I was watching Morning Joe when they revealed the new cover of Time Magazine. I was shocked, not by the image of a woman whose face had been disfigured by her husband, but by the topic: What Happens When We Leave Afghanistan? It’s the question I’ve been asking everyone who complains about the time and money we’ve put into Afghanistan so far and I never get a good answer. The woman on the cover, Aisha, is 18 and was sentenced by a Taliban judge for running away from her abusive husband. Her punishment involved brother-in-law holding her down as her husband sliced off her ears and her nose. This was just last year. This puts a face on what will happen on an even more widespread scale if the U.S. just pulls our troops out. As of right now the Karzai government in Afghanistan is making more and more deals with the Taliban. And when we pull out the reality is there will be even more deals and incidents like this will become more of the norm.

Now I’m not advocating for more troops or to stay in Afghanistan indefinitely. No, what I’m saying is we Americans need to face the reality of a decision we made in 2001. The truth is a vast majority of this country supported going to war in Afghanistan in 2001 after 9/11. Even a good portion of the “anti-war Left” came on board, using cases such as Aisha’s as their justification. We not just had to go into Afghanistan for revenge but to liberate an oppressed people. I remember this. Sure there were some protests but nothing compared to what happened when we went into Iraq. And now here we are, almost 9 years later and the progress has been dismal. Part of that is because we got distracted in Iraq. Think about it, General Petreaus and others have said they need 10 years to get Afghanistan right and completely weed out the Taliban and terrorists. Well if George Bush had focused instead of getting sidetracked in Iraq, we’d be approaching the end of this war (if prediction were right, which isn’t a guarantee). But that’s not what happened. We lost focus, “forgot” about the Afghanistan War and now that we’ve refocused we see what mess we’ve created and now we want to just leave.

What we need to realize is that no matter what we do, we’re fucked. All options for leaving Afghanistan have low success rates and lead to big problems.

1. We could stay the 10 years the Generals say they need and try to help stabilize the country. The problem is, there is no guarantee this will work. The most stable Afghanistan has been was when the Taliban was running it. That of course came at the price of human rights and a breeding ground for terrorists. To “do it right” would require endless amounts of money and the sacrifice of U.S. soldiers and Americans just don’t have the stomach for that. This has already turned out to be one of our longest military engagements and with the way our economy is, we just can’t afford it.

2. Pull out all combat troops and just use small special forces teams and drones to attack terrorists. This seems to be what most people suggest but I think they forget that even that costs money. At least when we have 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, people pay attention. You drop that level down to just special forces, CIA and drones and you have the makings of a “Secret War” that could be waged for decades and be a constant drain on the economy with no real chance of success or end game in sight. Only striking at terrorists in this manner is about as productive of just cutting off the head of a Hydra and watching as 2 more grow in its place.

3. Pull out all troops and just walk away completely. A lot of Anti-War people say this but I don’t think they realize that all this does is delay the inevitable. We did this before in Afghanistan. We offered our support in the 70’s with the freedom fighters against the Soviets and when the Soviets left, we did too. The country fell into a Civil War and the Taliban and Al Qaeda emerged from that. Leaving now just guarantees that 20 years from now we’ll be right back over there fighting an enemy that hates us, not because of religion but because we came in, messed up their country and then turned our back on them. This option just starts the cycle all over again

As I said, we’re fucked. This morning after seeing the cover of the Time Magazine Mike Barnicle asked “At what point do we say we are no longer willing to risk the lives of 60 service men and women each month for this?” My answer to that is simple “When we start asking that question first, before we invade a country and overthrow its government.” It’s really that simple. We did the same thing in Iraq. We invaded, overthrew the government and then we get mad when we get stuck in a “nation building” situation.  You break it you buy it.  You make a mess, you clean it up.  At least that’s how I was taught.  We might not like it but this is what we did.  It’s our responsibility because we made it our responsibility.

