Color me unimpressed. This is nothing but mealymouthed assertions without an iota of data. This presentation could have just as easily have been given by Rumsfeld.

do some math Zip.

I posted thus blog at 4:58PM.
Your 1st response was posted at 5:42 PM.
the vid link is 32:36 min long.

Plus the Q. and A.
I feel i have a very good cause for questioning whether you really gave McChrystal fair shift.
It's possible by time alone that you fully covered the links, but ain't no way in hell you really contemplated what McChrystal said. Not enough time spent. sorry pard'ner; doesn't wash, so no games, s'ok?

On C-SPAN this morning, Silvester Reyes, Dem Chair of Intelligence Committee said; If we pull out of Afghanistan al Qaeda will have a safe haven from which to train and operate.

I had, I guess, a Pavlovian thought; will they be safe from our Predators? our Cruise Missiles? our bombers? our Spy Satellites? our CIA?

Reyes said we'd be there for quite some time, this after being there 8 years already. Someone should take stock of what we've accomplished in the 8 years we've been there. If you listened to the rest of his appearance you can see why being there for 'quite some time' will produce nothing except more dead and maimed troops, and more American money going down a rat hole.

Reyes wasn't aware that he was arguing against himself as he continued to describe Afghanistan.

I'll be honest, I don't have time to read the links. I'm sympathetic to the general in once sense -- if he's leading a counter-insurgency then he needs more feet on the ground. Counter-insurgency is a little like crime fighting. More cops, more patrols, less crime (or at least less obvious crime). A bit of "broken windows policing" can work.

But we need to have a policy discussion about whether or not we want to wage a counter-insurgency in Afghanistan, about how much money we're willing to spend and about how long we're willing to tie our forces up in that region. I'm not sure but I'm leaning towards less is more.

It is humbling for me just to think to join a conversation between two such honorable and dignified men, Cy and Zip. One is older like me but courageous beyond my dreams. The other is young and filled with an intelligence and commitment that augurs well for a lifetime of valuable service to his society. I salute both of you.

Things - the world, and the affairs of the world - are getting beyond me these days. My opinions, my thoughts, even the principles that I spent a lifetime constructing seem oddly off mark, even quaint. There was a time when I would have engaged this discussion with enthusiasm and élan. Now I offer my comments as just the murmuring of a stranger.

Cy says “we owe the bastards for the past 3+ decades.” When was it that I was sitting on my couch watching Henry Kissinger being interviewed on CNN when the broadcast was interrupted to bring the first of the eye witness accounts of the attack on Bagdad? Oh yes August 1990. I was 46 years old. I am 65 years old today. War seems to be in our nature. I would suggest that what we owe them is to leave them alone. How much worse could it be for them?

Continuous war for twenty years on a place roughly the size of California. Add ten years and increase the size to that of Texas and you have a place called Afghanistan. I call them places because neither is a “nation” other than as a construct in the mind of a European with an eye to colonial domination. Zip suggests elections. I suggest that deep in their souls neither place wants elections any more than the U.S. wants Divine Right Monarchy. Imposing one on the other will be an equally daunting task. I say give it up.

Opium and its derivatives are not as bad a thing as is often suggested. Cy commented briefly on its palliative value. It does not corrupt the body as much as other drugs like meth or cocaine or even alcohol. It is only mildly addictive. For example there is no significant morbidity from opiate withdrawal whereas there is a 10% death rate for alcohol withdrawal – the DT’s. There might actually be more uses for opiates than are currently acknowledged but that is another matter. Opium growing is a subterfuge.

As I say I feel a bit misplaced these days, kind of out of touch. I have read Ptolemy’s proofs and it seems incontrovertible – the sun revolves around the earth. Yet I once met an old Greek, Aristarchus, who suggested that it was the other way round. Against the logic of Geometry and modern mathematics and the opinion of notables like Ptolemy I have only my intuition that tells me things are in fact “the other way round.”