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White House: Leaving Afghanistan Not An Option
WASHINGTON - The White House said Monday that President Barack Obama is not considering a strategy for Afghanistan that would withdraw U.S. troops from the eroding war there.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that walking away isn't a viable option to deal with a war that is about to enter its ninth year.
"I don't think we have the option to leave. That's quite clear," Gibbs said.
The debate over whether to send as many as 40,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan is a major element of a strategy overhaul that senior administration policy advisers will consider this week as they gather for top-level meetings on the evolving direction of the war.
Obama has invited a bipartisan group of congressional leaders to the White House on Tuesday to confer about the war. He said the administration would brief leaders from both parties and key committee chairmen and would seek their opinions.
"They're an important part of this and the president wants to hear from them," Gibbs said.
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84 Comments so far
Show AllDidn't the Nixon whitehouse say the same in 1969?
One must wonder if this statement is meant as a rejoiner to the China Daily article that softly demands the US leave Afghanistan and end its global war of terror.
And they say, Quaqmirastan isn't Vietnam. Yes, we couldn't turn tail and leave Vietnam, we couldn't surrender to the Commies, the dominoes were going to fall. Now, we have sent our economy overseas for the Chinese communists to run, the communists are capitalists - proving that one totalitarian system is as good as another - and Vietnam is a trading partner.
But the money and lives had to be spent first to protect the honor of the politicians, generals and think tanks. We couldn't leave until we did. We declared victory and left in the end. It was chaos, tragedy for some and humiliation for the world's greatest power who swore they wouldn't let it happen again. But the only lesson learned from Vietnam was for the military to never lose another war by letting the American people discuss amongst themselves. The other part about the futility of propping up governments and bombing people into submission was lost.
Saw a headline today that tribal leaders in Pakistan are threatening to fight us if we don't stop with the drones. Guess we will have to add them to the ever-growing list of those needing to be watched and killed by remote control by the idiots in Washington who brought us too big to fail. Seems that is true for the military as well.
I'm with China. I want our government to stop exploiting us for their ambitions abroad. In my opinion, the single greatest investment we could make in security for our country would be to get our own house in order.
Not considering a timely withdrawal from Afghanistan ASSURES the collapse of the American experiment.
Go ahead and ask the last long term occupier of the region, the former USSR, how it went.
Ask them about the brigades of soldiers abandoned without resupply or reloads when the Soviet economy collapsed.
And that was when the home country was within a long walk. Through controlled, if not allied territory, not across an ocean with a tenuous supply chain tended by a profit driven corporation.
And if you look at the geopolitical situation in the area, you don't have a whole lot of friends in the area...
that's it in a nutshell.
in the end the USA will be FORCED to confront , whether it likes to or not, the REALITY of overextension that eventually catches up with all empires.
in many ways....obama is continuing the "swallowing" of the BAIT that Osama bin Laden proferred with 9/11. he WANTED the USA to be DRAWN deep into the middle east and central asia....because it would DEMONSTRATE what he meant to all "islam" - regardless of the factional differences:
"AMERICA is a colonial power that attacks ALL islam".
that may be from HIS point of view....however true or false that is and whatever the differences of agreement or non-agreement FROM the muslim world towards bin laden's concept of "the west wages war against islam"...
but what IS salient is that he HAS drawn the USA into a quagmire which it will eventually be extricated out OF ONLY at the MERCY of the people - in all their differences AND distant or close kinships as well as rivalries - LIVING THERE for thousands of years.
in the END - it is NEVER UP TO THE UNITED STATES , no matter what sort of ideas americans have .
it's NOT what americans THINK or WISH that matters.
it's what the Afghanis, the Pakistanis, the Pashtuns, the other tribes, the Taliban, al qaeda, Persians, Kurds, etc. etc. etc.
WISH .
this is not UP to the USA to decide on. and the sooner the USA - from obama, to mcchrystal , to petreaus to congress to pundits, to this or that corporation and to this or that american on the street - REALIZE and ACCEPT it - the BETTER it is for america.
there is another distant but highly possible potential:
the MORE the USA tries to impose itself - and through it , KEEPS CAUSING more chaos and spreading the "war front" - the closer it gets to teh borders of Russia and China who have their staked interests in the region coming from thousands of years of interrelationships - whether through rivalries or games of compromise --
the MORE that kind of scenario develops BECAUSE of US INSISTENCE to be a "power" in that region -- the more the resistance will GEL AGAINST the USA from ALL FRONTS - which -
from thousands of years of deep, vast, broad experience of balancing acts - CAN decide (as has been the spectacular case of Russia and China as former BITTER rivals and enemies) to produce a COMMON FRONT against AMERICAN - for that is what it is ALREADY perceived as and will become even more so - intrusions and attempts to "dominate" or EVEN be a "power" .
