Closing Arguments: Afghanistan Decision Time for Obama

The bottom line with all of the conflicts/wars is ….GET OUT NOW. Obama should not honor any requests to send more troops. These Generals and military leaders live for war, otherwise they are sitting behind a desk and probably bored. It is all very self serving, at the cost of young people ….OBAMA….please do not turn into George Bush!

President Obama…
You need to send the troops the military leaders are requesting.
You may be our leader…but your comment made me wonder today whose side are you really on…
Plus…Oprah called Air Force One your airplane!::??
Excuse me…that Air Plane belongs to the taxpayers of AMerica…Remember us the ones who work so much we barely get to answer all the daily surveys…
I am also coming to a point where I wonder if we need to answer T.V.’s requests for our thoughts…
Seems to me our Government…has not been listening to the people any longer.
Like taking our tax money to pay for abortions in other countrie!!!???
What in the world has happened to America??? Our leaders to appear to be following our decisions…But making up their own rules as they go…and please BBoot Pelosi out of there and she needs to find a early retirement to her kitchen or something other than politics and government…Thanks for a opportunity to share my views….
DKT

Follow the advice of his Army advisors they are trained to make military decisions.

Mr. Obama approved the replacement of Gen. McKiernan with Gen. McChrystal because Gen. McChrystal was the man with the experience for the type of war we are engaged in over in Afganistan. My question is…why is Mr. Obama not listening to the expert he himself approved? Yes, yes, yes, we all know “he” is the president…now I would like to see Mr. Obama back up “The General” he approved and give this military expert in the field of COIN and Sp. Ops. what he is asking for so that he can do his job!

Send the troops. Wars are decided by who wins. Somebody wins and somebody loses, less everyone loses. There will never be a winner without the troops. Obama knows nothing about anything else, so how could he know anything about warfare?

Martin:
President Obama – in my opinion is not in step with the realties of war in the middle east to include Afghanistan – we are at war in a very very volatile region of the world. Here are the questions I would ask Obama:
1. how much time has Obama spent in Afghanistan?
2. How can Obama really understand the realities of war sitting in DC oval office?
3. What has he learned from the Bush debacle of the middle east conflicts that American is currnetly engaged?
4. Why hasn’t he enlisted the “hands of advice” input from Colin Powell – who has measurable more knowledge of war than he (Obama) has?
5. Why hasn’t Obama not gone aboard a US warship stationed in the middle east to gauge the nuances and critical issues confronting America’s involvement in the War in the middle east
6. It is my opinion that Obama is very very “off center” with the realities of “war” and the definition it embodies – particular when he is the President

Everybody worries about “another vietnam”. Well…..ask the troops who where there. If the politicians would have stayed out of the decision making process, we would have fixed vietnam quickly. Take a hill by losing many soldiers, then be ordered to give it up. I say let the military run the war. That’s what they are paid for, what they are trained for.

this war will never end, even if we are there a hundred years. Send our troops home, they can protect us here in the USA.

I would defer to experts on Afghanistan & military policy. On this Obama needs to be a leader & not defer to the flavor of the moment. We do not want Afghanistan to again become a safe haven for terrorists. It so unfortunate that Afghanistan was largely ignored by the Bush administration in favor of our unnecessary invasion of Iraq. Afghanistan was neglected & allowed to slide back into chaos. We’ve lost precious time & lives in the last several years as the Taliban & al Qaeda was allowed to regroup & strengthen.

Tonight I had the opportunity to hear Khalid Hosseini author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns at a library lecture series here in Syracuse New York. While both books are fiction they are rooted in history. A history which is significantly different than what was the genesis of the war in Viet Nam. This war started for the US because we were attacked on our land and 3000 people died vs a war against the spread of communism. The strategy needs be changed in Afghanistan to deal with winning the hearts and minds of the Afghani people to stand up against the insurgents (Taliban as well as Al Queda) in the rural areas of Afghanistan. There has been significant progress in the cities in Afghanistan in the last eight years. Seven million students have returned to school which will help with the extreme poverty. Extreme poverty leads to the proliferation of groups such the Taliban, Al Queda etc..I encourage Nightline as well as President Obama to seek out the expertise of Mr. Hosseini as he understands and can articulate substantive background and facts to help put this confounding conflict into the proper perspective. But to just exit will only further imperil the Afghani people as well as entrench the very forces that plan to attack “the west.”

Nuts, Nuts, Nuts…. The Generals have been trained to go to war and they want it. Read your history people. Bottom line is we need help here at home, in the United States. We need to worry about our people for a change. We need to make things in the USA, not continue buy things from China.
We don’t need to have our soldier’s killed everyday for nothing in a forgein land. The people of Afg. need to stand up for their own rights.