I shouldn’t be surprised by the lack of owning up though. This is typical behavior for America. This country has a history of making huge messes and then complaining when it comes time to foot the bill. We steal the land of the Native Americans, shove them on reservations and then complain when the rest of the country has to help support them. Africans were brought over as slaves and helped build the country and were treated as second class citizens all the way up until the 1960’s. Over 400 years of discriminating against blacks and using them to build this nation but 30 years of “diversity programs” to help level the playing field people are already crying foul (Shout out to Senator Webb).  This is what this country does. It creates a mess and then wants to weasel out of “doing the right thing” or at the very least just acknowledging that we don’t want to clean up the mess created. We don’t take responsibility. In the case of Afghanistan, I don’t know which option is the best. They all seem pretty bad. But I do wish that the people that complain about the money being spent at least have the guts to acknowledge people like Aisha. Acknowledge and take responsibility that when we leave we will be opening the door to even more human rights violations like those Aisha suffered and retribution against those that used to help us. Don’t pretend they don’t exist or that they won’t be causalities of yet another example of this country failing to have the stomach and the commitment to clean up messes we created.  Own up to it and make the decision.  But don’t just close your eyes and pretend the consequences of this country’s actions don’t exist.

Topics for the show:
Why there was no Sunday Show
In Mel Gibson’s Rants We Trust
What’s up with women who in 2010 stay with abusive men?
If he beats you he doesn’t love you
If 90,000+ documents leaked and nobody cared…
The Afghanistan War isn’t about Religion, its about an abusive relationship

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Topics for the show:
Ryce and Kriss have no real topics
Who comes to a Pig roast and then doesn’t know they are eating pork?
Lebron James…douche move of the year
We get to watch Lebron in PrimeTime pick the next city he’s gonna disappoint with no Championship
In relationships communication is key
Gifts don’t mean shit if it’s just a mask for deception
Lindsay Lohan goes to jail…and that’s enough about that
Priest steals $1.3 million to live alternate gay playboy lifestyle?
Rush Limbaugh with the dumbest comment of the year
Afghanistan…we broke it, we bought it

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Topics for the show:
Friendly’s throws it’s hat into the “Instant Heart Attack Menu” fast food game
Tiki Barber claims to be too broke to handle a divorce settlement
LT gets indicted
A Harlem school fails to protect kids, one dies
Rep. Barton apologizes to Tony Hayward for getting our ocean in his oil
A judge rules against the Obama Administration’s deep water offshore drilling moratorium
General McChrystal opens his mouths and shoves his foot all the way down his throat and out his ass

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WASHINGTON — Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.

Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes’ systems. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber — available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet — to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter.

U.S. officials say there is no evidence that militants were able to take control of the drones or otherwise interfere with their flights. Still, the intercepts could give America’s enemies battlefield advantages by removing the element of surprise from certain missions and making it easier for insurgents to determine which roads and buildings are under U.S. surveillance. (Source)

To sum up this article:  Insurgents are using Pringles cans and cheap software to bypass our million dollar equipment.  Ladies and gentlemen, this is a prime example of the fuckery that goes into politics.  This is not shocking to anyone with any knowledge of how our government procures and maintains its equipment.  Equipment is bought and sold from the lowest bidder, not what actually works the best.  Then functionality is stripped out to cut even more costs to make it more attractive for Congress to sign off on.  And when it comes to upgrades?  That can take years…or in this case…decades.  The fuckery of this process is common knowledge. The article says that military officials have known about this issue since 1998.  The claim is that they just didn’t think the lowly insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan would be knowledgeable enough to exploit it.  That’s bullshit for several reasons.  First off, even your most computer illiterate person these days knows that an unsecured wireless link is a huge security risk.  There’s a reason why just about everyone uses a WEP key (or better) to protect their wireless home networks.  You want me to believe that no one, NO ONE, thought it wise to secure an unencrypted link on a military network?  Then, to say that you thought the insurgents wouldn’t be technologically advanced enough to figure it out when we spent the last 8 years listening about how the terrorists are using cyberspace is just bullshit.  The article hints at the real problem:

Officials stepped up efforts to prevent insurgents from intercepting video feeds after the July incident. The difficulty, officials said, is that adding encryption to a network that is more than a decade old involves more than placing a new piece of equipment on individual drones. Instead, many components of the network linking the drones to their operators in the U.S., Afghanistan or Pakistan have to be upgraded to handle the changes. Additional concerns remain about the vulnerability of the communications signals to electronic jamming, though there’s no evidence that has occurred, said people familiar with reports on the matter.