against THAT backdrop -- what is the USA hoping to accomplish?
send a MILLION american troops and other personnel?
in a real all-out war - where conceivably the USA will BE pitted against a grouping surrounding Russia/China/Iran and likely in the near future even Pakistan/afghanistan against the USA
exactly HOW is the USA going to SURVIVE becoming the proverbial DUCK IN THE WATER?.
doesn't the USA< Pentagon, obama, congress, etc...know already that China can QUICKLY mobilize a MILLION troops to its western borders next to pakistan/afghanistan should china see a threat to ITS longstanding interests in the region ? and from the SOUTH -- what is the USA going to protecting its troops and personnel and garrisons in afghanistan/pakistan with the growing power of IRAN? whose fellow shiites IN IRAQ will NEVER be counted on by the USA to repeat a battle against their Iranian fellow shiites? the US troops in iraq become MORE sitting ducks -- far away from home - with their energy and replenishment conduits subject to the will of the Shiites - who are CLEARLY the winners in iraq over the Sunnis.
Saudi arabia is NOT going to get itself involved or be seen openly as a TRAITOR to all islam and arabs at the behest of the USA...if it TRIES -- that saudi royalty is FINISHED! and they KNOW IT.
SO -- exactly what is the USA going to do if it continues its attempt to "expand" its power through the EXPANSION OF WAR deeper and deeper INTO the very borders of china or iran and russia?.
the USA is IN FOR A LOT OF TROUBLE that will make its IRAQ MIS-"adventure" a PICNIC in comparison!
what IDIOTS these US leaders and industrialists really are, after all.
they think they are SO sophisticated - they are so blinded by their fancy schemes and games of power -- they have NO idea that it's NOT UP TO THE USA - never was, never WILL BE.
despite all their big bombs .
"...they think they are SO sophisticated - they are so blinded by their fancy schemes and games of power -- they have NO idea that it's NOT UP TO THE USA - never was, never WILL BE.
despite all their big bombs ."
Teddy- I agree with all that you have said on the subject, but the evil US does have a lot of "big bombs" and I don't doubt for a second that they will use them.
:(
Iranians are not Arabs. That is a point of pride for Iranians: that they are not Arabs, that their history as Persians, as a civilisation, is much longer, much more impressive than that of the Arabs. Notice that the language of Iran is NOT Arabic.
Two, the rivalry between Shia Islam and Sunni Islam, is long, and often vicious, including the rivalry between Saudi Wahhabi Sunnism and Iran Shia Islam.
It is really really simplistic to see everything in the vicinity of the middle east in the reductionist terms of "TRAITOR to all islam and arabs".
It might indeed not be an option. After all, if the Democrat president pulls out of a war started by youknowwho then the Republicans will condemn the Dems as having no spine and being soft on terrorism. That wouldn't bother people who actually had a spine and knew that leaving was the only realistic solution to the problem, but the dems seem not to have one of those things. And the Republicans have a spine so twisted and diseased that mere words are not enough to condemn the ghouls.
I think you are being generously kind to both for-profit organizations.
"I don't think we have the option to leave. That's quite clear."
The option of peace is off the table? The option of reversing and renouncing the disasterous decisions of the recent past no longer merit serious discussion within the President's inner circle of advisors?
This is a political choice in and of itself - a choice being made behind closed doors by the Obama administration, the same as it was a political choice by the Bush/Cheney White House to warm up the B-52's and side with the northern alliance warlords against the Taliban in October of 2001.
That's absolutely clear to me.
Bill from Saginaw
I thought I read somewhere that _all_ options were on the table. Doublespeak? Why not pull out? What's our duty to their political stability?
All these macho guys with their "nuke 'em" mentality are the ones that cost America $688 billion and our economy to boot. Sometimes the most manly thing to do is to walk away from a fight.
Of course it isn't an option. The pipeline isn't finished yet.
"The pipeline isn't finished yet."
Hell, it's not even been started, and probably never will.
The Russian Caucuas oilfield the proposed Unocal pipeline was supposed to be supplying the West has turned out dry hole after dry hole.
Yes, right now Russia is a major producer. But the majority of it's production is going domestic, and it is past it's peak oil production.
