4000 extra troops fight war without end
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| Fri, 03-27-2009 - 8:21pm |
No exit strategy, a war we are losing, a war we can't win. Is this Iraq? No, President Bush won that war.
This is Afghanistan, and President Obama is determined to send troops in to fight this good war. You know, the war we can't win, the war with no exit strategy, the war Americans will die in, the war which will not install Democracy, and which will not stop drug trafficking. The good war!
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2009/03/abc-news-luis-m.html
Additional 4,000 Troops to Be Ordered to Afghanistan
ABC News' Luis Martinez reports: As part of the Obama administration's Afghan strategy review to be unveiled on Friday, an additional 4,000 troops will be ordered to Afghanistan to help train the Afghan army and police, defense officials tell ABC News.
While the troop announcement may be it for this year, it's possible that even more troops will be headed to Afghanistan in 2010.
Last week, a senior administration official told ABC News' Martha Raddatz that by the end of August the total U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan will stand at 64,000. This official added that it was unlikely any more troops would be sent to Afghanistan this year beyond the additional trainers to be announced Friday. There are currently 38,000 US troops in Afghanistan.
However, it's possible that the troop strength in Afghanistan could rise even higher next year, possibly to as many as 70,000 U.S. troops, as the Pentagon meets additional troop requests from military commanders in Afghanistan, another defense official said today.
That includes an additional combat brigade that top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, would like to employ in southern Afghanistan and possibly more trainers needed to train a planned doubling of the Afghan army's size. Both the combat troops and trainers would require additional support troops known as "enablers."
The 4,000 trainers are in addition to the 17,000 troops that President Obama announced in February he was sending to Afghanistan this spring and summer. They will come from a combat brigade the Pentagon had slated in the original request for extra troops made by McKiernan. However, they were not included in February's announcement for additional troops. At the time, the White House said any further troop deployments would depend on the results of the Afghanistan strategy review.
The deployment of the training brigade meets a long-standing request for 4,000 trainers to help the Afghan army and police, that Pentagon officials had hoped would be met by NATO countries.
However, the need for more trainers may grow next year with the planned doubling of the Afghan army's size, so it's possible that more trainers might be needed beyond those to be announced Friday.
If that's the case, there will be a need for more enabler troops to support those extra trainers.

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We "won" in Iraq long before Bush made any acknowledgment that most of his "goals" were spurious*. There were NO WMD (even if conspiracy theorists were right in their claim that weapons were spirited away to Syria, they were no longer IN Iraq), and Saddam was deposed. Both occurred within the first three months of the war. Since those were the ostensible reasons for which Iraq was "pre-emptively" invaded, we should have been able to say ....errr.....ummmm..."mission accomplished". The military did its job.
Bush was a lying, scheming, ignorant and arrogant fool with aspirations to grandeur and he wanted more--specifically easy access for corporations to Iraq's oil industry and reserves. The "war president" used 9/11 to frighten us into acceding to his unconstitutional power grabs and attacks on civil liberties. But get this: Of OBL he said:
"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."
3/13/02
"I am truly not that concerned about him."
3/13/02 (The New American, 4/8/02)
Nor did he really care about democracy in Iraq. If he had been that concerned, he'd never have been cozy bedpal to military strongman Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan!
BTW, since iVillage caters primarily to women, let us look at their status under the Taliban in Afghanistan. This is an excerpt, I strongly urge reading the whole link:
"Female education, from kindergarten through graduate school, banned. Employment for women, banned. It's now illegal to wear makeup, nail polish, jewelry, pluck your eyebrows, cut your hair short, wear colorful or stylish clothes, sheer stockings, white socks and shoes, high-heel shoes, walk loudly, talk loudly or laugh in public. In fact, the government doesn't believe women should go out at all: "Women, you should not step outside your residence" reads one of the Taliban dictates.
