Today it will finally happen. I am about to make you think that I have gone off the deep end. Half of you are going to think I’m a loon for what I’m about to say, the other half for my reasons. But, here goes.

We should surrender in Afghanistan and bring our people home.

OK, quiet down, here is where the rest of you give that hand gesture to the computer screen. Please, out of respect for my decision to put my conclusion first and give you a few minutes to wipe away a tear and say, “I’m so proud”, please read the following.

First, Afghanistan is a large country with relatively few people. That means there are lots of open space where no one lives, especially in the mountainous region near Pakistan. So, the Taliban “governed” the country so long as they left most of the tribal leaders in charge, gave them resources when the poppies went to market, and left the people of the tribes alone. Al Qaeda was welcomed by the Taliban because they brought money, training, etc, and there is plenty of room for them to have training camps without bothering the Taliban (mostly in the towns and cities) or the tribal leaders, (mostly in the plains and crop-able areas). Why is this important? Because even if all the tribal leaders agreed to join together in a republic, there would be insufficient people to close their borders and police the open areas against terrorist training camps. Afghanistan lends itself to smuggling and illicit behavior, and coincidently, the control of it by high tech methods like UAV’s. This is why Al Qaeda was there, why the Taliban formed there. When a relatively few U.S. special forces, I think about 3,000, showed up with flashlights and UAV’s and illuminated the landscape, the roaches scurried under rocks and into cracks, and fled under the fridge into Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, etc. This is my next point, there are rocks, cracks, and fridges to scurry under which are not in Afghanistan.

Next, there is Iran. When the roaches found safe haven in Iraq, agreed in limited numbers, and U.S. forces showed up hunting Saddam, Iran could not resist sending men and material to attack U.S forces and Iraqis. Iran has been doing such things for many years, and just like the Russians, we are reluctant to attack them full on, and they are reluctant to attack us full on. We are in a cold war with Iran. They use oil money to fund terrorism against all non-Muslim countries and Islamic countries not supporting the extermination of Israel or the other agendas their version of Islam demands. We are not building tanks and sub’s in an arms race like we were with Russia, we are in a man power race. Iran has filled the aggressive-fascist-totalitarian power vacuum left in Russia’s absence.

So, the Iraqi roach motel was set up with U.S. security when the Iraqi people tired of interference from Iran. There is generally little love lost between the differing factions (Shiites in Iran, and Sunnis in Iraq.) represented by the two countries and both took advantage of the chaos to kill the other. When the Iraqi’s grew tired of the killing, they embraced, grudgingly, the security offered by U.S. forces, there in large numbers. They are taking over this security in hopes of thwarting Iran and other’s attempts to destabilize them in the future, and that the Americans will soon leave. Roaches check in, but don’t check out, so they needed somewhere else to scurry, and the Iranians needed someplace easier to attack Americans by proxy, and someplace easier to destabilize.

Iran is now sending their insurgents and IED’s to Afghanistan, and trying to affect the destabilization of Pakistan. Why these? Why now? Pakistan is easy, they are U.S. allies with little willingness to face off against Iran, so Iran can take pot shots at Pakistan without the possibility of an all out war. Second, if Pakistan falls into a state friendlier to Iran than the U.S., perhaps Iran can simply buy/steal/borrow their first nuke, or affect the delivery of one which did not originate in Iran.

Afghanistan is a little harder, but is the bridge from the situation there, to my assertion that we should surrender. President Obama claims that he can establish a dialogue with Iran and improve our relationship with them. The controlling tyrants in Iran, and much of its population, believe that it is a divine imperative that Israel must perish, and anyone who interferes with this must also. It is as much a part of their religion that we are evil, and Muslims who do not oppose us must die whenever possible, as Mass is sacred to Catholics. Catholics would not soften on Mass any more than Shiites will soften on the destruction of the little and great satans, or the nukes they think will bring this about. God is mightier than President Obama, at least he still is in their eyes. When President Obama insinuates that he can improve relations with Iran by offering anything other than American or Israeli deaths, it does two things. It shows Iran that they can behave even worse than before, without prompting military responses, and it compels them to demonstrate to the world that they will not soften in their faith.

So, to win in the middle east is similar to ridding your house of roaches. You can enclose it in a tent, fog it, and kill them all at once. Affective, but drastic and expensive. Or, you can start where they are known to be and kill them there while making that area inhospitable to them in the future. Still not cheap, and more time consuming, but limits the places where holes must be drilled and offensive odors generated. In my analogy, the first involves an all out attack on Iran. Destroy the world’s most prolific supporter of terrorism and show the next would-be-tyranny-vacuum filler the futility of leading by bayonet in opposing freedom. The second involves maintaining a U.S. presence in Iraq, kicking non-Afghanis out of Afghanistan and maintaining a presence there, just as in Germany, Japan, Italy, and others. Then, lather-rinse-repeat, until there are no rocks and cracks in which Iran can hide insurgents and Al Qaeda can train terrorists. This would include places like Syria and Pakistan, and eventually, Iran.

