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The Secret Details of Obama's Afghan Plan
Manpreet Romana, AFP / Getty Images
Obama will give the military most of the troops it wanted, add more in a year if needed, push the Afghans to step up—and change the mission against al Qaeda. Leslie H. Gelb has the exclusive details.
President Barack Obama’s long-awaited Tuesday speech on Afghanistan offers lots more troops to the military and some promising rhetoric for war skeptics. He will authorize between 30,000 and 36,000 new U.S. troops, depending on prospective NATO contributions, and an additional 10,000 more in a year if necessary, according to administration sources. Obama will stress that these and other moves to strengthen the fight against the Taliban and al Qaeda should be seen as a boost to friendly Afghans and not as an open-ended American commitment. The boost will provide the time and the incentives for America’s Afghan allies to prepare themselves to assume primary responsibility for continuing the battle.
I believe that the Obama approach is reasonable, and about the most that can be expected, given the powerful conflicting pressures. The plan deserves the support of the American people.
I would have preferred no more than about 15,000 troops, mainly trainers, a two- to three-year plan (not a fixed timetable) for Kabul to take the combat lead, and much more toughness toward our two-faced Pakistani “allies.” And the administration sources stress that the precise details and rhetoric of Obama’s plan won’t be set until the president gives his speech Tuesday night at West Point. But based on what they’ve told me, I believe that the Obama approach is reasonable, and about the most that can be expected, given the powerful conflicting pressures. The plan deserves the support of the American people.
The United States already deploys about 68,000 troops, and there are an additional 36,000 or so of various stripes from friendly countries. General Stanley McChrystal, NATO’s commander in Afghanistan, asked for about 44,000 additional American troops on the ground. The 30,000-plus that Mr. Obama will approve is about the maximum that could actually be deployed to Afghanistan in the next 12 months. And if the general can clearly demonstrate he still needs more in a year, the president will signal his willingness to consider an additional 10,000. But that would be the limit, the end of it.
• Bruce Riedel: A Taliban Leader Threatens Obama
• Ret. Col. Ken Allard: Why We Should Screen Muslim SoldiersThe strategy to govern the employment of these forces, Mr. Obama is expected to say, will be much like the counterinsurgency approach he originally approved back in March—the approach McChrystal reaffirmed in his recent “secret” leaked report. That means clearing areas and holding them with military force, followed by civilian and economic programs. He will also underline the anti-terrorist component of this strategy—namely the focus on attacking al Qaeda itself, a point stressed relentlessly by Vice President Joe Biden during the nearly two-month policy review.
But there are two additional elements to the strategy. U.S. forces will expedite the long-neglected training of Afghan military and police forces. And the new 30,000-plus surge of U.S. troops will be used to beat up on the Taliban enough to make it easier for the Afghans themselves to manage down the road.
Mr. Obama will also announce a change in the American goal—without calling attention to the new objective. His goal up to now has been to “defeat” al Qaeda. The new mission: to “dismantle and degrade” the terrorists. It is a more modest and achievable goal, intended to weaken the terrorists’ ability to operate in the South Asia region. The United States will continue to take the lead over the next few years to achieve this goal in Afghanistan. But after that, the president is expected to say, the main burden will fall on Kabul—though with continuing American economic and military support. As of this point, it’s not clear whether Mr. Obama will condition his new strategy on President Hamid Karzai cleaning up the corrupt and ineffectual Afghan government. The words of caution and warning to Karzai will be in the Obama speech. But he likely won’t go so far as to say “shape up or else.”
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Paul Schrodt is a writer living in New York City. He has contributed to New York magazine, Radar, and Esquire.com.
Obama's Dangerous China Game
Leslie H. Gelb, a former New York Times columnist and senior government official, is author of Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy (HarperCollins 2009), a book that shows how to think about and use power in the 21st century. He is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.
The Speech Had Potential
Leslie H. Gelb, a former New York Times columnist and senior government official, is author of Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy (HarperCollins 2009), a book that shows how to think about and use power in the 21st century. He is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.
New Doubts About Afghanistan
Leslie H. Gelb, a former New York Times columnist and senior government official, is author of Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy (HarperCollins 2009), a book that shows how to think about and use power in the 21st century. He is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.
diamondgrl
Khmer Rougebama is just trying to get our PATRIOTIC men and women of the armed forces out of the country because he knows they will support the TEA PARTY MOVEMENT to retake America from the Democratic socialist nonworkers Party!!!
Well, this is one loyal American you can't ship off to Afghanistan or stuff in an EPA run ACORN reeducation camp! When Glenn Beck gives us the signal to rise up and take you down, we'll be ready!
abcxyz
I am a foreigner but strongly appreciate the US for the values it stands for. I am completely neutral and enjoy watching news related to the US. But watching Fox News and especially Glenn Beck completely annoyed me and push me off...Glen Beck seems to be so obnoxious, extremist, emotional, obsessed.... Everything the other guy is doing is bad!!! As a result, I turned off
the screen when Glen Beck is on...He should work for a Circus ..Fox News is way way below the caliber of ABC, Reuters, CBS....Too Bad...(Hope it will be extinct soon..)
dcuckler
My momma used to say we need to love the wrong minded because they can't help the way they are. I just don't have enough love for nuts like you!
osea65
Go have some pie diamondgrl, before you hurt yourself, LOL!!!!!
cvillekid
See you in February at Piccadilly's, if you dare, you comsymp. We'll reserve a special iguana for you, mocker!
oliverckerr
The way to defeat Taliban. wipe out al Qaeda, and give the Afghanistan people a chance to have their country not overrun with terrorists is to occupy the poppy fields, as the opium poppy is what makes Afghanistan such an attractive place for self proclaimed war lords, and others.
The following essay is my Afghanistan Strategy, as a candidate for president of United States. Happy Thanksgiving.
The issue is the Afghanistan monopoly on the world's opium poppy which is distilled into heroin right on the farm! That is the only issue, driving every thing!
Every time you pull up at a Stop and Go in America, to get gas, or a coffee, or cigarettes, outside a few feet away from the door someone is hanging out. That person is dealing crack from Columbia, or heroin, from opium poppy grown in Afghanistan.
This unremarked criminal harmony is taking place from sea to shining sea. When Barky Obama's oldest daughter comes home from school with an ever so slight droop in her eyes, from a morning snort with one of her friends, then maybe our president will get wise!
When more than one million pre-teen and early teen agers are getting into heroin, telling themselves, "I'm in control, I only use twice a week," then you will begin to see the flowering of out-of-control crime someone bound to the drug is willing to commit, to get their drug. The unnecessary mayhem we are soon to be facing, brought on by ignoring the real issue, which is the opium.
We can occupy all the poppy fields, and pay the farmers cash in advance (CIA). That must be our policy!
I dedicate this post to our troops in harm's way, and all of those decent people who seek a rational sensible approach to defeating the Taliiban and al Qaeda, the original reason we went into Afghanistan.
This is an open letter to president Obama, his, The Daily Beast watchers, and of course the readers of this page.
Here is the Afghanistan Solution, the strategy we need, what we must do, how to do it, and why, and what I, an independent candidate for president am going to do upon election to our highest office, a happenstance that in today's volatile economy, cannot be ruled out.
The American people are bound to find out when I wrote this essay. The question is: how many more will die between this day and that?
In the event president Obama decides to withdraw from Afghanistan, upon the success or failure of his flawed military strategy, it will be on behalf of his reelection, not because withdrawing is the smart thing to do.
Upon my election we will be immediately going back to Afghanistan, in the event the President pulls us out without solving the opium poppy issue, as the heroin for sale on every street corner in America does constitute a threat to our freedom and life.
Now to the Afghani solution:
We adopt this opium poppy strategy, explained below, or we risk another terrorist attack in America, rivalng the 9 / 11 attack, because the money needed to make another attack will come from the sale of the opium / heroin around the world.
Were that the only issue on the table it would be good enough reason for your close attention! White House officials involved in the ongoing Afghanistan deliberations should carefully consider what is here revealed!
