AFGHANISTAN - ARE WE THERE TO WIN?

After viewing the appearance of General James Jones, Obama’s National Security Advisor, on Sunday’s (8/9/09) Meet the Press, I have growing concern about the intentions of the United States when it comes to our long range plans in Afghanistan. When questioned by host David Gregory, Jones gave a Washington-speak response that indicated that the Administration felt it could take ten years to resolve the situation.

There have been some interesting articles appearing in the national media, and some suggest that we are currently losing the war to the Taliban. Since our new President announced the substantial increase of over 25,000 additional troops, their full impact is yet to be felt, but it is a clear fact that our combat troops are thinly dispersed. While there are additional contingents of NATO and/or United Nations forces there, we lead the troop commitment by a huge margin.

Monday’s New York Times (8/11) carried another interesting article indicating that we are finally addressing the influence of the poppy fields in providing funding for the Taliban insurgency. How many years have we known that fact and now we are finally addressing the flow of opium across the world?

Personally, I do not care one twit if we hurt the feelings of the local poppy farmers. I have long felt we should totally destroy those fields. Now there is a proposal that we pay the farmers to grow other crops. Remember, please, that we previously gave the farmers $250 million to grow something else. Here we go again trying to buy new friends with our taxpayer’s hard earned dollars. You may remember that back on April 29th I expressed my sentiments about the Poppy Fields in depth.

I listened to General Jones carefully and I have growing concerns that we are again on a “Nation Building” mission in Afghanistan. Jones indicated that it would take another eighteen months to determine if the current battle plan is working and I suggest that is totally unacceptable to wait that long before instituting additional corrective measures. Jones said it would take a long time to train the local Army to defend themselves without our support. How can this Administration accept the continued escalation of battle field deaths and horrendous injuries to our brave fighting men and women?

Our government has the perfect opportunity to address the issues in Afghanistan by restricting the flow of financial aide to the Afghan leadership. We continue to toss billions of dollars to corrupt governments across the world and we have little or no accountability or positive results. Pakistan, a key factor in solving the Afghanistan problem, is only giving lip-service to the issue of border security, but we still are propping up that questionable government, too.

How can we continue to funnel our brave young fighting forces into Wars where we apparently have no real will to win? Here we go again with another Viet Nam, Korea, Iraq One and Iraq Two. This is now clearly Obama’s War and currently his administration is trying to keep the current situation buried in the back pages of our newspapers and cable new channels. It is becoming obvious that we need many more troops, so let us provide them, do the job, win the war and get the hell out of that cess pool.

Tragically this is another one of the dirty little hidden secrets growing within the Obama Administration. The American public will not, and must not permit another war to continue where our brave women and men are just cannon fodder for political considerations. We cannot continue to play games with our fellow citizen’s lives with “Nation Building” when we cannot operate in a financially responsible way within the confines of our own country. No where in the Obama staged talks, nor in the General Jones interview did I hear our clear intentions to win the war and get the hell out of Afghanistan. The United Nations is giving the good old USA the finger one more time, but our complicit Congress will keep pouring millions into their corrupt pockets.

COMMANDER GRANGER