Veteran; Thank you I completely AGREE. We need help here.

The POTUS should employ more and better remote sensing technologies around base camps to prevent soldiers from being “sitting ducks”. Thermal Imaging and Microphones and the like could be spread around a camp and prevent any hidden attacks.

Even with my son in the Marines, IS TIME TO GET OUT from there….. too many lives already lost, plus I voted for Mr. Obama because he promised to take all the military personel from those countries.

Obama needs to send all the troops the Gen. needs so we can win this war. If not bring all of our troops home from everywhere and just take care of our country and just not woeey about others unless we have a good ,very good reason. Send bointy hunters after #1 , you know the mater nind of 9-11!

When we started this war after 9/11, the American public was all for it. Now we are committed. We need to finish what we started. We have to make sure that Afganistan is secured so that it doesn’t remain a threat to our security. Our military is fighting valiantly over there. We must give them the tools they need to win. They need more troops, so that is what we should give them. The sooner we help our troops defeat the Taliban the sooner they can come home. Finally, our president must take the advice of his experts in military and world affairs. The Secretary of Defense, Joint Chiefs, and even the Secretary of State think we should send more troops. But it seems that Obama is going to listen to Joe Biden and his chief of staff, who don’t want to do anything else in Afganistan. Obama needs to listen to the people who are actively involved in this war not his political advisers. This isn’t an election it is a war.

We now have two presidents who have neglected our troops in Afghanistan. First President Bush completely neglected our troops and the war in Afghanistan so he could pour endless numbers of troops into a war he lied us into and we never should have gotten involved with in Iraq. Now we have the President of change Obama(what a joke) who claims to support our troops, and is committed to keep our troops in Afghanistan, but refuses to provide our troops the staffing and equipment levels they need to get the job done.
These brave men and women of all branches of our United States of America military have done and are doing an excellent job while risking their lives for us. Neither we nor the politicians we elected should be permitted to send our troops into harm’s way without giving them everything they need to get the job done.
It is time for President Obama to own up to his promises of change and being a leader. It is time for President Obama to make a very important decision. GET OUR TROOPS THE SUPPORT THEY NEED NOW, or GET OUR TROOPS OUT OF AFGHANISTAN NOW.
President Bush, President Obama, Congress, and Our News Media has been and is lying to we the American people about the true cost of the war. They report to us the deaths of our troops in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they have been hiding the extremely high number of wounded United States troops as a result of these wars. They do not want we the people to know the true numbers, because they know We The American People would demand either the proper resources be provided to our troops or that we get our troops out of these countries NOW.
President Obama, look back at history and recall the one term sessions of President Carter, and the good President Bush, as well as all the Republican candidates for office who lost their elections because of we the people’s hate for the Bush Chenney lack of leadership. Don’t sell your home in Illinois, because you have just over three years before you too are voted out of the White House.
President Obama, it is time to become our leader, and stop acting like the little boy with his new toys. Get our troops the support they need NOW, or bring our troops home NOW.
YES YOU CAN, so far that has proven to be a lie, a bold face lie.
President Obama may be too young to remember Vietnam, but many of are not, and have not forgotten Vietnam. And I know the president is old enough to recall that Afghanistan kicked the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. Based on how President Bush and President Obama have and are not handling Afghanistan, we will eventually leave the same way the Soviet Union left. And that is a shame, because our military is the greatest / the best in the entire world. Give our troops the staff, equipment, and rules of engagement they need to get the job done, so end this thing now so we do not repeat Vietnam and Soviet Union’s Afghanistan.

How can you be so sure about your 95% assumption? The fact that you have to ask what my point is, shows you don’t get it. Don’t worry yourself over it. Enough Americans know exactly what the point it.

If we as a country are sending our military troops in harms way as we have already done in Afghanistan, either President Obama gives the troops on the ground the equipment and the adequate personnel needed as determined by General McChrystal or pull our troops out as opposed to leaving them in a position that makes the job we sent them to do even more difficult and more deadly as and end result!

obama needs to send more troops because if he dont they will just come over here and fight us in the u.s.a. and there will be more deaths then 9/11

Obama needs to quit dilly-dallying & send more needed troops to Afghanistan, or bring them all home. Otherwise, There will be grave danger and many more deaths for the ones there – they are in dire straits. Bush dilly-dallied and did the same thing in Iraq, ignoring McCains advice to send more troops and make a Surge, and then finally did send more troops. If you’re going to fight a war, you fight to win, not just try to kill more of them, than they kill of us – which is exactly what happened in Vietnam. Obama worried more about getting the Olympics in Chicago, than how many of our men are in great peril in Afghanistan. What an idiot!

