Reading Comprehension For The Loss

Right-wing reaction to last night's story that Obama was putting the Pentagon back to the drawing board on Afghanistan have been predictable, harsh, and in some cases, mind-bogglingly wrong.

Col. Mustard wants Obama to get busy feeding more troops to the black hole already.

Will someone tell our President this is not a term paper. You don't get to move the paragraphs around, tweak the punctuation, and cut and paste until it reads just right.

Keep screwing around on this and there will be no Afghan government left to which we can turn over "responsibility."

The problem is that there's no legitimate Afghan government to turn over things to now, either.

Reliapundit just says we're throwing the towel in.

OBAMA SEEMS UNABLE AND UNWILLING TO EITHER DETHRONE KARZAI OR ERADICATE THE TALIBAN AND AL QAEDA.

I GUESS OBAMA'D RATHER JUST LOSE.

Well, maybe if we weren't paying the Taliban hundreds of millions to not attack us, that would be a start. And replacing one American puppet leader with another will not help the legitimacy problem at all.

But Power Line's John Mirengoff gets the award of the day for this one:

If it were true, however, that Karzai poses the obstacle to success that Eikenberry perceives, Obama should decide not to send in any more troops and should seriously considering bringing home the troops who are in Afghanistan now. But, according to AP, this is not what the president has in mind. Instead, he reportedly is leaning towards adding 30,000 or more U.S. forces. Half would fight and the other half would training and hold ground. And, as noted, there would be some sort of provision to "clarify" when the U.S. would bug out.

So let's get this straight: Karzai is too pathetic to justify sending in the 40,000 troops Obama's hand-picked commander wants, but sufficiently able to justify sending in 30,000.

As weak war leaders go, Karzai takes a back-seat to President Obama.

No, John, Obama may not in fact be leaning towards 30,000 or more U.S. forces. The whole point of the article is that the President was going to consider that, but Eikenberry's cable changed his mind and now he is not accepting any of the four options to send in more troops. In fact, the article you're complaining about says right here:

The president was considering options that include adding 30,000 or more U.S. forces to take on the Taliban in key areas of Afghanistan and to buy time for the Afghan government's small and ill-equipped fighting forces to take over. The other three options on the table Wednesday were ranges of troop increases, from a relatively small addition of forces to the roughly 40,000 that the top U.S. general in Afghanistan prefers, according to military and other officials.

Was considering. Past tense. As in "is not considering now." As in "Obama has rejected those options and wants a withdrawal plan." Yes, the "half-and-half" plan is one of the options that "military officials" were considering, but Obama as of last night is now looking for other options. The article does say a troop increase is still "likely" but then again, all four of the options on the table Wednesday morning were troop increases, which means a troop increase Wednesday morning was in fact certain. Since Obama now is looking for other options, and a troop increase is now likely but not certain, perhaps we are looking at a withdrawal plan.

And I do have to give Mirengoff some credit: he is absolutely correct when he says that if Ambassador Eikenberry is right about the Karzai government (and I believe he is, and said that Karzai's government was never going to be viewed as legitimate and that because of that a military solution is not possible here and here and here and here and here) then we need to withdraw.

Once again, I'm hoping the President will do the right thing and begin a drawdown. The Karzai government is a joke. We're reduced to bribing the Taliban not to attack our convoys and paying military contractors billions just to haul supplies around the country. Extra troops will not win us this war without a stable, legitimate government. Since one isn't possible, then neither is a military solution.

It's time to go, and I'm hoping Obama is finally ready to say "What is best for the Unites States is to reduce our presence in Afghanistan."