Time to leave Afghanistan?
Conservative columnist George Will ignites a debate by saying the U.S. can't afford to rebuild a weak nation
PFC Steiner scans ridge-lines with night vision in Afghanistan.
(Corbis/Chad Hunt)
It's time to get out of Afghanistan, said George Will in The Washington Post. Even increasing U.S. troop strength from 21,000 to 68,000 would leave the coalition far short of what it needs to defeat an entrenched insurgency. Instead, "America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent Special Forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters."
This is no time to "wave the bloody shirt," said Frederick W. Kagan in National Review. The only way for George Will to make the claim that the coalition can't win is by "rudely disparaging" the contributions of the British, the Afghan security forces, and our other coalition partners. "The surge of forces that some (including me) are proposing" will simultaneously hurt the insurgency and bridge the gap to a time when Afghan government forces can do more on their own.
Will's prescription was bound to anger the "national security wing of the Republican Party," said Marc Ambinder in The Atlantic, especially as it comes as the U.S. commander, Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, asks for more troops to turn around the war. The question is whether a fiscal conservative like Will can get people to buy his argument that nation-building is implausible, and that even trying is unaffordable. "After five years of Democrats calling for an end to operations in Iraq, I guess we've come full circle."
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7 Comments
Posted by Johnny Reb, Tuesday, September 1, 2009, 1:44 pm It's not time to leave Afghanistan just yet...we've not nuked the place just yet. Lay waste to it til the point that Hiroshima looks like a sunburn, then we're gone. For good. Just like the savages that inhabit the hellhole now.
Posted by Jay Bee, Tuesday, September 1, 2009, 5:25 pm Johnny Reb Yeah right. Good thing you're only posting on discussion boards not running foreign / military policy.
Posted by Ali Raza, Wednesday, September 2, 2009, 8:03 am Yes Mr Obama You are right its time to leave afghanistan because this time is very good to leave afghanisztan and protect our value in the world if your are not leave to Afghanistan may be next 2 years United states is only united not a state ok mr obama you says am i right if i am right just say your are a nice gay bcuz i am also follow your words change we need change we need change we need cnange we need
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Posted by Ernie Sandoval, Wednesday, September 23, 2009, 8:25 am George Will is absolutely right we are now victims of an ongoing militray industrial conspiracy to extend a war which we can't win and have already lost. The further loss of our and other countrie's young soldiers is murder the pretense upon which the warprofiteering military has based this war is total bullshit. Let the hired mercinaries do their work, not our innocent kids. Bring them all home and let the Afghani's resume the centuriesold tribal conflicts without another single young soldier killed and sacrificed for nothing.
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