So a pipeline from Russia to the Indian Ocean via Afghanistan was a no-hoper to begin with.
The pipeline was to enable NatGas from Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakstan to bypass Iran, the most direct and least costly pipleine route.
Actually, Russia exports over 70% of their crude oil extraction, although its net exports have stopped growing and are likely to remain flat for probably another 10 years or so; please see this page, http://www.eia.doe.gov/cabs/Russia/Oil.html
Russia's Caucus region exports go to Europe through pipelines in Ukraine.
I've cross-posted this from another thread, because it is critically important:
A 2008 report from the Rand Corporation on "How Terrorist Groups End" states:
"The evidence since 1968 indicates that most [terrorist] groups have ended because (1) they joined the political process (43 percent) or (2) local police and intelligence agencies arrested or killed key members (40 percent). Military force has rarely been the primary reason for the end of terrorist groups, and few groups within this time frame have achieved victory." (http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG741-1/)
THIS is the key point that Obama buffoons should be understanding. Diplomacy and police action works. The military are helpless.
Bring the troops home now.
The Rand terrorism report, unfortunately, is what the "cruise missle liberals" within the Obama administration point to as justifying heavy reliance upon targeted assassination drone technology, special forces black ops, and intensive use of mass detention, torture, and loyalty bribery.
For the so-called moderate hawks, that's what category #2 of the Rand analysis translates into - "diplomacy and police action" means divide and conquer the locals by having hybrid soldier/spooks do the bulk of the wet work, while the traditional, uniformed Pentagon-style military presence gets scaled back. If you buy this logic, then suddenly we have an 83% chance of successfully defeating terrorism in Af/Pak by adopting such a diplomatic/paramilitary strategic mix.
Rand studies also generated similar light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel scenarios during the Vietnam war. It is a truly ominous sign that if withdrawal is indeed off the table as a policy option, we are now triangulating somewhere between the Rand and McChrystal/Petraeus approaches.
Bill from Saginaw
Occupying the country and attempting to make Afghanistan into something foreign to itself does not get us closer to capturing Osama bin Laden and disabling al-Queda, the only legitimate reasons for our being there in the first place.
The Obama administration had oughta listen to the people and reduce rather than expand our military effort in Afghanistan.
Let's not be hearing the following a couple years from now.
"We must send more troops in, or the 5,000 Americans who have died will have died for naught. And we must budget $200 billion this year for Afghanistan to support the troops."
To leave is not an option.
To win is un-attainable.
To lose is the remaining outcome. Heckuva job....
Mon dieu, doesn't it make you want to pull your hair out by the roots? No, makes you want to pull out THEIR hair by the roots. These officials and advisers and whatever else they call themselves, simply have to be tunnel-visioned idiots with thinking processes that haven't changed in 40 years.
There is something beyond insane happening when the US perpetrates wars in the Middle East that
kill thousands, maybe even millions, because, essentially, of an attack in Manhattan that killed LESS THAN than 4,000. Such a response to
9/11 is disgusting overkill, especially when the majority of those being killed are civilians. I don't want to be part of such an atrocious mess, but as a taxpayer and US citizen, I am.
Give these guys a break. They're smarter than we are. They understand that sending your army half way around the world, up forbidding mountains, and having them camped out for years among hostile natives is really the best way to maintain our American way of life. It has to be.
It's like a Monty Python sketch.
Sometime in October 2011 we be in Afghanistan longer than the Soviets were. (10 years). If we are still in country by then, (which I'm sure we will be), my guess is the Republican wing of our one party system will use this as a rallying point against the Democratic wing's presidential run.
In the end I'm guessing at some point we'll end up leaving like we did in Vietnam. We'll declare some type of lame victory then hightail it out of there.
Meanwhile, how many deaths? Who's loved one will it be? Not the bi-partisan group in Congress.
Joe
Henry Kissinger and Lee Duc Tho of North Vietnam eventually shared a Nobel Peace prize for their tedious, not-so-secret diplomacy in Paris that ultimately led to a signed treaty fig leaf to cover US military withdrawal from southeast Asia. For some reason, I just don't think the rest of the international community will let Uncle Sam "declare some sort of lame victory and hightail it out" twice in a single generation.
Too much blood. Too many lies. And now, simply too much unpaid American debt owed abroad to merit another round of such face-saving hypocrisy.
That may be the real, lasting legacy of the Bush/Cheney era. Obama or no Obama, if the American government will not or cannot restrain Pentagon militarism and the CIA's excesses which spread death and destruction across the globe in the name of fighting terrorism, then small wonder everybody suddenly prefers a visit to Rio, Madrid, or Tokyo over a trip to Chicago.
