It has been 3,000 days since WMD said he’d catch the Nine Eleven Conspirator UBL, uh dead or alive? WTF happened? Instead of bombing the hell out of Afghanistan and Iraq, we should have bombed Pakistan and Iran? What happened to the hunt for Usama Bin Laden? I believe UBL is the dead nemesis of a bankrupt Government. If you believe that the Nine Eleven attacks were not a false flag black operation by Christian Zionist Neo Cons, then what happened to the hunt for the UBL?

“Evidence linking these Israelis to 9/11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It’s classified information.” — US official quoted in Carl Cameron’s Fox News report on the Israeli spy ring and its connections to 9-11.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYIZW959vJc

Stop your job hunt with a Health care admin Degree it is easy and I got my degree in months and now I am working check http://bit.ly/6jqMDp

Despite your flag waving, I highly doubt anything said here will convince anyone “every student at UNM needs to support continued military efforts in Afghanistan.”

You can’t defeat al-Qaida in Afghanistan and expect al-Qaida to just go away. You still see even Iraq has poor security after a mere 6 years of U.S. military operations. With American-led bombing campaigns killing civilians in both Iraq and Afghanistan the U.S. has ensured much American hatred among the Arab nations for generations to come. War never was the answer, and Obama is now burdened with the mistakes made by Bush and Rumsfeld.

You say, “We cannot afford to fail in Afghanistan, or retribution may come in the form of a mushroom cloud,” which sounds like it came right out of a Bush speech in 2002. Nobody is swayed by this cheap rhetoric anymore.

It’s quite laughable, but you also say, “We need to act like adults and recognize that failure is not an option here.” You mean supporting a war is acting like an adult? Very foolish thinking. War is the ultimate failure, and dissent is the soul of democracy.

The war in Afghanistan is unwinnable, as is the war in Iraq.

Any dedicated guerrilla force can push a conventional army around for decades. If you are looking for the next Somalia, Afghanistan is it.

It is completely unconscionable that we send our best and brightest off to be killed, maimed and psychologically unhinged while ignoring real needs here at home.

(On a side note, to Post American,
I couldn’t sign that petition on FB since it demanded only equality for homosexuals, what about people who don’t get married? Or polygamists? Marriage should not be a social engineering project by the state.) Thanks though.

Afghanistan is completely unwinnable. We should not sacrifice american lives for the welfare of Afghanis. If we are to win, we must ruthlessly pursue the heart of Islamic totalitarianism. This requires an unequivocal understanding of U.S. individualism over theocracies. One indication of this lack of understanding by the rookie-in-cheif recently was the abandonment of the Iranians attempt to overthrow their government…imagine what Iran could have become had we supported these people.

Eric,

What are we winning here? Terrorism has always been around and it will continue to be around long after we are gone. Afghanistan and Pakistan have a fluid border, they want it that way and there is little we can do about it. Sending another 30,000 troops to add to the troop strength already in Afgahnistan to stop a a few hundred militant al Qeada activitists is insane.

All we are accomplishing is ginning up more anti-american sentiment in the Islamic world which leads to more terrorism. I am 59 yeras old and since I have been alive America has been in Korea, no win there, Vietnam, lost that one, Iraq, still there, and Afghanistan, still there and expanding. Is America just uncomfortable not being in a conflict? We respond to every crisis, including 9/11, with military aggression towards someone somewhere and usually without any real goal. Mr. Obama is using the same scare tactics of Bush/Cheney and Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon. We’ve been lied too enough and it’s time to say ‘NO”, enough is enough.

McInteer, if your children were being bombed in the cross-fire of this murderous war, I don’t think you would support it.
It is easy to “support the war” when you are an adult male sitting at your computer in the US.
However, it is all but easy to be in the war if you are a child in the freezing mountains of Afghanistan.
——————————————————————-
end post

ps. McInteer, if you are so bold as to submit such statements to the news paper of THIS UNIVERSITY, then back it up. Come to THIS UNIVERSITY so you can take the blowback from your pompous statements instead of firing away letters from behind your desk.
For the future; If you do not care about this paper enough to even respond to its readers, then you do not deserve to be hosted in it. That simple.

Mark: well put.

We live in a “post-9/11” world where we have the Patriot Act, the Department of Homeland Security, and TSA. We have to take our shoes off to board an airplane, after we’ve put our 2oz bottle of shampoo in a little plastic baggie…assuming we have the correct identification.