For those that don’t understand what that means, let me explain.  You know those defense appropriation bills that Liberals love to rail against and say are unnecessary?  Yup…this goes to that.  That “pork” that old ass John “I barely know what a computer is” McCain likes to say needs to be taken out?  Yup, this is “pork”.  See, you have a bunch of old folks in Congress that don’t understand this shit.  So when you tell them you need $10 million to upgrade the decades old network equipment and software, they put it off.  Instead money goes to funding F-22 we don’t need because the parts for the plane are built in different states and the senators for that state don’t want to support losing those jobs.  And so money is diverted from what we do need to something we don’t and we end up with security breaches like this.  Now that its in the Wall Street Journal, expect to see money for this attached to some bill in the near future but only because it makes people look bad.

This sadly, is how shit works in our government.  This is why I chuckle at progressives being upset at the Health Care Reform bill.  The problem is the system.  To be honest an “easy” fix is to putting a limit on the number of consecutive terms people in Congress can have.  But that would then require a vote in the Congress…….and Congressmen/women aren’t going to vote on limiting their own power.  So the cycle continues.  Welcome to politics people.

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Topics for this show:
Vodka in Pill form?
Submachine gun attack at a birthday party in Baltimore
Tila Tequila whores herself out for attention again
Why are women so catty and anti-Rihanna?
Tiger Woods might be a professional golfer but he’s an amateur cheater
Obama’s decision to send troops to Afghanistan
Black people and some of their unreasonable expectations of Obama

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If you went to college then you know the best part of college is the frat party.  Beer. Women. Tomfoolery. Beer.  It’s a fun time for all.  Unless you’re the roommate of the guy who hosted the party and wake up the next morning in a sea of solo red cups, party string and overflowing trashcans.  See, while parties are fun, what typically happens is, people come in, make a complete mess then leave without even attempting to clean up after themselves.  Your roommate who hosted the party will be passed out for the next 8 hours on the sofa in the living room.  Now you’re left holding the trashbag and your parents are on their way up to visit.  This typical college situation is exactly what President Obama is facing with Afghanistan, except much much worse.

As I read people’s reactions to the president’s speech on Afghanistan I found myself getting frustrated.  I was called an ‘ObamaStan’ because apparently, if Bush had made this same speech, I would have condemned it.  Truthfully, I found that mildly offensive.  Bush would never have made this speech.  Bush clumsily tried to tell us that Saddam helped plot the 9/11 attacks when most people with knowledge of the region knew that Osama Bin Laden hated Saddam.  So whenever Bush tried to link Iraq to the War on Terror, it just didn’t make any sense. Then there’s the fact that Obama’s speech was on Afghanistan and Bush spent the majority of his 8 years in office ignoring the first war he started.  Instead of developing a legitimate strategy in Afghanistan, Bush, Cheney and the rest of the Administration turned their sights to Iraq, for no apparent reason.  It is completely unfair and asinine to compare Bush’s speeches on Iraq to Obama’s speech on Afghanistan.  See, I remember when we went into Afghanistan.  The majority of this country supported this war.  The American citizens are only tired of this war because they believes we’ve been fighting it for 8 years.  Truth is, for the majority of the last 8 years we’ve diverted life saving equipment, money, troops and support away from Afghanistan and into Iraq.  When Bush pushed for the surge in Iraq, he took troops from Afghanistan and surprise surprise that was around the same time causalities in Afghanistan started to increase.  The ONLY time we were focused on Afghanistan was the first year and a half we were there. That was it.

President Obama is facing heat on from both sides of the aisle on this issue and as I’ve written before, I don’t envy the President with having to make this decision.  Some conservatives want an open ended commitment like they got from Bush in Iraq.  That’s just crazy.  I’m not about to support an open ended, no strategy commitment.  Let’s not kid ourselves with revisionist history.  Bush went into Iraq with no strategy or even a real reason for going in.  First it was WMDs, then it was Al Qaeda & 9/11 then it was to promote democracy. Some even say oil was the real reason. Any time a “time line” or exit strategy was mention the response as “as long as it takes.”  An open ended commitment in Iraq really got us nothing.  Iraq isn’t stable and it won’t last and its only a matter of time before the next dictator emerges in that country.

