(I think one could be excused for asking how a guy that avowedly loathes modern America and its culture can be taken seriously when he advocates a narrow, isolationist, "America-first" foreign policy.)
Anyway, Scheuer and several others were asked to respond to this set of questions:
Should Obama gamble that more troops and new tactics will turn the tide, as Bush did in Iraq, and how many more troops would it take? Or does Obama risk his presidency by getting bogged down in another Asian land war in support of an increasingly undemocratic government? And what's the alternative to an "Afghan surge" -- perhaps, as conservative columnist George Will wrote last week, withdrawing and relying on special forces, intelligence and drones just to monitor the Afghanistan-Pakistan border?And below is a bit of Scheuer's response. (I'd like to copy the whole thing in full, just so you can get a feel for how scattershot and angry this tirade is, but I'll fight the urge.) Watch out -- the crazy comes so fast it's kind of hard to focus.
Et cetera. Good luck with all that.This week’s question is an apt one to follow the discussion on summer reading. Summer was once the time when adults indulged in beach reading that allowed them -- in a child-like fashion -- to escape the hard realities and simple right-and-wrong choices of adult life. The books chosen allowed the sea-side reader to create his own reality for a few days and to intellectually experiment and wrestle with creating the world he or she would want to exist.
Sadly for America, virtually all of our ruling elite -- politicians, generals, teleprompter-reading news “experts” like Stewart, Hannity, and Olberman; print commentators and pundits, and most especially the great bulk of the thoroughly pagan, ahistorical, and anti-American academy -- now live the beach-reading experience the year round with no time off for reality, or for right and wrong. Although examples of this are legion -- witness the child-like world conjured by the communist/ultra-green/felon-loving/9/11-truther that our president wanted to advise the White House -- there is no better example of the nature of our perpetually child-like elite than those who offer us the vision of a world where there is legitimate reason for hope on the issue of Afghanistan.
Quite simply, there is no hope. The Afghan war is lost beyond recall, and all the young men and women who have died there since 9/11, and all those who will die from today forward, have died in vain. Their lives have been wasted by those in both parties who have governed us since 2001. These are men and women who find the idea of fighting to win repulsive and inhumane, but do not mind a lick wasting our kids lives for such non- essentials as human rights, women’s rights, secularism, and democracy for non-Americans, most of whom want no part of them and will fight them to the death. The simple reality is:
--Bush had a window for savagery for the first 12 or 15 months after 9/11; he could have done anything in using the U.S. military to achieve the only mission that could -- or can -- be accomplished in Afghanistan-- the annihilation of al-Qaeda and the Taleban. He and his tough-talking but always effete Neocons advisers and pundits did not have the courage to effectively destroy America’s enemies in Afghanistan. Obama’s team, on the other hand, has a clear affinity for America’s Islamist enemies and has dismantled most of the U.S. intelligence and covert-action programs that helped hold the Islamists at bay without having anything to put in their place.
--Rumsfeld and his clique fielded a tiny force in Afghanistan; foolishly believed George Tenet‘s lie that Afghans would sell their families and faith for money; assigned the task of closing the Pak-Afghan border to the Taleban’s tribal brothers in the Pak Frontier Corps; and so allowed most of al-Qaeda and the Taleban escape to regroup, refit, and fight another day. That day has arrived.