The key to winning Afghanistan and Pakistan, to dissolving al Qaeda and Taliban, is controlling the opium the Afghanis meticulously grow. On this planet, world wide, opium is the grand poppa of all opiates. That dirt-cheap heroin readily bought every day on the streets of Manhattan and Washington DC, on the streets of Kabul, and by the barrack gates where our tropps are billited, began it's life a sleepy Pashtun poppy, milked in Afghanistan, oceans away.
That 17% pure heroin bag; available on select street corners in every major city in the western world, started out an opium poppy grown in Afghanistan. You first saw the rich Afghanistan poppy fields in The Wizard of Oz.
93% of the world's opium is grown and refined into heroin right on the Afghani farms!
They Afghanis are not such a backward unsophisticated country as rigid status quo bureaucrats are apt to paint them. The farmers grow the highest quality most potent opium that yields the most heroin, world wide! Similar to our Iowa farmer's ability to grow bountiful crops of corn.
Bill Gates must marvel at their opium / heroin market share. Monopoly!
The poppy crop is irreplaceable, worldwide; a blessing for all sides, especially us, because controlling the opium poppy fields means we will have taken over the main source of income for all the barbarian Taliban, the terrorist al Qaeda operations in all the neighboring countries, and all of the Western Hemisphere cartels and subtle European drug dealerships.
This must be our focus. Why does our government fail to see this. Why does our military allow the Afghani convoys carrying tons of heroin to pass the check points?
The heroin lifeblood for terrorists and drug cartels is smuggled out of Afghanistan, throughout Europe, with tons, tons going by plane and ship to South America where, repackaged, the heroin's origin is disguised so no one gets wise; and from there, routed to Mexican cartels, and from Mexico, into United States, to be sold in our ghettos and suburban neighborhoods and school yards.
For the cartels this wholesale heroin represents billions of dollars in retail business. Billions of underground criminal, and terrorist dollars, our school yards only one of their retail outlets!
Knowing this, why does our military ignore the convoys of trucks laden with heroin to pass?
The key to stuffing Taliban and al Qaeda, eradicating all of their corruption of Afghanistan, is to choke the opium supply the Afghan farmers are world wide famous for; choke the supply which would wipe out the opium / heroin smuggling trade; and choke their criminal customers on our side of the sea.
We don't have 68,000 troops in uniform, stationed in South America, chopping down the Columbian jungle to get at the cocaine plantations. That is not happening, and won't. But we do have 68,000 troops stationed in Afghanistan, 30,000 more on the way and the opium poppy stratgegy carefully explained here will SAVE MOST OF THEIR LIVES.
Surely, we can agree we do not want to see any more American lives lost or blood shed.
The Taliban's and al Qaeda's end in the opium/heroin trade nets millions of dollars, peanuts in the big picture, falafel on the table for Taliban's "freedom fighters" billited over the border, in Pakistan; and money for the families of al Qaeda's suicide bombers throughout the Middle East.
For the international criminal drug cartels the Afghanistan opium / heroin wholesale / retail is between 500 and 600 billion illigitimate unwashed tax free dollars per annum!
Without the opium / heroin trade, al Qaeda and Taliban operatiuons would be decimated. The Western Hemisphere drug cartels would lose their hundreds of billions of dollars and would be facing their own recession. Street corner drug dealers would be signing up for unemployment checks. All of the illegal heroin in the United States would dry up as the pipeline for the heroin would be destroyed!
That is exactly what we want.
In Iraq, whoever is running the roads, wins. In Afghanistan, Taliban also controls the roads, so every patrol is a potential death drive. The opium dollar is fueling both the war and the Taliban structure, enabling them to strike!
Afghanistan is a poor country with a rich culture. Whoever controls the opium harvest will have battled for that right. The hardy Afghani farmers get only enough to live decently and plant their fresh poppy.
The Taliban "freedom fighters" would leave for home in a heartbeat, were they not getting fed and allowed to while away the days smoking the black Afghani hashish. No food no money no fight. The newly chosen Taliban "leader" has a payroll he must meet. The opium proceeds cover the Taliban payroll!
President Obama is our Commander-in-Chief, the civilian boss in charge of our ribbon shirts, but General Stanley McChrystal and his military bureaucrats, and all the retired cable news talking heads grousing every day are all misreading and misleading the Afghanistan war.
Wars are fought for economic reasons. The poppy fields fuel criminal enterprize world wide. Congtrol the poppy fields and all the criminal activity world wide is thwarted!
A recent Wall Street Journal article: Top Troop Request Exceeds 60,000 by Peter Spiegal and Yochi Dreazen stated,
"White House officials familiar with deliberations said that while some elements of the Taliban were inclined to harbor al Qaeda, which operated freely in Afghanistan through 2001, other members were focused on Afghanistan's internal politics and much less likely to support the international terror group."
Oh! The taliban is more interested in securing seats on the local neighbor hooded school boards? Hardly! their Afghanistan infrastructure has one purpose: controlling the opium poppy during and after the harvest!
The Taliban differs from al Qaeda in one respect. Taliban are criminal drug dealers hiding behind religion and oppressing the local people they believe is the key to their continuing success in controlling the opium / heroin, whereas Al Qaeda smuggles heroin to fund sensless political attacks throughout the Middle East, and to plan another 9/11 which cannot be accomplished without many millions of dollars.
A few years ago a Taliban leader came to Texas. Whatever the official reason for the "trip," talks about a potential oil pipe line, the real reason was to have some lengthy conversations on throw away cell phones with Mexican and Columbian Cartel officials about shipping refined heroin instead of tell tale smelly opium. The Columbians got into the act because no one would suspect heroin originating in faraway Afghanistan would be round-about smuggled into South America, and from there, north to Mexico and then into USA.
The oil pipe line talks were a hoax. The Taliban came to Texas to solidify the opium / heroin pipeline, moolah for the mullah.
We don't need to build an Afghanistan army.The unalighned unofficial Afghani militias know how to fight.
With a little strucure and dollar support at the bottom, at the farm level, the Afghani people will protect themselves. Abraham Lincoln established a sea embargo to win the Civil War. Without supplies by ship from Europe, the Confederate Army was doomed.
Our troops get killed on border patrols between Pakistan and Afghanistan to protect our way of life across the ocean. Yet a stone's throw away, Mother Nature's opium is grown for the criminal and international terrorist's gain? How can our military be so dumb as to allow this to go on, creating millions of terrorist jihad dollars?
The only thing going across that Pakistan / Afghanistan border are paid fighters and convoys of drug smugglers hauling their cargo. The Afghan opium is key to everything happening there!
We own the opium and control the poppy fields and the whole country is ours. We don't need the roads. We can resupply our troops dug in with night time helicopter delivery!
Opium control by us means renegade Taliban, al Qaeda terrorists, and warlords are on the road again. Skedaddled or killed.
(I like the idea of not killing anybody.)
The White House failure to respond to this plan will lead to loss of American lives, and seal the impossibility of Barack Obama being reelected to a 2nd term in our Highest office.
Though i am a candidate for president and bring to the table a Vehicle for World Peace, my candidacy is not the issue; only what "eye" say is the issue. The opium production and our clear ability to control that opium, is the main and only topic.
Our guys must begin digging foxholes in every opium field, making Cash In Advance deals CIA with the Afghanis we are purchasing their opium crop for top dollar, in raw opium form, while paying them rent for digging our fox holes on the edges of their poppy fields.
The farmers won't have to brew the black sap into a dangerous snowy heroin powder, so they are poppy plentiful, an ounce or two included for the house, compliments of us.
Raw opium isn't dangerous. You won't kill yourself smoking opium the way you can so easily overdose from a heroin syringe, so we want their whole opium crop raw, just like unefined brown sugar, and we will pay the refined opium heroin price which is similar to tacking on an additional 65 cents to a bushel of Iowa corn.
The war momentum will immediately shift! Once we are digging in on the poppy fields, everything changes because without the proceeds from smuggling the heroin, the Taliban will whither away!
Instead of Taliban's "freedom fighters" picking us off every other day as we patrol the dangerous Afghanistan border, we will occupy the opium poppy fields and wait for Taliban to show up sould they dare, our invited guests for a steel jacket lunch.
