{"id":8705,"date":"2009-09-14T10:54:52","date_gmt":"2009-09-14T17:54:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=8705"},"modified":"2009-09-14T10:54:52","modified_gmt":"2009-09-14T17:54:52","slug":"afghanistan-another-9-11-and-american-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=8705","title":{"rendered":"Afghanistan, Another 9-11 and American Elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

At Obsidian Wings<\/a>, Eric Martin discusses how the recent, blatantly fraudulent<\/a> Afghanistan election effects the prospects of U.S. success there.<\/p>\n

Due to the complexity and tenacity of the multi-layered, multi-faceted conflict that we are seeking to address as an outside presence with limited resources and staying power, we are forced to bank on a miraculous combination of luck, good fortune and skill in order to pull off an outcome that, if all goes well, might come to fruition some 15 years and a couple trillion dollars down the road (with many thousands of NATO soldiers lost in the interim). But all is not going well, far from it. One of the most crucial political watersheds has played out in worst-case scenario terms. COIN will not fix this. It’s well past time we abandoned what George Kennan called the “stubborn pursuit of extravagant and unpromising objectives.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In addition to the other (in my opinion, extremely unpersuasive) reasons for maintaining a huge U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, Democrats may also be motivated to stay in Afghanistan because they’re afraid of the worst-case scenario for future US elections.<\/p>\n

Our strategy in Afghanistan cannot prevent future terrorist attacks against the U.S.; there are many failed states in the world other than Afghanistan, which al Qaeda or other terrorists could use as a base while attacking the U.S.. Our presence in Afghanistan doesn’t prevent future terrorist attacks; it just relocates the people planning the attacks, from Afghanistan to other locations.<\/p>\n

From the point of view of the Obama administration, however, that prospect must be a pretty big elephant in the room. Suppose the US greatly reduces its presence in Afghanistan, and then there’s a terrorist attack in early 2011, organized by an al Qaeda group which — had we not pulled out of Afghanistan — would have organized the exact same attack from one of the ungoverned areas of Pakistan?<\/p>\n

The US wouldn’t be any worse off a result — the US civilians killed in such an attack would be just as dead in either case. But the Democratic Party would be much, much worse off. Any terrorist attack is bad — but a terrorist attack that can be directly blamed on a specific policy decision by a Democratic prescient, would wipe out the Democrats electorally. I honestly can’t imagine a bigger boon to Republicans.<\/p>\n

I’m not saying that the Obama people aren’t sincere about their reasons for wanting to maintain our huge military commitment to Afghanistan. But I wonder if the worst-case scenario for the Democratic party isn’t biasing Obama’s people towards thinking the case for war is stronger than it actually is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At Obsidian Wings, Eric Martin discusses how the recent, blatantly fraudulent Afghanistan election effects the prospects of U.S. success there. Due to the complexity and tenacity of the multi-layered, multi-faceted conflict that we are seeking to address as an outside … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-elections-and-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8705\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}