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MoveOn — which walks a delicate balance of nudging Obama in a progressive direction without alienating its millions of pro-Obama members — is asking its membership to host screenings of Robert Greenwald’s movie Rethink Afghanistan between October 7 to 14 to commemorate the war’s eighth (sigh) birthday. Greg Sargent noted on Friday that MoveOn’s foray into the Afghanistan debate represented one of the first times in the Obama administration that the group is "exerting direct pressure" on Obama.
But it strikes me that Afghanistan might be the best issue, from MoveOn’s perspective, to press Obama on. The president is reviewing all options, and his aides say nothing’s off the table for discussion. I personally think withdrawing from Afghanistan would be a disaster, but leave that aside. I’m not sure exactly what MoveOn thinks "a clear exit strategy" ought to entail — over what time horizon, for instance — but it’s certainly positive that someone is pushing Obama to think beyond what can often be a constrained or circumscribed debate.
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Your tendency to think clearly on these sort of topics makes me wonder:
What “disaster” do you foresee resulting from a fairly quick and complete American/NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan?
See, I’ve become convinced that there’s nothing to be accomplished there, at least with large scale military forces. So in the interest of providing an insight I may have missed, what do you think would be such a negative result?
mikey
Taliban forces overrunning Afghanistan’s north, strengthening their hold over the east and south, and besieging a fragile Kabul government to provide strategic depth for al-Qaeda precisely at a moment when it seems like al-Qaeda Senior Leadership is running aground and vulnerable.
Should it turn out that we can inflict greater damage on al-Qaeda over the next — I dunno — year while reversing the Taliban’s momentum, then my guess is we put ourselves in position to start thinking about a military endgame, and a favorable one. But this mix of fragility and, dare I say it, anti-al-Qaeda opportunity, leads me to believe contemplating withdrawal at this point is a mistake.
Disagree respectfully Spencer. Pashtuns are not overrunning the north of the country, Taliban or no. Make no mistake, this is essentially a tribal conflict at this point– its time to start talking about how to draw some of these Pasthuns into some sort of power sharing agreement. This “denying safe haven” argument makes no sense. There will always be people with anti-american agendas SOMEWHERE. The way to defend against this is with intelligence and robust law enforcement at home. Don’t you see… having the US invade Afghanistan was Al-Q’s plan all along– and its worked out well for them. Why in Dog’s name should we continue to go along with this?!!?!?!?!