Coming Home at Last?
Asked if the United States might send still more troops to Afghanistan, if the Obama surge is not succeeding by year’s end, Vice President Joe Biden answered, “I do not believe so.”
So, that is it. Biden is saying the 100,000 U.S. troops in theater or on the way is our limit. If Kabul and the Afghan army fail with this investment of American forces, they will be permitted to fail. All the chips we are going to commit are now on the table.
And a series of critical deadlines is approaching.
By the end of August, all U.S. combat troops are to be out of Iraq. Only 50,000 “training troops” are to remain, but all U.S. forces are scheduled to be withdrawn by the end of 2011.
In December, a review takes place of Afghan war strategy. Next July, U.S. withdrawals are to begin, though, since naming Gen. David Petraeus as his field commander, President Obama and his cabinet have emphasized that the withdrawals will be “conditions-based.”
We will walk, not run, to the exit.
But if we are topping out in Afghanistan, and the U.S. troop presence in Iraq is already less than half of the 170,000 after the surge of 2007, it seems America is on her way out of both wars.
What did they accomplish — and at what cost?
Saddam and his Baathist regime were overthrown, the dictator was hanged, elections were held, and a government that reflects the will of a majority of Iraqis put in its place.
Cost to the United States: More than 4,200 U.S. dead, 35,000 wounded, $700 billion sunk. In the Islamic world, the Iraq War led to pandemic hostility toward America. At home, the war led to the rout of the Republicans and the election of an anti-war liberal Democrat.
If Obama is indeed leading America into socialism, the War Party that led us into Iraq can take a full measure of credit.
And what is the cost to the Iraqi people of a U.S. invasion and occupation and seven-year war, the end of which is nowhere in sight?
Perhaps 100,000 dead, half a million widows and orphans, 4 million refugees, half having fled their country, devastation of a Christian community that dated to the time of Christ and the ethnic cleansing of the Sunnis from Baghdad.
Four months after elections, they have no government, and bombs that kill dozens still go off daily. And, when the Americans leave, a civil and sectarian war may return. The breakup of Iraq along ethnic and religious lines remains a possibility. The price of liberation is high.
And what did the Iraqis do to deserve this? Did they attack us?
No. They had nothing to do with 9/11 and had complied with the U.S. demand to eliminate all weapons of mass destruction years before the U.S. Army stormed in to discover and destroy those weapons.
And we wonder why these ungrateful people hate us.
The Afghan War was, at its inception, a just war.
If the Taliban would not turn over bin Laden and those who plotted the mass murder of 3,000 Americans, we had a right to go in after him, as Woodrow Wilson had a right to send Gen. John Pershing into Mexico to find and kill Pancho Villa after he murdered Americans in New Mexico.
But after the defeat of the Taliban by the Northern Alliance, the overthrow of Mullah Omar and our failure to capture or kill bin Laden at Tora Bora, we decided to stay on and convert the most tribalized and xenophobic land on earth into an Islamic democracy and strategic ally.
We will soon enter the 10th year of this war. And though 100,000 U.S. and 50,000 NATO troops are committed, the Taliban are winning — because they are not losing. They are more numerous, more deadly and more resourceful than they have been since their ouster in 2001.
Even Gen. Stanley McChrystal said the war was a draw. And Biden says we have reached the limit of our commitment.
Thus, what we are looking at is endless bleeding, now running at 60 dead U.S. soldiers a month, with no American military or political leader willing to say when the bleeding will stop or the war will end.
And the home front is visibly eroding. A majority of Americans now believe the war is unwinnable or not worth the cost, and a growing minority in Congress wants out. Some NATO allies are departing. Others are setting deadlines for withdrawal.
As for the Afghans we leave behind, who committed themselves to America’s war, they will, when we depart, suffer the fate of the “harkis” in Algeria, the South Vietnamese army and boat people, and the Cambodians we left behind to the tender mercies of the Khmer Rouge.
Have the politicians, journalists and think-tank geniuses who dreamed up these wars suffered ignominy and disgrace?
Not at all. They are debating and devising a new war — with Iran.
Patrick Buchanan is the author, most recently, of Churchill, Hitler, and ‘The Unnecessary War,’ now available in paperback. COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM.
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SO what do you think will happen in Iraq when only the training troops are left? after all troops are out?
. . . the Cambodians we left behind to the tender mercies of the Khmer Rouge.
