Afghanistan is turning to crap. 90 people (mostly Tazik civilians) were killed by an air strike. President Obama’s military is now actually doing what George Bush was accused of
Situation has devolved to the point we are paying protection money to the Taliban in order to get supplies to our own forward bases
Art, you’re straying off the talking points… we can’t talk about anything but health care right now, lest we actually subject the Dear Leader to the same scrutiny afforded to Mr. Bush on our affairs abroad. Of course, we can’t have that, can we? ;)
Anyone heard from Cindy Sheehan lately? Michael Moore? What’s the “Exit Plan”? What is the clearly defined goals?
Much of John Batchelor’s show was about this – I started a blurb about a month ago for the Unintended Consequences blog about Afghanistan – who are the players and what is going on and what the hell are we doing there? It’s a really complex situation. While it isn’t vietnam, it does have the added complication that one of the countries next door has nuclear weapons.
I’m not at all letting George Bush off the hook for this. While the world wsa generally on our side when we kicked Taliban ass right after 9/11, he pulled up short just like his father did in Iraq in the early 1990s. If you decide you’re going to have a fight, pummel the other side to the point they say “we’re never going to do that again”, don’t just throw one punch, delcare victory and and move on the next thing you want to do.
The significance of the Tazik part is they are the dominant ethnic group in the northern part of Afghanistan. (Tazikistan is in that area – afghanistan would be better off being dissolved and let the ethnic groups align themselves rather than forcing them to work togther). The Taziks have generally been more supportive of the U.S. involvement, where the southern part of the country is more supportive of the Taliban and has ties to the fanatical muslims in Pakistan. This incident could seriously undermine our abilty to ever bring the country under control, espeically after the horribly mismanaaged election.
The air strike was called in by a German commander working for NATO