The key to Afghan quality of life for Taliban, thugs without a country when we defeat them, to shipping their kids off to the Ivy League is based on who gets to stash the cash from Afghanistan's opium crop.
Would that be Karzai and his drug dealing family in Kabul? As soon as we instigate the above strategy karzai and his government officials will protest because they also benefit from the opium / heroin smuggling and sales.
At the same time, on the diplomatic front we ought to push to reunite Pakistan with India. This will initiate a furtther eviction of Taliban by the Pakistani people. For Pakistan, rejoining India means freedom, food, jobs, education, and a better life. Only the Pakistani military bureaucrats are against this idea, and their minds could be changed with a passport, an SUV, and a forty acre guarantee in Montana.
Instead of knee jerk reactions to my Hunt For The Red October reference to 'Montana," just get creative and plant that idea in Pakistan newspapers! Now is the time to wag the Pakistan India dog! regardless what India andd pakistan do, we need to put this idea on the table and get the people talking about it!
Sad, these policies, purchasing Afghanistan's opium, piecing off the Pak military, and reuniting Pakistan with India may be too progressive for the president, and for his Secretary of State Hillary Clintstone, too, but perhaps not.
Certainly this wagging of the Pakistan-India dog will be incentive for the Paks to evict the Taliban and that is what we want! The Paks have nothing going for them under the Taliban gun.
Don't you know the Taliban bribed the Pak military for long-term safe journey with the opium money. That is how they established their foothold in Pakistan! Opium money! Too bad our President is surrounded by bureaucrats who wouldn't know the scent of an opium house were they standing at the door.
Many Taliban soldiers will change colors of their turbans and meld into the crowd as soon as they realize the opium harvest has been taken away from them. It isn't about religion, or the neighbor hooded school board, or how many times a day you pray to Big Al (Allah to you), it is about the opium / heroin and millions of dollars in cash! Seeing as you can eat three hot meals a day in the streets of Mumbai for less than a dollar, one million dollars = one million days divided by x number of Taliban "grunts."
In Afghanistan, we need to get busy, prepare the opium fields, create comfortable foxholes guarding every poppy acre, booby trap the brush surrounding with a wide safe swath to the farmhouse, and make it clear to the farmers, by shelling out CIA Cash In Advance, we are purchasing their whole raw opium crop but paying top refined heroin price, so the farmers are with us! Less work and more money is a super incentive for the farmers.
Taliban, Al Qaeda and warlords will have to exit their caves and cross the poppy fields instead of picking us off with their remotely detonated roadside attacks on roads they control. Retired military may be opposed to this poppy war, but hard pressed to explain why they support that opium trade just the way it is.
We should be purchasing the whole poppy crop, and negotiating fair and square and in advance how much sticky black sap can be extrapolated from each plant. The plants, ripening by day, are the draw for Taliban, al Qaeda and warlords to show, the only way for them to go, taking on our troops in the poppy fields where we will defeat them!
When they come down the yellow brick Afghanistan road we can sting them from above. A couple drone attacks will turn them all around in their tracks. No opium no paychecks.
The extra virgin first opium milking is scheduled to start tomorrow. Our enemies know that but will be powerless! The farmers are out of the picture as they are already paid in advance. At 4:00 a.m. we begin snipping every plant two inches above ground with two handle bush trimmers, chop chop, just like that. At dawn, we start stuffing wood chippers and spread the soil with the chopped up results to fertilize next year's crop.
So good-bye Taliban grunt, and don't step on any land mines going home.
A couple million heroin addicts in Europe will be going cold turkey! The Mexican and Columbian drug cartels will be out of heroin, and lose hundreds of millions of criminal dollars in projected sales, reason enough for everything we do to control the poppy fields.
Regardless bureaucrats will be viciously against this operation. The status quo is how the rigid government's bureaucrats always want to go.
But with a cash infusion at the farm level, Afghanistan will begin to flourish. The Afghani people will start rebuilding their own country, without corruption from above, roads and schools decided by tribal leaders in the farm districts where the poppy is grown, with a helping hand from us.
We must also purchase their whole marijuana and hasish crop, and either sell that to the shops in Amsterdam or bring each of the harvests to USA for medicinal purposes. Otherwise we run the risk that that crop, too becomes an income for the terrorists. Afghani marijuana is the most potent in the world, best for relief of chemotherapy's side effects.
Regardless what Obama's surrounding bureaucrats say, we occupy the opium fields, purchase the whole crop, and all the heroin sold every day in our country will dry up! Young kids in poor neighborhoods will not become addicted to heroin. Don't we want that? Don't you? The opium / heroin dry up is guaranteed because all of the other countries where opium grows, they only have planted enough for their own home land and neighboring clientele.
The opium pays al Qaeda's world salary. But who controls the opium wins the terrorist war, world wide! The above poppy strategy will accomplish our mission! Those opposed want things the way they are. Follow the money, Mr President. In the event we ignore the terrorist's cash cow, and leave, al Qaeda, opium rich, will have the funds to execute all of their murderous plans. Wasn't the twin towers brought down and their Pentagon attack enough for you! You inherited that issue! The opium trade paid for the 9/11 tragedy! We cannot risk allowing that to repeat. We cannot!
Unless Obama wants it guaranteed before the end of his first year that he is a lame duck one term president, then ignore what eye say. When there are fifty thousand steet corner heroin dealers in USA earning a living dealing "smack" then what are you going to do about the new generation of criminal entrepreneurs, throw them in jail for working in a jobless economy. What will that cost?
Happy Thanksgiving.
candidate for president
michaelslevinson.com
bobj72
Normalcy was abandoned....... long, long ago.
Cymatic
I really hope this is an attempt at comedy! I can't tell the difference between straight talking extremist right wingers and left winger parodies any more.
martykz
My thoughts exactly. The parody of those people has almost become MSM itself with SNL, Colbert, Stewart, et al, that it's sometimes hard to see where their reality begins.
Slamlander
They have a reality? O_o
Not that I can tell.
Hotfrostins
Reading you post left me with one single impression- "what a dumb bitch"
The Presidents plan is so refreshing. It is quite a good feeling to have him present such a well thought out plan of action with serious goals that are assessed as attainable and there is followup action if needed. Pressure for results where it it needed. This type of plan was never presented by the previous administration. Our military should be bolstered with moral knowing that the nation and the full weight of this administration is backing the war effort.
Why you would twist it into some ploy as a tool to promote your Tea Party is a childish grasp. But then maybe you were just making funny. If you were then wake up girl. War is no joke, our people are in harms way every second to protect those of us lucky enough to live freely here at home.
Georealist
What an intelligent, insightful posting! Thanks for reaffirming what a thin veneer exists before the nasty innards of an Obamasniffer become evident. This is no plan...it's a halfhearted compromise that is more politically than militarily motivated. It's McChrystal "light." My guess is you are clueless when it comes to what lies at the foundation of the Generals original plan!
So..the military is protecting you from Afghan insurgents??! Where do you live..Waziristan?
easton
yes, and georealist's plan is?? Hey geo, Waziristan is in Pakistan, not Afghanistan, before you mock someone at least get the geography right. There are very few Afghan insurgents in Pakistan, mostly Taliban higher ups who have the money and logistics to go there. Eikenberry is the present Ambassador but was the Commanding General in Afghanistan before McChrystal, and he advocates less troops than this plan. General Eikenberry or McChrystal, who to follow? Definitely above my pay grade and I at least acknowledge it.
And of course the military is protecting us from Afghan insurgents. If they win, the chances of the Pakistani insurgents winning increases, and Pakistan has nukes.
Hotfrostins
What a spiteful ignorant attack on the commander in chief and his efforts to win the war with as few casualties as possible, attempting for a change to think things through first. Thanks for reaffirming what a thin veneer exists before the innards of an armchair general brainwashed by FOX and blind support of the Right wing fringe become evident. This is a plan and if you would remove your soul from the clutches of BeckHannista hate you may be able to some day recognize it. I may be clueless to your interpretation of the General "request" by I think the General will be getting almost all that he asked for. Yes the military is protecting me, nad always has protected me every day of my life. I would much rather prefer sniffing this President then all that ass you been sniffining the last 9 or so years. Obamsniffing is like a breath of fresh air compared to the that stink you wallow in.
diamondgrl
Thank God for a real man like Georealist who will protect me from these liberal thought police!
