by William S. Lind

The advent of Gen. Stanley McChrystal as America’s overall commander in Afghanistan appears to be good news. He seems to understand that in this kind of war, the rule must be "First, do no harm." Associated Press recently reported him as saying that his measure of effectiveness will be "the number of Afghans shielded from violence, not the number of militants killed." Unusually, he seems to include American and NATO violence in his calculation, since he has ordered a drastic cutback in air strikes. Heavy American reliance on air strikes has probably done more than anything else to win the war for the Taliban.

But history is littered with the failures of promising new generals; "Fighting Joe" Hooker somehow comes to mind. If Gen. McChrystal is to represent any real hope that the U.S. might get out of Afghanistan with some tailfeathers intact, he must confront a host of challenges. Let’s look at just four:

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...As an Army friend put it to me, until these and similar internal challenges can be met, our efforts in Afghanistan are like trying to get somewhere by riding faster on an exercise bicycle.

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We are wasting lives, money, and political capital in Afghanistan every day even as our own poor are in a desperate situation. Millions of people around the world are much worse off because we can not seem to mind our own business.

If you are for nation building, then you are for the whole package. There can be no separation.

No.

By the way, does your group rely on the taxes taken by force from the working poor in this country to help those overseas, or is it true charity?

No more so than it does on taxes taken from the rich. See my last post to Chris.

Were you vaccinated against smallpox? You seem to be old enough to have been. If so, then you have an example of how tax dollars help society in this arena. Would that we could choose who might be afflicted with things such as smallpox, but we can't.

Look Dr. Orwell, if the war was over there would be no American troops (or our toadies) there and an American "surge" under Obama would not be underway.

It is a "war" or a brutal occupation of a defeated nation. Take your pick, it is still immoral and you seem to be damn pleased those dead gave their lives so you could vicariously play hero.

Get a video game, it is cheaper and far fewer innocent men, women, and children would have to die.

What part of the first President's plan do you think is not workable?

I think we should go with hash considering the topic of the day is Afghanistan. Eh?

The reality is that they are all too scared and reliant and don't want to pull the plug, they just want to cry about it until they feel better.

You once told me that your father supports you. I don't object to that on principle--most people frown on that kind of thing today, but I find it refreshing when families take the more traditional view of sheltering their children from the world until they're emotionally mature enough to face it.

However, I don't think people in your position have any standing to talk about reliance and fear. Go out and work for a living, then come back in a couple of years and tell us what you've learned.

Like I have said many times, no one seems to believe in "live and let live" anymore.

I find it odd that after 8 years of yelling about the murdering George Bush, we now find murder to be just part of the price of building a new and better world. Perfectly acceptable these days, don't ya know.

Not willingly, no.

Thanks for the reflective essay, Amity. Your response is thought-provoking, unlike the tiresome mud slinging and personal attacks by some of the otherwise intelligent posters.

So I guess South Korea is being brutally occupied. There's no real point to this discussion any further, you won't talk about the facts, and you have positioned yourself on a pole so extreme that you can't countenance anything anyone is doing outside their own country for any reason anywhere. I'm not happy with the U.S. conduct in Afghanistan, nor that of a lot of other parties there. But at least I try to find out what they are actually doing, and why. I don't just burst out screaming 'imperialism' and pretending that all funds and everything else should be withdrawn to the U.S. borders. And the poor in the U.S are not comparable to the poor in places like Afghanistan, or the rest of South Asia. Go to South Asia and see for yourself.

Are you trying to tell me that there was no medicine or medical research until the USA started funding it? I find that hard to believe, especially since Chinese medicine seem to be a few years older than the USA itself.

What you can not seem to see is that there are always trade offs, and so it may well be that taking money from the poor to fund everyones pet project may well be more harmful than you can see. Think about it. What if the present way is not the best?

Anyway, I was never impressed with all this "if you ever did X" (without even a choice in the matter) then you must support the continued lack of choice.

Blah!

What part of the first President's plan do you think is not workable?

I thought you were an old fart, but you are downright ancient aren't you? Did you vote for Washington, Adams, or whom?

I didn't agree with all of Amity's points, but I do agree with yours. I'm glad people speak up when some of us turn this place into a turd-pool. And with that, I abdicate from the remainder of this thread and encourage a few others to do the same in the name of keeping this space useful.