President Obama is unwilling to accept either approach. This is his prerogative, except that he has backed himself into a corner. I assert that when then Congressman and Presidential candidate Obama declared Afghanistan the righteous war, the war of necessity, the war that must be won, he was not giving an assessment of Afghanistan. I assert that he was contrasting it with Iraq. He was not so much declaring that Afghanistan must be won at all costs, although he came close, as he was stating how bad he thought President Bush’s judgment was in fighting an unjust and unwinnable war in Iraq and neglecting the just, winnable one in Afghanistan.

A few things changed after he took this stance. First, Iraq was won and if left alone, the military would manage the transition of troops from Iraq. No credit awarded to President Obama for getting troops out of Iraq. Second, the roaches scurried to Afghanistan. Flashlights and UAV’s would need backup by more troops. And, candidate Obama is now President Obama. He can’t send more troops because that looks like Bush and is contrary to his belief that there is rarely a military option. But he can’t loose there, because he would look wrong/weak.

So, thinking he had it licked, he hand picks General McChrystal to asses what is needed to do what the President wants. More on the want part in a minute. McChrystal takes him seriously and does just that, to the tune of 40,000 more troops. President Obama’s chin hits the oval office desk and he quickly, and truthfully starts to re-assess his policy. The collective anti-war gasp is audible even in the heartland. “He is not seriously considering sending more troops to the Middle East?”

The clincher comes from the, “do what the President wants”, part. If you look at McChrystal’s assessment, there is little or no mention of troops needed to win the war. It is mostly about building hospitals and schools and other winning the hearts and minds stuff. I already indicated why this will have no influence on the insurgents as there are no dead Americans being offered. And, since there are not enough Afghans to protect the country without the Americans, winning their help does not bring the troops home. So as the insurgents escalate the war, and the President escalates the social engineering, Americans are dying.

I see nothing that indicates that this President is willing to match the insurgent escalation with backup for our troops. I see no indication that he intends to protect the Afghanis once such a war is won by leaving protection forces occupying Afghanistan, or to do anything similar to prop up Pakistan and protect her nukes. There is no doubt in my mind that he does not intend to chase roaches into any other place on earth. As I see it, with this President, there are only limited possible outcomes. First, we could prevail in Afghanistan and bring our troops home from everywhere in the Middle East as the left keeps insisting on doing. This will allow the Taliban to return, making the lives and treasure lost in vain. It is anybody’s guess what would become of Iraq once the promise of U.S. enforced security is broken. I suspect Iran will seek revenge for its last war with Iraq and that this time Iran will prevail.

Second, we could stay in Iraq, and keep an outpost in Afghanistan but stop advancing the war on terror. The troops in Afghanistan and Iraq would be the subject of attack just as the Israeli counterparts are. (There have been some 7,000 missiles launched into Israel from Palestinian territory. Any guess what country made the missiles?) They would continue to die in the name of the status quo, with no measurable affect on curbing terrorism or the harboring thereof.

Third, we could stay and fight without prevailing in a kind of artificial proportionate-response stale mate reminiscent of Vietnam. This would be brought on by sending fewer troops than needed to overwhelm the enemy, say for instance if the military expert chosen by the President asked for 40,000 troops and got 20,000 instead. If you don’t know, this is the route chosen by the President in recent days. Our people would continue to die in the name of the status quo, with no measurable affect on curbing terrorism or the harboring thereof.

Fourth, we surrender and bring the troops home now before any more are lost. They would no longer continue to die, with no measurable affect on curbing terrorism or the harboring thereof. We could, of course, use Special Forces to make precision strikes anywhere in the world we could find roaches. This would require considerable increases in the clandestine presence in marginally friendly places and in hell holes alike. The left would sooner cut off funding for abortions in minority neighborhoods than offer to increase the size and scope of the CIA and the like. This would also hint that there are people in the world who cannot be reached by the current President’s charm and therefore need to die.

All of these possibilities would render us less safe in retreat than continuing the war on terror wherever the roaches scurry to. But without such an alternative in the Presidential list of ideological options, surrender gives our military a chance to survive until such a time as things get bad enough, or we elect a president more worried about Americans than political posturing, to put them to the use which they are suited.

Our military is full of people of character willing and immensely able to fight and die for freedom. They are supremely suited to fighting and dying for the cause to which they are turned. But when they are hindered from fighting, it is senseless to allow them to die.

It is my opinion that this President will make no use of our military greats worthy of their deaths. Bring them home and hand victory, or at least the claim of it, to the enemy. Do this openly instead of covertly behind the Washington spin of political correctness. The President will not overwhelm the enemy so that our people do not die, so he must retreat or allow them to do so.
The President’s philosophy that there is no military solution to violent attacks, only allows for limited proportionate response, or retreat. I hope that he chooses the least deadly option and retreats. At least then there is a chance that in a few years another president will come along, or some epiphany will befall this one, such that they will be needed again for purposes nobler than satisfying a roaches need to feed, or the President’s hope that the faithful will stray in fatigue from hearing him declare it preferable to us.