Obama is the one that said Afhanistan was the nexessary war. I am not convinced. Nation building is not conservative. We destrooyed Al Quaeda in Afghanistan and now we are unclear on our mission objective. We cannot impose a western democracy on this tribal land. They have no sense of national unity other than an artifical British partition drawn up centuries ago.

I don’t want to diminish the efforts of our soldiers. I respect and support the military whole heartedly. But history has proven that fighting a war without a clear objective and a clear will to win will be a disaster. I say draw back, send up some drones, and destroy any attempt to organize by Al Quaeda.

It’s like the death penalty here in CA. If you aren’t willing to do it right, the whole exercise is futile.

This President LOST when he didn’t have the heart to win! You want to make this like Reid but Reid DID NOT give a way forward Fred did! IF the President WANTS to win he can BUT he DOES NOT AND SO HE WON’T….you really need to listen again because this WAS NOT like Reid in the slightest!

Nothing ANY Republican says, or for that matter, nothing any Democrat says, no poll results, not even the empty threat of impeachment, will cause the little crap-burger to resolve that America should win in Afghanistan. He’s not going to. He does not want to. He’s made that perfectly plain.

What part of that suggests any hope? Even a shred of hope? Even a rumor of a ghost of a shred of hope?

Fred is telling it how it is. However that is perceived, that is tough noogies. Some things SHOULD be said, ESPECIALLY in a time of war.

I love the troops. I love the mission. I love the freedom of the Afghanis. I hate what is happening. I’m in a military family, and I myself served. But 53% of voting Americans, a whole colossal mass of STUPID people made this happen, and there is no possibility of turning course.

None.

It is not in us to pronounce defeat. We must, at all times, advocate victory.

Remember, when everyone, and I do mean everyone, advocated a pullout, George Bush held his nerve and gave David Petraeus everything he asked for.

I know that Fred couched his statement in an analysis of Obama’s lack of nerve, but we, as conservatives, must always advocate victory. “For without victory, there is no survival”.

I give Fred Thompson the benefit of every doubt, but I disagree with what he says here.

Fred is right. I have felt for a while that if Obama wanted to win the war, that for political purposes, and to bash Bush, Obama said was the right war that we abandoned, he would have listened to someone, anyone, and not after all this time say he doesn’t like any of the plans. Like he knows crap about fighting a war to win. I guess that Harvard law degree made him a war expert also. Obviously he has no time to listen to the General he appointed to carry on his March strategy. I hate every minute of every one of our soldiers sitting like ducks in Afghanistan being killed because they don’t even have adquate equipment, or supplies. The defense budget has been stripped, just as every Democrat president does. The polls are showing that Americans are turning against the Afghan war, because there is no support for it by this administration. Of course Code Pink is involved. The latest reports are that our troops, the Army in particular, is losing morale. They have no idea why they are even there getting killed and maimed.

To even remotely equate Fred’s comments to Reid’s is ludicrous. Reid said the war was lost, as Iraq was gaining a foothold every day. Obama doesn’t give a flying crap about the war. He is more interested in getting his socialist healthcare passed. He is more interested in bowing to foreign royalty. He is more interested in pushing the peaceful Muslim religion, just like at Ft. Hood. He is too busy sending terriorists to NY for criminal trials. He DOES NOT CARE, yet our troops are dying every day. Heck, he even wanted our wounded troops to pay for their own medical care. I want to see every American soldier out of Afghanistan yesterday. Not because I want another embarrasing loss like Vietnam, but, if Obama has a problem with using the word victory, then I wonder what strategy he will come up with that won’t measure when it is time to leave there. I’d bet that his 71 car entourage in China would have paid for a heck alot of working weapons for our troops.

With respect Dan, FRED IS RIGHT, YOU ARE WRONG.

and now that someone has the good judgement to prove we are not warmongers for warmongering sake, he is called out?

and now that someone has the good judgement to prove we are not warmongers for warmongering sake, he is called out?

I have to cringe whenever I hear people on the right who I respect advocating for surrender, and though Fred isn’t doing that, IMO, he does provide aid and comfort to the enemy in Afghanistan by declaring the war lost. It can be lost, but it could also, with the proper outlook and policies, be won, and I think that it would have been better if Fred had phrased his point more as advice for Obama (which probably wouldn’t have been taken) than as a declarative on how the war will progress.

is badly bungling this war. Refusing to win is losing.

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Activists Taking Action: Unified Patriots

He should never have let that sentence come out of his mouth. I am afraid that Fred’s stature has diminished in my eyes, and that is unfortunate.

That said, let me repeat that his analysis is perfectly correct, and unless Obama does something differently than he is doing, we cannot win in Afghanistan.

Don’t be so hypersensitive about criticizing Thompson. I argued with Dan a bit about this this morning, and I now understand his position. He makes the salient point in the first paragraph:

in this particular case I think his point is precisely correct on the merits, but there are just some things that opponents of the President shouldn’t say during wartime, and maybe it’s just bad phrasing or just being provocative…

He didn’t say Fred was wrong. In fact, he stated that Thompson was basically correct. He’s just saying that the way he said it was not helpful. This is the kind of statement that the Left uses against us, and Ben Smith took hold of it right off the bat.

Don’t be so touchy when The Fred takes a hit. No one’s perfect.