Bill from Saginaw
The Afghan tribesmen, especially the Pashtuns, have a code of revenge. I don't see them providing a fig leaf settlement. They are taught that killing an infidel is a sure way to heaven, and they like having targets.
If walking away isn't a viable option then leaving feet first is?
Deja vu, this is LBJ's incremental defeat all over again.
Nobody is going to sweet talk the Pashtuns out of their country.
The blind leading the blind.
The Afghan sweetheart civilians will HATE THE US for years and decades to come ! ARRRGH ! :.(
Yep. Definitely!
Obama never goes off-script. That's why they call him "disciplined". "Disciplined", however, can mean slightly different things depending on how it's used. The word could also be used to describe, for instance, a slave who has just been whipped...
I am not even sure there is any reason to pay any attention to the Dem party or the White House. They certainly are not paying any attention to us...
That's a valid p.o.v., but I'm not sure that we need to bother with wondering if we can be "even sure there is any reason to pay any attention to the Dem party or the White House". We can probably dismiss such questions, with assurance that we're surely right (to dismiss such questions). Why bother with asking questions when we already know the answers?
Obama thinks he has to appear tough for domestic political reasons, and he may well be right. It's too late for him to appear in Profiles In Courage, and that seems to be the gist of it.
I don't think "Obama thinks he has to appear tough for domestic political reasons". Instead, he just is an "employee" of the real ruling elites and does like an obedient employee does, which is to follow orders. He's playing political games in the U.S. for public apparences. It's all stage acting. He's really working for the ruling elites.
They're who the merged Dem. and Repub. parties really work for most of all. It's also why, f.e., the Dem. Party leadership unconstitutionally said and did NOTHING when GE made sure that its MSNBC or NBC refused to allow Dennis Kucinich to participate in debates between Dem. Party candidates in 2008; just a little "taste" of what's really going on, who's really ruling. (And voters also said ... basically nothing, supporting the corrupt Dem. Party leadership's corruption.)
They [decide] and the rest of the population consists of mostly lemmings, human lemmings, that is; Repub. and Dem., alike. After all, they, combined, make up 60% or more of people who vote. So it's most of the population (of eligible voters anyway).
Obama surely knows who he's really working for and has enough talent to put on "competent" stage acts, shows. He has a tongue that would cause a wise person to welcome a viper. At least we can very certainly know what vipers are up to doing whenever we move and they're never hypocrites or hegemons, and don't know the difference between right and wrong; unlike Obama.
Problem: We already could know from his years as a senator that he rather never voted in ethical, acceptable terms, and we could also learn that his whole political career has always been backed by Big Finance industry people, that he was nowhere without them; and that's never a good sign, at all. But voters supporting him pretended that he was the person to vote for. That's a claim that couldn't fit with Obama, Clinton, or McCain, but voters are dumb, human lemmings and want to drag everyone else on the lemming ride ... of apocalyptic mass suicide. These voters also are the false prophets of the so-called "lesser evils" rule for voting and without ever being able to prove the "lesser" part! Many of these false prophets also falsely claimed that Obama truly opposed war on Iraq in his 2002 speeches, but would never quote his then words, which, when we find them, we can clearly see that he was [not] really opposed to the launching of this war. He mostly spoke like a Senator John Kerry did, which is not to oppose the war, only criticizing the way it was conducted; instead of criticizing it based on the fact that it was criminal to even contemplate war on Iraq, much more criminal to launch the war.
Obama's been a fraud all along and it's his supporters who obstinately refuse to see this [reality].
"Obama thinks he has to appear tough for domestic political reasons"? No. For racket reasons? Evidently.
There is only one subject to discuss here, courage! You either have it or you don't. For those of us that have it, now is the time to do our job and set this country straight again. For us, anything less is beneath us. Now is the time to do and die.
I heard that Obama asked Bush what he thought of his Afghan policy. Bush replied: "Heck of a job, brownie."
It will not be an option now, but it will be when they are getting their arse kicked royally and when they run out of cash and bodies to place out there.
Ah where is Le Duc Tho when you need him??? Oh! he died in 1990... We're screwed... Afghanistan has never been about anything but helping to control the currency of oil trade settlements to maintain US dollar hegemony. The sad truth is that those idiots in Washington are watching the leaping fish behind the boat, not the waterfall in front of it. The criminals running the US banking system have landed the mortal blows here with their greed and corruption. We are beyond external factors for protecting the dollar. It's a dead currency walking and the whole world knows it. There isn't any
further reason to be in Afghanistan or Iraq for that matter.
