From the calm and measured intelligent discourse of cable news to the hard hitting in-depth stories of the Associated Press, the debate is raging.  Should we send more troops to Afghanistan?

The debate is usually very narrowly defined: “Are there enough troops in Afghanistan to win?” or “If we send more troops is winning possible?” Assuming that the war is “winnable,” does that make it right to wage it?

Let’s put the shoe on the other foot for a moment.  If Afghanistan invaded the U.S., and Afghan TV debated about whether the war against the American terrorists was winnable, how would we feel about it?

If Pashtun and Tajik pundits callously debated how many more troops it would take to pacify Washington, D.C., would Americans just accept occupation and greet the invaders as liberators?  Or would we fight to defend our homeland?  The Afghan people are no different than us. No one likes being occupied.

Whether most Afghans agree with the Taliban’s ultra-strict version of Islam or not is irrelevant.  When your country is under attack, you join up with whoever can expel the occupiers.  Find this hard to believe?  Don’t forget how we gave Bush a blank check to do whatever he wanted when our country was under attack.

The common justification for the occupation of Afghanistan has been the Sept. 11 attacks.  We had a responsibility to bring the hijackers and those that supported them to justice, to bring peace to the families of the victims.  We haven’t caught bin Laden in eight years. All we’ve done is kill more innocent people.

Do Americans even know who we are fighting in Afghanistan?  When the Russians invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the U.S. sent hundreds of millions of dollars to train and equip the most radical jihadists it could find.  We funded these radicals through Pakistan’s ISI, and one of our star subjects was Osama bin Laden.  All of these fundamentalists, who we armed and trained 30 years ago are now our “enemies.”

Ronald Reagan called them “the freedom fighters of Afghanistan.”  Now, they are “terrorists.” This is the monster we’ve created with our arrogance and ignorance.  Every time the U.S. sticks its nose where it doesn’t belong, it makes the situation worse.

Now we’re arming and training warlords, drug lords, and criminals to fight the fundamentalists.  But who are we going to pay to fight the warlords 20 to 30 years from now?  When does the cycle of violence end?  Do we ever learn our lesson?

The central government of Hamid Karzai, who just stole an election, only controls 20 percent of the country.  So, if this is the status after eight years, the only thing more troops will do is lead to more deaths of US soldiers and Afghan civilians.  This of course leads to more recruits for the Taliban, and the U.S. has to send more troops.  This bloodshed can go on forever if we don’t put a stop to it right now.

Russia invaded Afghanistan in 1979, and the mujahideen bled their empire dry. President Carter’s National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, came up with the idea of funding Afghan rebels to draw the Soviets in to defend their proxy government.

Brzezinski describes the game, “We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would … That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Soviets into the Afghan trap…”  Russia spent 10 years there, and it bled their empire dry.

Now it appears that bin Laden is laying the trap for us, and we fell for it: hook, line, and sinker.  Will we be the next empire to die in Afghanistan?

As Jeremy Scahill, author of “Blackwater” and an expert on military affairs, said, “The United States occupation is the single greatest recruitment tool for the insurgency in Afghanistan, including the Taliban.”  Does bombing Afghan wedding parties, killing dozens of civilians instantly and suddenly make Afghans want to sing the Star Spangled Banner?  Of course not.  It justifiably makes them want to kill us.

The truth is this: The fewer troops we have there, the less power and appeal the Taliban will have.  Let’s get the hell out of the Land of the Pashtuns as soon as possible, which would give the Afghan people a real chance to sort out their own affairs, and find their own democratic voice.

Many have speculated that Afghanistan could become this generation’s Vietnam, but it appears the outcome of the  war in Afghanistan will be much different than the Vietnam War. There are many similarities with Afghanistan and Vietnam, but there are many differences too.

Our war with Afghanistan started soon after Sept. 11, 2001, when it was determined that the hijackers who flew into the twin towers of New York, the Pentagon and into the ground in southwestern Pennsylvania were all members of Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is a fundamentalist, Islamic, multinational, stateless group bent on destroying America and Americans. The headquarters of Al Qaeda was located in Afghanistan. The Taliban were creating a safe haven for Al Qaeda. The Taliban is a group of Islamic fundamentalists, from Afghanistan, who were protecting Al Qaeda.

The word Taliban means student. It is a religious and political group that governed Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001 when its leaders were removed from power by NATO forces. In 2004, a new Taliban insurgency group rose up in guerilla style to attempt to defeat the current elected administration.

The guerillas of the Taliban are similar to the guerillas of the Viet Cong in Vietnam. They were also an insurgent group of local Vietnamese and warlords.

Vietnam had a history of foreign occupation from the French and then from the United States. Afghanistan has a history of foreign occupation from the British in the middle 1800’s, the Russians in the 1980’s and now the United States from 2001 until the present.

