READ before you type. Nick wrote: "By the time Obama got into power and surged more troops back there it was too late. And it's been too late ever since."
Posted By: coeur-de-lion
Re: Are you suggesting Obama . . . .
didn't play a part in extending the Afghanistan debacle? You don't even mention him.
As an IL STATE senator in 2002, Obama was outspoken against the Iraq War and said that he would vote against the resolution if he was in the US Senate.
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http://www.factcheck.org/2016/09/obamas-war-stance-revisited/ Obama’s War Stance, Revisited
"Obama, Oct. 2, 2002: Now let me be clear – I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. ... But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military is a fraction of its former strength ... I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars."
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As POTUS, Obama had to play the hand he was dealt in as diplomatic a manner as possible. He couldn't just abandon Afghanistan and piss on many allied nations who also lent support in the Middle East wars. The surge, though controversial, was an attempt to recover what had been lost due to the expansion to Iraq. Then, later ...
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http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/01/world/asia/obama-afghanistan-war.html The Afghan War and the Evolution of Obama
"President Obama’s advisers wrestled with an intractable problem in the spring and summer of 2015: How could they stabilize Afghanistan while preserving Mr. Obama’s longtime goal of pulling out the last American troops before he left office?
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As it happened, the president solved the problem for them. In early August of that year, when Mr. Obama convened a meeting of the National Security Council, he looked around the table and acknowledged a stark new reality.
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“The fever in this room has finally broken,” the president told the group, according to a person in the meeting. “We’re no longer in nation-building mode.” ..."
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Trump inherited Afghanistan from Bush and Obama. Trump had other ideas about Afghanistan.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/i-just-dont-want-to-kill-10-million-people-trumps-comments-reverberate-in-afghanistan/2019/07/23/88e8d15e-ad0c-11e9-b071-94a3f4d59021_story.html ‘I just don’t want to kill 10 million people’: Trump’s comments reverberate in Afghanistan
(video of Trump's speech embedded in the linked article)
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"... “If I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the earth,” Trump said Monday. “It would be over in literally, in 10 days.” He did not elaborate on how that would be done. ..."