Like our Commander-in-Chief, I would base my decision not simply on the request from the Commander in the field, but on a strategy informed by current realities and goals. COIN may already be the last war’s way of thinking.

Sending our troops into Afghanistan was our only option….it is the sentiment on Military Bases that we will “fight them on their land or they will fight us on ours!” My son is in Afghanistan fighting with the 82nd Airborne and he tells me “make no mistake, in the eyes of the enemy this is a “religious war”…winning the hearts and the minds of the people is crucial in our efforts, and the enemy knows this as well and employs various tactics to do so, some are very brutal tactics leveled upon their own people! These people deserve our help and this land needs to be purged of the Taliban and Al Quaida or this will be the center in the middle east as the “Mother of all Terrorist Nations”….I know there are those that think we should pull out and bring our troops home but we cannot afford, for the sake of the safety of our freedoms, to lose this war! The entire world is watching to see if the United States of America will run with her tail between her legs & leave Afghanistan AGAIN! Mr. Obama needs to put the details of this war into the hands of the experts. This cannot be another Vietnam where the war is being micromanaged in the boardrooms of the White House…it seems there is an attempt to straddle both sides, by our President, so he does not damage his politics…this is the time to make tough decisions, I for one will be watching closely to see if Mr. Obama has the stomach to do what is right in the face of plenty of opposition from his own party!!! God Bless and keep our troops!

to all the people crying vietnam: We didnt lose; we left. and look what happened.
leaving is not going to do anything but boost the insurgency and cause more problems for the afghans, and americans. the military commanders KNOW what they are talking about.. obama is doing what he is for political reasons. MSM doesnt support the war and the american people are kept in the dark. we need to support our troops and if sending more is what is needed to win this.. SIGN ME UP!

General McChrystal has said what he needs to get the job done. We need to send more troops, more equipment and whatever else they need. POTUS needs to take General McChrystal’s advice and heed his warning. While they study our troops are dying. If we don’t stop the terrorist there then they are coming here. Let’s not forget 9-11, the USS Cole, just a few examples of what happens when terrorist are not stopped where they live. Just last month they stopped a terrorist attack in Dallas, TX. Terrorist are like termites. You have to stop them before they invade and destroy your home from the inside out. I don’t make these statements lightly. I am the mother of an American Soldier who is deployed. I know the risk and the sacrifices. Our troops all volunteered to serve our Country. We all need to stand behind them and give them whatever it takes to get the job done. If you don’t support the war that’s your choice but you should stand behind those who defend your freedom! The sooner we give our troops what they need the sooner they all get to come home!

This is what happens when you elect a boy to do a man’s job. We have an idiot as our president who puts a general in charge then refuses to take his advice. The terrorists are laughing their heads off! I couldn’t stop sobbing seeing those brave young soldiers fighting and willing to die for us in that remote outpost in Afghanistan. Meanwhile in Denmark our idiot president is groveling to have the olympic games in Chicago! Just shows where his priorities lie! ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES!!!

With all our high tech equipment, are you telling me that we don’t know where the enemy is ?? Eight years is a long time to be in the dark. Whatever we are doing is not working. How long is it going to take you people on the hill to figure that out?? Get in there, get rid of the enemy and let our men come home. No more dilly dallying around.

Obama is trapped. He was set up by McChrystal. Obama does not have a choice. He has to provide the troops.
McChrystal is guilty of insubordination. He leaked his report to the press, and served it to Obama’s political opposition. He needs to be given the same punishment as Janet Karpinski-relieved of his command, demoted and forced into retirement. His commanding officer needs the opportunity to look at the facts and make a decision based on the facts. He does not need to be forced into a decision.

Obama needs to stop terrorizing american citizens with his threats to revise health care in unreasonable/unconstitutional ways, to further increase taxes that affect the middle class (he has already done this), to at a minimum triple our electrical costs, and to continue to make us look weaker and weaker to foreign terrorists. You can’t reason with unreasonable people, including sociopaths and terrorists.
Obama needs to support our military leaders and troops, not undermine us and put us at further risk. He needs to listen to McChrystal and take definitive and decisive action to support that. This is not Vietnam unless Obama, as with Vietnam, creates that with his politician ways.
Obama needs to stop trying to expand his egotistical power domestically by increasing government, and he needs to stop wasting our time and money on all this harmful health care reform stuff. He should simply write and sign a bill for now to hold government responsible for getting the $50 billion/year of waste/fraud out of Medicare and then in 4 years, if government can prove they can be responsible and do what they’re supposed to do, consider further efficiencies (not increases).