Obama Needs GOP to help stay in Afghanistan

In today’s Washington Post, there is a unique insight into President Obama’s efforts to keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan.  He cannot do it without strong G.O.P. support.  Democrats are jumping ship in droves relative to our involvement in that war.  They say that politics makes strange bedfellows.  I think we are seeing that here.

I personally have never been able to figure out the mission in Afghanistan for U.S. and NATO troopers.  I have never had it adequately explained to me and I have asked many times.  I have never read a good explanation of that Western involvement in this graveyard of empires called Afghanistan.  Have you?  Would you mind sharing it with us if you can?  I need to be enlightened here.

Initially, I believe our mission there had something to do with punishing the Taliban.

These people were allegedly the theological base within Islam that supports terrorism within and without Islam against other Muslims and non-Muslims who do not accept the extreme right-wing reading of the Quran that is extant in a branch of activist Islam that is called Wahabism.

Bin Laden accepted Wahabism in his native Saudi Arabi, where it actually originated in the 19th century, and he took it to Afghanistan where he trained international “troops” to bring radical right-wing Islam to the world.  Mostly Saudi Arabian men then took it here and killed people on 9/11 in three separate terrorist attacks.

Now, that is the story that we have all been told.  I have no reason to disbelieve it but some things do not make sense relative to our reactions to this.  Wahabist cells are being trained all over the world, wherever they can find and buy land for training camps.  They are a dangerous phenomenon in Islam that is spread over the entire planet.  Moderate Muslims are terrified of them and their influence.  They are a threat to normally accepted Islam as well as they are a threat to the West. Afghanistan is only one place that these terrorists train (by their own reckoning they are faithful saints of Islam).

Why Afghanistan?

Supposedly because Bin Laden was/is there and/or was/is in Pakistan across the border from Afghanistan and he is hiding.

A six-foot six-inch Saudi man who must be on a dialysis machine three times a week is “hiding” in the mountains of Afghanistan or Pakistan and successfully eluding elite NATO forces. Are you buying that?  I write novels and I have to tell you, I could not come up with a storyline like that.  Nobody would believe it.  It just could not happen.  A giant terrorist with no kidneys who need near-constant dialysis is moving around the most difficult mountainous terrain in the world and eluding elite Western special ops forces?  Nahhhh!  It ain’t happening.  Something else is going on.

Would somebody please level with us?

Obama wants us there.  The most left-wing, the non-mainstream president we have ever elected in this country wants us deeply involved in Afghanistan to the point where he has already sent in more troops.  What does the president know that we do not know?  Why must he depend on the opposition party to get this wartime agenda off the ground, and why is his own party deserting him if this is so important to American defense?  This is very, very odd.

I am old enough and been hurt enough and seen enough really crazy things in life now to know that something is going on here, probably in a big way, that does not meet the eye.  What is it?

Why would a left-wing president who apparently has no stake in continuing an increasingly unpopular war be pushing so hard to keep the thing going?  Does it involve poppy production?  Stopping Russian influence on the oilfields in neighboring countries?  Having an army permanently stationed in western Asia and so we need a convenient excuse?

If American lives are being expended for over eight years now and none of us can adequately explain why, the soldiers either need to be brought home or we have a right to a clear, complete and immediate explanation as to why these young Americans need to continue to fight and die in this Stone Age country that poses no immediate national defense threat to us.

We deserve that Mr. President.  Please make sure we get it as soon as possible.