Wednesday, July 28, 2010

I Agree With Andrew Sullivan! (Hat-tip to Brian!)

So there's this pro-war putz named Brian Platt who I used to keep on my blog-roll as a source of decent-minded pro-war information until he turned out to be a dishonest, cowardly hack/crybaby.

For a lark, I went to check out his response to the Wikileaks story and his first entry was some sputtering drivel about "treason" (from a stateless organization), then he recovered his sense enough to say that the info wasn't new or dangerous (except for some in-country officials who, supposedly, the Taliban would not otherwise have known about) and that (get this!) everything is for the best because the more people know about "the mission" the more they tend to support it (!!!!ha!ha!ha!!!!)

So, then, his latest tactic is to point to statistics about all the girls we're educating n' shit, and all the cellphones some Afghans have, as if that justifies propping-up a hideously corrupt, unpopular government of torturers and pedophiles.

His source for these stats was Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic, so i decided to check out what Sullivan was saying, and i didn't see the statistics, but I did see his article on the significance of the Wikileaks and I'll have to say that I agree almost entirely.

Quote:
When one weighs the extra terror risk from remaining in Afghanistan, the absurdity of our chief alleged ally actually backing the enemy, the impossibility of an effective counter-insurgency when the government itself is corrupt and part of the problem, the brutality of the enemy in intimidating the populace in ways no civilized occupying force can counter, the passage of ten years in which any real chance at success was squandered ... the logic for withdrawal to the more minimalist strategy originally favored by Obama after the election and championed by Biden thereafter seems overwhelming.


We ain't gonna win the way we're going, the documents reinforce that it's a clusterfuck. It creates more "terrorists" than it destroys. Time to call it a day.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You have it so nailed, thwap. Blessed, beautiful writing as well. Not a bit vague. LK

thwap said...

Thanks LK. It was such a pleasant shock to read Sullivan's thorough demolition of the case for staying.