But two uninvited guests can just walk right into the White House and shake hands with the President with no questions asked. The most strongly defended house in the entire world, surrounded by restricted airspace, patrolled with armed guards and two people can walk right on in and smile for all the cameras.

A crazed gunman can open fire on a military base, on US soil, and shoot dozens of people and not a single one of them can fire back because they have been disarmed by the very government they work for. They had to take cover and hope and pray the “police” would show up.

“National Security” is a joke: we neglect what happens inside our own borders because we are maintaining an empire, not the republic that was founded some 200 years ago.

The claims that we have to support an undeclared, unconstitutional war in Afghanistan because it is a “war of necessity” and “failure is not an option” make no sense. Those are nothing more than catchphrases that have been used in every conflict we have been in since WWII, the last time Congress declared war.

The “non-interventionists” want to bring the troops home to defend America, not some third world country.

I agree with Steven and Mark completely.

Sadly, that’s not going to stop the president from sending troops to Afghanistan and seeing more people die.

I honestly bewildered that some people find war so appealing. Just remember all you people that support the war: you do so with ease while the people who fight it die.

The “terrorist attacks” was a failure of government, not a success of the extremists.

UNM excessively supports war and killing in many student and research programs. Vice Provost Wynn Goering has written “The University of New Mexico has ROTC programs for the Army, Navy and Air Force. It has research partnerships with nuclear weapons laboratories. It has high-security facilities for biological agents and toxins.”

UNM should sever all connections with military agencies and defense contractors, which siphon money and resources away from UNM’s true mission to educate the public.

Wouldn’t it be better if a UNM Vice-Provost could write “UNM students are excelling in the research and application of alternative energy technologies, medical advances, environmental clean-up, international relations, international law, etc?” Not likely with the current UNM administration. Has Vice-Provost Wynn Goering, who has written that he was raised a Mennonite, a religious group that has historically refused to support war and refused to serve in the military, done anything to de-militarize UNM?

Well said folks

I will contact this McInteer guy and see if he wants a freebie in the paper or if he actually cares enough about what people here think to give us a visit.

“America, a country where its soldiers will put their life on the line in order to protect your right to spit on them!” Steve Chavez

We owe our economy, freedom, rights, and just about everything to the military. W/o the military, it wouldn’t matter what Obama did or said or anything else. We would be run over. If you don’t believe this your’re sniffing and huffing stuff.

If a conservative doesn’t like guns, he doesn`t buy one.
If a liberal doesn’t like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.

If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn`t eat meat.
If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone.

If a conservative is homosexual, he quietly leads his life.
If a liberal is homosexual, he demands legislated respect.

If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation.
A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him.

If a conservative doesn’t like a talk show host, he switches channels.
Liberals demand that those they don’t like be shut down.

If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn’t go to church.
A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced. (Unless it’s a foreign religion, of course!)

If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it.
A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.

If a conservative reads this, he’ll forward it so his friends can have a good laugh.
A liberal will delete it because he’s “offended”.

I always marvel at, and it never ceases to amaze me, that some US citizens polarize their rationality and thinking toward the goal of global peace in terms of who is or isn’t in favor of (or supporting of) war.

Anyone with understanding will see that Obama has learned since his time in office that there are important things at stake militarily, which is why he has no choice but to participate in Afganistan.

Still there will be the individuals who think that all that is necessary is to stop the war. They don’t believe that our having the strongest military in the world has any positive bearing on the globe at all. This is a naive approach, one devoid of comprehension of humanity and the psychology of human beings. The globe is not America, and perhaps we could avoid all future wars if it was. But that is not the case.

To the contrary, we should materially oppose the US war effort. If you see a military vehicle in your neighborhood, tear it apart if you think you can get away with it or are willing to suffer the punishment. Puncture tires, take off wheels, whatever. Organize with others to shut down bases. Call out and stop UNM’s historical and continued support of mass murder overseas. The gravity of the situation gives us all the moral imperative to act. Drones alone have killed hundreds of civilians. The US military’s overall death toll for the last decade stands in the hundreds of thousands.

squeaker, dude, you would get your ass kicked by the GIs anywhere near the area. Definitly do not advise this, for your own good, even if you are a treasonous piece of s—t.

I support the troops. They are duty bound to fulfill their mission and do so despite the hardships. They have honor, and trust and faith in each other to do the right thing. I hate it when idiots speak about things they have no clue about, ie. its lost or our troops are committing atrocities, etc.