This is a flat out lie. The U.S. didn’t occupy Cambodia, or undertake to protect the Cambodians from the Khmer Rouge.
“The politicians, journalists and think-tank geniuses who dreamed up these wars” won both of them, in their terms. The middle class was impoverished, but they remain among the affluent elite. Israel has gotten to do whatever its expansionist right wing wants, and there as in Iraq and Afghanistan ridiculous imperial boundaries imposed by the British and the Turks to separate nations or lump them together to make them more ineffectual remain in place, and cause further problems because no one pay any attention to those root causes. War with Iran furthers all these aims. Meanwhile, while Mr. Buchanan rightly excoriates these people on foreign policy matters, in all issues domestic he supports them and their Republican allies, ensuring that the culture-war camel’s nose will continue wedging its way into the tent, dragging with it the ‘support our troops’ anti-’terror’ line will continue to prevail and bring with it more economically disastrous, deficit-’financed’ imperialist intervention that serves only the military-industrial complex and the Confederate militarist cult.
“Training troops”.
What the hell does that mean? And why does it take US official Military troops to do that?
During Vietnam days, I remember in the Green Beret camps here in the US, we’d train Thai soldiers (indeed, troops from all around the world).
Let’s pull our troops home. If we can’t spare the expense of sending our people to the borders with mexico or canada, then how in the world can we justify keeping them stationed in the asian-pacific and europe and the mideast, et al?
Also, let’s stop propping up our politician’s pet ideological projects worldwide. If our country had a hand in making the black ethnic population of the US impoverished financially and spiritually by propping them up, then let’s stop also trying to do that to poor countries around the world. Let’s get more intelligent about how we “help others”.
Re: obi juan “SO what do you think will happen in Iraq when only the training troops are left? after all troops are out?”
Best case – another Egypt. Run by an autocrat who has no love for the United States. But we could have had that in 2004 with sufficient bribes to the various factions.
It wudda been a lot cheaper too…
Does that mean all the “permanent” air bases in Iraq and Afghanistan will be closed?
@David Tomlin
RTFA. Buchanan never said that we “occupied” Cambodia, at least not in the sense that we occupy Iraq or Afghanistan. We did, however, conduct significant combat operations there against Communist forces both Vietnamese and Cambodian:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_Campaign
We also helped overthrow the Cambodian monarch Prince Sihanouk, and promised support to the government headed by Marshal Lon Nol, a promise we later, as we did in South Vietnam and Laos, reneged on.
So, yes, Buchanan is absolutely correct. lrn2history
When we do withdraw, let’s hope the overly compassionate geniuses in Wshington do not decide to allow a large flood of Afghan refugees into the U.S. After all, one of the stated grounds for fighting “over there” was so that we didn’t have to fight them here. Our track record with respect to Muslem political refugees has not been especially reassuring, whether from Aghanistan, Somalia, Palestine or Egypt (blind cleric anyone?). We certainly don’t need a pool of potential terrorists within our country. We have enough already.
Re: tbraton
Makes sense. Although perhaps we should create an immigration exception for all of the Iraqi Christians that have been harassed, persecuted, and driven out of the shining example of democracy that Iraq now is. (Thanks to the “Surge” of course.)
Withdrawl should not even be an option on the table. If we come home we appease the terrorists, and they will follow us home. We cannot let that happen, we cannot let the jihadists take the fight to our shores. We must stay strong like Reagan and win this war.
Nate Weinstein, face it. The only reason you support this war is because it was launched to protect Israel. “Appease the terrorists” my rear end. Bring the troops home, and put them on the border. When the Department of Homeland security was founded, I’m pretty sure homeland meant “USA” and not “Israel”.
Reagan had the wisdom to withdraw from Lebanon and not get sucked into the Mid East quicksand. Withdrawal is the only sane option left on the table. How good does it feel to “win” in Iraq with Bush’s Surge and then lose our entire country in the next election cycle.
Joseph Robinette Biden, who commits verbal gaffes (the horror, the horror!), is bang-on right about both theaters. A civil/sectarian war in Iraq may return after the departure of American forces? No: A civil/sectarian war WILL return! Biden’s partition idea was, and remains, the best solution for a “country” invented by a couple of British diplomats at the end of WWI.
As for AfPak, again, Biden’s view is the right one: Get the conventional forces the Hell outta there, and truncate the Taliban’s ability to play the reliable host to al Qaeda through drone strikes and Special Ops soldiering.
