Matthew Yglesias » Just Making Stuff Up

Oct 7th, 2008 at 9:42 am

Just Making Stuff Up

Some time ago, Barack Obama was laying out his argument for deploying more troops to Afghanistan, explaining that “We’ve got to get the job done there, and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there.” I go back-and-forth sometimes on the issue of whether sending more forces to Afghanistan is really advisable, and this certainly seems like the strongest argument in favor of the more troops position. It’s one John McCain at least says he agrees with. Says, that is, when his campaign isn’t slandering Obama by sending Sarah Palin out on the trail to accuse him of arguing that US forces “target and kill civilians in Afghanistan.”

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20 Responses to “Just Making Stuff Up”

El Cid Says:
October 7th, 2008 at 9:48 am
It is totally un-American and unpatriotic to suggest that U.S. military operations could end up hurting people. How dare he?
SP Says:
October 7th, 2008 at 9:50 am
Seriously, the ad attacking this is so out of context that the voice-over has to say the entire sentence except for six words. I’m waiting for the Simpsons-like footage splicing where Obama is accused of wanting to grab someone’s “sweet.. sweet… can.”
strasmangelo jones Says:
October 7th, 2008 at 9:54 am
You know, there’s other options besides air raids and more troops. For example, we could simply pull out of Afghanistan.
msw Says:
October 7th, 2008 at 10:04 am
As SP points out this is not just Palin on the campaign trail, there is an ad running on television making this accusation.
steve duncan Says:
October 7th, 2008 at 10:09 am
Do we know U.S. military forces don’t target and kill Afghan or Iraqi civilians? Terrorism is not the exclusive province of the weak, the oppressed and those lacking a standing military. Accusations of torture were greeted as the rantings of irrational leftists looking to denigrate our war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those accusations proved true. One day an enterprising journalist, a citizen pursuing an FOIA request or a conscience stricken soldier seeking closure will come forward and reveal we have targeted civilians.
Eric Potruch Says:
October 7th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Fuck McCain and his mail-order VP. This isn’t nearly as bad as it’s going to get. Dana Milbank at WaPo has a piece where he chronicles a man at a Palin speech telling a sound man for the media, who happened to be black, to “Sit down, boy!”

Yes, my friends — this is the Republican campaign at its fighting best.
Ryan Says:
October 7th, 2008 at 10:23 am
Seems like not so long ago, this wouldn’t have even worked as a smear. I thought Republicans were A-OK with indiscriminate killing of brown people.
Chris Says:
October 7th, 2008 at 11:05 am
@steve duncan: We don’t know that. But it’s not the point: the point is that Obama never said that U.S. forces were *targeting* civilians, only that they were killing them (which they clearly *are*, whether intentionally or accidentally – there’s piles of corpses to prove it).

Intent matters, and Obama knows that, which is why he didn’t say anything about an intent he didn’t know was there. That’s why Palin’s distortion is significant.

As far as the larger issue of what to do with Afghanistan, ISTM that we’re using a chainsaw when the job calls for a scalpel, and we should send spies and possibly assassins rather than occupying with massive conventional force. But that would require acknowledging that killing someone sneakily isn’t really a worse crime than killing them openly, which in turn would undermine the moral case against terrorism and other unconventional forms of warfare. If we started judging all forms of warfare by their body counts, we wouldn’t look so good, and therefore that approach must be avoided at all costs.
rmwarnick Says:
October 7th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Senator Lindsay Graham, who I rarely agree with, once said, “If we’re the good guys, we have to act like the good guys.” That would be a good rule to follow.

In Afghanistan, more innocent civilians are being killed by our forces and NATO than by the Taliban. It would be a massive understatement to say that’s counterproductive.
Richard Steven Hack Says:
October 7th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
Obama still doesn’t get it – and of course, that means Matt doesn’t, either (big surprise…)

Yo, Senator! YOU DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH TROOPS ANYWHERE to “get the job done”, you moron!

According to standard counterinsurgency doctrine, you would need FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND troops – at a minimum – to have any effect at all in Afghanistan. Where you gonna find them, short of a draft, Senator? Care to answer that question?

And then add the requirements for Pakistan to that number!

And the Pashtuns can easily come up with another X thousand or ten thousand more recruits the more US troops you flood into Afghanistan. Which means you probably end up needing X times four hundred thousand troops.

In fact, the problem – which you don’t seem to have ANY comprehension of, Senator (and Matt) – is that the MORE troops you send into Afghanistan, the MORE Afghan and Pakistani Pashtun will join the Taliban. BY DEFINITION! Which means you won’t EVER have enough troops to deal with the (under-)estimated 42 million Pashtun in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Get a fucking clue!
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Matt Yglesias

Just Making Stuff Up

20 Responses to “Just Making Stuff Up”

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