U.S. official resigns over Afghan war

kansaswhig said:

Thanks.



Well, as I said, "exit plans" aren't really applicable in a full on COIN strategy.



Oil was hardly the motive in Iraq, since we didn't take any. Motive in AFG? National security.



I wouldn't call AFG a failure, because to fail, you must have clearly defined goals that aren't met. We haven't done that. If you think about it, Obama didn't have much of a choice but to jump on the AFG bandwagon. He was so anti-Iraq that to also be anti-AFG would have hurt him politically. I think the "change" part in AFG was to set goals and implement a strategy, which we are still waiting on...



No, but on something as critical as AFG, you don't expect to intentions to change so quickly.



I don't know any prominent liberal who called for targeting Saudis.



I agree with you there. But don't forget that the majority of Democrats voted for War in Iraq, something they seem to forget sometimes.

Click to expand...

Just for the record, the Saudis remark was in parenthesis, as it was in jest. It was an attempt to point out that both parties were either misled or misleading when involving us in this. I mean, OBL may have been hiding in Afghanistan (or Pakistan), but the majority of the hijackers were Saudis, but obviously, we can't rock that boat.

And I respect your points, but I do not see Afghanistan and/or Iraq as anything BUT a geopolitical power grab.

In all, I tend to agree with Hoh, that there is more of a threat to our national security by staying with the status quo, rather than leaving.

As long as we are in bed with nation's such as the Saudi Arabia, whose human rights record is worse than Iraq's was under Hussein, I don't see our current occupations as anything more than a catalyst for violence in the Middle East.

And we won't convince anyone we are a noble nation who disposes of tyrannical dictators if we continue to intervene in the Mid East while we watch complacently as Africa is ravaged by loose knit war lords who engage in genocide.

Anyway, good discussion.