The last time I checked the 1st Amendment gives me the right to SAY WHATEVER I WANT and not be criticized for it by Kool-aid gulpers!!!! If you want to criticize other people who are just trying to let THE TRUTH be known then maybe you should move to Communist China, that way you won't have to wait for the orders to filter from them to Communist Chairman O-God-No-Bama before they get to you!!!!!1
DevilsLawyer
Um Diamondgirl, now I'm starting to be more and more certain you're a tea-partier parody and not in earnest. (But by no means break the role for my sake, it's too entertaining.) You seem to be saying that you have the freedom of speech to say whatever you like and others do not have the same freedom to criticize you, though you can insult them as Koolaid gulpers. And that somehow you need to be protected from criticism. The logic is so ludicrous and so representative of the far right, I'm forced to conclude you're secretly laughing at the tea party set. Good job!
osea65
Diamondgrl needs an intervention by Obama himself, one face to face with him and she'll be gulping that Kool-Aid desperately, LOL. The problem is that the tea party movement is necessary, because we simply don't know where our president stands, we hope he is like the rest of us and wants a country of democracy and prosperity, that rewards hard work and innovation, but he could also be true blood communist leader waiting to come out, and that we should all be very afraid of!!! Hopefully Diamondgrl is very wrong about our president!!!!!
sandiegogramma
O Puleeze....the patriotism of the Tea Party Movement is questionable at best. Their desire to incite hatrid thru words and actions is much more obvious. Just what are you going to take down...our country? And who are you going to take down....fellow American citizens? Get a life, Tea Baggers! It's time to stop the ridiculous and begin working toward unifying our great country in positive ways. Your war of hatrid can only lead to violence and more hatrid. Grow up and become a positive force for good with all your fellow citizens!
xlntcat
Now you know that the KKK, the neo-nazis and all of the rightwing extremist that are now comprising the unpaid membership of the Teabaggers are known for the Patriotism. And, of course, we can see that Dick Armies paid shills are the epitome of patriotism.
Georealist
No matter what diamondgrl posts on she catches a world of stuff! Liberals really can't handle a woman who doesn't fall in line! What's the problem..aren't the Democrats socialist?? What did I miss..my take was that Universal Coverage cinched the deal! To each according to their need, from each according to their abilities!
Isn't it hilarious that the same people who pontificate about the right of slime like KSM or Major Hasan to be heard fairly in a Court of Law (ta da!!!) can't stand Tea Party Protesters peaceably exercising their 2nd Amendment Rights!
Look at the responses also....little cryptic ditties that NEVER address the issue..precisely the kind of arrogant, condescending garbage you can hear on Letterman or Conan O'Brien..or Chris Matthews shows...!
Look at poster child Hotfrostins...the best this braintrust can come up with is "what a dumb bitch"..Isn't it interesting that this phrase was his/her ONE single impression. Really speaks volumes of this person..and their ilk.
Slamlander
True, debate suffers from the limits of the medium here. Quips are about all that we have time for, leaving the cogitation as a derivative.
Of course refering to the 2d Amendment when there are no arms in sight does tend to confuse the issue. Are you maybe refering to the 1st Amendment. If you are less than sure, perhaps you can reference the many copies of the Constitution and Bill of Rights on the Internet. Google is your friend there.
FYI, I am still provisionally a Republican. However, that may not be for much longer. Regardless, I an a Secular Centrist and DiamonGrl is definitely coming off as a send class twit. Remove the ad hominem arguments and you are left with ... nothing. But then, that pretty much sums up your argument as well.
cvillekid
In Geo's world, "Obamasniffer" qualifies as sophisticated discourse.
Hotfrostins
Your defense of the twisted logic of hate propaganda behind her first post speaks volumes on your person. It is a dumb bitchy whoring herelf to the hate of the right.... maybe you should try and date her, I think it would be a match made in hell.
Hotfrostins
I think I hit a Georeal nerve!
ectoendomezo
Groan...
Ignoring All Evidence..may be a satisfying method for "Winning A Great Many Small Contests Of Will..."..but..ummm...it..for the most part..it just make's people laugh....primarily..at..ummm..you!
The HYPOCRISY of the Repugs..is..So...Stupifyingly Blatant...so..ARROGANT..that it is more akin to a PSYCHOSIS..a 'Seperation From Reality'...
You crow and crow about 'Less Intrusive Government'...while you simultaneously INVOLVE yourselves in the MOSt..PRIVATE..and INTIMATE..decisions of BOTH Women AND Men...telling them what they CAN or CANNOT do with their OWN BODIES..TELLING them WHOM they MAY or MAY NOT MARRY...uhh..
.....IT DOESN'T GET ANYMORE 'INTRUSIVE' THAN THAT!
So..repugs..you know what? After Obama won..it became clear..YOU..CANNOT WIN! FOR AS LONG AS YOU CONTINUE TO REFUSE TO ACCEPT..CULTURAL DIVERSITY...YOU WILL NOT WIN ANOTHER PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION..PERIOD!
And since you are INCAPABLE of LISTENNG..and incapable of CHANGE..accepting of course to become even MORE self rightous and piggish..
So..THAT is the REALITY...you cannot face it..but..it does not matter...YOU and your 'VALUES' are BAD FOR AMERICA..FOR THE EARTH..FOR THE PEOPLE..FOR QUITE LITERALLY...EVERYTHING...
You'd rather be RIGID...than..RIGHT....sigh!
Slamlander
I might enjoin you to understand that the Religious Right does NOT represent all Republicans. Many of us aren't even Christian.
cvillekid
If the ones I saw at our local Tea Parties are capable of being "rigid" it's only thanks to modern pharmacology. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Slamlander
Au contrare, Religious Right is rigid by definition. The need no chemical assistence. Minds like steel traps they have, snapped shut!
As said above, I am less able to discern the difference between the Socialist Left and the Religious Right, neither are grounded in reality.
Note that a real conservative would not tolerate the change of even a comma in the US Constitution. Yet, the Religious Right proposes an Amendment to alter the way we view marriage. Excuse me but, that is antithetical to the definition of a conservative and they cannot call themselves that for that reason. They are the Radical Right. They are as much against the US Constitution as the radical left is. Both are wrong and I hope that both will fail.
oliverckerr
Well, diamondgrl whether girl or wanna be she or he is not a spring chicken as she / he refers to the Socialist Workers Party; ther Democratic Socialist Workers Party sounds like Hitler's medium.
Socialist Workers party was prominant on the state university campus' in the late 60's, an off shoot of the generalized anti-war movement.
michaelslevinson.com
xlntcat
The military has recently come out to declare that they in fact do not support the fanatic Tea Party. You cannot be a loyal American and threaten to show up armed to overthrow the government. That makes you a traitor seeking to impose your demented philosophy on to others.
castorita
Are you truly nuts or is this a joke?
bsfpitbull
Having been there and witnessed first hand what is going on in Afghanistan it will take more troops to insure a victory against the taliban and al Qaeda,if we pull out all of my battle buddies will have died for nothing and if you guys don't understand that then you are not supporting the people who have lost there lives in the cause of kicking the crap out of the terrorist and we all need to support our troops that are in battle and dieing for the better life of all man kind because if we walk away now they will have died for nothing, maybe it's about politics for some of you but for us it's about taking care of each other. when the shooting starts that is all you have is the battle buddy next to you, not the politics or what is right thing to for our goverment. It's about you staying alive and possibly losing your life for the better of the human race.
MrGEAH
Hope and Change are on the way!
Georealist
In what way?? There is nothing in this plan that makes anyone but political bottom fishers happy! McChrystal will smile and do his best because that's what's expected! Biden..who actually showed unexpected guts on this issue will shrug and go with the plan..because he's just along for the ride! Obama will feign concern and act as if he's Lincoln changing the course of the Civil War in one bold stroke!
