War Versus Healthcare

[Winstonm]

So what argument are you applying a counterweight to?

 

This one, mainly, on BBO. But to add a voice for total withdrawl as that never seems to be discussed as an alternative in the media discussion.

 

The President is Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. If he doesn't trust his General's opinion of what is needed to succeed, perhaps he should turn over his other duties to his VP, and go take command in the field. Oh, wait, Obama has zero experience or expertise in that area.

[Winstonm]

Back many years ago I was playing poker at Caesar's Palace (when they had a poker room - they might again it's been years since I was there) and one of the tourists in the game asked the dealer how he came to live in Las Vegas. The dealer told a story about coming to Vegas to play no-limit poker, and how it was different from the Limit 7-card stud we were playing at our table. The conversation continued like this:

 

Dealer: When a guy raises you $80,000, it makes you re-evaluate your hand.

Tourist: Hell, that makes you re-evaluate your whole life.

 

Same is true for that letter in wartime: Greetings from the President of the United States - it makes you re-evaluate your whole life.

[Winstonm]

Actually, I needn't have bothered with a counterpoint. This argument and author is surely enough to justify a total withdrawal:

 

In an interview with Fox News's Greta Van Sustren, Palin complained that Obama was not escalating foreign quagmires fast enough for her.

 

I want to see ...  a surge strategy in Afghanistan.... I want our President and this administration to listen to the advisers who they hired ... McChrystal, for one, back in March, telling the President, "Here's what we're going to need there" and then ramping up that advice lately, saying, "Mr. President, here's what we need in Afghanistan to win, to make sure that those terror cells don't grow, so that those terrorists don't come back over to the homeland in America, on our soil, and kill innocent Americans."

[jdonn]

Ok enlighten me since I still don't get it. Why exactly should the responsibility be felt by all? What is so special about war, which kills a lot of people, that isn't about the other things I mentioned, which also kill a lot of people? What you call a trivialization I still consider a perfectly valid comparison.

 

Anyway my real objection all along has been you (or anyone else, on either side) acting like the answer is just so obvious. Oh we should just leave, why didn't anyone else think of that? Maybe because it's not that simple?

[Winstonm]

Ok enlighten me since I still don't get it. Why exactly should the responsibility be felt by all? What is so special about war, which kills a lot of people, that isn't about the other things I mentioned, which also kill a lot of people? What you call a trivialization I still consider a perfectly valid comparison.

 

Anyway my real objection all along has been you (or anyone else, on either side) acting like the answer is just so obvious. Oh we should just leave, why didn't anyone else think of that? Maybe because it's not that simple?

I know - it's just play debate, anyway. Like one of the Kens said once upon a time: (paraphrased) I'd hate to actually learn something; it is so much easier to express opinion.

 

Like you, Josh, I also grow weary of one-sided, simplistic debate, only in my case it is the debate that leaves out the withdrawal option.

 

I do not think these times are like other times before - that we should simply look to the future and not the past. The question still to me is how did we get into Iraq and do we have pressing need to be in Afghanistan.

 

Why debate troop buildup when the basic question of why we are there are what we are trying to accomplish is so vague?

 

I should probably try in the future to be more precise and clear as to my objections - my objection is not to the troops in Afghanistan nor a buildup IF that is for the best. But I have not seen a reason given yet that satisfies this basic question.

[luke warm]

Anyway my real objection all along has been you (or anyone else, on either side) acting like the answer is just so obvious. Oh we should just leave, why didn't anyone else think of that? Maybe because it's not that simple?

winston can speak for himself, but from here it appears that he wasn't speaking necessarily of staying in or leaving afghanistan, it was going to war (any war) in the first place...

[PassedOut]

Here is a piece by James Traub that I found interesting: After Cheney

 

We know that Obama picked Biden for vice-president mostly because of his foreign policy experience, and Traub's piece gives a glimpse of how this works in practice. Much of Biden's work has been with Iraq, but he's been a strong voice in the internal Afghanistan planning as well.

 

From the outset of his tenure as vice president, Biden had come to view himself as the one who asked the unpleasant and searching question — who “upset the apple cart,” as he put it. In the debate over Afghanistan, he initially faced a near-consensus in favor of the view advanced by the generals. McChrystal offered three options, which boiled down to way more troops than he could get (80,000), enough troops (40,000), and failure (10,000 trainers but no new combat troops). Obama encouraged Biden to push the advocates to defend their arguments and justify their assumptions. Biden proceeded to do just that, especially with the brass; he proposed an alternative plan that focused less on defeating the Taliban and more on eliminating Al Qaeda. Obama reacted to this very different view by asking James Jones to present four options with different strategies, and troop levels appropriate to those strategies. When I asked Rahm Emanuel about Biden’s role in the discussions, he said: “People were thinking about certain things, but hadn’t expressed them. The vice president was expressing them.”

