by (name withheld by request)
The Afghan election is over and fortunately the Taliban did not wreak a bloodbath on voters as they had promised. However, they still caused quite a bit of carnage with suicide bombings in Kabul. As you probably know by now, the runoff election was cancelled when the contender, Abdullah Abdullah, dropped out of the race in protest, calling the election fixed. This can’t be helpful to anyone except the Taliban!
The Karzai regime was already discredited due to charges of widespread corruption, but Abdullah calling the election a farce anda fraud has really got to hurt Karzai’s popularity. In truth, Afghani’s were not all that excited about voting for either candidate. Abdullah and Karzai were considered poor choices.
For the average Afghani, voting under the threat of death (by the Taliban) for the lesser of two evils probably would not have had much appeal and the turnout would be extremely low. (Almost as bad as a typical City Council election in liberal Chico.)
Remember, Obama committed an additional 17,000 US forces to Afghanistan only last February and now he’s being asked to send 40,000 more and he’s stalling. If he chooses to send the 40,000 troops as requested the cost per soldier could be a staggering $500,000 per soldier! That’s right, the Pentagon is estimating it will cost another $20 billion a year, which is about a billion more than the entire GDP of Afghanistan in 2008. Spending $20 billion a year on a country where the men earn about $30 a month and 99% of the women don’t earn anything doesn’t pencil out for a lot of people here.
According to the CIA, real GDP growth fell from the 10% level in 2006-07 to a little more than 3% in 2008. Despite the progress of the past few years, Afghanistan is extremely poor, landlocked, and highly dependent on foreign aid, agriculture, and trade with neighboring countries. Much of the population continues to suffer from shortages of housing, clean water, electricity, medical care, and jobs. Criminality, insecurity, and the Afghan Government’s inability to extend rule of law to all parts of the country pose challenges to future economic growth, if not it’s survival.
The increased $20 billion dollar price tag for all the additional troops includes the costs of personnel operations and maintenance costs, some equipment and hazardous duty pay.
However, the Pentagon warned the actual costs could be higher, because the estimate does not include the cost of constructing additional facilities, providing support forces such as military intelligence assets that may be based outside Afghanistan or replacing damaged weapons or equipment. The official emphasized that until there is a formal troop plan, the costs are just estimated.
So what do you want to do?
Do we continue to prop up President Karzai’s corrupt and impotent regime with possibly a 20 year committment before us or should we cut our losses and bail now? This is the question Obama must be asking himself right now and my prediction is he will send in a limited number of troops, see how it goes and at some point in the future he will announce an exit plan.
Let’s face it; the world doesn’t care what happens in this backwater country and they don’t mind the US suffer losses. NATO has been worthless as usual. They have only sent a handful of soldiers to Afghanistan. It’s more of a token effort than anything else. And once again, the United States is footing almost the entire Afghan war costs, with the UK being our only real partner on the ground.
The democrats are in power and as a result liberal politics now dominate the conduct of this war and that is a travesty! Given the current handling of the war I just don’t see how we can have a successful outcome.
Our President is highly reluctant to take advice from his military and this only compounds a dismal situation growing worse. In the meanwhile, the Taliban is gaining in strength and influence as our troops are being asked to place themselves in harms way, they are ordered to check their fire to avoid any possibility of collateral damage! The Taliban appreciate this gesture, I’m sure! Adding insult to this injury our troops are being ordered to go forth and mingle among the people to win their hearts and minds!
Except for two little things this touchy-feely war policy would be great: Number one, that strategy has never worked in the history of the world and it’s causing us senseless causalities because the people of Afghanistan really don’t want us there (and neither does anyone else in the region).
We have no real friends in the whole area unless you think Pakistan is a friend? Even if they were, and I’m not saying they are, Pakistan has their own problems with insurgents and they are blaming us for that predicament. Okay, so who else is our friend in the area? Iran perhaps? lol Don’t tell me its the Russian! Forget them… they are gleefully predicting the United States is on the verge of a breakup, not unlike their own and they would love to see us suffer in Afghanistan.
The unpleasant reality is, we’re stuck between the liberals in power trying to run a war and a total lack of support from the world. We’re basically alone again and PC is dominating the battlefield. Our poor soldiers are paying the price again…and it makes me sick. Unless this situation is dramatically reversed quickly, our Afghan adventure will end as a political and military failure.