I hate the fact they are under the bama though—elections have consequences.

http://oathkeepers.org/oath/

That’s why I suggested caution, chayal. They can’t beat your bass if they don’t catch you. I also support the troops – as human beings. They’re not bad people, but they’re members of one of the most violent and oppressive organizations in history. I invite all soldiers to put down the gun and join the resistance like my comrades in Iraq Veterans Against the War have done.

Although the article on the “Tiles coming up at Johnson Gym pool” is riveting and of enormous new appeal. I think I’ll comment on this strand of the news on military politics.

I firmly believe that Conservativces do not like war, who in their right mind would actually like killing or risking getting killed. However, Conservatives understand that war is necessary from time to time. I am not going to comment on the most recent or current wars, those have been talked to death and we will probably never know the real issues.

One historical example is that Roosevelt repeatedly bolstered the US Naval forces while in office, and had Congress and Taft not deminished these efforts; it is likely that Japan would never have felt comfortable bombing Pearl Harbor and declaring war.

While liberal stance is against war, unlike the witless comments made by Summerspeaker to support illegal immigration by tearing up border patrol vehicles or military vehicles. The intelligent liberals really believe that if you extend the political hand of fellowship it will be extended to you in return. This is a weakness of their philosophy. A strong military is most often a deterent to violence/war. I wish it were not so, but human’s strongest motivators are: Personal gain and pleasure, greed, and lazines. All the other motivators are more difficult to sustain.

“Oppressive” is a naive way to describe the military. One should understand their use of words in order to give credibility to their point of view.

I can say that Santa Claus was a Nazi, but it would be foolish.

Obama hired the speech writers from the Bush era to write his speech, couldn’t you tell?

If the US military isn’t an oppressive organization, what is? We’re talking about of group of dedicated killers armed by coerced labor. The army conditions soldiers into strict obedience with a combination psychological and physical abuse and then sends them out to subjugate communities by leveling buildings, barricading streets, spraying lead, and herding humans like sheep. Bodies pile up by the thousands. Only the ubiquity of war allows us to ignore its essential nature.

Nicely written SS, were you able to destroy any military vehicles or border patrol vehicles last night?

I disagree with your definition of oppression.

Let’s get back on topic. On September 11, 2001 the United States suffered a horrific attack. At the time we were told there was no warning of a likely terrorist attack, but later found out there were hundreds of ignored warnings. When the Commander in Chief was told the nation was under attack, he continued to read a book about a goat? Nine Eleven was the best thing that ever happened to the Bush Regime. A 95% Approval rating, he used nine eleven to justify tax cuts, and the disaster in Iraq. We were told that a rag tag group of rag heads living in a cave pulled off one the most complex attacks in history. We were told Usama Bin Laden was in charge of the Nine Eleven Conspiracy. I guess he can’t afford a nice digital camera, because the subsequent videos of him are a joke. If UBL is not the dead nemesis of a bankrupt government, where is he? Why don’t we smoke him out? GOLDSTEIN? USA! USA! USA!

I’m sick of all the hippy liberals. Get off you butt and do something. You all fail to realize that this war you all find “unwinable” is the war that is keeping us FREE! Get a clue. These military men and women are serving OUR country to fight for OUR freedom. If you don’t like it- you don’t like the war…. MOVE! You don’t respect the United States of AMERICA go to another country, because this is our country.

(Wife of a Service Man)

Thank you for this article Eric

Thanks Post American. We need to have an intelligent debate about this troop escalation.

Let’s not make this a personal attack on the troops who have to be deployed. They are doing what their command staff and the president want them to do. I say the president and his generals are wrong to send them. I am very suspect of the integrity of General McChyrstal in particular because by most accounts he was the Bush lead man in the cover up of the Pat Tillman incident. I think his credibility needs to be challenged.

With that aside, the president has still not articulated a realistic goal for our continued presence in Afghanistan. We are still being fed those same vague and amphorous goals as to what we sort of hope to accomplish there (ala Bush style without the strange cheerleading jargon). We are still supporting a corrupt Karzai regime. I think we need to say NO until we get some straight answers as to how this will benefit america in the end. Already we are being told that the 18 month deadline is a flexible number. That should be a clue that Mr. Obama threw that in to appease the left. The real number is probably in mulitple years and that is why we need to demand a lot more from the president, his advisors and his generals before we escalate ourselves into the economic and moral poor house.

The military is voluntary Summerspeaker. It is bound by contract once you join, but it is well understood that there are risks when join. Coercion is the use of force to obtain compliance, the choice of whether or not to join the military is anything but.

