Why do you say that, Senators?  Just because the last of the troops would be coming home just as The One is "running" for his third term doesn't mean he's thinking anything at all about politics.  You should be ashamed of yourselves.

"The president came into office wanting to end the wars he inherited. But wars do not end just because politicians say so," the three senators said.

On one side of them, they do.  And then the other side blitzkriegs all over us and we die.  Except for him, of course.  He's got a pen and a phone.

And hashtags.

"The president appears to have learned nothing from the damage done by his previous withdrawal announcements in Afghanistan and his disastrous decision to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq.

What makes you think he's trying to "learn" anything, Senators?  What makes you think that damage wasn't his original and avowed intent?

They said that Obama's announcement "will embolden our enemies and discourage our partners in Afghanistan and the region. His decision on Afghanistan will fuel the growing perception worldwide that America is unreliable, distracted, and unwilling to lead."

It ought to fuel the growing perception that under Barack Obama, America has switched sides.  I would have thought that abandoning Iraq, turning over Egypt to the Muslim Brotherhood, turning Libya over to al Qaeda, and trafficking arms to al Qaeda in Syria would have been enough to cast that perception in cement, but evidently King Hussein still doesn't think the world has gotten the message.

The more responsible move was a "limited-assistance mission" to aid the security forces, they said. The move would "preserve momentum on the battlefield and create conditions for a negotiated end to the conflict.

The more responsible move is several high-yield neutron warheads at strategically placed locales.  Or pretty much what we should have done in the first place, since in order to build nations - at which we generally suck anyway - there has to be a nation there in the first place to build.  But there won't be any public appetite for "The Coulter option" until after at least one American city has gone up in flames, mushroom style.  Which O's "political" withdrawal will hasten.  And even then, you can count on him not retaliating, but instead "intensifying diplomatic efforts".

Besides, we won't have any nukes left anyway, much less neutron warheads.

Obama said in Tuesday's White House remarks that Americans have learned it is easier to get into a war than out of one.

In one sense, I suppose that's true.  Both sides of both the American Civil War and World War I, for example, thought they'd steamroll their adversaries in a matter of weeks or even days.  They all found out differently, in hardway fashion.  Of course, both sides of those two conflicts wanted war, even lusted after it, precisely because they thought victory would be easy.

However, we "got into a war" against the Taliban in Afghanistan because three thousand of our civilians got massacred by the jihadist network they hosted there.  I won't presume to speak for anybody else, but that doesn't strike me as an "easy" way to "get into a war".  And President Bush declared from the beginning that, far from being easy, this would be a long, difficult, "shadow" war that would long outlast his presidency, but one we could win as long as we maintained the will and resolve to, "in [our] righteous might....win through to absolute victory".

Then came 2008 and 2012.  So much for will, resolve, and righteous might.

Barack Obama was wrong about one other thing as well: It's easy-peasy-lemon-squeezey to get out of a war; all you have to do is quit, break your word and commitments, betray and abandon your allies, and effectively side with your erstwhile enemies.  Red Barry can do those things in his sleep.

And doubtless did.