Obama To Keep 9,800 Troops in Afghanistan.

Obama To Keep 9,800 Troops in Afghanistan

I will give my thoughts later. What you think about keeping troops in Afghanistan until 2016 OT?

democrat response: this is a good thing

republican response: this is a bad thing

tea party response: obama is a kenyan muslim

Peace Prize Prez

How long do we honestly need to be in a country before we declare it safe to leave? Given that we have been over there well over a decade and still feel we can't leave as of yet I'm gonna say that this war (both wars really) were badly mishandled.

It's the next president's problem now.

At this point, I don't think our troops will ever leave. Obama pretty much went back on everything he promised to do in his presidency.

So, some people think 2016 will be a good time to finally leave? There will never be a good time to leave but we have to eventually.

While I'm certainly willing to criticize the president where it's due (this is one of them imo) this is still nowhere near a fair assesment of his promises as a whole.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/

It would make it much easier for the rest of the army to get back in case oil were to be discovered in the future.

Funny how that works

Misleading, some of those "kept" promises are just gimmies. A weighted exercise would be better. OT, how much you say all the bitching Obama did during the campaign and then not closing Guantanamo should be counted against him? Or you can keep your doctor period. You can keep your plan period. Cap and Trade. You get my drift.

Oh I get that what matters to people the most is how they are truly going to assess a president, but jasean's assertion was that Obama went back on nearly everything he promised to do. Other than the topic at hand that's a statement directly relating to the number of promises kept vs those broken. Given the limitations of the presidency you can't really criticize Obama simply by the numbers since they remain quite above average.

the Americans can stay in Afghanistan for another decade and I doubt it would make a difference, the very nature of Afghanistan , being split along ethnic and tribal lines (which in alot of cases don't like each other very much) means the country is nearly impossible to keep stable, I have a feeling someone like Karzai has no more legitimacy in that country than the Taliban did, he just appeals to a different set of tribes or groups , so to speak.

Afghanistan suffers from just about every problem that plagues most Middle Eastern countries (if one can call Afghanistan part of the Middle East) , tribalism , ethnic division and conflict, religious discord and outside interference from both its neighbors and outside powers and the result is a mess, there are really only 2 ways to stabilize it, either put in a Saddam or Gadaffi style dictator who rules by fear , or break the country up according to ethnic lines. if the Americans aren't willing to do either, there is no point in staying, just like if a doctor does not want to administer the correct medicine to his patients, there is no point in even seeing them.

if it smells like imperialism, looks like imperialism, and acts like imperialism...........it is not imperialism

I don't think America had much interest in stabilizing the Middle East, after all we've been pumping money into their various conflicts for years. I think it's more about justifying a reason to install democracy and bring us a step closers towards globalization.

I don't think the Americans are doing this out of bad motives necessarily, I think its because they know that if they leave, it will be no different than Vietnam or Iraq, a waste of military and human resources that didn't amount to much, even if the reason for it were justified (and personally I think there was certainly some justification for it, even if I don't think they understood the country they were invading)

neither do I. They're just doing this because they don't want Afghanistan to look like the waste of money that it was the moment it falls apart one they leave.

But when you have thousands of troops in another country, you maintain more or less "control" over that country, even if than control is weak or doesnt extend to every aspect of life there.

well , to be honest nobody really controls Afghanistan , just like nobody really controls Yemen or Libya

as I mentioned in my previous post there are really only 2 things the Americans can do , otherwise they might as well pack up, because indeed its not good PR for them.

I don't follow the news or political things happening in the world, but I sorta expected this to happen.

Hazard pay here we come.

And the birds go tweet.

I came home to releases from Graham that it's a disgrace that we aren't staying there until "the mission is accomplished."

Why would anyone trust anything Obama says at this point?

Weird how the name Obama is so similar to Osama, and plus he's a black man and he still became president, wow the other candidates must have been bad. Just sayin

EDIT: I don't mean that in a racist way I just mean there's still a lot of racism about, racial stereo typing, an racial inequality in America, surprised me when he won the presidency.

From an international point of view I don't think he really has a choice. The US has been getting a lot of flack lately with their shady doings (Guantanamo, PRISM, War on Iraq, etc...), and while it may be very unpopular in the US for troops to remain in Afghanistan, I believe it would even look worse if they just bomb a nation to ruins and leave it in anarchy. I'm not saying that Afghanistan was paradise before the US came in or anything, but now with all the rampant and abundant suicide bombings that started after the US invasion, I can't help but feel that the US is responsible to some degree for the general lack of security the people in Afghanistan are suffering. Pretty much its a case of they broke it, so now they need to try to fix it.

