Obama Has No Intention Of Withdrawing From Afghanistan

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about how President Karzai was refusing to sign an agreement to keep the United States in Afghanistan (possibly for another 10 years or more). The White House had reported that President Obama had called Karzai in a last-ditch effort to get the Afghan president to sign the agreement (which would not only invite the United States to stay in Afghanistan, but would exempt American soldiers from being subject to Afghani courts for any crimes they might commit while in Afghanistan).

The White House had said that President Obama once again threatened to pull all troops out of that country by the end of this year if Karzai didn't sign the agreement. Now though, we learn that wasn't exactly the truth about what happened in that phone call.

A few days ago President Karzai gave an interview to the Washington Post, and his version of what happened in that phone call differs quite a bit from the White House account of it. Karzai says instead of Obama just withdrawing the troops at the end of this year, President Obama said he would wait for the April presidential election to be held and then get Karzai's successor to sign the agreement -- and Karzai seemed to think his successor would probably sign the agreement.

This is just one more in a succession of promises that President Obama has failed to keep on Afghanistan. Back in 2008, candidate Barack Obama said he would pull out American troops from Afghanistan by the end of his first term. But after taking office he changed that, and said he would end the war by the end of 2014 and pull out all the troops. Then he changed that, and said he would leave some 10,000 soldiers in Afghanistan to train Afghanis and fight terrorism. Then when Karzai refused to sign the agreement, the president once again said all troops would be withdrawn by the end of 2014.

It is now clear though that President Obama has no intention of withdrawing all American troops from Afghanistan any time soon. He has bought into the Bush administration neocon fantasy of saving Afghanistan by a military-forced regime change -- in spite of the fact that neither the American nor Afghan people want that, and there is no evidence that it could be done (since we are no closer to achieving it after 12 years than we were when we first invaded that country).

The American people are going to have to be more forceful in their desire for this seemingly endless war to be over. They are going to have to rise up and demand all American troops be brought home. We have already been in Afghanistan far too long (and accomplished nothing). It is time for this non-sensical war to end.

(The caricature of President Karzai above is by DonkeyHotey.)