Mission um, accomplished?

I consider Afghanistan to have been a threat to the security of the US in 2001. The Taliban's support of terrorism before and after 9/11 needed to be dealt with as a global security matter. And I'll never forget the anger I felt as I stood in the yard of a Mobil station on 2nd Avenue and 2nd Street, with my 3 month old daughter in my arms watching the World Trade Center burn. I knew then that it would be my country's mission to make the people responsible pay. And we almost succeeded, but then someone fabricated a diversion that pointed our military away from the people who deserved a hurting, to a country whose greatest crime was refusing to cooperate with the petro-political ambitions of our unrepentantly avaricious government.

So today, Afghanistan and Iraq are both tactical and strategic disasters. And the bitter irony is that those failures have been compounded by a phenomenon that weighed heavily on the Soviet military during the Cold War and their own incursion into Afghanistan: politics.

Just as it was in the Tom Clancy novel The Hunt for Red October, we have men and women (political officers) forming military tactical and strategic roadmaps based on polls and political "realities".

Staying this course is not a path to success. Every thinking man, woman and child in America knows this, but for reasons that must be very deeply personal and ego-driven, many of these same people simply won't face up to the reality that the political officers they voted for are paper tigers whose virtue, fortitude, humanity, humility, strength, passion and purity are really all about perpetuating their own power and ability to profit financially from their policies.

Mission Accomplished?

Buried on page 10 of the NY Daily News last week, Bill Frist was quoted as saying that the military effort against the Taliban in Afghanistan can not be won militarily. "You need to bring them into a more transparent type of government... And of that's accomplished, we'll be successful."

Senator Mel Martinez (R-FL) added "a political solution is how it's all going to be solved".

Does this mean get them to vote over there so we don't have them voting on our streets?

Is this how the cowards in the administration honor the sacrifices of the men and women who have died in Afghanistan? By cutting and running? By finding a political solution because the diversion of men and materiel to Iraq enabled a powerful regrouping of an enemy we had on the ropes 3 years ago?

This is an utter disgrace. Once again, the President shows his steadfastness is all an act, all a lie. Maybe annihilation of the government in Iraq qualifies as a fait accomplit, but when you're talking about actually making America safer from terrorists, it's an abject failure.

Show your dissatisfaction on November 7th. Get the hell out and vote against everyone.