OBAMA AND AFGHANISTAN: DOES HE HAVE AN EXIT PLAN OR IS HE GOING TO BE THERE FOR YEARS OR IS HE GOING TO TALK?

There seems to be a lot of mixed and confusing messages coming from President Obama over the last few days about what he plans to do about Afghanistan – and all seem to contradict each other in some way or another.

In the UK ‘Daily Mail’ there is a report that Obama is now beginning to talk in terms of there having to be an ‘exit strategy’, something that has rarely been mentioned over the last seven years since the Bush administration and their allies decided to invade the place.

Meanwhile, in an interview after having had talks with Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Obama tells the world that ‘the war in Afghanistan will go on for years’ adding that the world must not back down in the face of “vicious killers”.

And to top off the confusion, not three weeks ago Obama was saying that “there could be talks with moderate elements of the Taleban in Afghanistan as part of a process of reconciliation”.

Obama seems to have little idea of what to do in Afghanistan.

The war has been raging there for over seven years now with the end result being that the Taliban is now enjoying a popular resurgence. It seems, while the Afghan people had very little time for the old style hard-line Taliban, they have even less time for the US and other foreigners that are on their dirt killing more and more of their innocent civilians, and being governed by a corrupt puppet government that has even less respect for the people of Afghanistan than the US claimed the Taliban had. But, despite the years of fruitless war, Obama has considered sending another 17,000 US soldiers there from Iraq just to become more canon fodder for a war that cannot be won.
His best options are to talk and come up with a quick exit strategy. But Obama is clearly confused and his aggressive talk will be welcomed by the warmongering hawks in our world. Rudd has told Obama that the war is not popular with Australians, especially over the last week or so when two more Australian soldiers were killed and three more badly wounded just today. Obama should also be aware that the war is not popular anywhere else in the world either, particularly in the US who are likely to bear the brunt of any increase in casualty numbers a result of any increase in troop numbers ‘surging’ the place.