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~mvcarmac/women2.html
Life under the "leadership" of Saddam Hussein was no picnic but that was due in large part to the economic impact of sanctions. Again, here is an excerpt but the entire link is informative:
"Historically, Iraqi women and girls have enjoyed relatively more rights than many of their counterparts in the Middle East. The Iraqi Provisional Constitution (drafted in 1970) formally guaranteed equal rights to women and other laws specifically ensured their right to vote, attend school, run for political office, and own property. Yet, since the 1991 Gulf War, the position of women within Iraqi society has deteriorated rapidly. Women and girls were disproportionately affected by the economic consequences of the U.N. sanctions, and lacked access to food, health care, and education. These effects were compounded by changes in the law that restricted women's mobility and access to the formal sector in an effort to ensure jobs to men and appease conservative religious and tribal groups."
http://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/wrd/iraq-women.htm
*Bush STILL acts as though the vast majority of his actions were well-judged. He regrets the "mission accomplished" and "bring it on" episodes; and also bemoaned "intelligence failure" but those are, relatively speaking, small potatoes compared to the other massive missteps he and his minions made.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7759908.stm
Edited 3/29/2009 9:31 am ET by jabberwocka
Jabberwocka
Do you know what gets me about all of this? The way woman have it in Iraq is because of the RELIGION and the beliefs of the Muslim men in how woman should be treated. No country can go in an war with a coutry and expect to change their beliefs and religion. It just will never happen. when Anne Coulter said "We should go into their country, kill all their leaders and convert them to Christianity" that statement alone shows just how stupid and what a moron she is.
Coulter regularly spouts the outrageous. It's her stock in trade. Anybody who "buys her goods" ought to remember caveat emptor!
Women in Iraq used to have far more freedoms since Saddam's governance was largely secular; than their counterparts in other predominantly Islamic nations, including our odd old ally, Saudi Arabia.
Jabberwocka
"Iraqi women had civil rights before we stuck our noses in there and besides......"
You're correct.
The cost has been horrendous for Iraqis.
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
Doesn't look like a "win" anyway one views the facts.....
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/recent/
"I think this has festered for seven years, and now the tasks there are more difficult than ever. We need to remember that these are tribal people with no interest in having a democracy like we have in the USA."
You're correct. Plus the Afghanistan/Pakistan border isn't a border per se.
Given the history of the British & USSR's forays into Afghanistan it was a mistake to wage war there in the first place IMO.
Secret operations, CIA/MI6/military, could possibly have caught or killed OB & his cohorts maybe even brought them to trial.
Iraq battle after militia arrest
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7970006.stm
Two passers-by have died in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, after clashes between security forces and one of the militias which are backed by US forces.
The gun battle in the Fadil district of the city erupted shortly after the leader of the local Awakening group, Adil Mashadani, was arrested.
One account says US troops helped with the arrest alongside the Iraqi army.
Fadil was run by al-Qaeda in Iraq for most of 2006 and 2007, but they were driven out by the Awakening movement.
Baghdad security spokesman Qassim Moussawi told Reuters news agency: "Iraqi forces arrested Mashadani because they had a judicial warrant. The clashes started because of this."
Children playing
The BBC's Hugh Sykes happened to be in Fadil a few hours before the gun battle and he says the neighbourhood seemed calm and normal.
People were out shopping, fresh fish was on sale on a cart in the shade and children were playing.
He says it is an impoverished district where many buildings are bullet-pocked from the days when al-Qaeda menaced the mostly Shia neighbourhoods nearby.
No reason has yet been given for the arrest of Mr Mashadani - but his detention may destabilise Fadil unless it is satisfactorily explained, adds our correspondent.
The Awakening - or Sons of Iraq, as the Americans call them - mostly consist of Sunni Arab fighters who used to work with al-Qaeda.
They have been credited with helping drastically reduce violence, flushing out Sunni Islamist al-Qaeda from parts of Baghdad, western Anbar province and some northern towns.
There are estimated to be around 100,000 Awakening members nationwide and they were paid by the US military until last year when the Iraqi government began taking over the programme.
Analysts say the Shia-led government's handling of the Sunni Arab fighters it once fought against will be a key test of efforts to stabilise Iraq as the US prepares to withdraw its combat troops by August 2010.
Truth be told, if this were REALLY about liberating Muslim women, we might actually listen and dialogue with Muslim women instead of assuming we know what it is they need. Instead of creating problems for the, we could actually work for and with them.