I bet most of them are white as well... the racist son of a gun.

America never truely leaves any place they land on.

except no one has really been able to say what accomplished means anymore

I'm conflicted about this. On the one hand in the last four or five years I have become less optimistic about Afghanistan. The "blue on green" incidents, where Afghan police and military members that were being trained by NATO and U.S. forces have attacked those same U.S. and NATO forces has left a sour taste in my mouth.

On the other hand, I think that if the U.S. troops withdraw, then there is a strong possibility of the Taliban regaining power in much of the country and allowing their territory to become a safe haven for Al Qaeda. But perhaps Afghanistan will not matter much in this regard anyway, it seems Al Qaeda and its affiliates and allies already have plenty of strongholds: Yemen, parts of Pakistan, Libya, Mali, parts of Iraq, Syria.

Leaving the 9,800 troops for now is probably a wise move.

I think Iraq was a more winnable conflict, the terrain was more favorable and it wasn't as tribal. If we had kept a residual force in Iraq maybe we would've been able to stop Al Qaeda in Iraq from reconstituting and taking advantage of the Syrian civil war, and perhaps maybe we could've exerted more influence on that civil war by intercepting Iranian weapons and personnel heading for Syria.

Iraq is a very tribal country, can't remember the exact number of tribes in Iraq but it was alot, not to mention the ethnic and religious problems in that country, although in Iraq a big problem was that the majority of Arabs there were Shia, so it was easy for the Iranians to more or less take the country and make the lives of the Americans rather difficult.

there are only a few countries in the region that aren't really tribal , Egypt would be one due to the urbanization that took place in that country, due in part to the Aswan dam breaking up the traditional farming in some rural areas.

in regards to Afghanistan , no amount of troops can really stabilize the country unless one looks at the causes of instability in that country.

Considering we are still in Germany, Japan, and South Korea I'd say 100 years is a pretty good measurement of time for military forces in a particular country. On a serious note, pulling the major forces out and still leaving a token force behind is a good decision on behalf of the White House.

Yes, how convenient...

yeah good point, I just don't know what we expect to accomplish in a place like Afghanistan, are we going to forever keep the pretend peace? We certainly don't have high tensions with Japan or Germany, but perhaps we are accomplishing something non-war related over there.

Yea because we still have all the oil we stole from Iraq to use..............oh wait.

Also funny is tools like you would never admit that we are not profiting at all from the contracts China is getting for Afg's rich mineral deposits. If we went there to conquer and exploit resources why did we not force them to give us the contracts? Fucking American hating tools on this forum, such simpletons. We invaded Afg for one reason, 9/11 was orchestrated from there as a Taliban led government providing safe haven to Al Qaeda. Just stfu with your bs already.

Meh, not much to talk about. The public is tire, I'm tired, of all the fighting. Sadly it looks like all the blood and treasure was all for naught, and Obama wants to end the war by 2016, in part, for political reasons. And that is that.

It was largely meant as a joke tough murican, settle down.

In essence, Obama and his administration decided to leave behind American forces in Afghanistan because they know that the place is as unstable as it gets and they're to blame for that to an extent at least. They know that if they just pack up and leave at this point all hell will break loose in there and people around the world, specially Americans, will begin to wonder if all the resources that were poured into that war and the staggering death toll turned out to be all for nothing. In short Obama wants to save face and to at least try to maintain the current shitty status quo in there, with the fallacious promise that things will eventually get better.

I think you have the reason correct (instability), but I don't think it's about saving face - I think it's about Pakistan and their nukes falling into terrorist hands.

They just picking up the empty crisp packets and beer cans that got left over.

Hmm yes you're right. It's not really in the U.S' best interest to have instability proliferate and extend in that region. But I still think that it would undermine the ability of the U.S to wage any wars in the future if the American public reaches the conclusion that Afghanistan turned out to be yet another Vietnam. I mean in recent history, the U.S was involved in a number of wars that turned out to be a disaster more or less. Think Vietnam, Cuba, Somalia, Iraq and now Afghanistan. I think it has become exceedingly hard to sell the idea of a war to the American electorate.

Agreed. But shouldn't that be the case? Iraq was an odd situation in which it's still difficult to rationalize why it started in the first place, and the Afghan war was probably ill suited to a true war considering the enemy isn't a defined state but a mobile, hidden, and amorphous target. Some increased pragmatism in starting wars is probably warranted.

I think for something like an attack on us or our allies (in which it's a slam dunk case of defense), the support will be there. Beyond that, there may be less chest beating and more caution.