Aug 08 2009
Troop surge on the way in Afghanistan
So Barack Obama announced today that he is working on a new plan for Congress over handling the war in Afghanistan and neighboring country Pakistan. The plan will be released fully by September 24th, but administration officials, speaking anonymously, have already begun to leak a few details over the report.
“Because we believe the American people deserve clarity on our progress in Afghanistan, we have compiled a comprehensive set of metrics based on the objectives laid out by the president and informed by a stringent intelligence review. We have briefed members of Congress and their staffs over the past few weeks. Work has already started on the first quarterly round of measurements and we expect to continue engaging Congress in the months ahead.”
The data will be organized under nine objectives. Luckily the comprehensive set of graphs and statistics will also be color-coded — red, yellow and green — according to how well the objective is progressing. I mean it would be a shame if Congress actually had to read the reports or bills that they’re dealing with before putting together a soundbite, right Steny Hoyer?
Another interesting detail that leaked was about the rumors of a troop surge in Afghanistan.
“On the military side, there have been 21,000 additional troops requested,” an official said. “The president has approved the movement of those troops, and we’re going to track and make sure they arrived. On the civilian side, there’s an order of magnitude less than 21,000 civilians who have been requested, and we’re going to track their progress.”
A troop surge of 21,000 in Afghanistan… I have to admit I cannot wait to see this report. Hopefully it will answer a couple of my questions, such as, what the hell are we still doing over there?
When will we be done in Afghanistan? We are well on the way to having the most American casualties of the campaign so far this year and there are no signs of a U.S. exit anytime soon.
Remember when “low profile” was the order from Washington? No heavy construction, turn over everything we build to the people of Afghanistan when we left? The 3-story solid concrete $17 million barracks under construction at Bagram Air Base (complete with Burger King and Pizza Hut, five mess halls, and living quarters for 20,000 people) does not seem very low profile.
Here’s my thing, I object to the U.S. objective in Afghanistan. Terrorism simply isn’t that big of a threat to justify how much money and human life we are sacrificing over there. Car accidents kill way more people than terrorists do and even if terrorism really was a big threat in the U.S. this seemingly endless occupation is only going to breed a new generation of terrorists.
“War on Terror,” what is that anyways? Terrorism is a tactic, and as Ron Paul pointed out, you can’t fight a war against a tactic. The “War on Terror” doesn’t even make sense from a grammatical standpoint.
At the very least it should be interesting to see what is contained in this report. I’m especially curious to see what nine objectives Barack Obama has for Afghanistan, although I don’t expect that I’ll agree with them.