Both governments of Vietnam and Afghanistan are rumored to be corrupt and they don’t have the full support of their people.
In both cases, it is said to be asymmetric warfare when a weaker side can successfully exert leverage on a stronger military power. Power is not everything. When a military power goes into a foreign nation, they don’t know all the nooks and crannies of the area. They may have air power, but they don’t have land power. It is very difficult to fight a ground war in someone else’s house. The locals know all the hiding places that the foreign military doesn’t.

The terrain is an important aspect. The terrain in Vietnam was tropical, with rainy seasons and incredible heat and humidity. Afghanistan is rugged with mountains and unpaved roads and extreme climate changes.

It is hard to win the hearts and the minds of the local people if you look like a previous occupier. In Vietnam, the United States looked just like the French, and to the Vietnamese, they were the same. In Afghanistan, the United States looks just like the British and the Russians, there is little difference to the local people.

So much for the similarities, the differences between Afghanistan and Vietnam are that the United States was attacked by Al Qaeda and the war is against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. These are our sworn enemies. Al Qaeda attacked over 3,000 innocent Americans on our soil. Vietnam never attacked us, we were just there to keep the Communists out of Southeast Asia. We had no vested interest in Vietnam, except perhaps the oil of Sumatra and the rest of Southeast Asia.

As presidential adviser, James Rubin recently stated on MSNBC, “The whole world is on our side in Afghanistan; the whole world was clearly not on our side in Vietnam.”

On Sunday, Sept. 27, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S commander in Afghanistan stated on “60 Minutes” that he is fed up with the way the United States has been fighting the war for the past eight years. McChrystal assumed his current assignment on June 15, 2009. Since that time, he has said that the situation in Afghanistan is a little worse than he thought it was. He said the violence in the north and the west is greater than he expected.

He sent a new directive to his troops in writing that stated, “We must change the way we think, act and operate.

“If the people are against us, we cannot be successful. If the people view us as occupiers and the enemy, we can’t be successful and our casualties will go up dramatically.”

“The only way to win is to earn the support of the people,” McChrystal explained. “Conventional military operations designed to kill the enemy can never win this war. Destroying homes and accidentally killing civilians in the process only creates more insurgents and alienates the population.”

McChrystal then  stated  that “civilian casualties … are literally how we lose the war or in many ways how we win it.”

Although Afghanistan is bigger than Iraq, it only has half as many forces as Iraq. McChrystal told “60 Minutes,” that he plans to double the forces to 400,000.

With McChrystal’s understanding of the people of Afghanistan, I think it is possible to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people and in turn win the war in Afghanistan.

President Obama is a making a mockery of America’s priorities with his visit to Copenhagen, Denmark today. His visit is for one reason and one reason only, to bring the Olympics to Chicago in 2016.

The Olympics are one of the most anticipated and celebrated cultural events in the history of the world. It brings the world together for two weeks to celebrate and support different nations and athletes representing those countries.

I hope that Chicago hosts the XXXI Olympiad in 2016. I would be the first to wear red, white and blue, hoping for an American sweep of the events, but at a time when Obama is facing some of the toughest challenges and divisions this country has ever seen, it’s flat-out ludicrous that he goes to there to cheerlead.

Afghanistan is aching for decisions from our commander in chief. The troops are hoping for more support and quick action so they can handle the enemy and make a successful push. Health care is at a standstill and the recession, well, it’s still a recession. But, hey let’s get rockstar Obama over to Denmark for a day and delay fixing the problems and quagmires this country is currently facing.

Great idea chief. Let’s sell the idea that Chicago, one of the largest and economically ailing cities in America, is equipped to hemorrhage it’s thin wallet. It costs $5 billion to host the games. It most likely will be much more in the end.

Teens are dying in the president’s adopted city and jobs are declining. Health care and war continues to be left by the wayside, but the Olympics, well they seem to be the top priority.

Chicago…ahhhmm I mean the United States is spending $100 million dollars for the bid alone. That money can go to public transit, crippled businesses and social and police programs to combat the astronomical crime rate that has plagued Chicago this past year. If you haven’t heard, 36 public school students have been killed this year. It is a frightening trend that has hit Chicago.

This menacing rate of violence has made national headlines. And, yes it has been brought to Obama’s attention.  He is sending Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan to Chicago in the wake of the violence.

So Obama, the most famous person on the planet, has made it quite easy to be in many places in such a short time, but not this time. Barack and Michelle Obama should instead take the time to visit Chicago more often and give it the boost of morale that he has given to the rest of the country, although that morale is slowly becoming a redundant press release.

I am really starting to get furious with our president and his knack for meaningless campaigning. What the hell is going on in our country? Does anyone really know? The only ones that challenge him are members of the GOP, and they are the ones that got us into this mess in the first place. Thanks Obama for the rhetoric and smiles. I would rather have you as a talk-show host or motivational speaker, not the commander in chief. If you were the former at least you would be doing a good job.

If there was ever a time that Chicago could use a visit from their hero, their beacon of hope and perseverance, it would be now. But no, he decided to go to Copenhagen to bid for the unsure possibility that Chicago may host the Olympics.

It must be a real burden for you to have to sacrifice your time for a European vacation.