It's a Kabuki play in 3 parts....to what end? A safe Afghanistan? Go there sometime..please..it's the armpit of the Earth with mountains. This was..and is..a gesture of committment for future allies..nothing more. In fact..a very good case can be made that the motivation of this empty gesture is Vietnam redux...a political move made to show we can stand up and won't cave in the face of any threat..anywhere.
Hotfrostins
It sounds as if you are against this war and in fact you are reacting and posting as if it is a new war just begining. In reality its an 8 year botched Bush fiasco. Poorly managed,underfunded and not well thought out in my opinion. Now this President is attempting to reboot the war effort to an attainable goal of withdrawl with a successful outcome for our future. Your incessant whining and hper critical analysis with limited information is disgusting, as are the rest of your mongering ilk that have made fortunes and billowed their egos with the blood of our troops.
OldCrow
Training is a much tougher (and longer) issue in A-Stan. Their troops are mostly illiterate and corrupt. It will be process better measured in decades than years, and our strategy should not be centered around the Afghanistan army taking over the mission NATO is currently doing. At least not if we plan on leaving there any time soon. Training worked in Iraq because their army were competent.
Dick325
ABSOLUTLEY WRONG. Bring the troops home now!!! The expense in lives and to our economy is far in excess of any possible gain for the USA in the future. We got rid of the cowboy in the White House but the same military advisors remain to contaminate our future. We must reduce the size of the 3 military academies in order to reduce the production of misguided advisors. A uniform, medals and stars does NOT make for an intelligent individual but rather is a disease of itself. Enough is enough, bring them home now. One Vietnam in my lifetime is a sufficient learning experience. RR$, Ph.D.
osea65
Obama is a good man, with some fucked up friends that's all!!!!
ndspinelli
First, and most important, I give thanks for all military serving to protect us. They are away from their families and in harms way. I'm as much a wise-ass as anyone, but maybe today posts should be straight.
Secondly, whether you agree or disagree, our prez is doing what he said he would do in his campaign. So anyone who voted for him[I'm one] should not be surprised. My fear is weak knee progressives will abandon Obama. That would be a huge mistake.
ectoendomezo
Yes I voted for him as well..however..I don't recall him saying he would appoint a ..back room 'Final Policy Decision Making Team' HEADED by..not oNLY a Republican(!?) but a KNOWN..Military Industrial Complex HAWK from way back..General JIM JONES of the...NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL!
I don't recall that...
I am ASTOUNDED also by his..UTTER..lack of HONOR in keeping his..frankly...OATH to us that he would NOT continue the BushII Civil Liberties Abuse Program...Obama..well..CANDIDATE Obama said UNEQUIVOCALLY..that he would NOT USE SIGNING STATEMENTS..well..149 of them later...that is..just..IGNORED...
Obama was MARKETED..on essentially..THREE MAIN FUNDAMENTAL QUALITIES...HOPE..CHANGE...AND 'CONSTITUTIONAL SCHOLAR'..
Well..I do not see the 'CONSTITUTIONAL SCHOLAR'...Anywhere...WHERE IS this..Constitutional Scholar?
Frankly..I do NOT require a HArvard Degree to KNOW...for a FACT..that "WATCH LIST"..is NOT in the CONSTITUTION...Nor is "Business Owners Can Be Snitches"..INFRAGARD..HEINOUSLY EVIL..."FUSION CENTERS" these...EVIL...and ILLEGAL...FISA END RUNS..make every..EVERY..Policeman...into an "ASSET" of CIA...period!
"Oh..the POLICE are the ones GATHERING the Information...WE just ANALYZE IT..so..its all OKAY...don't worry...TRUST US."
"Fusion Centers' also make "PROFILING"...a DEFACTO.."LAW"...and here I thought PROFILING was..umm..NOT 'Okay'...
And..then.."TRANSPARENCY"..WOAH NELLY! What Obama has done with THAT LIE...is...STUNNING in its arrogance..
Look...I voted for CANDIDATE OBAMA..but President Obama..is FAILING..he has SPIT..literally...SPIT..in the faces of his ACTUAL.."MANDATE"...more and more the NEW "EXCUSE"..to replace the "its Only Been (X) Months" excuse..is becoming..'Where is the Obama Generation" and these PUFF PIECES that CONSISTANTLY..fail to recognize that SO many X-ers AND Y-ers...and EVEN some BOOMERS...voted for the man..FOR..his PROMISE..to RETURN OUR CIVIL LIBERTIES TO US...thats why..for example..the "NO" on Telecom immunity 'Group' on his OWN website..was..and may still..be the BIGGEST one..20,000 plus..and he SPIT on us...and that was the COMING ATTRACTIONS..the Preview...and tis getting WORSE..not BETTER...just ask anyone at the Pittsburgh G-20 Protests..those "Week Knee'd Progressives" had their FREE SPEECH DROWNED OUT BY..MILITARY..."SOUND CANNONS"...CAMOUFLAGED MEN WITHOUT BADGES...DRAGGING A KID INTO AN UNMARKED CAR AND SPEEDING AWAY...and WHERE..is our CONSTITUTIONAL SCHOLAR?
So...I a SICK and TIRED of all the APOLOGISTS..the APPEASERS...who..MOCK those that DEMAND that a Man actually KEEP his PROMISES...and frankly..HIS OATH OF OFFICE...
The simple TRUTH is..the "WEAK KNEE'D PROGRESSIVES" are the ones that simply GO ALONG...in TRUE BELIEVER fashion...accepting ANYTHING..any amount of LIES..pointing to ONE Promise 'Kept' while 20 OTHERS.."DISSAPEAR"...
Nope! OBAMA LIED..simple as that..he will NOT win again..thisis the MOMENT for a 3rd party...Obama is JUST another Corporate Slickster...just the BEST one YET!
Slamlander
"So...I a SICK and TIRED of all the APOLOGISTS..the APPEASERS...who..MOCK those that DEMAND that a Man actually KEEP his PROMISES...and frankly..HIS OATH OF OFFICE...
"
Sort of like GW Bush? There was no promise that he managed to keep and no Constitutional right that he managed leave unviolated.
halfradiol
I would prefer that we leave Afghanistan completely. It pains me to realize how brutally the Taliban will treat their own countrymen and women once they regain power (if they do), but unless and until a consortium of powerful nations get together and agree to jointly intervene militarily in any country which is abusing its citizens there is little that the U.S. should do about it.
No one from anywhere along the political spectrum could disagree that brutal treatment of a country's citizens is out of order; no one should disagree that a group of powerful nations acting together could do something about that. No one who wishes this country well can, in good conscience, bitterly oppose this or any other President, who is trying to do the right thing. Today it is the right wing which is spewing lies and hatred about this administration-----from health care to foreign policy. It has allowed its blind hatred to blot out reason. We do not want to go back to the hateful days of the Father Coughlins and the Gerald L. K. Smiths, and the vicious anti-Semitism of Henry Ford and his Dearborn Independent. It almost seems like the fringe people would prefer a Hitler like figure to lead us. I think that Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and the like learned their craft at the feet of Joseph Goebbels.
RobLACa
"Today it is the right wing which is spewing lies and hatred about this administration-----from health care to foreign policy. It has allowed its blind hatred to blot out reason"
Go to hell with your lies. You care to back up your words with your life? How about some facts or the truth? You can't and you won't you hateful little coward.
"It almost seems like the fringe people would prefer a Hitler like figure to lead us."
What are you talking about, you commie fa$$ots got that right now with this smug arrogant betch in the White House. How stupid can you be? Dumbo is proven liar and a complete fraud. He hasn't saved or created $hit. Rush has an accuracy rating of 99.3% and you traitors can't stand being proven wrong and exposed by Beck, Rush or any AMERICAN myself included. a registered democratic AMERICAN.tHE PARTY OF DEMOCRATS ARE TRAITORS TO THIS cOUNTRY AND OUR CONSTITUTION. Their hate and lies had the opposite effect on me. It awoke me from my ignorance and but an end to 16 years of blindly voting straight democratic.
Democrats are the party of perpetual fraud,
"until a consortium of powerful nations get together and agree to jointly intervene militarily in any country which is abusing its citizens there is little that the U.S. should do about it."