Then there are liberals (as well as some conservatives) who think Obama should just pull out of the region, immediately.  Let me ignore the historical and strategic reasons this is unwise for now and just talk logistics.  Have we forgotten what happened on October 3 of this year?  The ambush of the outpost in Kamdesh where 200 Taliban solders attacked inadequately supported troops.  Those troops were set to leave that outpost as well.  See, in order to safely pull troops out…you have to secure the area first, else you’re setting our troops up to be attacked like sitting ducks.  Right now we don’t have the troops to even secure a safe withdraw from Afghanistan.  Not only that but you have to approve funds for the troop withdrawal (Kinda like you need funds to close Gitmo).  Even if we were to pull troops out, in order to do it safely, it would take until….2011.  So even if we were going to withdraw we’d have to send more troops to Afghanistan anyway in order to protect our troops enough to get them out of there.  I know that seems contradictory but again, you have to remember that our troop levels in Afghanistan right now are so low they are at the point of putting our troops there in danger.

Now let’s think about this historically.  I think people seem to forget the history of Afghanistan.  The reason we have Al Qaeda  now is because we basically left Afghan freedom fighters to fend for themselves last time we were playing our human game of Risk back in the 70’s.  If we were to just pull troops out now, as much as I would love for the troops to come home, ten years from now we’d be facing some new America-hating radical group and pundits on TV would be debating where they came from.  Those Afghan soldiers, tribal leaders and police that we’ve been promising we would help are about to be abandoned…again.  Its like a repeat of what we’ve already done.  Will Obama’s strategy lead to a stable democracy in Kabul?  Of course not.  But I don’t think that’s what his strategy is.  Its to make one last attempt at giving the Afghan people a solid footing to stand on before we walk away.  You can’t say we’ve ever done that because almost as soon as we went into Afghanistan, Bush and his cronies were eying Saddam in Iraq.

Strategically, we also have to worry about Pakistan.  Again, Bush made a mess out of Pakistan by giving then President Musharraf billions of dollars to “fight terrorism” which he instead used to fuel an arms race with Pakistan’s also nuclear armed rival, India.  In order to get Pakistan to focus on the terrorist in its own country and on its border with the extremely unstable Afghanistan, Obama has to at least try to reach out to them.  Leaving an unstable Afghanistan on Pakistan’s doorstep isn’t going to really encourage Pakistan to care about helping us.

We can debate all day whether Afghanistan was the “good war” to go in.  That’s a moot point now.  We’re in there.  As much of an opponent of the Iraq war as I was, I also realized that as much as I hated the fact that our douchebag president at the time got us into an idiotic war, I knew that we couldn’t just pull troops out immediately.  Consequences have actions.  Yeah, Bush should never have brought a bull into the china store, but once he did, it was our responsibility to clean up the mess.  You break it, you buy it.  Unfortunately we broke Iraq and Afghanistan.  We can argue all day and night about how legitimate those wars were.  It doesn’t matter.  The fact remains that as Obama used to say, as careless as we were getting into those wars, we have to be careful getting out.  Now in 2011, if there has been no progress made, then I’m willing to start the “Bring them home” chants.  But we’ve never, NEVER given Afghanistan the attention it should have gotten and I’m willing to give President Obama a chance to try this strategy since it’s the first one we’ve ever used in that country.

Oh and one more thing to the liberals stupidly saying “This isn’t change we can believe in.”  Well, its definitely the ‘Change you voted for’.  As a candidate (Hell, even as an Iraq War opponent), President Obama never hid the fact that he believed Afghanistan was the right war to go into and that he believed in sending more troops and more resources into that country.  He said this blatantly.  So if you somehow feel betrayed by Obama, what that really means is that you didn’t pay attention to his policies before you voted for him.