[credit: Jeff Danzinger]
Wackydoodle sez: Tell 'em just pass checkpoint '69 in Charlie Ville.
Senator John Kerry (D-MA) held a hearing on Wednesday, the ninth anniversary of the beginning of the war in Afghanistan. He invited some former CIA experts to testify on the status of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and what alternatives there are to another "surge" or increase in US troop levels. Repugnants in their characteristic misinterpretation of events credit the "doubling down" by the Charlatan for reducing violence in Iraq: a delusion based on leader worship. The killing tapered because the Shias and Sunnis decided to stop fighting each other. Paying the Sunni militia large sums of money to end their insurgency helped more than any increase in American military presence. What Wackydoodle is suggesting in his own pithy way, is the same approach suggested by Kerry's witnesses: a non-military response led by Afghans to infiltrate and turn Afghans loyal to Al Qaeda or eliminate them by other means. One witness said, "I think many of them are young men who could be won over, and would just as soon take a paycheck from the local governor and serve in the militia as they would with the Taliban." Right now, Al Qaeda is in hiding in Pakistan according to the testimony. One means of preventing its effective return is to leave in country hunter-killer teams composed of experienced US agents, acclimatized special forces and Afghans whose sole covert mission would be to deny Al Qaeda safe haven in Afghanistan. In short the overall effort must be perceived to be conducted by Afghans, as the Vietnamese War was turned over to the South after Tet demonstrated the true status of the conflict. Afghans are notoriously xenophobic, and a majority of them want foreign troops out of the country within two years. There is legislation pending in Congress to establish executive accountability for the conflict. HR 2404 requires Defense Secretary Gates to submit an exit strategy to Congress. So far Congress has given 44 a free pass in conducting the war. One way for 44 to EARN the peace prize he was just awarded is to reject the safe political choice of more troops, and begin ending American conventional military involvement in yet another unwinable war.