Sorry, But We Don't Need Saving
http://www.thenational.ae/article/20080527/OPINION/161952119/-1/SPORT
Tala al Ramahi
Many Arab men (and women) would cringe at the thought that they would be labelled feminists. It would be puzzling to a European or American watching from afar that many of the most progressive Arab women would be weary of the word, most probably because it carries with it Westernised connotations of what a woman is expected to be.
In the UAE, increasingly more men have realised and stressed the need for women to receive an education so as to liberate themselves from the ills of poverty, inequality and illiteracy. These men have also ingrained in the rising generation of women the importance of them actively participating in the civil, political and social arenas.
However, the words “feminist” and “Arab man”, may seem like a contradiction in terms – to the Western world, at least. Almost 30 years since the publication of Edward Said’s highly influential book, Orientalism, the study of Islam, Arabs and the Middle East has unfortunately, remained largely unchanged. Said argued that postcolonial literature and discourse on the Middle East produced in the West had been tainted with the ideological assumption that the East was inherently inferior.
It is no surprise then, that the Arab woman’s representation in American discourse is either as an image of an oppressed, helpless, and veiled human being who is in need of being “saved”, or as an exotic character (usually a belly dancer or a sensual harem-girl). As a result, white American feminists have accepted the flawed image of the Arab woman, and have since added the Arab woman’s plight to their liberation agenda. And so now, Western feminists believe that it is their duty to save their Arab sisters from the burden of the men in their lives and the culture that is supposedly restricting them from achieving their own liberation.
Upon my arrival in the United States a few years ago as a student in California, I immediately noticed something peculiar about America’s fascination with the plight of the Arab woman; the most important voice of all – that of the Arab woman – was never heard. There was no interest in listening to the concerns and grievances of the Arab woman.
If they had only asked, feminists in the US would have realised that their Arab counterparts have not accepted a second-class status in their societies; they might also have discovered that the majority of Arab women did not yearn to become exactly like their Western counterparts either.
Furthermore, according to a recent study (the most comprehensive of its kind on the Muslim world) that was conducted by the US authors John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, Muslim women actually are in favour of gender parity, but would want the equality of the sexes to be on their own terms, and within their own cultural context.
It would have been wiser for Western feminists to listen to their Arab counterparts, instead of assuming that they needed to be saved. The lack of alternatives to Western-style feminism left many educated Arab and progressive women (including myself) unable to identify with the very movement that was supposed to embrace us. In order to believe in their vision, we were supposed to choose between our emancipation and our culture. We refused to make such a compromise.
My experience with feminism in the West led me to believe that it is imperative that educated Arab women establish movements that relate to their experiences and grievances as Arab and Muslim women. While American feminists focus on mundane issues such as Saudi women not being allowed to drive a car or swim in public, we should tackle the bigger issues.
Almost half the women in the Arab world are illiterate. In less developed countries such as Yemen, and war-ridden countries like Iraq and the Palestinian territories, the figures are dishearteningly higher. The ability to wear a swimsuit in public should not distract from the real problems of Arab women’s access to education – or health care.
Of course, the state of women in the Arab world is far from uniform. In the United Arab Emirates, for instance, Emirati women are graduating in higher numbers from colleges and universities than their male counterparts. We already have four female cabinet ministers, eight women on the 40-seat advisory council, and a woman judge.
Despite such achievements, it seems that American feminists are more concerned with the way these women dress rather than their substance; a notion that defeats feminism’s very essence. It is up to the Arab woman to decide whether the hijab or abaya is a religious obligation or a part of her cultural identity, for instance.
A lot of Western feminists refuse to accept that there are women who willingly choose this form of dress over the Western alternatives. The same reasoning holds for many other aspects of an Arab woman’s life, such as freedom to choose to stay at home and be a devoted mother.
A friend’s mother, who was visiting the country for the first time from the United Kingdom, watched a young woman stroll through the mall and made an astute observation: “She’s wearing an abaya yet she has the walk of such a liberated woman,” she said. It must not have occurred to her that maybe, just maybe, the Emirati woman had decided not to make a choice between the two.
talramahi@thenational.ae
Exactly.
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