Iraq and Afghanistan

Notice how the ‘rising sectarian violence’ in Iraq is getting little to no attention from the press? A few years ago, this would have been a definite sign that we were losing the war. Even the news from Afghanistan is getting little attention. The ‘surge’ strategy that the Obama administration is implementing in Afghanistan is a pale copy of the ‘surge’ in Iraq. In addition, this ‘new’ strategy is complete with an end date. I fully expect the U.S. to begin a withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2011. It will be completed prior to the presidential election cycle of 2012. This is all in agreement with President Obama’s belief that we had no business over there. He was against the ‘invasion’ of Afghanistan AND Iraq. The U.S. is responsible for the problems and the ‘occupation’ is creating more ‘new’ terrorists. And he gets to say that he ended both wars. What a political windfall!

This is a basic misunderstanding of the issues that are at the core of the violence and warfare in the first place. If he is correct, the war will just fade away. If I am correct, the war will become very quiet and the enemy attacks will gradually spread to other parts of the world. Eventually, the attacks will become much more noticeable and will begin hitting the United States more and more effectively. Eventually, WMD will be deployed. At that point, containing the war will be out of our control.