Ted Rall for October 04, 2021

I was bemused that Biden lied about the fact that the generals had suggested leaving troops there. Twice, actually: Lying isn’t what I think he does, much (aside from political exaggeration)… AND the fact that the generals didn’t want to pull out completely. Of COURSE not, doh! (It’s good that generals don’t get to make political decisions).

What about the weapons manufacturers? Surely they have a say in all this.

To the man selling hammers everything looks like a nail.

Afghanistan WAS winnable. Jeezus Dubya Bush decided to micromanage Tora Bora and that’s when it all went to shit. The same way LBJ’s “bombing pauses” allowed the NVA to recover and keep going guaranteed that that war was lost in 1965.

How did we disengage from one recently, Ted? Any thoughts?

If ONLY we had committed more troops…

After World War II, the U.S. lost its perspectives on committing itself to wars that could not be won.

Yea tell us, random generals who clearly didn’t know what they were doing

Theodore, you might want to ask W. how we got there. Otherwise as to why staying when there was no strategy is a fair question.

All that armament has a best before date.. be a shame to waste it.

Got to agree on this one. We get in these things because the generals want to play with the new weapons!!

Well, they would know, wouldn’t they. I suppose their answer would be – we follow the orders of the President.

“First our experts will discuss Vietnam . . . . "

I find it interesting that military experts are being questioned about how to run a country, being their main concern is how to destroy a government. Military are not ran as a democracy but more of a dictatorship ( I am not criticizing ) their aim is what is best for our military, not what is best for the country. One reason we got in to this war was that Bush Jr. didn’t read Bush Sr. book. Where he explained why he didn’t go into Iraq, because it is harder to hold a country than it is to overrun a government. People will say what about how well we did after WWII, they forget first, we did not start those wars and their where many in those countries that were ready for the war to end. Second, the people in those countries were more like the people in charge of Allied, in education and background. Middle Eastern countries are very different from us in many ways and we have been very poor at find leaders to run them in the way we want them ran and are not the way their people will be the most likely to follow. Change is a slow journey and is very hard to force on anyone ( just look at our own country and the aftermath of the last several elections). We could have been out of this war much earlier, but each president wanted to come out a winner and were not willing to let everyone realize that we had not won. For good or bad Biden has stop the slow bled of our military, there was no good way to leave once started what happened would have happened is some way or other.

“What people do with these things after they leave our plant isn’t our concern.”

The hijackers of 9/11 were all Saudis. OBL was a Saudi who thought a multitude of Islamic sins were committed by allowing the Coalition to build bases in Saudi Arabia to defeat Saddam the first time and those hijackings were his revenge. He ran away to hide in Pakistan. And shrub then invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. The war profited Hlliburton and others. It was a Dick move. We are out of it, that is a good thing.

The United States of America has NEVER gotten into a war “we couldn’t win.” Our War of Independence against the then world’s super power proved that.

Could be that the question refers to Afghanistan, but we won that one. The mission on 9/12/2001 was to defeat and overthrow the Taliban Afghan government who had given safe haven to the terrorist group al Qaeda who had attacked us the day before, and refused to allow us to pursue the terrorists. Some 90 days later the Taliban was deposed and we went after the terrorists who then fled Afghanistan into the mountains bordering Pakistan. At that point the mission was successfully accomplished, and it was a win. But then Cheney/Rumsfeld decided we needed to invade Iraq. Bush2, even with accurate military briefings, didn’t have a clue and believed the cooked intel from the Brits about Hussein having WMD and the false assertions by Cheney that Hussein was responsible for the terrorist attack. So, rather than take the general’s recommendations and send in our Special Forces Mountain Divisions, Afghanistan was put on the ‘back burner’. They were ordered to prepare for Iraq.

Most of our military, particularly the generals, are not war mongers, nor want to go to war. There are always exceptions. As with all our population, viewpoints vary from one extreme to the other. Most are in the middle. Some do want career advancement, some ‘glory’, some financial benefit, some revenge for those fallen. But most are honorable people who serve this Nation, taking an oath to heart to support and defend our constitution. They serve at the pleasure of the president, the civilian elected government. The U.S. Military does not make policy, they carry out the policies made by the civilian elected government.

“War” isn’t the problem. We have not been at “war” since before most of us were born.

The problem is Congressional Authorization of Use of Force. With it we could be at “war” again tomorrow. We have been in “war”, excuse me, conflict in one place or another for most of the last 40 years due to AUF.

We keep blaming Biden. Or Trump. Or that Obama guy. Or Clinton and the Bushes. But it’s not them. It’s Congress that’s the problem. The president uses the tools Congress gives him. It doesn’t matter if it’s taxes, immigration or “war” it all comes down to Congress.

If we want change we have to change the Congress.

Eliminate the parties to start with. Audit Congressmen going in and coming out of office. Make DC and PR states. Same for Guam and the AVI’s! Move the Capital to somewhere outside DC. Say, Paducah, Kentucky. They’ll get work done there. Remove the cap on the number of House members and restore the 1:30,000 ratio of Representatives to represented. That would give us about 11,100 Congressmen. Plenty of representation for ALL the people. Take democracy out of the hands of the corporations and back into ours. Even the Koch Brothers can’t buy off 11K Congressmen. Not and have them stay bought.

What is AUF and AVI?

The MSM pundit should have said “and stayed in all the wars we haven’t won.” War is a racket: Marine General Smedley Butler.

isn’t it a little late for jokes about Vietnam?

I remember George W. Bush lied the USA into to intractable wars.

Wake and see that republicans are pure evil incarnate.

Looks like “Fox and Friends”. Remember ‘shock and awe’’