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Subject: Is The War Really In Afghanistan As Obama Repeatedly Insists?
CJH    10/12/2008 11:58:19 AM
Obama and Democrat critics of our invasion of Iraq claim, I believe falsely, that there is no good reason for our having gone into Iraq. They claim that the "war" is in Afghanistan" but they don't explain why that is. They state a half truth and expect us to automatically fill in what's missing to make their sophistry sounding statement seem reasonable. But how can it be true that Afghanistan is the sole locus of the war on terror? Not one 9/11 hijacker was an Afghani. 15 were from Saudi Arabia, 2 were from the Emirates, one was from Egypt and one was from Lebanon. 9/11 was planned and executed by Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda become involved in Afghanistan through the Soviet occupation. The war isn't against Afghani religious extremists, it is against Al Qaeda which is international. The "war" was in Saudi Arabia for Al Qaeda after 1991 and not in Afghanistan, yet Al Qaeda was in Afghanistan in force after the Soviets left and still was when it pulled off 9/11. So Al Qaeda itself doesn't operate according to Democratic Party USA reasoning. Our enemy after 9/11 was Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda was international, drawing support over time from Arab countries, Western Europe and elsewhere. Shouldn't we have invaded Saudi Arabia? That was the where Al Qaeda's core of support was. Shouldn't we have invaded Egypt where Ata came from? How about Sudan? How about the UK or Syria or Jordan? How about Pakistan? Obama doesn't say we should go where Al Qaeda is, he just says the "war" is in Afghanistan. He does, with dubious credibility, say he will go after Bin Laden in Pakistan. But how do we know where Bin Laden actually is? Considering our intelligence community's past performance, I would not assume Bin Laden is in Pakistan and not in, say, some Paris suburb. Of course he says he will go after Bin Laden in Pakistan, but that will either be a 1993 "Blackhawk down" military operation or a deputation of Democrat lawyers. There was not central locus of Al Qaeda after we kicked the Taliban out of Afghanistan. Our invasion of Iraq rid the world of a dangerous man who was corrupting the UN. Our invasion shattered the myth of Arab invinciblity in the person of Saddam Hussein. Our invasion of Iraq set up the possibilty of a self governing, stable and prosperous Iraq. Our invasion of Iraq issued a challenge to Al Qaeda that Al Qaeda could not ignore without losing credibility in the Islamic world. In order to further prosecute the war on terror after January 2002, Iraq for us was the choice that addressed a number of problems. It was probably the optimal choice. Someone needs to call Obama on his sophistry or big lie. The war is in Afghanistan no more than it is in any country where Al Qaeda has active support. No one (in a position of responsibility) is going to advocate our invading Saudi under any circumstances. No one is going to advocate our invading Egypt or Sudan, or Yemen, or Syria or Jordan or the UK's Muslim neighborhoods or Pakistan. As costly as it has been, our invasion of Iraq has been the best proactive response to the Islamist threat available. Obama will never achieve any foreign policy goal approaching that. We were told that Afghanistan was a quagmire. We were told that the Arab street would "erupt" if we invaded Iraq. We were told that we were going to get bogged down against Saddam's army. We were that Iraq was another Vietnam. We were told that Iraq was a civil war and we were in a quagmire. All this has proved untrue however unfinished a work Iraq might be. We were told there were WMDs in Iraq. We knew Saddam had used poison gas already. But besides stockpiles of chemically weaponized artillary shells, we did not reportedly find the expected WMDs. Although that does not mean they never existed, Bush's critics, not satisfied with just asking what happened to them, jumped to the conclusion the WMDs never existed. This shows they are not interested in the truth of the matter. In their rush to slime Bush, Democrats neglect the imposing reality that surfaced as a result of our not finding the expected WMDs. That reality is that we cannot believe what our intelligence agencies and the intelligence agencies of other countries tell us. IMHO, we need a CIA that has a reputation for dramatically enhanced black ops capabilities. That's because if people around the world really feared the CIA, the quality of the CIA's human intelligence would probably improve dramatically. There is a lot to be said for assassination, terrorization and disinformation as a method of dealing with the bad guys when it avoids collateral civilian death and damage and avoids getting our military people killed in some unfriendly place as well.
 
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FJV       10/13/2008 12:32:01 PM
Actually it is in Pakistan, but we better not let the press in on that.
 
 

 
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CJH       10/18/2008 11:43:15 AM
A Thought - what if Pakistan were to cede either sovereignty over or at least administrative control of Waziristan to Afghanistan.
What benefit does Pak derive from having the tribal areas? Perhaps the domestic political fallout would make such an arrangement impractical but if not then in that case why not cede the control and lose the headache?
 
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theBird       11/19/2008 12:52:41 PM

A Thought - what if Pakistan were to cede either sovereignty over or at least administrative control of Waziristan to Afghanistan.


What benefit does Pak derive from having the tribal areas? Perhaps the domestic political fallout would make such an arrangement impractical but if not then in that case why not cede the control and lose the headache?


For some reason countries seem unwilling to give up control of shitty backwaters whose chief exports are terrorists and illegal drugs.  Best choice for Pakistan would be not only cede the tribal areas, but forcibley eject them and set up a border patrol to make sure they stay out of the rest of the country.  This way the tribal areas can continue thier traditions of fundamentalist Islam and living it shit, and the rest of Pakistan can continue thier tradition of technological advancements and living as a comparativly normal member of the international community.

 
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CJH       11/23/2008 5:50:35 PM
Perhaps it may be said that Obama, by presenting a somewhat ambiguous ME policy stance, has left Al Qaeda in a momentary state of strategic indecision. If so, this will fade after the new administration gets under way.
 
I expect Al Qaeda, Iran and other ME players to initiate mischief unless Obama shows he won't tolerate any nonsense from them. If Obama projects an image of weakness, expect a new round of trouble in the ME.
 
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CJH       11/23/2008 5:57:43 PM
It will be interesting to see what Iraq does to adapt itself to a post-Bush situation. In a sense, the border between Saudi Arabia (along with Jordan and Syria) runs through the middle of Iraq.
 
Also, if Obama pulls us out of Iraq or the region, will that not create a vacuum which will attract other nations in? Will the Russian navy, for example, return to the Indian Ocean? Will all that ME oil in the Gulf attract a Chinese or Indian naval presence?
 
It's fun to speculate.
 
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