Newsweek can kiss my fucking ass. "Obama's Vietnam"

[Hugabear]

While I was at a local grocery store this evening, I saw Newsweek with the following headline: Obama's Vietnam: How to Salvage Afghanistan. No fucking way. Is the media going to now start referring to this as Obama's war? Obama didn't fucking start it, the dumbfuck cowboy asshole did. It's not his fault that Bush diverted resources to Iraq to get finish his pappy's business. Fuck, we should have never even gone into Afghanistan to begin with!

[JSK]

1. I have heard Thom Hartmann say that

twice this week. :(

[Xipe Totec]

2. Newsweak...

'nuff said.

[Hydra]

3. At least Obama has started to counterattack

If you let a lie go unchallenged, it becomes true in the minds of the stupid.

[JimboBillyBubbaBob]

49. Good one

A succinct and powerful thought, thank you.

[bbinacan]

4. IIRC

Obama was, and is an advocate of war in Afghanistan. He sees that as the real front.

[hendo]

15. shh..

there you go with facts..

[LakeSamish706]

5. "Fuck, we should have never even gone into Afghanistan to begin with! "

Never a truer line said, and we should get the hell out now... There is nothing to be gained by staying there other than watching innocent lives taken for nothing. The Russians could do nothing there, so why the hell does the US think that they can? Get the FUCK out now is the real answer.

[TahitiNut]

6. Absolutely.

I've said that since the very beginning.

[Hugabear]

7. Libya handed over the PanAm bombing suspects. NO MILITARY ACTION REQUIRED.

It took several years, but no Libyan or American (or any other nationality's) lives were lost because of military action. No bombardment, no invasion, nothing. We used diplomatic and economic pressure, and it worked.

[hendo]

16. Russia couldn't do anything there in part

because the US was funneling arms into Afghanistan. Without US assistance, the Russians probably would have been more successful.

[LakeSamish706]

22. I agree with that, but still not sure that anyone can win there without major...

loss of life and a huge influx of manpower... And then the question becomes... Why? What is to be gained from doing any of this?

This whole thing is a Bush fantasy to go into Iraq and nothing more.... From where I stand, there has not been a satisfactory explanation to "What really happened on 911" to warrant an invasion of Afghanistan.

[ConcernedCanuk]

23. That IP thing in your posts sorta irritates me, not enough to alert on, - but I skip your posts

.
.
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I skip your posts as soon as I see it

maybe others do it too?

try a poll maybe . .

but in the interim -

as soon as I see that IP thingy

I scroll down and don't read your post

so what's the point?

[LakeSamish706]

25. Your concerns are unfounded.... That person is not identifying anyones...

IP address... If you want to personally find your own current IP address then do this;

Go to Start, run, and type in command followed by the enter key....
type IPCONFIG and enter....

This will identify your IP address... It is not the same as this users IP idendtification...

[hendo]

29. yeah

it did nothing. no logs were kepty, it was just a nifty gadget.

haha, just kidding

I'm watching you.

[ConcernedCanuk]

34. I think I said it wasn't a concern - it just bugged me

.
.
.

My profile will tell anyone who looks, exactly who I am and where I live

It was sorta an irritating thing to me

There are some here with active avatars that bug me - and I scroll down to not see them

just sayin'

[1Hippiechick]

43. IP addresses are individual to your computer, and needed for remote destop connection

which is very handy in working from home, on occasion.

[hendo]

27. what IP thingy?

:hide:

[ConcernedCanuk]

35. "it was just a nifty gadget"

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that one . .

[1Hippiechick]

45. self-delete - posted in wrong spot

[Oregone]

52. Without US assistance, the Russians probably would never of been there

The nation state may of failed at some point later more gracefully before all their institutions and infrastructure was destroyed by the proxy conflict. The children of the land may of had fathers to raise them, instead of extremist Mullahs. History would of been a lot different.

[Webster Green]

8. Seems like a reasonable analogy to me..

Increasing U.S. troop strength in that country is a bad idea (IMO).

Decent intelligence and strategic actions are required, but hundreds of thousands of troops are counterproductive, and will result in another whack-a-mole quagmire.

[Why Syzygy]

9. Please read this englightening post by a one time visitor:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=4948683&mesg_id=4954319

What everyone is calling "tribes" are nations in the eyes of most of the people who live there-- Afghanistan is an arbitrary collective of ethnic groups pulled together unwillingly under a nation-state. Taliban is simply a word that refers to they who study the Koran devotedly and literally, but it has become an empowered force to reckon with, thanks to our sloppy and deliberate covert activities based on greed, imperial desire, and meddling in others' business. The idea that bombardment from the air somehow extinguishes a people's passion is not only absurd but proven wrong. And the idea that one could ever fight a war on something as vague as "terror" is even more twisted than trying to fight a war on "drugs." Both are poorly-defined concepts, when, in the case of the former GWB was referring actually to resistance fighters who resorted to criminal means like attacking the WTC; or, in the case of Ronald Reagan, when he was actually not referring to drugs themselves but to their channels of distribution and those who abused them.

