President Obama Considering Faster Pullout of Afghanistan W/No Troops Left Behind

[bigtree]

from the NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/09/world/asia/frustrated-obama-considers-full-troop-withdrawal-from-afghanistan.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0


WASHINGTON — Increasingly frustrated by his dealings with President Hamid Karzai, President Obama is giving serious consideration to speeding up the withdrawal of United States forces from Afghanistan and to a “zero option” that would leave no American troops there after next year, according to American and European officials.

Mr. Obama is committed to ending America’s military involvement in Afghanistan by the end of 2014, and Obama administration officials have been negotiating with Afghan officials about leaving a small “residual force” behind. But his relationship with Mr. Karzai has been slowly unraveling, and reached a new low after an effort last month by the United States to begin peace talks with the Taliban in Qatar.


The option of leaving no troops in Afghanistan after 2014 was gaining momentum before the June 27 video conference, according to the officials. But since then, the idea of a complete military exit similar to the American military pullout from Iraq has gone from being considered the worst-case scenario — and a useful negotiating tool with Mr. Karzai — to an alternative under serious consideration in Washington and Kabul.

The officials cautioned that no decisions had been made on the pace of the pullout and exactly how many American troops to leave behind in Afghanistan. The goal remains negotiating a long-term security deal, they said, but the hardening of negotiating stances on both sides could result in a repeat of what happened in Iraq, where a deal failed to materialize despite widespread expectations that a compromise would be reached and American forces would remain.

“There’s always been a zero option, but it was not seen as the main option,” said a senior Western official in Kabul. “It is now becoming one of them, and if you listen to some people in Washington, it is maybe now being seen as a realistic path.”


read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/09/world/asia/frustrated-obama-considers-full-troop-withdrawal-from-afghanistan.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0&smid=tw-share

[Beacool]

1. Just like it happened when the Russians left, I fear for the girls and women.

They were oppressed terribly under Taliban rule. The US promised not to abandoned them. Hillary reiterated it as SOS and personally told them that we would be there for them.

If we leave completely, what will happen to them?

[Pirate Smile]

2. What do you want us to do?

[Beacool]

40. Leave a presence to impede the Taliban from taking over the country.

As it happened after the Russians withdrew and we left them swinging in the wind. After 5 years of a civil war among various factions, they ended with the most repressive government they had ever seen. Women and girls couldn't work, study or even receive medical care from male doctors. The Taliban destroyed the magnificent Buddhas that had been carved thousands of years ago. These people want to take Afghanistan back to another century. It's not moral to abandon again the girls and women after we invaded their country.

[msongs]

3. they will revert to what they've done for past 3000 years nt

[bluestate10]

4. Is it right to allow that? nt

[Amonester]

5. No, but where's the money to not allow that?

In legal (or not?) tax havens?

[cali]

35. Is it our place to stop it? We haven't stopped the genocide in the Congo

where women have been brutally raped and murdered in huge numbers.

[Gravitycollapse]

29. What exactly are you trying to say with this post?

[Beacool]

41. That's not exactly so.

I've seen pics of young Afghani women taken in the 70s, they were university students and were wearing western clothing.

[bigtree]

7. that seems unrealistic

How long do you believe our men and women in uniform should be expected to serve as the buffer between those who identify themselves as Taliban and the rest of the Afghan people?

I've never never been convinced that our forces, collectively, do more good than harm in their defense of Kabul. We began the Obama term with an unprecedented escalation of forces far above Bush's deployment with the aim of pushing the Taliban out of regions like Kandahar. That mission was an abject failure; both on the stated aims to make that mission a model for the rest of the deployment; and, in the blowback which claimed thousands of Afghan lives and hundreds of American lives - far above the Bush total of casualties.

The result of all of that was a retreat to defend Kabul (like in Iraq in the wan of the Bush occupation when he pulled back to encircle Baghdad) and a flailing out with airstrikes and drone attacks. The defeat of al-Qaeda, which was at the center of the Obama strategy, is now a matter of semantics as he scrambles to get out without it looking like the sad rout that it inevitably has become.

We can't keep telling ourselves that we can keep Afghans from killing each other with this exhaustive occupation of force; the price has proven too high; the results and successes, using our own logic for remaining, have been few and far between; and our forces have always been counterproductive there; both in their activity and their presence.

The U.S.-led NATO operation should have been completely shut down, yesterday.

[xtraxritical]

24. Of course we're number one and need to show that we can

do better than the Russians, and the English for that matter. All the lives lost there and nothing changes. Leave them in the fifteenth century.

[Recursion]

31. You have asked the only important question

And nobody in public ever seems to ask it: are we doing harm or good? Advancing our interests or retarding them?

But asking that would take admitting that we haven't really had a mission in Afghanistan for years now.

[Beacool]

42. I don't know the answer to your valid points,

but it's cruel and immoral to abandoned the girls and women of Afghanistan.

