‘This Week’ Coming Up: The Future of Afghanistan
EmailComing up… Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and our powerhouse roundtable.
Tuesday night, President Obama delivers his major Afghanistan address to the nation from West Point.
All indications are that the President will order more troops to the region. Will he have Republican support and will liberals back the strategy? In a "This Week exclusive," Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) take on the tough questions: How many troops? How much will it cost? Can Afghanistan be saved?
Also, the healthcare debate: Senator Graham declared healthcare reform dead on arrival, but will insistence on a public option by liberals like Sanders kill the bill? Graham and Sanders debate the healthcare impasse.
Plus our powerhouse roundtable: George Will, Cokie Roberts, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, political strategist Matthew Dowd and former Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority spokesman and author Dan Senor take on the difficult Afghanistan decision. And the lagging economy has shoppers slogging through another holiday season. Is another stimulus needed? Can a middle ground be found on healthcare? As hacked e-mails from scientists heat up the global warming debate, how will the controversy complicate next month’s climate change summit in Copenhagen? All that and all the week’s politics on "This Week."
See you Sunday.
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What they don’t tell you much about is that Pelosi and friends in Congress are putting together the “Share the Sacrifice Act” as a means for paying for this garbage.
In the “Share the Sacrifice Act”, they are setting up a blanket tax that will tax most Americans – yes – middle class too. I believe the proposal is for a 1% surtax on people earning UP TO $150,000!
Now why they are thinking about levying a tax on people for a war which the majority of Americans do not support is beyond me. Why they are expanding a war which the majority of Americans is beyond me.
Afghanistan is “un-winnable” and has been for centuries – we are the latest fools to try our hand at this and can see why we are failing miserably. We have not learned anything from the tragedy of the Vietnam war.
Give President Obama another year or so and he won’t even get a guest spot on the “stupid pet tricks” segment of the Letterman show. He will make George Bush look like a great leader. Most of all, we will all finally figure out how this man has totally pulled the wool over our eyes to get into the White House. He mocks us all with his arrogance and total disregard for public opinion.
Posted by: JonF | November 25, 2009, 3:29 pm 3:29 pm
Perhaps the question is not whether Afghanistan can be saved, but rather can they be prevented from continuing to be a problem?
Only by totally eliminating the Taliban, permanently from the face of the planet, can we surmise the end of the problem, there.
Posted by: Rick McDaniel | November 25, 2009, 3:41 pm 3:41 pm
Its not the number of troops, duh! Its deploying them where the terrorists are. The safe havens and operations HQ of Al-Qaeda is in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. That’s where you need troops deployed. No amount of troops in Afghanistan is going to solve the problem if you have a constant supply of fresh and well-trained terrorists coming from these safe havens in Pakistan.
Posted by: Globalguy | November 25, 2009, 3:59 pm 3:59 pm
JonF: Palin is the ONLY one who could make Bush look like a great leader! (Snicker, snicker) By the way, I agree with you on Afghanistan. We have no business being there spending our money and loosing our precious troops. Health care, we NEED reform whatever it takes. I’ve seen too many suffer just because they can’t go to the doctor. If we hadn’t spent so much on Iraq, we wouldn’t be in the position we are in now.
Posted by: Bobcat | November 25, 2009, 4:50 pm 4:50 pm
It’s about time you had Bernie Sanders on. You should have him back for the next health care discussion.
Posted by: Brian Lupiani | November 25, 2009, 5:19 pm 5:19 pm
Oops – next time I’ll read the entire blurb before shooting my mouth off. I thought the discussionwas only going to be about Afghanistan.
So, thanks for having Sanders on to talk about both. I hope he becomes a frequent guest. At least he’s still in Congress, unlike Newt Gingrich – who shows up WAY more often than he should.
Posted by: Brian Lupiani | November 25, 2009, 5:26 pm 5:26 pm
The future of Afghanistan? Chaos……..to anyone with vision correctable to 20/20 Snelling.
Posted by: Doppelganger | November 25, 2009, 5:55 pm 5:55 pm
Taking military pressure off gihadists in their home regions is not a good idea. Neither is a Vietnam-style escalation to prop up a corrupt regime. The only answer left is for NATO to be the harasser of the Taliban element, not the occupier of Afghanistan — saw a cool site; Balkingpoints ; awesome satellite view of earth
Posted by: MikeW67 | November 26, 2009, 3:35 pm 3:35 pm
Hello,
I as President after many months of polling plan to do what polling data has told me works best.
