When I clicked on the MyDD link this morning, I was thinking that I hadn't heard from Jerome in a long time. There hadn't been anything bitter to say about Obama after the inaguration, so I guess it was no surprise.

What a surprise to see a bitter, resentful post this morning!

Jerome, I have been a huge defender of you in the past. I have defended you against countless attacks here and elsewhere. But no more.

Now you are just embarrassing yourself. A copy and paste job offering more of a swipe at Obama supporters than any insightful analysis?

Jerome, you have proven yourself to be completely out of touch with present day politics. You could not have gotten the 2008 election any more wrong, so one must wonder how you could get anything pertaining to Afghanistan right.

You retreated to blogging about international politics, something which very few care about, and very few can question you on (because very few care about international politics). I suggest you stay there, or retire from political analysis. And to think you were a co-author of crashing the gate?

Obama has proven you wrong on every count in 2008, and when it comes down to Obama versus Jerome on Afghanistan, I'm going to have to side with Obama again; him having the far better track record than you.

I don't know if political analysis is your day job. If it isn't, don't quit whatever it is. You finally proved that you are completely out of touch.

It is very easy to say there is no military solution of Afghanistan and history says you may well be right. So what are the other options?

1) Pack our bags and just leave and let what ever happens happens, not our problem.

2) Try and get to some type of stability and concentrate more on building than destroying. Yet then again this solution still would require a foreign presence in the region and NATO or US troops for protection to the aid workers until Afghan forces can do it.

So which of these solutions works for you or do you have another way in mind?

Yesterday, I had the extraordinary pleasure of seeing Ted Sorenson speak (and meeting him briefly). At one point someone asked a question about Vietnam, and he stressed that at his core, JFK knew that political problems don't have military solutions. It's a lesson too many presidents never learned.

Now, Sorenson also talked a lot about the similarities he sees between President Obama and President Kennedy, and if there's anyone qualified  to make that comparison, it's him. So I'm hoping that Obama is looking for a long-term solution besides the troop build-up. As much as I've disagreed with you before, Jerome, I'm glad this is something you're talking about.

and other rebel groups is the only thing that makes any sense and it seems to be (beginning to be) in the works. It was effective in Iraq and it's the only way the U.S. gets out of Afghanistan without its tail between its legs. The key is to call whoever we compromise and call truces with 'not the Taliban'. Just a matter of semantics. ;)

Guess who said this on February 17:

I am absolutely convinced that you cannot solve the problem of Afghanistan, the Taliban, the spread of extremism in that region solely through military means. . . . We're going to have to use diplomacy.  We're going to have to use development and my hope is that  . . . Prime Minister Harper [ends] up seeing the importance of a comprehensive strategy.

A)  Jerome Armstrong;
B)  Gordon Brown
C)  Hamid Kharzai
D)  Barack Obama
E)  John Kerry
F)  Hillary Clinton

The SHOCKING answer.

Seriously, pointing out the obvious and then pretending that Obama isn't smart enough to figure it out only makes you look sloppy or dumb.

As President, I would deploy at least two additional brigades to Afghanistan to re-enforce our counter-terrorism operations and support NATO's efforts against the Taliban. As we step up our commitment, our European friends must do the same, and without the burdensome restrictions that have hampered NATO's efforts. We must also put more of an Afghan face on security by improving the training and equipping of the Afghan Army and Police, and including Afghan soldiers in U.S. and NATO operations.

We must not, however, repeat the mistakes of Iraq. The solution in Afghanistan is not just military -- it is political and economic. As President, I would increase our non-military aid by $1 billion. These resources should fund projects at the local level to impact ordinary Afghans, including the development of alternative livelihoods for poppy farmers. And we must seek better performance from the Afghan government, and support that performance through tough anti-corruption safeguards on aid, and increased international support to develop the rule of law across the country.

http://www.barackobama.com/2007/08/01/th e_war_we_need_to_win.php

I think deploying more troops as planned is a good idea to clear out the area for bit while we focus on rebuilding, installing schools, hospitals, and infrastructure, bribing local chiefs, and providing assistance to setting up a new government.  

This sounds easy, it won't be, but we have learned a lot from Iraq.   We lost Iraq in the rebuilding stage, along with lack of interpreters we could trust.  We had the potential to rebuild, but once we got in there, we didn't act like liberators, we acted like invading thugs (looking at blackwater, halliburton).

Learn from mistakes in Iraq, we hire locals, instead of bringing our own immigrants (to maximize contractor profits, silly), for labor and engineering.  We have numerous interpreters to assist us with the locals, we provide money for food and shelter to locals and chiefs.  We assist the people in building their government but we don't write the f'n constitution for them.  We invest in the people, we don't treat them like scary animals - we know that many of these people only subscribe or join the fundamentals because that is the only access to get food and shelter, and many times these relationships were formed more in an extortion format.  We may even have to consider allowing their poppy farms to continue since it is a large source of their revenue. I am sure we could use that for pharmaceutical uses.

Of course this is really obvious, but, well, look at Iraq.  I am fully confident that Obama knows this as he has already described how military force alone will not solve the Afghanistan problem.  Thus the only logical use of upping the military force would be to do some clearing out to buy us some breathing room so we can invade the locals with some love, food, shelter, and comfort.

Some of us haven't been screaming against putting more troops into Afghanistan because we support the idea of putting more troops into Afghanistan.

Further, no one who has called for a retreat from Afghanistan has shown me any alternative that would bring bin Laden to justice and destroy Al Queda.

For you to attack progressive bloggers for not agreeing with you is trollish behavior.

I don't know what the solution is but I do think it important to ascertain the size and scope of the problem so that we are all aware of the complexities involved. It is imperative, in my view, that the blame for this catastrophe be squarely placed on the Bush Administration. I've written several posts to that effect already and I suspect that there will be more down the line.

But let's be clear Afghanistan and Pakistan is a mess and it threatens to consume the nation, the Obama Administration and the progressive cause unless we forthrightly discuss the issue.