Caught between the scylla and Charibdes

The proverbial Scylla and Charibdes I speak of is the elephant in the room to a lot of my liberal pals. "If we got Osama, why the hell are we still in Afghanistan?" It is a valid question. I hope to illuminate a little bit here as to why, although the morality is dicey and the main target is taken out, we need to stay in Afghanistan for the time being.

In 2001 we ran into Afghanistan after 9/11 to show the world that this is just not done to the United States of America. It has been a constant in our history when shoved, we do shove back and generally twice as hard and damn near dare folks to get up. We were fighting a type of war different than any other in our nation's history but we felt up to the challenge. But sadly, Afghanistan was merely a decoy for the US to pick apart and lie about another country's involvement in 9/11. Things were left behind and others were focused on the red herring that was Saddam Hussein. In the meantime, things lagged so bad in what alledgedly was our number one priority of Afghanistan that while the reich wing of us were crying support the troops, they were conveniently forgetting that the main cause of this war on terror was setting up shop in one of our allies backyard. But we got Saddam Hussein and of course we knew by then that he had nothing to do with 9/11 even Cheney was admitting this. Yet, as we got Saddam, Afghanistan was festering, we had lost Pat Tillman and the Army and The Shrub wasted no time spinning that into God, Justice and the Reich Wing American way. But that is another blog for another day. Afghanistan lost a lot of luster in the short attention span theater that is the US of A once Jessica Lynch and "her cute self" was rescued after protecting herself and her crew "Rambo' Style (again another lie for G, J, And the RWA Way) and again once Tillman was killed in a friendly fire again made out to be Tillman stood there like John Wayne (another draft dodging Republican BUT I digress)

Short point, there was NO plan in Afghanistan. We had no freaking clue what to do in that country, Our soldiers did their damnedest of that I have NO doubt. But they were ill prepared for what to expect in this country that is thousands of miles away from their lives, they were ill prepared to come back into civilian life afterwards, they were just sent to a place and in essence told to figure it out.

I choose to believe that BHO is being deliberate because we don't want to pull out as fast and sloppily as we entered this quagmire. I know my bluer than blue pals will say "keep drinking that Kool aid" and the red of our citizenry will twist this into an endorsement of Shrub's (lack of) action. It is neither. It is common sense. We can not change a mind set overnight. We can not change a flawed policy overnight, we fought with blue dogs and reich wingers. Instead of wishing for instant gratification, let's let the President do his job. I believe in the man that got bin Laden in 2 years where Clinton and Bush failed after 13. We WILL get out of Afghanistan. I believe Barack Obama is the right man at the right time.