Once again the unique way this administration views things is coming to the front… and by unique I mean naïve, inane, muddled…
Two reports are being released this week, one from The Atlantic Council of the United States (ACUS) and the other from Center for the Study of the Presidency (CSP), and both paint starkly negative views about Afghanistan (AKA The War that George Forgot).
Retired Marine Corps Gen. James Jones led the ACUS report which concludes that
“progress achieved after six years” in Afghanistan “is under serious threat. […] Make no mistake, NATO is not winning in Afghanistan,”This is not totally suprsiring as many critics have been saying that the success of ousting the Taliban and, in turn, putting al-Qaeda on the run has been ebbed by the lack of attention this adminstration has paid to that war… now it’s getting a little more attention with the release of these reports.
Though that isn’t going to stop the Bush(whacked) Administration from donning its rose-colored glasses and spinning the violence that has befell the country.
Case in point; Defense Secretary Robert Gates…
Gates is not only downplaying the upswing in violence in Afghanistan but is trying to spin the violence the administration is acknowledging as being good…
You read that right… something that most 5-year olds can distinguish between, violence is bad, no violence is good, is being spun as good by a supposed intelligent adult.
Last week Gates attempted to claim that “NATO has had a very successful year in 2007″ and that the significant increase in suicide bombings in 2007 was the “manifestations of a group that has lost in regular military terms.”I’m sorry… what? An increase in violence is a positive? Are we living in opposite land?
And what’s more, Gates wasn’t done… while he admitted that there is a “rising security issue” there, he spun that by saying that that was because the Taliban are turning to terrorism, having failed in conventional military conflict with the NATO allies…
Huh?
Maybe reading his whole comment verbatim would clear it up…
““And so we are seeing more suicide bombings, more use of (improvised explosive devices), and so on. These are actions of people whose conventional military efforts have failed,” […] The rise in violence and attacks like we saw in Kabul are manifestations of a group that has lost in regular military terms in 2007 and is turning to terrorism as a substitute for that.”Yeah, that didn’t work…
Granted, spinning an upward spike in violence as signs of progress is a common Bush(whacked) Administration tactic used in Iraq as well as Afghanistan… in fact, ThinkProgress even reminds us of some of them:
June 2007, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow described intense new levels of violence in Iraq as “signs of success.”
May 2005, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared “So suicide attacks, whether in Okinawa or in Baghdad today, are not a sign of strength. They’re a sign of desperation.”
March 2004, Vice President Dick Cheney brushed off the (insurgent) attacks as a sign of ‘desperation’ among U.S. foes…
What I see reek is more so a sign of desperation from this administration… trying to tie an increase of attacks and overall violence as any kind of success… it just doesn’t work that way, no matter what political ideologies you may have. So allow me to put this into words that even Bush could understand;
More violence… baaaaaaaaad.
Less violence… goooooooood.
Is there a way to ingrain this into the administration’s collective brain?I didn’t think so…
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