First, it is clear that in order to not look weak, I must send more troops to Afghanistan to fight and die in a war I do not believe in. Polls indicate that I can tolerate another 500 to 700 American soldiers being killed in Afghanistan irrespective of whatever they are doing there.
Second, I will need to begin bringing all troops out of Afghanistan in August of 2011. This will be great for my re-election campaign. I will have soldiers flying into airports all over the country. Maybe we can arrange a parade. Coverage of the troops must include non-stop praise of me.
Third, even if the Taliban regains control of Afghanistan and the government collapses as we leave and women and children being slaughtered in the streets, I have already spoken to the media about not covering any of this.
All in all, I believe that we have come up with a comprehensive strategy to make me look both a little less weak and heroic going into 2012.
Sincerely,
Jimmy Carter II
Posted by: Angelo | November 27, 2009, 8:39 am 8:39 am
If reporters would just listen to President Obama and stop making up stuff they would know how he thinks. Now as for the GOP and those who are hopeing Obama/USA fail will say anything. Senator Graham was in Iraq/Afghanistan so many times with McCain he could have claimed citizenship. Since Obama took office Graham couldn’t care less about our troops over seas. Now Obama knows the only way to get our troops home is to let the Afghanistan/Taliban work out their problems. Look Bush and the Taliban were such good friends in 1999, that then Gov. Bush invited the Taliban to the USA as his guest. Now notice how the Media never talks about that.
Posted by: Jackie | November 27, 2009, 11:38 pm 11:38 pm
Offering jobs to Afghan militants to cease hostilities . . . if it goes anything like the Democrats’ pathetic attempt to create jobs here in the US, then I predict disappointment.
I could just see it, Democrat style jobs like they’ve done to us here in the US: ‘you can have a job, but you can’t dig for gold, you can’t fish, but if you apply for an exemption you can only fish for 3 days out of the year between Dec. 24 and 26 for only one specific species of fish, you can’t drill for oil, you cannot log your cedars or firs, but if you can show us that you can make a structure out of tamarask that passes all of our building codes, fire codes, and environmental codes you may harvest only 1/2 acre per year to preserve the pockmarked turtle habitat, and you may only construct new buildings inside the environmental hazard free activity zone, your work will be inspected by federal authority regulation including EEO and OSHA regulations . . .
Sadly this is all probably true.
Posted by: Tom | November 28, 2009, 3:36 pm 3:36 pm
I don’t know what the name of the man with the beard is, but he obviously has his thoughts alined with the White House and appears to me to be an ignorant self serving fool bent on pushing the agendas. I’m sticking with Fox, the voice in the Washington wilderness. I suppose if you keep him, the others can make him more the liberal town idot.
Posted by: don kirby | November 29, 2009, 9:53 am 9:53 am
My son is in Iraq,my nephew is going to Afghanistan. President Obama needs to put more troops in Afghanistan or pull the troops there out. The troops over there need to have backup. Remember someone’s son or daughter is over there doing what this country has ask them to do. They need to be safe and not short handed.God Bless Our Troops!!!
Posted by: JackieS | November 29, 2009, 9:55 am 9:55 am
When I started paying taxes in 1965 I paid a War surtax. We should still be paying for wars if we want to fight them. It would be the most accurate poll of public approval. Magnetic ribbons are cheap and easy and support the “everything for nothing” attitude that’s so prevalent now.
Posted by: Jon | November 29, 2009, 11:02 am 11:02 am
Why should the economically repressed be the main ones to support this war with their fathers, daughters, sons and mothers. The economically wealthly should also support this war with their precious assests. And any profits made on this war should be taxed at least 90%.
Posted by: rispo | November 29, 2009, 11:16 am 11:16 am
I caught the end of this morning’s discussion on global warming. I think all of your commentators missed the key reason for supporting green energy. Supporting green energy is all about not sending the better parts of a trillion $$ per annum to the middle east oil despots. Climate change and pollution are very nice side benefits as well !
Posted by: Mike in Chicago | November 29, 2009, 11:23 am 11:23 am
Mattthew Dowd is exactly right about raises taxes and reinstituting the draft if the Afghanistan conflict is actually an existential “war of necessity” that we’ve constantly been told. What we’ve had for the last nine years is one percent of the population fighting and dying and being repeatedly rotated back into the two conflicts while the rest of us go shooping in our SUVs with the “Support the Troops” magnets on them. It’s a national disgrace!
Posted by: bill kostar | November 29, 2009, 12:13 pm 12:13 pm