It is interesting that some of the most violent and relentless movements have always been that of anarchy—that which you support, but when it comes to organized violence you adamantly oppose it.

If one were a champion of human survival, then that individual would embrace capitalism and liberty. Yet you do not, you advocate for coerced equality and egalitarianism against those of unique human ability.

I was alluding to taxation, Damian. Tax revenue pays for the U.S. military. I would have expected an Objectivist to pick up on that.

What violent and relentless anarchist movements are you thinking of?

It’s come to our attention that this column was inadvertently posted twice on our Web site. Unfortunately, we were unable to transfer the comments from the second posting to this one. Commenters on the second posting are encouraged to repost their comments. Thank you.

I really dig President Obama because he makes the right and left, CRAZY! That Dick, Cheney last night said Obama was giving aid and comfort to the enemy, Treason! Obama haters like Cheney, Palin, Beck, Hannity whine and bitch that Obama was dithering! We could sure could have used some dithering before the disaster in Iraq. They don’t seem to understand how badly they ****** up this so called “War on Terror” by cutting and running in Afghanistan to rid Iraq of their Weapons of Mass Destruction Related Programs, FAIL! Iraq, the Torture, the attack on the Constitution, the Rule of law destroyed our credibility and our alliances in this ‘war’ against the guerilla armies of evil. I believe that Obama, I mean Osama is the dead nemesis of a very bankrupt, third world government. I support the Troops and the President, because they are a hell of a lot braver then I am in the tasks and fight they have taken on. I find the ‘Peace’ movement to be such a joke. At some point the whole shithouse is going to go up in flames.

U.S. launches new bid to hunt bin Laden
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2009/12/09/US-launches-new-bid-to-hunt-bin-Laden/UPI-72151260378071/
…there are suggestions that the true objective of the campaign is not to destroy the Taliban, but drive al-Qaida into Pakistan where that country’s military is turning up the heat on the jihadists in the tribal belts.

Fo those of us who have worked in organizational dynamics, imagine that your boss or your subordinate has just informed everyone that they will only be with the organization for another 6 months. Then they are going to die or move or something. Your relationship with that person has just changed drastically. Lets say you have a project that is going to take a year to implement. Are you going to invest any time or effort in some one who is leaving in 6 months?

If you are a UNM student and your girlfriend whom you are very fond of, informs you that although you both are graduating in 6 months, that she is going on to Germany to study funkenfood for the next 3 years right after graduation. If you are not interested in Germany or funkenfood, how much effort do you think you will put into that relationship over the next 6 months. AND do you think you might have a “wandering eye” now that you know your relationship is hosed?

This is what Cheney was eluding to, it’s not the only truth, but it’s definitely one of the truths. When we say we will stand with you for 18 months or fuck around for 3-4 months trying to decide what to do- it doesn’t mean people sit back and say, oooooh this guy must have some very intelligent strategy. NO

The core truth for both sides is:
1.) none of the commentors, including me, have the real facts about the war in Afganistan. You aren’t going to get them on the internet or from the Media.
2.)what we do know from experience with the military coming home from the Viet Nam war is that support for the military is a key element in their continued health and well being.
3.) no one but the military has the ability to defend the USA, not the poor families in Afganistan, the liberal peace-love-dove crowd, or the media.
4.) to err on the side of loyalty and practical survival means to support the military

I’ll take my chances, Firegazer1. I don’t want to be defended by bombs and drones that kill thousands.

just out of curriosity, lets say that we send 100,000 troops to afghanistan tomorrow, and within 3 months, there is no more fighting. do we pull out then? sure, fightings over, why not? but here’s the kicker, what happens when we do? afghanistan has no economy, and hence no was to pay for a government which can actually govern. this leaves us with two options if we wish to see the government we installed continue to maintain control there:

1) continue giving military aid indefinitely. we can pay the afghan governments operating costs for the next 100 years.

2) legalize heroin so that the afghans can flip their own bill.

seem like two bad choices? they are. thats why the afghan war is bound to end in US withdrawal, and resumption of taliban control, what we might also term ‘defeat’.

also, i thought we were supposed to be fighting al-quieda, not the taliban lets face it we have made too many enemies to win, and we as a nation had the resolve to stay there for the next 50 years, little would be accomplished. it sucks, but thats the truth.

finally, the best thing we could do for pakistan would be to leave. since our escalation in afghanistan, the taliban has grown increasingly powerful in pakistan, and our constant drone attacks have created quite a political debate there. if anyone is destabilizing pakistan, its the US.