DEMOCRATS ARE ABUSING THE AMERICAN CITIZENS AND ITS ABOUT TIME WE DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT AND THAT IS WHY DEMOCRATS ARE SCARED AND SMEARING THOSE WHO ATTEND TEA PARTIES AND LYING ABOUT THOSE WHO EXPOSE THAT MARXIST PUNK DISGRACING THE WHITE HOUSE AND DESTROYING OUR ECONOMY, OUR COUNTRY AND THE LIVES OF AMERICANS.
2010 AND 2012 CANNOT COME QUICK ENOUGH.
halfradiol
Wow............really hit a nerveRobLACa..........extremist views will get you nowhere...............unless you want another Uganda (under Idi Amin) or Russia (under Stalin) or Germany (under Hitler). Wake up and smell the ashes of the bodies you'd burn in the crematoria.
NYUKULELE
The Tea Baggers won't have to rise up and take anything down (as if they could). This plan is going to bankrupt the country (unless you're a banker or arms merchant). This will be the same corrupt few getting rich as always profit on war.
This is Vietnam all over again. ( I speak as a veteran.) It's the collapse of the Soviet Union all over again. All more troops will do is provide more targets. There is no strategy to win. There is no way to win.
Obama (who I voted for) is pathetic. I thought we were getting a leader. Instead we got a puppet who is a good orator.
ndspinelli
nyukulele, We both voted for Obama and we both know he said, during the campaign, he would prosecute this war. It is surreal that people who voted for Obama castigate him for doing what he said he would do.
NYUKULELE
Since the president has failed to uphold his promises on other fronts, is it surreal to hope that he might continue that trend and refute the war mongering? Otherwise, he's just another cheap political whore, doing the bigging of his moneyed masters, as he's done since taking office. He might be smart, but he's a moral dolt.
Georealist
I'm very skeptical of this approach...and my take on Gelb is that it was leaked to him because he's an Administration mouthpiece. It certainly raises several issues...
1. 2 to 3 years REALLY means about 1 full year...Winters are over six months..Basically enough time to see 3 to 4 thousand soldiers killed in this sitting duck "hearts and minds" approach...and not enough time to convince Afghans that a governement force won't fold in 60 days once the Americans leave..
2. The problem lies in the Pakistani no man lands...huge ill defined, mountainous bad lands that serve as retreat and infiltration conduits for insurgents. You can't get 'em unless you hunt 'em down and kill 'em! Hearts and minds is village by village win the populace over approach. It won't work.
3. This is a poorly thought out strategy by McChrystal that relies on the Iraqi model...it won't tranfer well...if at all. Obama is once again a President who can't make the bold, decisive move
(eg, Iran...)..his 3 month delay is really a 9 month delay..It will be past March 2010 before anything of consequence takes place...
In the next 2 years the US troop deaths will top 5000...and the Pakistanis will bide their time until we leave..pretending to do something while planning a post Occupation strategy of Afghan (Taliban look alikes) accomodation.
Hotfrostins
Wow, you have all the answers for how this is going to play out.To bad Bush didnt have you in his cabinet. You are so sure you know what will happen even with a renewed commitment and plan of attack. Your crystal ball has been working overtime and now you want to share all your doom and gloom. Unfortunately like all wars, this one is frought with unpredictability and unforseen circumstances which could turn the tide in either direction. I trust this administration and the General to understand and recognize when and if this war becomes unwinable and worthy of withdrawl.
Gerarddm
Obama is trying make the best out of the very bad hand played before him by Bush43 in general, and Afghanistan in particular. We'll see how sharp a player he really is this next year.
Georealist
The Afghan war is Obamas War..remember..??? This was the one HE thought was the correct one to fight. If Obama didn't like the Bush strategy he could have changed it months ago..remember?? Obama replaced the Bush Afghan Commander of Forces with McChrystal...remember??? This blaming of the idiot Bush needs to take a backseat to the realities of what this President has done and is doing...The buck stops with him..this liberal guilt mongering and blaming is typical. Obama is responsible and has been for nearly a year..He is the President..not Bush.
Slamlander
Only one word: WRONG!
Look at a Calendar, it started with Bush43, it was run by Bush43, its was FUBAR by Bush43. As much as many of us agreed that it was needed, Bush43 ran it into the ground. Had Bush43 not gotten distracted by Iraq (which was nicely contained, BTW) Afghanistan would have been over already.
oliverckerr
The way to defeat Taliban. wipe out al Qaeda, and give the Afghanistan people a chance to have their country not overrun with terrorists is to occupy the poppy fields, as the opium poppy is what makes Afghanistan such an attractive place for self proclaimed war lords, and others.
The following essay is my Afghanistan Strategy, as a candidate for president of United States. Happy Thanksgiving.
The issue is the Afghanistan monopoly on the world's opium poppy which is distilled into heroin right on the farm! That is the only issue, driving every thing!
Every time you pull up at a Stop and Go in America, to get gas, or a coffee, or cigarettes, outside a few feet away from the door someone is hanging out. That person is dealing crack from Columbia, or heroin, from opium poppy grown in Afghanistan.
This unremarked criminal harmony is taking place from sea to shining sea. When Barky Obama's oldest daughter comes home from school with an ever so slight droop in her eyes, from a morning snort with one of her friends, then maybe our president will get wise!
When more than one million pre-teen and early teen agers are getting into heroin, telling themselves, "I'm in control, I only use twice a week," then you will begin to see the flowering of out-of-control crime someone bound to the drug is willing to commit, to get their drug. The unnecessary mayhem we are soon to be facing, brought on by ignoring the real issue, which is the opium.
We can occupy all the poppy fields, and pay the farmers cash in advance (CIA). That must be our policy!
I dedicate this post to our troops in harm's way, and all of those decent people who seek a rational sensible approach to defeating the Taliiban and al Qaeda, the original reason we went into Afghanistan.
This is an open letter to president Obama, his, The Daily Beast watchers, and of course the readers of this page.
Here is the Afghanistan Solution, the strategy we need, what we must do, how to do it, and why, and what I, an independent candidate for president am going to do upon election to our highest office, a happenstance that in today's volatile economy, cannot be ruled out.
The American people are bound to find out when I wrote this essay. The question is: how many more will die between this day and that?
In the event president Obama decides to withdraw from Afghanistan, upon the success or failure of his flawed military strategy, it will be on behalf of his reelection, not because withdrawing is the smart thing to do.
Upon my election we will be immediately going back to Afghanistan, in the event the President pulls us out without solving the opium poppy issue, as the heroin for sale on every street corner in America does constitute a threat to our freedom and life.
Now to the Afghani solution:
We adopt this opium poppy strategy, explained below, or we risk another terrorist attack in America, rivalng the 9 / 11 attack, because the money needed to make another attack will come from the sale of the opium / heroin around the world.
Were that the only issue on the table it would be good enough reason for your close attention! White House officials involved in the ongoing Afghanistan deliberations should carefully consider what is here revealed!
The key to winning Afghanistan and Pakistan, to dissolving al Qaeda and Taliban, is controlling the opium the Afghanis meticulously grow. On this planet, world wide, opium is the grand poppa of all opiates. That dirt-cheap heroin readily bought every day on the streets of Manhattan and Washington DC, on the streets of Kabul, and by the barrack gates where our tropps are billited, began it's life a sleepy Pashtun poppy, milked in Afghanistan, oceans away.
That 17% pure heroin bag; available on select street corners in every major city in the western world, started out an opium poppy grown in Afghanistan. You first saw the rich Afghanistan poppy fields in The Wizard of Oz.
93% of the world's opium is grown and refined into heroin right on the Afghani farms!
They Afghanis are not such a backward unsophisticated country as rigid status quo bureaucrats are apt to paint them. The farmers grow the highest quality most potent opium that yields the most heroin, world wide! Similar to our Iowa farmer's ability to grow bountiful crops of corn.
Bill Gates must marvel at their opium / heroin market share. Monopoly!
The poppy crop is irreplaceable, worldwide; a blessing for all sides, especially us, because controlling the opium poppy fields means we will have taken over the main source of income for all the barbarian Taliban, the terrorist al Qaeda operations in all the neighboring countries, and all of the Western Hemisphere cartels and subtle European drug dealerships.