The US economy isn't coming back, it's toast.
Ah where is Le Duc Tho when you need him??? Oh! he died in 1990... We're screwed... Afghanistan has never been about anything but helping to control the currency of oil trade settlements to maintain US dollar hegemony. The sad truth is that those idiots in Washington are watching the leaping fish behind the boat, not the waterfall in front of it. The criminals running the US banking system have landed the mortal blows here with their greed and corruption. We are beyond external factors for protecting the dollar. It's a dead currency walking and the whole world knows it. There isn't any
further reason to be in Afghanistan or Iraq for that matter.
The US economy isn't coming back, it's toast.
I'm not sure what you precisely or really mean by, "There isn't any
further reason to be in Afghanistan or Iraq", for it could be meant to say that it is the sole reason that the GWoT wars were launched and continue; or that there might have initially been another reason, one that's "given way" to the present cause, the oil and gas resources, to control them and, through this, global economics.
Other than that lack of certainty about what your post says, the rest seems to be accurate enough.
For the oil and natural gas part, people should read the following article by Pepe Escobar and check the two videos for presentations by him, linked in my or one of my posts for the article.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/10/02-9
With respect to the U.S. currency, I haven't finished reading the following article yet, but it's clearly interesting, let's say.
"The Economic Recovery is an Illusion
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Warns of Future Crises",
by Andrew Gavin Marshall, Oct. 3, 2009
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15501
According to what he says of the BIS, it's the "central bank of central banks" and its managers (whatever the titles are) know what they're talking about. It seems that the US currency is heading for a more drastic devaluation or decline, which (I guess) always happens with declining empires. The U.S. doesn't seem like a declining empire in military terms, yet; not fully seeming to superpower-wise be on the decline, anyway. But it's well argued that the U.S. is a very declining empire. That (I also guess) would help to explain why there's so much panic over oil and natural gas reserves, the control of these. Otherwise, we could (and should) just have fair business practices between countries. That would prevent an empire from declining, if it was managed fairly, but the power-mongers rule and the only thing they do is destroy ... everything in or on their paths and within their control.
FIRE these idiots! A wise business person does FAIR business!
That's it: pick the biggest humiliation possible.
If Osama bin Laden is still alive, he is nodding wisely and smiling widely.
How about this for an option? Impeach Obama for reneging on every goddamn promise he made to us who voted for him?
MichaelC
Obama is true to form. The oligarchy will never give up the habits that earn them so much money--not until they are overthrown. It can be done peacefully, though not often. I'm thinking of Venezuela. Where is our Native American leader when we need him?
The only other question: Is Obama just a puppet who belongs to the oligarchy, or is he a 'wise coward' who is not willing to be 'removed' because he displeases the oligarchy. It's not a very important question, the results are the same.
A "wise coward"? You mean a spineless coward. If he was a "wise coward", then he'd be "streets smart" and wouldn't be doing what he's doing; as U.S. President, and before, throughout his corrupt political "career". Instead, he'd be so wisely coward that he'd sound public alarms, to alarm everyone about the predatory danger lurking over us all and then he'd scram, like for the hills.
George, Obama is no 'wise coward' (which is an oxymoron, anyway) --- he's an apologist for EMPIRE.
Obama is no JFK either --- who had the real courage to confront the hidden corporatist Empire (and their CIA enforcers).
Instead, we've gone and got ourselves a full fledged corporate, finance capitalist, imperialist SOB.
Obama was 'in the tank' for the ruling-elite corporate/financial EMPIRE, which fully controls our country behind the facade of their two-party, 'Vichy' sham of democracy --- 'from day one'.
In reprising the role of Tom Cruise in "Jerry Maguire", Obama just said to the ruling Empire, "you had me at 'campaign money' and media coverage". What an egotistical tool!
I'd gladly eat a 'flying pig' the day that Obama has the guts to even whisper the question, "BTW, shouldn't we be talking about this hidden Empire?"
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
"Leaving Afghanistan is not an option." Please ask Obana to explain why not.
Why ask when we already know the answer and that it's either bs, or ... another kind of bs. Whatever kind or "flavour" of bs that it is, the answer's foreknown and unacceptable. The only variability is in terms of "flavour".
