Obama's Afghanistan Strategy: They Win, We Lose

Posted by Van Helsing 

Remember when Afghanistan was the "war of necessity" that we must win, whereas Iraq was the losable "war of choice"? Bush's surge having turned the tide in Iraq put a whole new perspective on Afghanistan. Evidently, losing is not only an option now, it's Obama's plan:

President Obama urgently looked for a way out of the war in Afghanistan last year, repeatedly pressing his top military advisers for an exit plan that they never gave him, according to secret meeting notes and documents cited in a new book by journalist Bob Woodward.

Frustrated with his military commanders for consistently offering only options that required significantly more troops, Obama finally crafted his own strategy, dictating a classified six-page "terms sheet" that sought to limit U.S. involvement, Woodward reports in "Obama's Wars," to be released on Monday.

According to Woodward's meeting-by-meeting, memo-by-memo account of the 2009 Afghan strategy review, the president avoided talk of victory as he described his objectives.

"This needs to be a plan about how we're going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan," Obama is quoted as telling White House aides…

Obama kept asking for "an exit plan" to go along with any further troop commitment, and is shown growing increasingly frustrated with the military hierarchy for not providing one.

Jack Wakeland of TIA comments:

As Woodward's book sinks in, it will become more and more difficult for President Obama to pretend that he has any desire to see to the nation's defenses. This will be a particularly ugly issue for the men and women of the US military. They're going to have little choice but to begin rejecting Barack Obama categorically as unworthy of being their commander-in-chief.

Again, this is a very ugly situation to have: a president who has zero desire to defend the United States giving orders — and not giving orders — to the US military to carry out its duties in combat, overseas. The widespread contempt and disgust which a majority of military men felt for President Bill Clinton is nothing compared to what is brewing right now.

Imagine being out there on the front lines with your life in constant danger, forced to fight under absurdly restrictive rules of engagement, knowing that your farcical "Commander in Chief" plans for you to lose and is only stalling until your defeat can be arranged so as to cause him minimal political damage. If the most crucial weapon in our armed forces' arsenal is morale, Obama is disarming them.

Our troops are paying a price for this farce.