The Real Reasons

Some of my thoughts this morning on Obama's decision on Afghanistan troop deployment.

It is now truly his war. I think after the election he had an opportunity to turn the corner and get out of 'Bush's war', and he would have had a lot of support from the general population. Now, no matter what he says, it will not be so easy to withdraw since it is his war too. He is being way too optimistic in my opinion about beginning 'withdrawal' in 18 months. Besides, what exactly does that mean? It will be stretched over many years, with the resulting deaths and billions spent.

I know exactly what putting in 30,000 troops means, however: it means many more American and Afghani deaths, it means tons of money spent on killing and 'nation-building' in Afghanistan, it means more anti-Americanism around the world and more jihadists signing up to fight Americans, it means MORE terrorism in the future, not less, it means alienation from Obama by plenty of people whom he will need to maintain political support, it means distraction from other problems, including those in our own country.

I think the only thing that could justify this kind of policy in the President's mind is a broader strategic thinking oriented around Central Asia and Pakistan, that deals in issues like countering China as a growing Asian and world superpower, the need and desire to be militarily present in the Central Asian 'stans' to the west of China, north of Iran, and south of Russia, the energy resources of Central Asia and possibly getting them to the West via an Afghani pipeline, and the threat of an unstable Pakistan.

It's my guess that these are the real reasons that we're there, but for whatever reason, they won't talk about them in public, perhaps because it means occupying a foreign, Muslim nation for years and possibly decades for our own hegemonic purposes. In that sense, we got very little real information from Obama's speech last night about our future course in Afghanistan or the real reasons we're there.