Here's from another thread also:
They're all gooney birds, including a large percentage of the posters here. Drones? Soldiers? Killing of innocents? Aiming for Al Qaeda in a haystack? If you, I, they can't run the United States what makes us think we can run Afghanistan? Or that we know anything about what would happen if we left? Someone suggested that Osama would take over. But I'm not aware that he wants Karzai's job. And I think that could be really tough for him if he's already dead, a possibility according to Robert Fisk, the British wise man of the Middle East and many others. So that commenter, Obama, McCrystal, Biden are all talking through their hat. Simmer down, come home, play rope-a-dope if you want a better boxing strategy.
*
How infuriating it is to hear that the discussions in Washington are only about whether to increase troop levels. "Nobody is saying we should get out," a witness said. Read this post, twerp, go to Common Dreams, look around, listen to the American people and not their elected idiots.
Would it make a difference if I made a distinction between "warmongers" and "warmongering idiots?" Probably not, but I'll try anything, dear reader, to make you understand that I am not interested in personal insult, whoever you are, but rather in the big, more abstract questions of who among us Americans actually wants the Afghan War, and why.
Because the Afghan War, like the Iraq War, is built on a lie. The difference is that the Iraq lie, WMD's, was more compelling before it was exposed. The idea that sending drones into the haystack of Paki mountains will destroy a darkly magic and pernicious needle and thus save us from international attack beggars belief. In the middle of it all, Zazi almost did perform such attack, supposedly. If his story is to be believed, isn't it evidence of the uselessness of our eight-year effort?
Equally ludicrous is the notion of training an Afghan army to take over by making scrawny peasants do push-ups (witnessed and supervised by strapping, politically conservative American trainers of course). Or of building schools, roads or plumbing as long as our polarizing presence is there.
In short, any single person who supports our army in Aflacia for any of their false reasons is not only an Aflac goose but a horrific warmonger, one of the worst in history, ailing from impotence they will be lucky to overcome in this lifetime. (That's not insult, just the speculative psychologist in me speaking.)
Seldom has there been so little justification for any war.
*
msangerman
Obama is the commander in chief, what he says goes. We elected Obama as our president and as our commander in chief. It's time to let our president do his job. We put our trust in Obama by electing him. Let's put our trust in him once more by abiding to his decisions.
*
Plantagenet
This is a democracy. People are allowed to express their opinions and even dissent.
*
Msangerman,
One of the reasons I voted for President Obama is that he said he cared what I thought. The baloney about him being "commander-in-chief, and what he says goes" is too authoritarian, too unquestioning, too impotent in the way I described before.
You should be your own person and inform yourself and have your own opinion, never surrendering it to anyone so automatically.
I only support President Obama's good decisions, not his bad ones.
" That is quite clear ". Mr. Gibbs, would you please explain to the American people what is quite clear? It is quite clear that we are supporting Karzai a very corrupt quilsling who just got caught in massive fraud in the recent election. It is quite clear that we are not supporting our troops; unless you call killing them supporting them. It is clear to me that the majority of Afghans hate the U.S. occupation of their country. It is quite clear that the heroin trade is rampant in Afghanistan and Karzai's brother is involved in it up to his eyeballs. It is quite clear that the oil and the strategic location of Afghanistan is of utmost importance to the fascist, 1% war mongers. And finally Mr. Gibbs, it is clear to me, that you are one hell of a liar!
I don't believe in Bin Laden. What evidence is there that he exists?
"Osama bin Laden Dead or Alive?" with Dr. David Ray Griffin on his new book by the same name. We examine all the evidence, both that indicating bin Laden died, and that suggesting he is still alive; the important bin Laden videos and audio recordings, the significance, if any, in the timing of their release; statements by significant political and intelligence figures; and why the hunt for bin Laden must proceed.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23127.htm
It's amazing how blind we are to circumstance. If Obama was born and brought up with the Taliban, ...he would believe in, and fight for their cause, ...the same as most any man would. He would be united with them as brothers. Obama needs to understand this point, and realize brothers can sit down and talk to each other, ...exchange idea's, ...understand we are all the same inside. In another circumstance, the next person you kill, who calls himself Taliban, ...could just as well have been your brother. Maybe God will be kind to you, and allow you to be born a Taliban next time, ...perhaps then you will understand.
And by the way, you say it's the threat of terrorism that keeps us in Afghanistan. Tell me how many attacks there have been by the Taliban on United States soil. Oh, ...the answer is zero isn't it? So you shoot to kill an entire population because it allowed a handful of renegades to live in their country eight years ago? Want to know something that really works? Love your enemy...