Afghanistan: some common sense.

Six days ago President Obama formally announced his policy on the war on terror in Afghanistan. He did it to the corps of cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, NY. This address should have been made from the oval office in the White House. The president should not have used the cadets as political props. As I have written previously, Barack Obama is incapable of taking a firm stand. He cuts issues into halves and half again and again, until there is very little substance in the final position. Obama wants to win but not pay for the surge in troops by raising taxes, much as Obama does not want to pay for increased health care coverage with extra taxes. Obama wants to stay the course but have a deadline. Obama wants the 27 other member countries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to also increase the number of troops that they have in Afghanistan. http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/nato_countries.htm Obama intends to place 30,000 more U.S. troops in Afghanistan. NATO apparently may place 7,000 more troops in Afghanistan. It would seem that those 27 other NATO nations could easily match the U.S. commitment soldier for soldier. A principle tenet of NATO is that an attack on one member is regarded as an attack on all. That is what kept the old Soviet Union (Russia) from swallowing up Germany after World War II. On September 11, 2001 the United States was attacked by Muslim terrorists sponsored by the group known as Al-Qaeda, which was based in Afghanistan. NATO rightly took military action to destroy this terrorist base. Unfortunately, that military effort failed. Whether the U.S. overthrow of the dictator in Iraq undermined the action in Afghanistan is debatable. The fact is that after eight years no substantive goals in Afghanistan have been met. Further efforts are folly, especially the typical half measures that Obama is doomed to repeat on all his issues. My position, as stated previously, is that NATO should immediately withdraw from Afghanistan. The people of Afghanistan eventually drove out the Russians in the 1980s by themselves. The U.S. supplied some weapons, primarily shoulder mounted stinger missiles. Neither the U.S., nor any other nation supplied any troops. If the people of Afghanistan could defeat the Russians, why can't they defeat some of their own: the Taliban ... a radical Sunni Islamist movement that governed Afghanistan from 1996 until late 2001, when they were removed from power by NATO forces during Operation Enduring Freedom? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban Dependence on the U.S. government should be removed with strong incentives and deadlines. Both major U.S. political parties agree on that. They just disagree on the issues where it should be applied. Republicans think it makes sense on social welfare programs. Democrats think it makes sense on war and occupation. Both are correct. We Americans never seem to learn. Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968 based largely on his secret plan to get us out of Viet Nam. His ad agency phrase once in office was to VietNamize the war, i.e., turn over responsibility to the people of that country. It never happened. Sound familiar? Remaining in these backward countries never works. Never. Corrupt politicians in the occupied country have no incentive to let the U.S. leave. The U.S. is the source of their power and wealth. No matter how well intentioned American policy is, it never works in these situations, which by definition involve relationships of dependency.