Good to see my Carol G. Great essay. Correct issue.

Makes me mad with an anti war ideology. I wish to go 'which side are you on'.

I WANT OUT.

WE THE PEOPLE HERE DONT WANT NO WAR.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4p6tfoankk

Is this toooooooooooo simplistic?

Probably.

But I will stick with Bobby Darin on this one.

Good to see you again, Carol, it's been a while.

EXCELLENT post.

It is probably incorrect to claim that the majority of Afghans don't want us there. Ahmed Rashid is a Pakistani journalist who has lived and worked in Pakistan and Afghanistan and is a long time expert on the Taliban. On NPR, he reports that most Afghans don't want us to leave. Conversely, they almost universally hate and fear the Taliban. Their problem with our presence is not who we are but the fact that the crossfire kills and injures civilians. They would welcome our presence unambivalently if we provided the security they needed until their own indigenous security forces could replace us.

The main reason we need to remain engaged in Afghanistan until we can safely be replaced is the catastrophe that would ensue if the Taliban assumed uncontested domination of Afghanistan. This would provide a safe haven for Pakistani insurgents, including Al Qaeda, to flee to and establish a presence. In turn, this would threaten stability in Pakistan, a nation with nuclear weapons coveted by the terrorists. Our goal, therefore, is not a military victory, but the maintenance of reasonable stability as a temporizing measure.

Finally, although the overarching concern is the threat of Al Qaeda, indirectly linked to a threat of total domination of Afghanistan by the Taliban, we shouldn't completely ignore a moral obligation we would betray if we left prematurely. The Afghan people haven't forgotten the brief respite from Taliban oppression we bestowed on them with our successful 2001 campaign. They haven't forgotten that at last, girls could go to school, everyone could listen to music, and men could walk the streets without fear of death or injury because their beards weren't proper.

Great post Carol. You lay out the fact that there are no easy choices in determining what the future holds in Afghanistan, as well as the opportunity that was lost if only we had stayed the course with sensible strategy and diplomacy - especially vice Pakistan - when we first engaged post 9/11.

What is frustrating when we get to this point of quagmire, however, is the way in which the discussion always skews politically toward the chickenhawks. For so long as they hold firm in the insistence that we need more troops and more resources than we have at present, they will always prevail in the political arena. After all, when the end comes - as it did on the roof of the Embassy in Saigon - they can still thump their chest and claim glory would have been theirs if only the government would have supported them. Meanwhile, they consider not the soldiers who are lost and wounded and the treasure that is lost while they play games meant to avoid the difficult choices that REAL leaders are expected to make.

I can't pretend to know just what the correct way is to exit this murky swamp that Bush and the neo-cons left us in in Afghanistan. But I respect Obama's apparent insistence that he have a map in hand before stumbling further into this byzantine quagmire in which we find ourselves.

If Obama follows through here with the consideration of ALL his advisors' inputs and a precise objective in mind, he will be showing the kind of leadership I would expect of a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize - even as it most assuredly will earn him the disdain of the chickenhawks.

Cue the neocons and their GOP supporters, who have yet to be humbled by their many costly mistakes and failures in launching their New American Century. They are certain they can get this done right this time, if only Obama will continue providing troops and resources to forever forestall their inevitable failure to win peace by making war.

The compelling comment above by "70%", while anecdotal, is consistent with other reports indicating that most Afghans welcome our attempt to free them from Taliban oppression, and that increased security is a paramount consideration.

The article linked to by Beetlejuice is one I found unpersuasive - it substituted hyperbole and dogmatic assertions for evidence. I do agree, however, that our Pakistan/Afghanistan policies must be coordinated, and I expect the coming decisions on Afghanistan troop levels will take that into account. We are already calibrating the level of response to Pakistan insurgents, and in fact, events in the past year have tended to vindicate rather than refute the wisdom of much of our strategy of carefully targeted drone attacks, while leaving military operations to the Pakistani military. The enemy will always try to formulate a counter-strategy, but at this point they seem to be losing. One reason is the increasing unpopularity of Al Qaeda/Taliban style terrorism among muslims, in Pakistan and elsewhere, due to its murderous toll suffered by muslims themselves.

This does not relieve us of the need to avoid provoking anti-western sentiment through excesive "collateral damage", but we already seem to have learned that lesson, and I doubt that we will sabotage our efforts in either Pakistan or Afghanistan by reckless disregard for the consequences of our actions. We are not, fortunately in my view, about to disengage in either effort, but we will always to need to adapt on a continuing basis to changes in the tactics and whereabouts of the terrorist enemies.

Discussion about our presence in Afghanistan is informative and healthy...Pro or con. Many comments appear to be opinionated bs. I guess that is what forums are for. Would you like to hear it from an expert?
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09252009/watch.html