Chicago Sun-Times on a speech by Lara Logan:
Her ominous and frightening message was gleaned from years of covering our wars in the Middle East. She arrived in Chicago on the heels of her Sept. 30 report, “The Longest War.” It examined the Afghanistan conflict and exposed the perils that still confront America, 11 years after 9/11.
Eleven years later, “they” still hate us, now more than ever, Logan told the crowd. The Taliban and al-Qaida have not been vanquished, she added. They’re coming back.
“I chose this subject because, one, I can’t stand, that there is a major lie being propagated . . .” Logan declared in her native South African accent.
The lie is that America’s military might has tamed the Taliban.
“There is this narrative coming out of Washington for the last two years,” Logan said. It is driven in part by “Taliban apologists,” who claim “they are just the poor moderate, gentler, kinder Taliban,” she added sarcastically. “It’s such nonsense!”
Logan stepped way out of the “objective,” journalistic role. The audience was riveted as she told of plowing through reams of documents, and interviewing John Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan; Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and a Taliban commander trained by al-Qaida. The Taliban and al-Qaida are teaming up and recruiting new terrorists to do us deadly harm, she reports.
She made a passionate case that our government is downplaying the strength of our enemies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as a rationale of getting us out of the longest war. We have been lulled into believing that the perils are in the past: “You’re not listening to what the people who are fighting you say about this fight. In your arrogance, you think you write the script.”
Our enemies are writing the story, she suggests, and there’s no happy ending for us.
I gotta disagree with Ms. Logan on this one. We’ve already announced we are leaving that piece of shit country. We should just pack up our stuff and get the fuck out.
Things are not gonna get better anytime soon. Our voters would not stand for increasing our troop strength and the Soviets proved that you can’t win the Afghani hearts and minds by use of force anyway. Most importantly, the people we went in there to get aren’t there anymore.
Yes, they hate us. The longer we stay there the more they will hate us. But if we aren’t over there they have to hate us at a distance. What we can do is make clear that we will not tolerate that country (or any other nation) being a terrorist haven like it was before the attacks on September 11th. We can keep sending them money and other support as long as they behave. Otherwise, fuck ’em.
Sometimes there are no right answers.
The Crawdad Hole 
Holy Sheepshit Batman!
SNL had two of the funniest skits they ran in years about the debate.
hahahaha
I hadn’t seen this one, thanks for posting it ! The new Obama is getting better, he’s also a local boy and will be bringing his stand-up here in a few weeks.
Just had Gabby Douglas Day when she was back in town. These kids are putting Va Beach on the map 😀
Ha , they wee being kind to Obama lol
They have a hard time admitting that THEIR GUY is one big joke! The rest of the world is laughing at Obama; why can’t they?
PS, tell me please please please, what were the two lies that Romney really said?
Anyone here got any ideas on why this went through the house?
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/hr6566/text?inf_contact_key=92187111791891773363758c608702503fd49785c0dd103aab80622dbca7dbd4
Am I the only person having problems with YouTube today?
They found you out.
I’m pretty cool with your summation… BUT, I took from her conversation that we are being misled…. and that NO REPONSE after our Ambassador is KILLED sends a message of weakness to the Taliban, and emboldens them.
I’m fine with leaving, tying any aid to cooperation, and further, removing our emissaries (and closing our embassies) from their countries…. BUT, could our leaders be truthful about what the hell is going on? – ’cause right now it looks like this administration is either not talking about the subject, or deflecting the subject.
I would like to be told the truth – that we probably will have to live with the possibility of Terrorist attacks ’til the end of time… With that acknowledgment, we can work to SECURE our country and interests, so that we can prevent these attacks as much as possible.
I’m with you, jeffhas. We have a huge fucking financial stick, and we ought to USE it. And we ought to respond with swift, deadly, utterly implacable force if attacked.
Other than that, leave off the nation building and occupying and let them sweat and starve in their third world shitpiles.
It’s just nice to see Ms. Logan challenging the Preezy. He was certainly thumping his chest the other night for his Hollywood pals about bringing peace to the ME. (now give me mo’money!).
I so admire her , after what she has been through , she has reserves of courage and goes on to tell another painful truth . What a woman !
I’m not fine with pulling out and leaving. I wish we’d never gone in, but now we’re in “you broke it, you fix it mode.” Dictators have been disposed, there’s a power struggle between extremists, Iran is getting a bomb, terrorists in Syria have chem weapons, it’s a nightmare. I agree with Ms. Logan, “Our enemies are writing the story.” We need to be writing the story because that’s actually the path to less bloodshed.
Yeah, but we’re broke. Are we going to borrow from China to continue losing wars?
The choice isn’t doing nothing/appeasement v. war — that is what Obama says the choices are but he’s full of shit. There is a third choice as Romney outlined – it used to be called peace through strength — attaching aid & diplomatic assistance to adherence to certain standards. Now we’re just giving money with no strings attached in the sense that any “conditions” to that aid are easily disregarded because they know we are weak & will not follow through on any sanctions, stopping the aid, etc.
yttik is right — we need to be writing the story.
I agree with yttik & angie. Just pulling out will prove more costly in the long run.
And Angie , I also think that Obama has encourage our enemies by distancing from our friends , esp Israel . That has no doubt helped with recruitment and encouraged rebellion . There are so many shades of evolving consequences of a weak disorganized POTUS.
Don’t mind at all pulling out early as long as we break lots of stuff – theirs and ours – doing it. Leaving the place even slightly better is a loser’s way, not ours under these conditions.
Bush went to Afghanistan to get the Taliban for having given refuge to al-Q. Bush also went after Bin Laden. He was a failure on both counts. Obama has only made it worse.
Meh. If we’re not in Afghanistan we’ll be somewhere else. We’re always fighting some war, like in Orwell’s 1984.
Bin Laden was killed based on what Bush built, not Obama. 👿
If we were somewhere else the odds are great there would be better supply chain access, so that alone would be a win-win.
I think we should invade Canada instead. I don’t like the way they’re looking at us.
I think Mexico is a better place take over. It has oil and lots of cheap labor, and will fight us always mañana, and we beat them once. 🙂
It’s a win win.
Don’t beat me up because I came up with a bad joke.
I vote for France! Just because. And who needs oil when you’ve got all the wine and cheese?
Halle-fucking-lujah! Thank you Ms. Logan for your courage. Now move our soldiers and personnel out and give them what they want – a one way trip to hell! If we have a bomb to save the infrastructue great, drop it. If not, blow it to hell. And then we can start mining the minerals. 👿
LOL! Well, we are one of the few countries that actually looses money going to war. We not only fund the darn thing, then we pay to rebuild the country later! Not the British, oh no, they always went in, pillaged, plundered, and actually made a profit.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2214753/Mitt-Romneys-52-point-debate-victory-Obama-biggest-Gallup-poll-history.html
Interesting. So many are showing Romney got a nice bounce, but the Prezzy has come back because of the 7.8% unemployment figure. Not surprising. But it looks like the statistical tie nationally and in swing states is sticking. So that’s a big change from a few weeks ago.
Legalinsurrection funny.
😆