Vital yesterday, not today? Poliquicks
Leslie H. Gelb, wrote an interesting article on the thedailybeast.com on February 26, 2011: “Lost in the furor over Libya and Egypt is the admission by the U.S. military and Defense Sec. Robert Gates that the Afghan War makes no sense.”
Gelb continued. “Case in point: The U.S. military announcement carried in Friday’s New York Times and Washington Post that American troops were withdrawing from an obscure valley it once termed ‘central’ to the war effort. Vital yesterday, not today. Is it possible for anyone to figure out how to fight this war?
“Second case in point: Remarks on Friday to West Point cadets by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, including this bon mot: ‘In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it.”
Anyone’s guess was Gates referring to Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan?
After years of fighting for control of a prominent valley in the rugged mountains of eastern Afghanistan the United States military has begun to pull back most of its forces from an area it once insisted was central to the campaign against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
I’ve alwasy thought that the previous and curent Administrations sees Afghnaistn as vital national security interest.
Weren’t we suppose to be keeping Al Qaeda from re-establishing a base of operation in Afghanistan and keeping the Taliban form an Islamic fascist regime spreading hate and mayhem across Afghanistan.
To paraphrase the immortal words of Walter Cronkite after the TET Offensive in Vietnam: What the hell is going on?