“Although perhaps we should create an immigration exception for all of the Iraqi Christians that have been harassed, persecuted, and driven out of the shining example of democracy that Iraq now is.”
Steve M: Although I am not religious, I would also make an exception for Iraqi Chritians and the one Afghan Christian (if he is still alive).
BTW, as if my response of yesterday rang a bell, there is a piece on the op-ed page of today’s NY Times by Seymour Topping, former correspondent for the Times, entitled “No Afghan Ally Left Behind.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/31/opinion/31topping.html?_r=1&ref=opinion The piece concludes: “And, if need be, we should offer asylum to anyone directly endangered for helping us. Having fought brutal wars in their countries to protect our interests, we owe them nothing less.”
Let Israel take over. Afghanistan, as well as Iraq, was fought for her, anyway.
Keith, yes Israel is our greatest friend and ally, but stating that it is the only reason I support this war is to protect Israel is insulting the intelligence of us all. Do you remember where you were when the world stopped turning on that September day? Do you rember where you were when this nation that we love fell under attack when a mighty sucker punch came flying in from somewhere in the back? Have you forgotten 9/11?
“…the election of an anti-war liberal Democrat.”
“If Obama is indeed leading America into socialism …”
Are you serious about either of these sentences?
Anti-war??
Maybe less pro-war than a neo-con but anti-war???
Did Obama ever pretend to be anti-war? Has ANY one since JFK been able to run for the highest office in the land and get taken seriously been ANTI-WAR??
I don’t think so.
Obama is a socialist …
Well I guess you could say he is a socialist in the sense that he practices the same form of socialism George W Bush, Clinton, GHW Bush and Reagan did–socialism for big business, socialism for military contractors.
Follow the money.
The healthcare bill was a transfer of taxpayer money to Big Health Insurance. If Mitt Romney … excuse me, Obama’s healthcare plan was a socialist takeover of healthcare why were big healthcare insurers and big pharma on board from day one?
Follow the money.
If Obama is a socialist why did he keep the same team that presided over the biggest transfer of taxpayer money to the finance industry in history?
Follow the money.
STOP following tired talking points and outdated ideology from your days on Crossfire if you want people who don’t drink the kool-aid to take you seriously.
Stop preaching to the choir and use some actual thought.
Nate Weinstein, 9/11 was because of Israel too!
Everytime we have a big big adventure to ward off some scary problem/people who are all a long long way away we leave a wrecked country and a whole bunch of people we actively encouraged to help us…finally we bug out and they suffer for it. the awakening guys in Iraq are gettting it big time now. GJ us. Chances are Iran will have a lot of influence in Iraq. The end result …not great for us.
Nate buddy if Israel is such a great ally and friend where are they in Iraq, Afghanistan or even on the Korean border?Where does your loyalty really lie?
“Have you forgotten 9/11?”
Is that really why we’re still in Afghanistan?
Really?
Is that really why we ever went into Afghanistan?
Really?
“9/11 was because of Israel too!”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks
The journalist Yosri Fouda of the Arabic television channel Al Jazeera reported that in April 2002, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed admitted his involvement, along with Ramzi Binalshibh, in the “Holy Tuesday operation”.[119][120][121] The 9/11 Commission Report determined that the animosity towards the United States felt by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the “principal architect” of the 9/11 attacks, stemmed “not from his experiences there as a student, but rather from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel”.[97]
Oh, and because ‘THEY HATE OUR FREEDOM’
I almost forgot …
Well we are different and the extreme elements in a number of places arn’t going to be fond of the US no matter what but the hate us for our freedoms is a silly argument. Firstly western Europe has a lot more freedoms if that is the word for extremists to hate. Osama should be alot fonder of us now if thats the theory as the US is chomping through freedoms at a furious rate. The Patriot Act, obvious lessening of the church/state separation, rendition, use of torture, lessening of Miranda rights(proposed)… we should be on their Xmas card list soon … but still they don’t seem to like us….
Look at Nate going on about how “Israel is our greatest ally”. The only reason he believes that is because he wants to. Israel is not our “greatest”, and barely an ally. It is an abusive parasite, who feeds of American tax dollars and military escapades.
Pat…
Suggesting Obama is an “Anti war liberal Democrat” President makes me want to Laugh.