[bigtree]

47. I dunno

. . . I think our presence there is counterproductive to even that aim.

Besides, policing the Taliban in Afghanistan on behalf of the Afghan people isn't why our country maintains and deploys our armed forces abroad. Certainly, there is going to be a human rights element that's abandoned there, when we eventually leave, but, the goal of eliminating that threat is just not any more realistic for the future than it has been so far with the deadly and unprecedented escalation of force that this President ordered and retreated from.

It is important to realize that there are limits to our nation's ability to provide security for that population and there's no indication that that protection offered is the most effective or even sustainable.

Our troops aren't an expendable resource. That's why our laws, regulations, and constitution places limits on how and why they're deployed abroad. I think the mission to defend Afghans against those in their country who identify themselves as Taliban is a mission fraught with folly and tragically flawed assumptions about U.S. military force and the men and women tasked to carry out those dubious and dangerous missions.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

21. You could say the same thing about Texas.

[Alamuti Lotus]

30. I fear more for the wedding parties and sleeping children that the bombs have "been there" for.

They were bombed under US rule; the more unfortunate were shot in the night. They were then called collateral damage (perhaps slandered as "suspected militants" when the evidence of the deed was murkier) and their surviving were given a small fist full of green papers, if they would only believe that the deaths of their kin had a value that could be so quantified.

What colossal arrogance for the cheerleaders of the invaders to believe that the world is but a savage place without their beneficent patronage! The special message about "being there for them" is brought to you by the good people at Lockheed-Martin, and whoever cuts a check for those drones to rain their "liberation" upon whoever is on the receiving end of the public relations campaign at the moment.

[Beacool]

43. I don't disagree.

But, I fear that in time they would return to Taliban rule if we completely withdraw and not leave any kind of presence there.

[kentuck]

6. Does anyone else see the connection to Edward Snowden ?

..and the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan?

[phleshdef]

8. No.

[kentuck]

13. The terrorists now have the word...

If you use the phone, the email, or use the Internet, the NSA will hear you. They will have to change a lot of what they were doing. It has been planted in their brains.

Since the USA was getting out of Afghanistan, they needed a plan to get the message out world-wide. It would not have worked only on American television. Snowden has accomplished that mission. Without communication, it is difficult to perform any mission.

Is he a real person, Ezra Klein asked??

[Spitfire of ATJ]

22. Don't you see one with Rick Perry?

I could,...if you'd quit bogart'n that thing....

[Cha]

9. Sounds like their work is done.

Mahalo bigtree!

[bigtree]

12. our troops have done all that our men and women in uniform should be expected to in Afghanistan

. . . and more.

[Cha]

14. Perzactly!

Bless their hearts.

[AtomicKitten]

10. oh hell yes and please

I don't care about the politics or some such shit, just shut it down.

[Scurrilous]

11. K & R

[NightWatcher]

15. Call it Operation Fuckit

Who gives a shit, right?

[bigtree]

18. call it Operation Limits

. . . we have long seen demonstrated in the two major deployments, the limits of our military forces in achieving and maintaining what are , ultimately, political goals.

[xtraxritical]

26. Of course Vietnam taught us none of those things.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

16. Wag the dog

He tries to distract us from NSA and IRS by keeping yet another campaign promise!

[AtomicKitten]

25. DU

ZY

[Skittles]

32. care to tell us WHY we are still there?

go ahead

[Pretzel_Warrior]

44. To tick you off

Mission Accomplished!

[Skittles]

45. see my previous post referring to five year olds

this is a PERFECT EXAMPLE

[Logical]

17. Wow, about fucking time. Good news! n-t

[morningfog]

19. Quit considering, get us out!

[bigtree]

20. yesterday!

[Pretzel_Warrior]

27. Go ahead. Accuse him of "dithering". It will carry with it some element of symmetry

[tblue]

23. "Obama Considering"

Okay. Let me know what he finally decides.

[reusrename]

33. Right after Gitmo is shut down. n/t

[burnodo]

34. yeah, right?

nt

[MrSlayer]

28. Yay! Something I can be happy about.

We should have been gone long ago. This would be a check in the "good" column for the President. Now he just has to do it.

[cali]

36. better late than later.

the surge accomplished nothing. The Taliban will take control. Afghanistan's future looks no brighter.

[bowens43]

37. seriously? You think Obama 'condisering' something means anything at all?

one thing that he has taught us over the last 5 years is that his words mean absolutely nothing.

[bigtree]

38. as in his withdrawal from Iraq

. . . the President's pullback from Afghanistan has been ahead of the schedule he set for withdrawal as CIC.

Those earlier withdrawals have both been escalated ahead of schedule by the collapse of will, the tightening of resources, and the obvious and evident failure of the mission to accomplish anything more prescient than the huddling of our troops around Baghdad and Kabul.

[kentuck]

39. Meanwhile, the American Taliban take over this country.

Let's clean up our own backyard first.

[Scurrilous]

46. Kick