This must be our focus. Why does our government fail to see this. Why does our military allow the Afghani convoys carrying tons of heroin to pass the check points?
The heroin lifeblood for terrorists and drug cartels is smuggled out of Afghanistan, throughout Europe, with tons, tons going by plane and ship to South America where, repackaged, the heroin's origin is disguised so no one gets wise; and from there, routed to Mexican cartels, and from Mexico, into United States, to be sold in our ghettos and suburban neighborhoods and school yards.
For the cartels this wholesale heroin represents billions of dollars in retail business. Billions of underground criminal, and terrorist dollars, our school yards only one of their retail outlets!
Knowing this, why does our military ignore the convoys of trucks laden with heroin to pass?
The key to stuffing Taliban and al Qaeda, eradicating all of their corruption of Afghanistan, is to choke the opium supply the Afghan farmers are world wide famous for; choke the supply which would wipe out the opium / heroin smuggling trade; and choke their criminal customers on our side of the sea.
We don't have 68,000 troops in uniform, stationed in South America, chopping down the Columbian jungle to get at the cocaine plantations. That is not happening, and won't. But we do have 68,000 troops stationed in Afghanistan, 30,000 more on the way and the opium poppy stratgegy carefully explained here will SAVE MOST OF THEIR LIVES.
Surely, we can agree we do not want to see any more American lives lost or blood shed.
The Taliban's and al Qaeda's end in the opium/heroin trade nets millions of dollars, peanuts in the big picture, falafel on the table for Taliban's "freedom fighters" billited over the border, in Pakistan; and money for the families of al Qaeda's suicide bombers throughout the Middle East.
For the international criminal drug cartels the Afghanistan opium / heroin wholesale / retail is between 500 and 600 billion illigitimate unwashed tax free dollars per annum!
Without the opium / heroin trade, al Qaeda and Taliban operatiuons would be decimated. The Western Hemisphere drug cartels would lose their hundreds of billions of dollars and would be facing their own recession. Street corner drug dealers would be signing up for unemployment checks. All of the illegal heroin in the United States would dry up as the pipeline for the heroin would be destroyed!
That is exactly what we want.
In Iraq, whoever is running the roads, wins. In Afghanistan, Taliban also controls the roads, so every patrol is a potential death drive. The opium dollar is fueling both the war and the Taliban structure, enabling them to strike!
Afghanistan is a poor country with a rich culture. Whoever controls the opium harvest will have battled for that right. The hardy Afghani farmers get only enough to live decently and plant their fresh poppy.
The Taliban "freedom fighters" would leave for home in a heartbeat, were they not getting fed and allowed to while away the days smoking the black Afghani hashish. No food no money no fight. The newly chosen Taliban "leader" has a payroll he must meet. The opium proceeds cover the Taliban payroll!
President Obama is our Commander-in-Chief, the civilian boss in charge of our ribbon shirts, but General Stanley McChrystal and his military bureaucrats, and all the retired cable news talking heads grousing every day are all misreading and misleading the Afghanistan war.
Wars are fought for economic reasons. The poppy fields fuel criminal enterprize world wide. Congtrol the poppy fields and all the criminal activity world wide is thwarted!
A recent Wall Street Journal article: Top Troop Request Exceeds 60,000 by Peter Spiegal and Yochi Dreazen stated,
"White House officials familiar with deliberations said that while some elements of the Taliban were inclined to harbor al Qaeda, which operated freely in Afghanistan through 2001, other members were focused on Afghanistan's internal politics and much less likely to support the international terror group."
Oh! The taliban is more interested in securing seats on the local neighbor hooded school boards? Hardly! their Afghanistan infrastructure has one purpose: controlling the opium poppy during and after the harvest!
The Taliban differs from al Qaeda in one respect. Taliban are criminal drug dealers hiding behind religion and oppressing the local people they believe is the key to their continuing success in controlling the opium / heroin, whereas Al Qaeda smuggles heroin to fund sensless political attacks throughout the Middle East, and to plan another 9/11 which cannot be accomplished without many millions of dollars.
A few years ago a Taliban leader came to Texas. Whatever the official reason for the "trip," talks about a potential oil pipe line, the real reason was to have some lengthy conversations on throw away cell phones with Mexican and Columbian Cartel officials about shipping refined heroin instead of tell tale smelly opium. The Columbians got into the act because no one would suspect heroin originating in faraway Afghanistan would be round-about smuggled into South America, and from there, north to Mexico and then into USA.
The oil pipe line talks were a hoax. The Taliban came to Texas to solidify the opium / heroin pipeline, moolah for the mullah.
We don't need to build an Afghanistan army.The unalighned unofficial Afghani militias know how to fight.
With a little strucure and dollar support at the bottom, at the farm level, the Afghani people will protect themselves. Abraham Lincoln established a sea embargo to win the Civil War. Without supplies by ship from Europe, the Confederate Army was doomed.
Our troops get killed on border patrols between Pakistan and Afghanistan to protect our way of life across the ocean. Yet a stone's throw away, Mother Nature's opium is grown for the criminal and international terrorist's gain? How can our military be so dumb as to allow this to go on, creating millions of terrorist jihad dollars?
The only thing going across that Pakistan / Afghanistan border are paid fighters and convoys of drug smugglers hauling their cargo. The Afghan opium is key to everything happening there!
We own the opium and control the poppy fields and the whole country is ours. We don't need the roads. We can resupply our troops dug in with night time helicopter delivery!
Opium control by us means renegade Taliban, al Qaeda terrorists, and warlords are on the road again. Skedaddled or killed.
(I like the idea of not killing anybody.)
The White House failure to respond to this plan will lead to loss of American lives, and seal the impossibility of Barack Obama being reelected to a 2nd term in our Highest office.
Though i am a candidate for president and bring to the table a Vehicle for World Peace, my candidacy is not the issue; only what "eye" say is the issue. The opium production and our clear ability to control that opium, is the main and only topic.
Our guys must begin digging foxholes in every opium field, making Cash In Advance deals CIA with the Afghanis we are purchasing their opium crop for top dollar, in raw opium form, while paying them rent for digging our fox holes on the edges of their poppy fields.
The farmers won't have to brew the black sap into a dangerous snowy heroin powder, so they are poppy plentiful, an ounce or two included for the house, compliments of us.
Raw opium isn't dangerous. You won't kill yourself smoking opium the way you can so easily overdose from a heroin syringe, so we want their whole opium crop raw, just like unefined brown sugar, and we will pay the refined opium heroin price which is similar to tacking on an additional 65 cents to a bushel of Iowa corn.
The war momentum will immediately shift! Once we are digging in on the poppy fields, everything changes because without the proceeds from smuggling the heroin, the Taliban will whither away!
Instead of Taliban's "freedom fighters" picking us off every other day as we patrol the dangerous Afghanistan border, we will occupy the opium poppy fields and wait for Taliban to show up sould they dare, our invited guests for a steel jacket lunch.
The key to Afghan quality of life for Taliban, thugs without a country when we defeat them, to shipping their kids off to the Ivy League is based on who gets to stash the cash from Afghanistan's opium crop.
Would that be Karzai and his drug dealing family in Kabul? As soon as we instigate the above strategy karzai and his government officials will protest because they also benefit from the opium / heroin smuggling and sales.
At the same time, on the diplomatic front we ought to push to reunite Pakistan with India. This will initiate a furtther eviction of Taliban by the Pakistani people. For Pakistan, rejoining India means freedom, food, jobs, education, and a better life. Only the Pakistani military bureaucrats are against this idea, and their minds could be changed with a passport, an SUV, and a forty acre guarantee in Montana.
Instead of knee jerk reactions to my Hunt For The Red October reference to 'Montana," just get creative and plant that idea in Pakistan newspapers! Now is the time to wag the Pakistan India dog! regardless what India andd pakistan do, we need to put this idea on the table and get the people talking about it!
Sad, these policies, purchasing Afghanistan's opium, piecing off the Pak military, and reuniting Pakistan with India may be too progressive for the president, and for his Secretary of State Hillary Clintstone, too, but perhaps not.
