{"id":4547,"date":"2009-08-19T15:07:13","date_gmt":"2009-08-19T22:07:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2009\/08\/19\/where-were-heading-in-afghanistan\/"},"modified":"2009-08-19T15:07:13","modified_gmt":"2009-08-19T22:07:13","slug":"where-were-heading-in-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2009\/08\/19\/where-were-heading-in-afghanistan\/","title":{"rendered":"where we’re heading in Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the not too distant past, leading out of the debris of that moment when just under half of the Democrats in the House voted to authorize the war in Iraq<\/span> and just over half of the Democrats in the Senate did as well, and coming in to the shift of an oppositional line from the Democratic Party<\/span>, the easy calculation was made in order to demonstrate to the American public that they meant business and were not “soft” in the Military and Defense departments.\u00c2\u00a0 Afghanistan<\/span> was and is smart; Iraq<\/span> was and is dumb.<\/p>\n

John Kerry<\/span> stumbled around there, further expressing a proposed — dare I call it — “surge” of military personnel in Iraq.\u00c2\u00a0 Muttering rollsed in along the lines of “maybe he doesn’t believe it?”, though I luck-lusterly meted that out with “maybe it’s a better strategy”, albeit not one that aligned in with the anti-war platform most of his voters would support.<\/p>\n

Interestingly enough, as support for the war in Iraq deteroiated through 2005 and 2006, a counter-veiling and quasi-counter-intuitive opinion emerged amongst a certain subset.\u00c2\u00a0 It made sense, even if it seemed based on such a bit too broad a framework of understandings — “a little bit of knowledge” being “more dangerous than none”.\u00c2\u00a0 Iraq will turn out fine enough — better than under Saddam; they have a well enough history of maybe authoratarian and undemocratic order, but order nonetheless — to pull together.\u00c2\u00a0 (And, oh yeah, caveat to keep some cred here: we’re building permanent bases.\u00c2\u00a0 ‘Tis a shame.)\u00c2\u00a0 But Afghanistan?\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t know about that one.\u00c2\u00a0 Not going as well as we are lead to believe.\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s the grave-yard of empires and all that.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0The United States\u00c2\u00a0might be screwed with that one.
\n<\/em>
\nAs it were, Obama campaigned promising winding down a war in Iraq, and ramp up a war in Afghanistan.\u00c2\u00a0 It is a plank that comes from out of the previous item of Democratic conventional wisdom<\/span>.\u00c2\u00a0 It is worth mentioning, on the eve of their election, that the administration has professed an uncertainty over the metrix, a sure-fire direction to uncertainty of purpose.\u00c2\u00a0 Democracy, I guess, is being served:\u00c2\u00a0 James Carville had provided political advice for one of Karzai’s opponents<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Elections tomorrow!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the not too distant past, leading out of the debris of that moment when just under half of the Democrats in the House voted to authorize the war in Iraq and just over half of the Democrats in the Senate did as well, and coming in to the shift of an oppositional line from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4547\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}