by leavingwt 18 Replies latest social current
BizzyBee, before I read your post about watching Dr Strangelove I was thinking about that movie! It was the part about Captain Kong trying to fix the bomber bay doors so he could drop the nukes. The background music When Johny Comes Marching Home was playing in my head and now that tune is stuck in my head. Are you a mindreader or have you been playing with demons lately?
villabolo
Jackbooted jingoism at it's finest.
No kiddin'
Thief.
Yes.BizzyBee, before I read your post about watching Dr Strangelove I was thinking about that movie! It was the part about Captain Kong trying to fix the bomber bay doors so he could drop the nukes. The background music When Johny Comes Marching Home was playing in my head and now that tune is stuck in my head. Are you a mindreader or have you been playing with demons lately?
villabolo
A little bit of "Farkle" goes a long way....I do understand his concern though. Hard to see any kind of meaningful truce with this extremist enemy without strong arm tactics. Hope I'm proven wrong.
:A little bit of "Farkle" goes a long way
Towards what? Passion, common sense, or insanity?
I prefer something between passion and common sense, but with a tad of insanity for some spice.
Farkel
Six months later, an update from the NY Times. . .
A Pentagon report on the last six months in Afghanistan portrays an Afghan government with limited credibility among its people, a still active if not growing insurgency and an enormous reliance on American troops to train, outfit and finance the country’s defense forces for the foreseeable future.
The report, released on Wednesday, is mandated by Congress every six months. It points to some improvements, including an increased optimism among Afghans about their government and the slowing of the insurgency in places where NATO troops have concentrated their efforts.
But an array of measures suggest that the situation is little better over all than it was six months ago despite enormous expenditures of effort, money and lives by the American and international forces.
“This is, I think, a very serious and sober report,” a senior Pentagon official said at a news briefing on Thursday in Washington, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
. . .
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/30/world/asia/30afghan.html?pagewanted=print
A Washington Post article about what is being learned from Bob Woodward's new book. IMHO, it's time to get the hell out of Afghanistan.
Military Thwarted President Seeking Choice in Afghanistan
. . .
This stark divide between the nation's civilian and military leaders dominated Obama's Afghanistan strategy review, creating a rift that persists to this day. So profound was the level of distrust that Obama ended up designing his own strategy, a lawyerly compromise among the feuding factions. As the president neared his final decision on how many troops to send, he dictated an unusual six-page document that one aide called a "terms sheet," as though the president were negotiating a business deal.
This inside story of Obama's strategy review, and what it shows about his leadership style and decision-making, is based on meeting notes, classified memos and interviews with more than 100 national security officials. Those firsthand accounts reveal a new president confronting the realization that months of tough debate and hard work had not brought forth a clear solution that everyone could agree on. Even at the end of the process, the president's team wrestled with the most basic questions about the war, then entering its ninth year: What is the mission? What are we trying to do? What will work?
At critical points in the review, the ghosts of Vietnam hovered. Some participants openly worried that they were on the verge of replaying that history, allowing the military to dictate the force levels. While Obama sought to build an exit plan into the strategy, the military leadership stuck to its open-ended proposal, which the Office of Management and Budget estimated would cost $889 billion over a decade. Obama brought the OMB memo to one meeting and said the expense was "not in the national interest."
. . .
Under the redefined mission, Obama told Gates, the best I can do is 30,000. "This is what I'm willing to take on, politically," the president said.
Gates had worked for seven other presidents. Each had his own decision-making style. They often floated assertions and conclusions, sometimes emphatically, sometimes tentatively. It wasn't always evident what they meant.
. . .
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/26/AR2010092603766_pf.html