Fred: Good speaker, mediocre communicator.

The progressives are fully immune to reverse psychology unless it’s proffered by George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin.

You might have better luck pointing out: As the direct result of President Obama’s shameless policies, 25 Million Afghans will be subjected to tyranny and oppression, and thousands are likely to face torture, mutilation and even death.

Although, the death of 50 Million innocents do not appear to have touched his soul.

Fred is right on and should be direct. America needs some real straight talk. This isn’t beltway political pattycake anymore. It’s real lives on the line. The longer we let this boy president pretend in office the more damage he will do.

Harry reid declared the war in Iraq lost because he WANTED it to be lost.

Fred Thompson declares Afghanistan lost, but does so sarcastically, and with a clear vision of who WANTS it to be lost.

The differences between the two men and their public pronouncements could not be more opposite.

I ask anyone I know serving in Afghanistan; Who do you see as advocating surrender, Obama or Thompson. It wasn’t the perfect choice of words, but I doubt there is much confusion about where Fred is coming from.

The War in Afghanistan should have been ended years ago with a vaporization of the mountains where Al-Qaeda/Taliban/etc. are located, and if it means a few peaks in Pakistan get turned into anthills, well, nothing’s perfect.

Terrorists – and from a cultural standpoint, the Islamic world in general – respect only force. Compromise, negotiations, quid-pro-quo, etc. are all seen as weakness.

Witness today’s headlines about Iran – again, as predicted – refusing to co-operate with BIG BRObama’s latest pact on uranium.

See:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125857144924754123.html?mod=article-outset-box

for me:

” The White House does not even pretend to portray this as a joint decision. It is a diplomatic cold-shouldering ……”

Hey SanFranNan, Dingy Harry, Joe Biden, you Kos Kids and all you Obama sycophants – I thought your man was all about getting rid of the ‘go it alone’ antics of the “cowboy Bush/Cheney/Hitler” administration.

Yeah…it sounds like it.

Morons.

“There is nothing conservative about the war in Afghanistan. The Center for Defense Information said a few months ago that we had spent over $400 billion on the war and war-related costs there. Now, the Pentagon says it will cost about $1 billion for each 1,000 additional troops we send to Afghanistan. One Republican Member from California told me recently that we could buy off every warlord in Afghanistan for $1 billion.

Fiscal conservatives should be the ones most horrified by all this spending. Conservatives who oppose big government and huge deficit spending at home should not support it in foreign countries just because it is being done by our biggest bureaucracy, the Defense Department.

We have now spent $1.5 trillion that we did not have–that we had to borrow–in Iraq and Afghanistan. Eight years is long enough. In fact, it is too long. Let’s bring our troops home and start putting Americans first once again.”

-Rep. John J. Duncan, Jr. (R-Tenn.)
War not conservative
Nov 18, 2009

is if in 2010 we elect so huge majorities in both the House and Senate that The Big 0 could be successfully impeached for his failure to fully prosecute the war in Afghanistan. Short of that The Big 0 is out to lose the war and blame it on W.

If The Big 0 were intent on winning the war, he would order the assignment of the troops requested and if he truly believes that is insufficient a new round of strategy development to win the war. He hasn’t. He’s played up the corruption in Afghanistan as though it is worse than the corruption in Chicago, Philadelphia, or the state of Minnesota. It isn’t, and that means it is a smokescreen for something else: The Big 0 wants us to lose the war so we finally learn our lesson. He’s even setting it up to be a repeat of Nixon’s Vietnamization strategy: force the locals to pick up too much of the burden before they are ready, and making sure they know in no uncertain terms that when they desperately need help from the US, it won’t be forthcoming.

I wish it were otherwise, if only for the sakes of the brave men and women on the field and their families back home. They don’t deserve to be playthings for The Big 0 to slaughter because they don’t belong in his new utopia.

If we do lose, the day we will have lost will be November 4, 2008, because this was the day that we did not turn out in great enough numbers to elect a patriot to lead us in the War on Terror, because we didn’t like the fact that he was soft on illegal immigration or some other issue of ideological purity.

Perhaps we can blame the media, who tricked the idiot “swing” voters into voting for a man clearly unfit to lead, but whoever is to blame, November 4, 2008 is the day that will live in infamy in the fight for Afghanistan.

Elections have consequences folks.

in ’63 and maybe sat by, maybe helped his being assassinated. There’s a good argument that the Vietnam War became unwinnable with his death as he was the only unifying force in the Country.

They’re one trick ponies. Comrade Obama hates this war but he stuck himself with it by declaring it to be the good war in contrast to the evil Bush’s bad war in Iraq. Now he and his fellow communists/Democrats are looking for a way out. We’re I Karzai, I’d watch my six.

The O, just a liberal[?] child lost in the dreams of cotton candy and naked power, the second being the sweetest and the power being totally domestic.
The poverty of intelligence, fortitude, and moral fiber is never more apparent, and not just with Obama but the entire leftist bloc. Foreign policy is incomprehensible, distasteful, an unmanageable distraction to these fools.
Obama fresh from a spanking in China, lectured to like the slow witted child he is, and rapidly becoming the laughing stock of The World, formerly the entity whose respect we had lost and desperately needed to regain.

So where is Fred T wrong ?