This 2004 comedy gem by Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer is worth revisiting. Krauthammer's neoconservative declares President Bush's Afghanistan invasion a resounding success.
President Bush put in place a military campaign that did in two months what everyone had said was impossible: defeat an entrenched, fanatical, ruthless regime in a territory that had forced the great British and Soviet empires into ignominious retreat. Bush followed that by creating in less than three years a fledgling pro-American democracy in a land that had no history of democratic culture and was just emerging from 25 years of civil war.
In 2009, Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai rigged the election to favor himself. Karzai's brother, Ahmed Wali, is one of the most powerful heroin traffickers in the world. The Taliban presence is at it's strongest since the invasion. A 2007 International Council on Security and Development report found the Taliban controlled 54 percent of Afghanistan. Apparently, the Taliban didn't realize Krauthammer declared Bush the victor.
Krauthammer on President Barack Obama's West Point speech.
No one expected Obama to do a Henry V or a Churchill. But Obama could not even manage a George W. Bush, who, at an infinitely lower ebb in power and popularity, opposed by the political and foreign policy establishments and dealing with a war effort in far more dire straits, announced his surge -- Iraq 2007 -- with outright rejection of withdrawal or retreat. His implacability was widely decried at home as stubbornness, but heard loudly in Iraq by those fighting for and against us as unflinching -- and salutary -- determination.
What about Bush's handling of Afghanistan in 2007. Krauthammer is suffering from selective memory loss. He declared mission accomplished in Afghanistan. For Afghanistan's sake Obama should avoid doing a Bush.
Krauthammer should be ignored on foreign policy matters. He argued for the Iraq invasion on the basis of weapons of mass destruction. His neocon heart supports torture. Do neocons, such as Krauthammer get to decide who is a terrorist? The neocons' track record wasn't so great on WMDs. How many innocent people will have to be tortured to satisfy Krauthammer's thirst for blood? If there are innocent people tortured don't expect, people like Krauthammer, to turn themselves in to the authorities. They might be tortured by the oppressive justice system they wished to create.
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