One east coast elitist said tonight, 'Mr. Obama seems to finally be connected'. If thats true, then what's he been doing for the last eleven months?

I listened to part of the President's speech this past evening and came away with a few of my own opinions. More troops are probably what is partly needed to get this mess under control however the eighteen month timeline is in my opinion realistic, practical and more than likely not attainable. Considering that we will not have the new troops in place before January of 2010 and those troops will take at least a month to two months to get placed and another month to get the lay of the land so to speak that adds up to somewhere in the vicinity of four months shot in the seat of the pants out of the eighteen the President claims is all that's needed to subdue an enemy that no one in recorded history has been able to defeat.

I realize part of his timeline logic is based on timing for his' highly anticipated run for a second term as are most of the other time lines for programs he has proposed since being elected to the highest office in the land. But the war in Afghanistan has nothing to do with being re-elected and the problems there are far more complex than the feelings of the Afghan people not being enamored with the idea of being occupied by another Soviet style army, which we definitely are not. The Karzai regime is going to have to get in step with our policies immediately if there is to be any real permanent progress made and that is going to be almost impossible considering the fact that Karzai is corrupt on a scale our government may not be able to comprehend, on the other hand they may know exactly what they are dealing with, but either way he is going to be like trying to control another Saddam Hussein and we know how that ended.

Today the Afghan generals were saying they needed almost twice the number of troops and national police that we have given as estimates, before they will be able to hold back the Taliban, if we have not been able to properly train the personnel they currently have how in God's name will we manage in the time being allowed before we pull out? There is continued talk about the fact that the Taliban and Al qaeda have long range plans, and let me put this in the proper context since we Americans generally don't think past the end of our proverbial 'dicks', their plans cover many years, like whatever it takes maybe several generations if necessary and as such they can lay back, wait for an adversary to spend themselves, like the Russians did, as a contemporary example, then dig up their weapons, rockets and bomb materials and go back to work. For some reason our politicians don't address this point and in fact go out of their way to avoid confronting it, as was the case in an interview I watched this evening with an East coast elitist ambassador type.

There may be a possibility to win this conflict but time lines to appease a far left constituency is not the way to go about it. This is going to take a gargantuan effort as Afghanistan hasn't got the sophistication or the resources of an Iraq. This is basically a 'total build out' of a country emerging from the middle ages that will require monetary resources that may very well tax us and others beyond our capabilities.

Thanks for reading,

"I think we risk becoming the best informed society that has ever died of ignorance".
Reuben Blades

Don't forget to check out my other blogs http://www.baronsperspective.blogspot.com/ http://www.theindependentpost.com/ http://www.christopherbaron.com/ just click on the links and they will take you right there.