Liberty MavenBarack Obama’s Own Hornet’s Nest: Afghanistan
November 19th, 2008 11:06 am | by Marc Gallagher | Published in Blowback, Foreign Policy, Maven Commentary, Obama, Politics, War, terrorism | 1
And so it begins. The pixels barely dry on my commentary this morning about Obama’s coming intervention is Afghanistan we get a new message from Al-Qaeda’s number two man, Ayman Zawahiri, warning Obama and the U.S. of the likely outcome of such a policy.
“What you have announced before … that you will withdraw (US) troops from Iraq (and send them) to Afghanistan is a policy that is doomed to failure,” Zawahiri said in the message made available by the SITE Intelligence Group.
“If you still want to be stubborn about America’s failure in Afghanistan, then remember the fate of (US President George W.) Bush and (Pakistan’s former president) Pervez Musharraf, and the fate of the Soviets and British before them,” he added.
Do these words have merit? Will Obama’s Afghanistan become the failure leading to his undoing? Perhaps the most compelling aspect of Zawahiri’s prediction is that it will not be an unexplored theory. Obama is going to intervene, and we are going to be able to judge the results of that intervention.
Will Obama’s own style of intervention succeed where Bush’s failed? I have my doubts.
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November 19th, 2008 at 2:14 pm (#)
For what it is worth, my husband, who is a senior officer presently deployed in Kabul (and a Campaign for Liberty supporter), seems to think Obama has a far better grasp of of events over there than did President Bush, which might bode for a glimmer of something positive. Nevertheless, I’m still thinking that Obama’s plans for Afghanistan are ultimately doomed, just because I doubt that either he or America have the will to what is necessary to achieve what could be called a victory there — namely what Michael Scheuer outlines as a no-holds-barred-merciless-bloodbath-and-forget-about-the-casualty-numbers.
The bloodbath-of-insane-proportions is not likely to happen because America would look even more evil in world opinion and it appears that Obama wants to be liked. So if the bloodbath is not likely to happen, then you have to build your hopes on soft power (such as hospitals and schools) which will take years to to bear fruit. In the meantime you have to build up the troop presence just to keep the Taliban from killing all the schoolgirls and up-coming doctors — and everything else living.
A crazy bad place to be….