Democrats abandon Obama on Afghan war

[Adios]

Where is that quote from Cain?

Zbigniew Brzezinksi's The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And It's Geostrategic Imperatives.  Brzezinksi was a national security advisor to Carter and remains influential in American foreign policy thinking.

Cain:  get this--I'm at an Afghan wedding in Los Angeles earlier this month (on July 4th, of all strange dates to be at an Afghan wedding, but I digress).  This woman sitting near me, a total vacuous cow, but she says,

"Did you hear, Jennifer, how Afghanistan is now a rich country?"

I said, "No, do tell."

She replies, "Yes, did you hear how they found all these mining things, these precious minerals, in the hills and mountains there?  Oh yes, they are going to be rich over there now."

Lail.  I'm sure there were Russians saying the exact same thing in the 1980s, since it was Soviet-era surveys we used to discover this.

GOOD THING AFGHANISTAN HAS ALL THAT WEALTH, OR IT MIGHT BE A REAL SHITHOLE BY NOW 

Thank you.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Where is that quote from Cain?

Zbigniew Brzezinksi's The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And It's Geostrategic Imperatives.  Brzezinksi was a national security advisor to Carter and remains influential in American foreign policy thinking.

Cain:  get this--I'm at an Afghan wedding in Los Angeles earlier this month (on July 4th, of all strange dates to be at an Afghan wedding, but I digress).  This woman sitting near me, a total vacuous cow, but she says,

"Did you hear, Jennifer, how Afghanistan is now a rich country?"

I said, "No, do tell."

She replies, "Yes, did you hear how they found all these mining things, these precious minerals, in the hills and mountains there?  Oh yes, they are going to be rich over there now."

Lail.  I'm sure there were Russians saying the exact same thing in the 1980s, since it was Soviet-era surveys we used to discover this.

GOOD THING AFGHANISTAN HAS ALL THAT WEALTH, OR IT MIGHT BE A REAL SHITHOLE BY NOW 

Very nice... and a very good quote too!

[BabylonHoruv]

I think that there's little or no sympathy for the "we're bring Afghans their FREEDOM" reasoning the Bush and later Obama administrations have been trying to sell as well.  But Obama RAN on the premise that he'd be pulling OUT of war, not escalating it.  So add to the the Pentagon shinanigans, and yeah, it doesn't surprise me the House Left (which, like the House Right, tends to be more party-platformed) would do this.

Obama seemed to be pretty clearly saying he was going to put more troops and effort into Afghanistan during the campaign to me.  I heard him saying he was going to pull out of Iraq and put all of that (plus more) into Afghanistan.  On the other hand Obama is well known for saying things in a way that everyone will interpret as what they want to hear.  I would have preferred to hear him say he was pulling out of both, but my cynicism may have caused me to mishear in any case.

[Cain]

Yeah, Obama clearly ran on an escalation in Afghanistan, I remember that very well.  It was one of the reasons I was skeptical of his whole "change" mantra.  That he was against the Iraq War initially (American troops are still going to referee in the upcoming civil war) and against Guantanamo Bay (not the concept of indefinite detention itself....just it happening at Camp X-Ray) made every idiot pundit with half a brain cell put him into the "dirty fucking hippy" category because, as we know, pundits are fond of labelling and not fond of thinking

[Jenne]

Whoops, yeah, I conflated the two regions.  My bad. 

[Cain]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2010-08-02-afghan-poll_N.htm

WASHINGTON — Public support for President Obama's Afghanistan war policy has plummeted amid a rising U.S. death toll and the unauthorized release of classified military documents, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll shows.

Support for Obama's management of the war fell to 36%, down from 48% in a February poll. Now, a record 43% also say it was a mistake to go to war there after the terrorist attacks in 2001.

The decline in support contributed to the lowest approval ratings of Obama's presidency. Amid a lengthy recession, more Americans support his handling of the economy (39%) than the war.