Having said that after reading a story today I do have to give Obama some credit:
U.S. Marines suffered their first casualties of a massive new military campaign Thursday as they engaged in sporadic gunbattles along 55 miles of Taliban-controlled heartland in southern Afghanistan. One Marine was killed and several others were injured or wounded on the first full day of the assault, the largest military operation in Afghanistan since the fall of Taliban government in 2001.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200...
Now, this is the main sticking point for a large percentage of folks like me to more escalation in the middle-east. We simply feel that too many young American lives are being wasted for some elusive, never attained goal. Why has it taken so long with so few results?
Unlike our previous "leader" though, while escalating in Afganistan our President seems to have clear-cut goals for success and is spelling them out:
The offensive will test the Obama administration's new strategy of holding territory and letting the Afghan government sink roots in Helmand province. The insurgency has proven particularly resilient in this area, where foreign troops have never before operated in such large numbers.
President Barack Obama told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday that he has a "very narrow definition of success when it comes to our national security interests" in the region. "And that is that al-Qaida and its affiliates cannot set up safe havens from which to attack Americans."
"I think we can measure it by whether or not they've got training camps where people are coming in and getting trained in explosives, being sent out and directed in carrying out terrorist activity," Obama said in Washington.
An immediate goal, the military says, is to clear away insurgents before the nation's Aug. 20 presidential election. Southern Afghanistan is a Taliban stronghold but also a region where Afghan President Hamid Karzai is seeking votes from fellow Pashtun tribesmen. Without such a large Marine assault, the Afghan government would likely not be able to set up voting booths to which citizens could safely travel.
In addition to short-term goals the Obama Administration has also set down benchmarks for long-term success:
The U.S. will have an opportunity to help develop alternate livelihoods for farmers whose opium poppy crops bankroll the Taliban. Helmand province is the world's largest opium poppy-producing area.
Obama told the AP he wants to help ensure that Afghans "are benefiting from development and improved agricultural systems and education systems and health care systems."
He also said Washington and its allies must build up the Afghan national army and police and help Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan secure their common border.
"The benchmarks of success that we've laid out are: Are we building an Afghan national army and police structure that can secure itself without the assistance of NATO forces or U.S. forces? Is Pakistan able to maintain its borders so that al-Qaida or affiliates aren't operating there?" Obama said.
Now, I do not know ultimately how history will judge trying to salvage something in Afganistan this late in the game. I personally still lean towards thinking we should just wrap it up and come home. Maybe it just stems from "War on Terror" fatigue.
I will say one thing for Barack Obama. The right keeps wanting to say how he is week in administering American foreign policy. While I am not sure if it will ultimately succeed now if the much more responsible approach of Barack Obama in determining both short-term goals and long-term benchmarks in Afganistan would have been pursued at the outset Osama bin-Laden may have been brought to justice and our operations in that country would have been completed years ago.
For all their bluster on "fiscal responsibility", "the economy", "strong foreign policy", and being "tough on the terrorists who attacked us" the Republicans have no right whatsoever in critisizing Obama. He inherited thier mess and is trying to clean it up.
Look at the massive failures of the Bush Administration in the middle-east and what they have cost. The mission in Afganistan which was the sole reason to be there was ignored so the money spent there during the Bush years was wasted. We had no buiness in Iraq, so that money too was wasted. Along with the young lives they they told us to "support".
Barack Obama has done more in his minimal time so far to support our troops with an exit strategy and a real plan to succeed and come home than the Bush Administration rubber-stamped by many Republicans in Congress who are now so critical of Obama did the whole time these wars were planned and concieved. They were too busy making money off of it.
I really hope this approach works now, but I really, really wish it would have been implemented years ago.
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