Certainly this wagging of the Pakistan-India dog will be incentive for the Paks to evict the Taliban and that is what we want! The Paks have nothing going for them under the Taliban gun.
Don't you know the Taliban bribed the Pak military for long-term safe journey with the opium money. That is how they established their foothold in Pakistan! Opium money! Too bad our President is surrounded by bureaucrats who wouldn't know the scent of an opium house were they standing at the door.
Many Taliban soldiers will change colors of their turbans and meld into the crowd as soon as they realize the opium harvest has been taken away from them. It isn't about religion, or the neighbor hooded school board, or how many times a day you pray to Big Al (Allah to you), it is about the opium / heroin and millions of dollars in cash! Seeing as you can eat three hot meals a day in the streets of Mumbai for less than a dollar, one million dollars = one million days divided by x number of Taliban "grunts."
In Afghanistan, we need to get busy, prepare the opium fields, create comfortable foxholes guarding every poppy acre, booby trap the brush surrounding with a wide safe swath to the farmhouse, and make it clear to the farmers, by shelling out CIA Cash In Advance, we are purchasing their whole raw opium crop but paying top refined heroin price, so the farmers are with us! Less work and more money is a super incentive for the farmers.
Taliban, Al Qaeda and warlords will have to exit their caves and cross the poppy fields instead of picking us off with their remotely detonated roadside attacks on roads they control. Retired military may be opposed to this poppy war, but hard pressed to explain why they support that opium trade just the way it is.
We should be purchasing the whole poppy crop, and negotiating fair and square and in advance how much sticky black sap can be extrapolated from each plant. The plants, ripening by day, are the draw for Taliban, al Qaeda and warlords to show, the only way for them to go, taking on our troops in the poppy fields where we will defeat them!
When they come down the yellow brick Afghanistan road we can sting them from above. A couple drone attacks will turn them all around in their tracks. No opium no paychecks.
The extra virgin first opium milking is scheduled to start tomorrow. Our enemies know that but will be powerless! The farmers are out of the picture as they are already paid in advance. At 4:00 a.m. we begin snipping every plant two inches above ground with two handle bush trimmers, chop chop, just like that. At dawn, we start stuffing wood chippers and spread the soil with the chopped up results to fertilize next year's crop.
So good-bye Taliban grunt, and don't step on any land mines going home.
A couple million heroin addicts in Europe will be going cold turkey! The Mexican and Columbian drug cartels will be out of heroin, and lose hundreds of millions of criminal dollars in projected sales, reason enough for everything we do to control the poppy fields.
Regardless bureaucrats will be viciously against this operation. The status quo is how the rigid government's bureaucrats always want to go.
But with a cash infusion at the farm level, Afghanistan will begin to flourish. The Afghani people will start rebuilding their own country, without corruption from above, roads and schools decided by tribal leaders in the farm districts where the poppy is grown, with a helping hand from us.
We must also purchase their whole marijuana and hasish crop, and either sell that to the shops in Amsterdam or bring each of the harvests to USA for medicinal purposes. Otherwise we run the risk that that crop, too becomes an income for the terrorists. Afghani marijuana is the most potent in the world, best for relief of chemotherapy's side effects.
Regardless what Obama's surrounding bureaucrats say, we occupy the opium fields, purchase the whole crop, and all the heroin sold every day in our country will dry up! Young kids in poor neighborhoods will not become addicted to heroin. Don't we want that? Don't you? The opium / heroin dry up is guaranteed because all of the other countries where opium grows, they only have planted enough for their own home land and neighboring clientele.
The opium pays al Qaeda's world salary. But who controls the opium wins the terrorist war, world wide! The above poppy strategy will accomplish our mission! Those opposed want things the way they are. Follow the money, Mr President. In the event we ignore the terrorist's cash cow, and leave, al Qaeda, opium rich, will have the funds to execute all of their murderous plans. Wasn't the twin towers brought down and their Pentagon attack enough for you! You inherited that issue! The opium trade paid for the 9/11 tragedy! We cannot risk allowing that to repeat. We cannot!
Unless Obama wants it guaranteed before the end of his first year that he is a lame duck one term president, then ignore what eye say. When there are fifty thousand steet corner heroin dealers in USA earning a living dealing "smack" then what are you going to do about the new generation of criminal entrepreneurs, throw them in jail for working in a jobless economy. What will that cost?
Happy Thanksgiving.
candidate for president
michaelslevinson.com
Georealist
Oliver! They let you out of the restraints! Allright! Keep at it...before the Community Organizer is thru you may actually get the vote from some non-felons.
Slamlander
A simpler solution is to allow Big Pharma to buy the opium. Problem solved!
oliverckerr
We purchase the whole crop. Then we can resell it to big pharma.
michaelslevinson.com
Johnnyappleseed
Mikey! Too long again, now you have had, we are taking your keyboard away, for three days, no more posts until Monday and I mean it.
One more time and you may well lose your candidacy for presidente'
oliverckerr
See the jobs filing dirtbag.
michaelslevinson.com
Martyz42
Well he could recall Westmorland & Haig as well (Westmorland is dead) & they could all stand up & ask for more troops.... THE WAR IS A JOKE & CAN NOT BE WON HELLO!!!!!!!
Or he could be honest & tell the American people about a certain pipe line through the country & that the mountains are loaded with gold mines, he could be that honest & admit the only thing we care abut is the pipeline & the gold but he won't be.....He will come up wit some gibberish about National Security & Afghan freedom & protecting females & so on & so forth with just plain BS...... (He could also say "look folks, the war is lost & was lost from day one & the only reason I am sending more troops to die & spending more money we don't have is to help me get re-elected in 2012, but he won't be that honest)
Georealist
Where's the gold? Who's assayed any potential mine site? Where's the pipeline going to be built? Give us route details and the developers...please..we are waiting..Earth to Marwhatever......
Afghanistan is lost before it's won..but we don't really need to layer on a lot of paranoid fantasy to oppose it....
CONFUSIONISM
Will tell you all something. Let's be positive, not everyone makes decisions because of greed. One thing for sure is i wish we had more spontaneous support from other Nations, because dismantling and degrading terrorism does not only help us Americans, but it helps globally, Obama means well, and there is nothing he would wish for, but, to be able to defeat thins nonsense terrorist, that all they pride themselves with is harmd and death. A place were moral values does not exist. I am sure there are plenty of people out there working really hard to obtain an Education, better jobs, better Careers and overall a better future. All of this things are necessary for the same reason Better future for all in the long run. Yes, there is grid, there is within self best interest, but that is never going away. For one, we live in a very competitive World in many dimensions and guess what War is one of them, i support the plan, as long as it is accomplishing a better future, and as long as we are being cautious, and measuring progress by every measure. There is nothing that i personally want and that is to Never see another World Trade Center Twin Tower Collapse due to imorals and one sided minded terrorists that have no sense for Humanity existence. Overall Folks, once and for all it is time to stand up to this MF terrorists. I wish that at the end Our Mission is accomplished, to a point where this people deterriorrate to the point of 0 existence. They are just taking needed space for people that do value life and that have a sense that now that we are here we should be all we can be, but never a terrorist. let's get rid of all of them.
Geronimo
as Leslie Gelb observes, the Paks want us to risk our troops to fight the Taliban while also wanting to aid the Taliban for curlicued reasons of their own. This makes me feel that it's high time cut Holbrooke loose to
talk in the Holbrooke manner to both the main Pakistani and Afghan Taliba bigwigs directly involved in this posturing. Let's
sideline the Washington tail in all this--the White house staff, the Defence Department high priests et alii, and leave the play
to Holbrooke in the field (he's sufficiently traiaed to keep in touch with those that count). Lets stop the bureaucratiic shuffling and get down to business which should be to do right by the Afpak situation while also that of the American taxpayer.
tl1970
how can we win in Afganistan?
who we will win?
there are millions of Afgans hostile to U.S.
and no defined entity to win...
all is tribal in Afganistan
P.S. nice deals/coupons site
-- Electronics-Links.com ---
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