In Afghan war, there's a lot to dither about [News Analysis]

Oct. 28, 2009 | Daniel Schorr | NPR

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President Obama is wrestling with an agonizing decision on how to "Afghanize" the conflict, to borrow phrasing from the Vietnam days. As U.S. casualties mount, Obama faces the ultimate question: Get more involved at the risk of losing support from an increasingly disheartened American public, or get less involved and risk facing the blame for letting Afghanistan go down the drain?

What Barack Obama calls reflection, Dick Cheney calls dithering. Come to think of it — a little more dithering by Cheney's administration might have saved us a lot of pain.

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Be that as it may, the president is wrestling with an agonizing decision on how to Afghanize the conflict, to borrow phrasing from the Vietnam days. Five widely advertised deep-study sessions of his war council have evidently not resolved the problem. Another session is scheduled for Friday.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs has conducted war games simulating at least 40,000 more troops, as proposed by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, or 10,000 to 15,000 more troops, as proposed by civilian advisers. That apparently did not resolve the dilemma.

What the White House faces is only partly a military strategy problem of how to apply rules of counterinsurgency and/or counterterrorism. It is also a problem of how heavily to bet on a shaky Karzai regime that may look different after the scheduled Nov. 7 runoff election.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai's newest best friend, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), who spent several days talking to Karzai, vouches for him. Kerry assured the Council on Foreign Relations that Karzai is ready to clean out the Augean stables of corruption in his government. The Senate's Foreign Relations chief urged a "sustained, long-term commitment to the Afghan people."

That may come in time. But first, Afghanistan needs some measure of security and stability, and that brings us back to the painful dithering. As American casualties mount, President Obama faces the ultimate question: getting more deeply involved in the conflict at the risk of losing support from an increasingly disheartened American public, or getting less involved and risk facing the blame for letting Afghanistan go down the drain.

There's a lot to dither about.

From NPR.org

Wildspirit
3 weeks, 2 days ago

Supporting corrupt foreign regimes seems to give credence to the war machine--Vietnam is fresh in my mind. We are uninformed, deceived, manipulated, and witness to out and out murder and mayhem...but are complacent witnesses. How stupid can we be? Pretty damned stupid is the answer, when we don't learn from history when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em. It's time to fold 'em.

Victoria
3 weeks, 2 days ago

What can we be thinking when we send our youth to the other side of the planet to fight a war that even the people in that nation will not step up to??? Our young folks becoming the hated occupiers, killers of innocents ... bringing their own culture to a place where it is not wanted, into a land with a history as old as the pyramids.

When will common sense reign? When will life outside the womb be also held sacred?

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3 weeks, 1 day ago

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