I am hopeful that Obama has taken a hard line in this regard throughout his campaign in order to convince his critics that he was willing to take a tough Bushlike stance on certain foreign policy initiatives and create a sense of contiguity in the Middle East. But now it's time for him to tack and change course. If the US really does care about the future security of our world, and about the welfare of all human beings--be they "women and girls" or anyone who deserves to live life with dignity and human rights--then what we should be doing instead of dropping bombs is listening to ALL sides, and that means taking a better inventory of who all these sides really are and what they are wanting. I'm sure each side is wanting something very legitimate, very reasonable. Before "death to all Americans" was mouthed, I am sure a US bomb fell somewhere and someone was hurt or killed-- and before that there was probably something much more understandable-- much deeper pain and suffering that was decades, centuries, even millennia old. We are blind to this-- completely ignorant of it in fact. I am disappointed that Obama, with all his education and wisdom, is not more appreciative of this complexity.
... more ...

[tuckessee]

10. At some point it will be his "Vietnam".

When will that be?

Is it Bush's War (launched with bipartisan approval, I should add) for another six months? Two years?

Obama hasn't exactly shown an inclination to get out of there.

He talks about "winning" and engages in escalation. He's C&C. It is his war now.

[Why Syzygy]

11. It's a senseless, unwinnable war he inherited.. ergo

"Obama's Viet Nam". I see nothing more there. If Newsweek is labeling it such in order to raise public awareness that it is worthless, so be it. (I could be wrong.)

[Orrex]

12. I heard some Conservative talker on the radio this afternoon

Speaking to Obama in absentia, he said something to the effect of "Bush is gone. He's history. Stop blaming him for all of the problems that you now have to deal with."

That's right--don't blame the arsonist who fled the scene once your house was ablaze. This is your problem, so you deal with it.

[hendo]

17. it doesn't do any good to blame bush now

it is a problem that needs to be dealt with, and it isn't like bush is around to deal with it anymore.

We need to move forward, and problems need to be addressed.

[Orrex]

19. Bush must be blamed for the mess, or else it will be pinned on Obama

Newsweek has already taken steps in this direction.

Certainly we don't just throw up our hands and walk away from it all; they are real problems to be dealt with. But that's a separate issue: the blame should remain squarely on Bush's shoulders before history is rewritten to show him as a non-horrible president.

[Oregone]

13. Adopting it doesn't make it any less his problem...

And he is planning on escalating it. This could get ugly

[hendo]

18. its better than pulling out

doesn't anyone else remember what the Taliban did in Afghanistan when they were in power?

[Oregone]

21. Does anyone remember how they came to power?

Weve been fucking with them since the late 70s, when we thought it was going to be "Russia's Vietnam". The Taliban was the natural faction that formed from the fatherless children of the Soviet-Afghan conflict, that we fueled (and engineered to some respect). When will we be finished fucking with that country?

[hendo]

31. we could have been finished

back in the 80s if only we would have funded schools back then.

[Oregone]

36. But did we "deserve" to be?

Should our inclination to use their country as a chess board and their people as dispensable pawns (men, women and children included) be forgotten for a few schools and buildings (that they already had at some point before the war)?

[hendo]

37. thats not quite why they hate us now

and you know it. The US, or rather discrete channels in the US provided them with the weapons and training to push back the USSR. There was never any "official" US involvement in Afghanistan. Are you saying that the US should have left them to get slaughtered by the russians? You might have been fine with that, but i'm not.

[Oregone]

38. Im saying the US shouldn't of drawn the Russians in, in the first place

Our funding started 6 months before the Russian "invasion" in December when Carter signed off on sending funds to anticommunist guerrillas (July 3rd, 1979 -- Research "Operation Cyclone"). It was to give them their Vietnam, according to a quote from Zbigniew Brzezinski.

The USSR was requested (multiple times) by the sovereign nation of Afghanistan (controlled by a Marxist party) to come to their aid in the conflict against the anticommunist guerrillas. Russia intervened to stop the collapse of a fellow communist state originally when the situation escalated late in the year of 1979.

Do you think the Russians just showed up and started slaughtering all the Afghanis? History is more complex than that, unfortunately.

We felt that in the grand scheme of history, the fall of the USSR was and End justified by the Means (a broken nation-state of Afghanistan and thousands of dead). Unfortunately, at any one finite point in time, man fails to grasp what the grand scheme of history really has in mind.

