Kerry hints at Afghan war being a 'lost cause'

[IndianaGreen]

Kerry hints at Afghan war being a 'lost cause'

Thursday 15 July 2010
by Tom Mellen

Senior US legislators warned the Obama administration on Wednesday that the bloody conflict in Afghanistan is increasingly seen as a "lost cause" that reeks of imperial hubris.

Democratic Senator John Kerry opened a Senate foreign relations committee hearing in Washington by stressing that the blood and treasure invested in Afghanistan since 2001 will be "irrelevant" in the absence of a serious strategy for building a stable Afghan state.

But the panel's top Republican Richard Lugar declared that this "grand ambition" to "remake the economic, political and security culture of Afghanistan" is "beyond our resources and powers."

Mr Kerry acknowledged that rosy Nato predictions of progress in Afghan military training, governance and economic development "have not occurred in ways that boost confidence."

The two senators appeared to be inching towards the realisation that states cannot export their political systems and cultural values onto independent peoples at the barrel of a gun.

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/92870

[msongs]

1. it was "won" years ago then the military/war profiteers refused to leave due to $$ nt

[Skink]

2. we'll have to give up on making the next Dubai out of it.

[Blue Owl]

3. GWB's war of choice is a flop

A big, stinking, toxic flop that has cost us so very dearly.

[pleah]

4. Wars=theft of billions n/t

[Chulanowa]

5. Could he enumerate the massive shift between 2004 and today?

What exactly was the turning point, Mr. Kerry? Because returning to the Afghan war was a core platform of your campaign for the presidency.

[amandabeech]

6. Perhaps the Pentagon report that no more than 100 AQ are still in Afghanistan,

and we find ourselves shoveling money into a country that does not want us there.

Maybe Kerry asked himself who would be the last to die for a lie.

It appears that Obama is losing Kerry, and that's not a good thing.

[Chulanowa]

7. Yer damn right we're "shoveling money" into Afghanistan

We kind of you know, demolished the country. I know, we're a bunch of white christians with flush toilets, and they're a bunch of brown moon-worshippers who have some sort of derkaderka-talk. Doesn't change the fact that we owe them, big time.

[burnsei sensei]

8. I guess "lost cause"

is the best he can muster.
I would call it a stupid, criminal act designed to kill young Americans and further enrich an elite.
The caliber of leadership in this Congress is so, so low.