 

Biden was not willing to discuss on the record the advice he gave the president while the decision remained outstanding, but the outlines of his views may be gleaned from news reports and White House interviews. Biden and those around him do not seem to believe that McChrystal’s strategy can work — not because they question the abilities of the military, but because they think the generals are far too optimistic about the civilian elements upon which the overall plan depends. They are deeply skeptical that the government of President Hamid Karzai can somehow gain legitimacy in the eyes of the Afghan people; that the U.S. can quickly develop the enormous civilian capacity that would accompany a military surge, or can train as many as 400,000 Afghan soldiers, especially with attrition rates now running around 25 percent; that Pakistan will accept a policy designed to bolster Afghanistan’s Pashtun-led government; that NATO allies will overcome public resistance to offer major help; or that the U.S. can afford to spend something like $250 billion on Afghanistan at a time when deficits are already running very high.

 

Biden does not view the Taliban as synonymous with Al Qaeda and does not appear to believe that it would be a calamity if the Taliban increased its presence in the Afghan countryside (though he is not prepared to see Kabul or other major urban centers fall). If Al Qaeda can be bottled up on the border with Pakistan through counterterrorism measures involving troops as well as drone attacks, and with the help of an expanded Afghan army, then it is unnecessary to build a secure Afghanistan that can defeat the Taliban. And then you could focus instead on the greater danger — Pakistan. “I’m going to ask you a question,” Biden said. “If I said to you right now, We can send $30 billion a year to Pakistan, or $30 billion to Afghanistan, which would you pick? Every ***** person says, ‘Pakistan.’ So I say, ‘O.K., guys, we should be talking about a PakAf policy, not an AfPak policy.’ ”

 

This is a thoroughly plausible proposition — if, and only if, ceding much of Afghanistan to the Taliban would not be a calamity. Among those who believe that it would be are Generals Petraeus and McChrystal, most Republican senators and experts like Bruce Riedel, who has said that it is “a fairy tale” to think that Al Qaeda will not return to Afghanistan along with a resurgent Taliban. Those who favor a larger military presence in Afghanistan accept the validity of Biden’s concerns but do not view them as insurmountable. Biden is very likely to once again lose the debate on troop strength, though he may win on narrowing the objectives. The real test of his success will be whether the new policy tilts toward Pakistan.

I'm looking forward to Obama's speech from West Point, and have no idea now whether I'll buy what he sells or not. But I certainly don't see an easy way out of this. Of course this situation should never have arisen, but so what. It has.

 

If Traub's piece is anywhere near accurate, Biden's role in the Obama administration is, in my opinion, essential.

 

As gifted as he is at retail politics, he has none of Barack Obama’s talent for the sweeping formulation or inspirational language, which perhaps explains why he has fared so poorly in presidential campaigns. Biden does not project even slightly in the realm of myth. But for this very reason, he is allergic to magical, wish-fulfillment thinking. “Guys,” he’ll say — this is how he describes addressing the Joint Chiefs of Staff — “what if it doesn’t work?” An administration full of youthful true believers, enraptured with their heroic leader, needs a skeptic and a scold. Obama may need one himself. And yet Biden is also, like Obama, an optimist. As vice presidents go, he has more in common with Hubert Humphrey, the happy warrior, than with dark Dick Cheney.

In business you definitely need people willing to rock the boat with hard questions about rosy scenarios, and I'm sure that role is vital in government too.

[jdonn]

It's been hard to judge Biden since he has seemed to remain relatively low key. It seems he is happy with a large behind the scenes role without needing the spotlight on him. That is just fine with me.

[Winstonm]

Anyway my real objection all along has been you (or anyone else, on either side) acting like the answer is just so obvious. Oh we should just leave, why didn't anyone else think of that? Maybe because it's not that simple?

winston can speak for himself, but from here it appears that he wasn't speaking necessarily of staying in or leaving afghanistan, it was going to war (any war) in the first place...

You are exactly right, Jimmy. And I am 100% convinced (having lived it) that the prospect of being drafted, forced into the military, then shipped into a live shooting war very much influences your belief system about wars and their necessity.

[Winstonm]

Defense Secretary Robert Gates says we have to stay the course in Afghanistan to deny al-Qaeda a “propaganda win.”

 

For the record, this reason to be at war is beyond moronic, beyond, sophomoric, and beyond idiotic. It is a stupid as a Douglas Feith-Sarah Palin gene pool.

 

Now, who the hell really supports our troops - the numbskull who says "Send more troops into battle so we won't have a PR failure"or the guy who says "bring all our troops home where they can do their real duty of protecting the country"?