One View: Obama’s Afghan Withdrawal Will Cost Lives
Note: Reasonable people can differ about the wisdom of our ongoing war in Afghanistan, its proper goals or methods of execution, and which policies will best secure our interests following the death of Osama bin Laden. Conservatives continue to debate these issues. Below, Lisa Curtis offers her view that by ignoring the generals, Obama is threatening the mission and setting America up for more serious consequences to come. Is Obama showing his hatred for the military and playing politics with American lives? – Ed.
Lisa Curtis, Human Events
President Obama’s plan for a hasty withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan risks squandering the hard-won gains made on the battlefield in southern Afghanistan over the last ten months.
U.S. military commanders on the ground in Afghanistan had reportedly requested a slower pace of withdrawal to afford them the opportunity to consolidate recent gains against Taliban insurgents. President Obama has denied his military commanders flexibility to determine the pace and scope of withdrawal based on conditions on the ground, and instead appears to have based his decision largely around the U.S. domestic political calendar.
The plans for rapidly withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan also risks upending the major achievement of eliminating Osama bin Laden across the border in Pakistan.
Bin Laden’s death and an aggressive drone campaign in Pakistan’s tribal border areas have put al-Qaeda on its back foot. The Administration deserves credit for accomplishing this crucial objective.
However, it is short-sighted to use bin Laden’s death as justification for hastening the U.S. troop draw down in Afghanistan. Announcing rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces will likely bolster the morale of the Taliban and encourage them to stick with the fight.
It Isn’t All Good News in Afghanistan
Jim Emerson, FloydReports.com
Before dawn this weekend, approximately 475 Taliban fighters escaped from a large prison in Kandahar. The prisoners opened their cell doors and left the prison through a well-prepared tunnel. Like the classic movie The Great Escape, they managed to escape without being detected. This is not be a Hollywood script but may have been influenced by one.
The Tunnel
In a well thought-out plan to break out, the prisoners took five months to build a tunnel from a local house to the section of the prisons where the fighters were being held. The 1,000-foot-long tunnel was designed and dug by engineers who added electricity and a ventilation system. Once the prisoners arrived at the end of the tunnel, they were met by waiting cars and buses. The drivers knew how to leave Kandahar without detection. The coordination of this operation was flawless, and whoever was the mastermind should be considered extremely dangerous.
Obama is Secretly Talking with the Taliban, Says It’s What Reagan Would Do
Ben Johnson, FloydReports.com
With Islamic riots, skyrocketing deficits, and state-skipping Democratic legislators hogging the headlines, this item has not yet gotten the attention it deserves. Steve Coll writes in The New Yorker, “The Obama Administration has entered into direct, secret talks with senior Afghan Taliban leaders, several people briefed about the talks told me last week.” Obama mentioned reaching out to “Taliban moderates” in 2009, only to drop the idea after public backlash. Apparently, the Obama administration has decided now is the time it wishes to look weak, hopeless, and pathetic.
Hillary Clinton detailed the American stance before a meeting of the Asia Society recently. She emphasized that if the Taliban returned to its history of repression and terror incubation, it would risk being branded “an enemy of the international community.” Mullah Omar and his buddies must be shaking in their turbans.
Hillary tried to calm the situation, saying, “I know that reconciling with an adversary that can be as brutal as the Taliban sounds distasteful, even unimaginable.” But she insisted, this is what Reagan would do.
She attributed her policy to Ronald Reagan and Richard Holbrooke. The lesson she and Obama learned from The Gipper is….
Obama’s Taliban Bailout
Kevin “Coach” Collins, Coach Is Right
A spokeswoman for the Treasury Department insists “No American taxpayer funds will be used to support [a] Kabul Bank.” Let’s hope this is one promise from these people we can count on because there will be serious consequences if Obama reverses himself.
The banks in Afghanistan must be controlled by the United States or our allies so they do not fall under the influence of the Taliban who will use sharia law to run them instead of accepted banking principles. Under sharia the terrorist Taliban will pull out 2.5% of every dollar handled by Afghanistan’s banks.
What Shari’a banks would look like
Shari’a banks run on the principles of Islam in every single aspect of their activities.
These banks would; charge no interest; avoid any speculative transactions; introduce and collect the Islamic tax called zakat and; discourage any production of tangible assets offensive to Islamic values.
In its purest state Islam is a huge redistribution scheme under which the zakat serves as a way to extract money from faithful Muslims to create the image of being a charitable religion. There is no choice for adherent Muslims when it comes to paying their zakat. Its monitory nature means a zakat can not justifiably be called an act of charity. Since zakat is 2.5% of a Muslim’s annual wages, lots of dollars would pass through Islamist bankers’ hands which would turn them into paymasters of terror.
The men who would be Afghanistan’s banking advisory board….
