Honoring the Sick and the Dead and the Marrying.

     Was it just in the movies that the Allies placed huge Red Crosses on the tops of hospitals and on ambulances so the Nazis and Japanese could avoid bombing them?

     I got thinking about it when I read this morning's story about a hospital in Afghanistan being the target of a car bomb, killing 60 people.

     Theses are the same people who seem to favor bombing their own fellow countrymen and women at weddings and funerals too.

     Maybe we should take the gloves off and start intentionally bombing sites in villages that harbor the Taliban? Weddings, funerals, Sunday brunch? The friend of my enemy is my enemy...you're either with us or against us?

    Sigh. I Guess we don't want to become them, do we.

What to make of Obama's Afghan pullout

By Michael J.W. Stickings

NYT:

President Obama declared Wednesday that the United States had largely achieved its goals in Afghanistan, setting in motion a substantial withdrawal of American troops in an acknowledgement of the shifting threat in the region and fast-changing political and economic landscape in a war-weary America.

Umm... what goals? Isn't that the problem? They were never clearly articulated. The Taliban was removed from power, yes, but that was before Obama became president.

So what was the point?

A stable, democratic Afghanistan? Well, that's not the case?

Just stable? Again, not so much -- not with most of the country largely lawless and with Karzai being little more than mayor of Kabul.

The destruction of al Qaeda and the Taliban? Well, Osama may be dead, but America's enemies linger still. They may not be able to use Afghanistan the way they used to, but, again, that was achieved long before 2008.

Ah, Obama says, the "tide of war is receding," and Afghanistan no longer poses a terrorist threat. But it hasn't for some time.

Look, I'm not saying that the war needs to continue. I've been against it for a long time now. But it's pretty ridiculous essentially to declare victory and to say that the goals have been achieved. The president can only say that because the goals were never clear in the first place, nor when he ramped up the war with more troops, with an Iraq-like "surge."

So we need to ask again: What was it all for?

Or does it not matter anymore, what with the 2012 campaign underway and domestic political considerations weighing even more heavily than before?

Mr. Obama announced plans to withdraw 10,000 troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year. The remaining 20,000 troops from the 2009 "surge" of forces would leave by next summer, amounting to about a third of the 100,000 troops now in the country. He said the troop reductions would continue "at a steady pace" until the United States handed over security to the Afghan authorities in 2014. 

Well, that's fine, even if it means three more years of war. But let's see what actually happens, and whether he sticks to the plan. Because, as Think Progress notes, the withdrawal of about 30,000 troops by 2012 would still leave more troops in Afghgnistan than were there when he took over the presidency. 

So what should we make of Obama's Afghan pullout? Not much. Yet.

(For more, see Carl's fine post from yesterday.)

NATO airstrike kills Afghan civilians. Yes, it's time to end this war.

By Michael J.W. Stickings

NYT:

Afghan officials said Sunday that a NATO airstrike had killed 14 civilians, most of them women and children, in the southern province of Helmand on Saturday night.

Local officials said the strike was aimed at Taliban fighters and missed, hitting two family homes.

But in a conflicting account, a high-level NATO official said Sunday night that nine civilians were killed in the strike, which was aimed at five insurgents who attacked a coalition foot patrol and killed a Marine. The insurgents continued to fire from inside a compound when NATO forces called in the strike.

"Unfortunately, the compound the insurgents purposefully occupied was later discovered to house innocent civilians," the official, Maj. Gen. John Toolan, commander of NATO forces in the Southwest region, said in a statement. The general apologized for the civilian deaths on behalf of all coalition forces, including Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top coalition commander in Afghanistan, and said the investigation into the episode was continuing.

"While I know there is no price on human life, we will ensure that we make amends with the families in accordance with Afghan culture," he said. 

This isn't about "us" being as bad as "them," it's about the quagmire the Afghan War has become, that it has been for a long time now. And making "amends" just won't cut it. It's time to get out.

Now, I'm not sure Hamid Karzai's "last warning" really means anything. NATO (and particularly the U.S.) will stay in Afghanistan as long as it wants.

But what is the point of staying? What is the war for?

There are several answers to that question -- including supporting the country's "government" (i.e., Karzai, who barely controls Kabul), rooting out the Taliban in the name of the "war on terror," building a sustainable state with a legitimate democratic government, as well as a healthy civil society, etc.) -- but not a single one is satisfactory anymore.

It may be impossible to avoid civilian casualties entirely, but this latest incident serves as a reminder of just how pointless the war has become.

America Matches Russian Record

    One year ago, I posted about the U.S. in Afghanistan and a dubious record we were on our way to breaking. Now we're there. And just as the Obama Administration sets a course for departing by 2014.

   The U.S. has been in Afghanistan as long as the Soviets were.

   This weekend, we break that record.

   And we're apparently not leaving anytime soon.

   In fact according to a FOX News report, we're sending in tanks.

   My original posting is here,.

    On November 14th, Bob Davis wrote in an editorial in the Anniston Star that the U.S. is spending $6-Billion a month in Afghanistan. Even in terms of government spending, that's a chunk of money. Are we getting anything of substance in return? If this were just a dubious U.S. Government research program---like a giant Halogen Collider of our own beneath Nevada---it would be one thing. But every day we stay, the lives of American military personnel are lost or changed forever.

     And yet how often did you hear the word Afghanistan during debates leading up to the election? When I asked Congresswoman-elect Martha Roby a question about the war(s) during our pre-primary election OTR program, she seemed surprised, as if it were a literally foreign issue she would not have to deal with.

     Now the candiates who professed to be budget cutters are in charge. Will they cut Social Security? Or Mr. Karzai's personal retirement program...the same Karzai whose behavior is causing concern by NATO allies.