Obama continues his foolish war in Afghanistan

This supports my view that Obama doesn't work for us, the people that elected him. I think Obama works for the entrenched government bureaucrats who are in power. Obama just does what the entrenched government bureaucrats who are in power tell Obama to do.

I am sure that Obama just took what the generals in military told him should be done in Afghanistan and Iraq and decided to do it.

Doesn't matter that the American people are fed up with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and want to get out. Obama is going to take the advice his entrenched government bureaucrats give me because he works for them, not the people that elected him.

I suspect he did the same on the "Don't ask, don't tell policy" that court martial gay folks who admit to being gay.

Obama when he was running for office said he would give gays the same rights as straights in the military.

But as soon as Obama got into power the homophobic generals who hate gays told Obama that letting gays into the military would destroy it, so Obama followed their advice.

I suspect that same thing happened on the drug war.

When Obama was running for election he said he would decriminalize drugs.

Of course when Obama got into power the goons that work for the FBI, DEA, Homeland Security, INS, TSA and other alphabet federal police agencies told Obama that decriminalizing drugs would destroy their empires. And of course Obama reversed his stance.

Source

Afghanistan war exit pushed back, officials now targeting 2014

by Nancy A. Youssef - Nov. 10, 2010 12:00 AM

McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration has decided to begin publicly walking away from what it once touted as key deadlines in the war in Afghanistan in an effort to de-emphasize President Barack Obama's pledge that he'd begin withdrawing U.S. forces in July 2011, administration and military officials have told McClatchy Newspapers.

The new policy will be on display next week during a conference of NATO countries in Lisbon, Portugal, where the administration hopes to introduce a timeline that calls for the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan by 2014, the year when Afghan President Hamid Karzai once said Afghan troops could provide their own security, three senior officials told McClatchy, along with others speaking anonymously as a matter of policy.

The Pentagon also has decided not to announce specific dates for handing security responsibility for several Afghan provinces to local officials and instead intends to work out a more vague definition of transition when it meets with its NATO allies.

What a year ago had been touted as an extensive December review of the strategy now also will be less expansive and will offer no major changes in strategy, the officials said. So far, the U.S. Central Command, the military division that oversees Afghanistan operations, hasn't submitted any kind of withdrawal order for forces for the July deadline, two of those officials said.

The shift already has begun privately and came in part because U.S. officials realized that conditions in Afghanistan were unlikely to allow a speedy withdrawal.

"During our assessments, we looked at if we continue to move forward at this pace, how long before we can fully transition to the Afghans? Of course, we are not going to fully transition to the Afghans by July 2011," said one senior administration official. "Right now, we think we can start in 2011 and fully transition sometime in 2014."

Another official said the administration also realized in contacts with Pakistani officials that the Pakistanis had concluded wrongly that July 2011 would mark the beginning of the end of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan.

That perception, one Pentagon adviser said, has convinced Pakistan's military - which is key to preventing Taliban sympathizers from infiltrating Afghanistan - to continue to press for a political settlement instead of military action.

"This administration now understands that it cannot shift Pakistani approaches to safeguarding its interests in Afghanistan with this date being perceived as a walk-away date," the adviser said.

Last week's midterm elections also have eased pressure on the Obama administration to begin an early withdrawal. Earlier this year, some Democrats in Congress pressed to cut off funding for Afghanistan operations. With Republicans in control of the House of Representatives beginning in January, however, there will be less push for a drawdown. The incoming House Armed Services chairman, Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif., told Reuters last week that he opposed setting the date.

On Tuesday, a White House official who spoke with reporters in a conference call arranged to discuss the December review, said the administration might withdraw some troops next July and may hand some communities over to Afghan authorities. But he said a withdrawal from Afghanistan could take "years," depending on the capability of the Afghan national security forces.

He also said the December review would measure progress in eight areas, though he declined to specify what those are. Congress will get a report by early next year, but Army Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S.-led international forces in Afghanistan, will not testify.

"This is designed to be an inside-the-administration perspective," he said, adding it will "set the policy-making calendar" for the Obama administration's first six months of next year.

While the Taliban are facing increasing coalition airstrikes, they have no driving incentive to negotiate with an unpopular government. Officials here quietly worry that while they, too, are seeing some drops in violence and the Taliban's hold in pockets of Afghanistan, those limited improvements aren't leading to better governance.