As an anti-war progressive, my thoughts regarding the President’s announcement this past week of sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan will be in the minority. But the truth is, some of us have been waiting eight years for the efforts in Afghanistan to be finished.
Its amazing how many progressives seem to think the Taliban are cuddly people, who are simply mis-understood. Objections to our troop presence is increased because innocents get killed, yet the Taliban do kill innocents, but that’s perfectly acceptable. Utterly bizarre.
An Afghanistan that mirrors the diverse, cosmopolitan society that was in the country prior to the Soviet invasion- in which co-ed schools in Kabul allowed women to even wear skirts!- is in American’s best interests. Obviously, the President gets that. There once was a time when those on the far Left took up arms to engage in war against fascist despots- those anti-fascist Americans who died in Spain during the 1930s have been continually overlooked in our nation’s history. Nowadays, far Left holier than thou rail black-and-red ‘anarchists’ rail against a careful and deliberate decision to engage in war, a decision that one could say is even justified, taking safety from the trappings of their petit-bourgeois lifestyle and using the power of a computer mouse to do… what, exactly?
Then there are those progressives who call Obama a warmonger and that he is engaging in pre-emptive war. One word: bullsh!t. The troops had been in there for each year of Bush’s term, during whose watch the Talbian reasserted itself. If he hadn’t reduced the troop presence to one smaller than what is currently stationed in Alaska (what are the odds of OBL being in Alaska, or its close neighbor, Russia), than we would have made huge strides towards establishing a functional civil society. But Shrub had to go play G.I. Joe with real people’s lives.
Then there are those progressives who say we should pull out all military presence and replace it with NGO and civilian presence to help develop the country. Un-frickin-beleivable. I’ll never forget the presentation I went to with a rep from the military and one from MercyCorps explained how their efforts are mutually enforcing. The purpose military is to fight and win wars, not nation build. MercyCorps & similar NGOs are to provide assistance in developing civil society, but it is unfathomable for them to consider doing so in a dangerous environment without military protection.
Out of all this teeth-gnashing by progressives about the supposed ‘betrayal’ by President Obama, its odd that nobody’s really brining up what the average Afghani citizen might want. Progressives seem to infer that many Afghanis would prefer to be abandoned from the protection of the U.S. military and left to the “protection” of the Taliban. And that’s completely insane.