Is this not what you learned in 12th grade social studies?

[spanone]

14. junior* will end up with no responsibility whatsoever...it's the story of his sorry-ass life

[Political Heretic]

20. Then he should WITHDRAW TROOPS FROM AFGAHNISTAN. Otherwise it IS his Vietnam.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

24. Like LBJ in Vietnam, Obama's upping the stakes in a lost war.

Which, deservedly, cost that first Texas cowboy his presidency.

[karynnj]

26. The title may not be implying that Obama is responsible,

but he will be responsible for dealing with it. At the HRC confirmation hearing, John Kerry very cautiously spoke of his seeing some similarities - and added that they needed to very very carefully examine what the strategy and the goals should be. HRC, representing Obama concurred.
(link to short video - http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=385&topic_id=259860&mesg_id=259860 )

Then yesterday, Kerry had a very good hearing on Afghanistan - near the end, one witness, a counter terrorist expert commented that Afghanistan, at this point, might be like Vietnam under Diem.
http://foreign.senate.gov/hearings/2009/hrg090205a.html

Now, neither of these men have any intention of blaming Obama, but they are seeing parallels.

[Breeze54]

30. President Obama IS responsible for BOMBING Pakistan!!! n/t

[karynnj]

33. True, but isn't this about Afghanistan? That is what the OP was speaking of

and what I wrote about.

I said nothing about any of his policies, most of which are not known to a very real degree.

[Breeze54]

28. Obama is 'surging' the forces in AfghanisVietnam....

He deployed bombers to Pakistan, he did it.

They bombed and killed MANY civilians!!! :grr:

USA OUT OF AFGHANISTAN... NOW!!!!

Don't believe it's a failure waiting to happen, like Vietnam?

Then watch "Charlie Wilson's War" on DVD!

Russia tried warring with Afghanistan and

left depleted, defeated and deflated $$; after ten years!!

'Obama's First "Gift" To Pakistan'

[Agent William]

32. Newsweek is a bunch of shit!!!

You know who reads Newsweek?? Mrs. King, my old high school teacher how was conservative as hell and a bitch. She tried to get me to read it as a 15 year old. I had to beat her to death with her own shoes...

[earth mom]

39. If Obama doesn't want that label, then he should end the war NOW. nt

[MadHound]

40. Sorry, but if Obama continues to rachet it up in Afghanistan, then it will be his Vietnam

Much like the blame LBJ got for escalating Vietnam. The moral, ethical and smart thing to do is to pull out of Afghanistan, but apparently Obama feels the need to continue the bloodshed.

[TWiley]

41. Call it what it is ...... BUSH FAMILY WARS FOR OIL AND EMPIRE

Why slurr the words?

[harun]

42. Winning Afghanistan should be helping them with roads, agriculture and then

leaving them alone. Trying to prop up a bunch of puppets to secure natural gas pipelines isn't going to work.

[ima_sinnic]

44. how is it NOT his Vietnam? I'm glad they've used those words

it could also be called "Obama's folly."

It doesn't matter who "started it." It is an unnecessary, unwinnable "war" (it was never officially declared, was it?) that he is prolonging, so it is "his Vietnam." It is a figure of speech now that means stupidly getting even more stuck in unwinnable quagmires.

[1Hippiechick]

46. AMEN to the reason WHY it is referred to as VietNam! n/t

[1Hippiechick]

47. ANY 'war' we 'engage' in is VietNam all over again. A war supported by citizens based on lies w/no

winner. WHEN are we, the American people, going to wise up?!?!? If the people in this country don't get behind Obama in supporting our joint effort in turning this country in the right direction, I still believe that we are facing the upheaval of the 60s all over again.

[proud2BlibKansan]

48. LBJ and Nixon didn't start Vietnam either

For that matter, neither did JFK. But when you are president, the war is yours.

[tekisui]

50. Sure he inherited it. But, he is escalating it.

That means he owns it. Gates already has said, as part of Obama's Administration, that it will take 3-5 years just to reclaim what was lost the past 6 years. We have already been there 8 years. 8 YEARS! And, we have been guaranteed another 3-5 just to make up ground.

We are looking a a 15-20 year war, at best. With no clear objective. No clear definition of success. No clear end game.

Afghanistan isn't Obama's Vietnam, yet. But, it will soon. He is actively working on getting out of Iraq, responsibly within 18 months of so. He doesn't own it. He is escalating and expanding the military actions in Afghanistan, he owns it.

We won't be out of Afghanistan during Obama's Administration (4 or 8 years). The next President will inherit it. It is unwinnable and a mistake.

[Beacool]

51. Did you read the article?

Or you just don't like the cover?

:eyes: