General McChrystal and Afghanistan

It really does not matter if general McChrystal is fired or not. (It matters greatly to him, of course.) I am referring to winning (Or losing) the war in Afghanistan. The stated goal is withdrawal from Afghanistan beginning in July of 2011. I expect that the U.S. will be for the most part fully out of Afghanistan before 1/1/2012. This is a political deadline because of the Presidential election in November of that year.

This all goes along with President Obama’s stated ideas that the U.S. is causing more trouble by our presence ‘over there’ than we are solving. If he stays true to his beliefs, he will have the U.S. out of both Iraq and Afghanistan before he has to run for re-election. This way he can say that he ended BOTH wars.

In any case, it really does not matter who is in charge of the war in Afghanistan simply because it will be going away anyway. The part that bothers me is that we are losing people TODAY. Why not just leave now? Why have more of our people killed and wounded if we are leaving anyway? The ‘surge’ is just killing more people, more of the Afghans and more of our own soldiers.

I am guessing that the ’surge’ was never expected to work, but President Obama believes that it is a good idea because it ‘worked’ in Iraq. This way, he can honestly say that he attempted a similar strategy in Afghanistan. After careful thought and consideration, it did not work. So we can then leave. Something that President Obama wanted to do anyway, so it is a win-win situation for him. (Politically)