{"id":149,"date":"2009-10-18T02:20:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-18T10:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=149"},"modified":"2009-10-18T02:20:00","modified_gmt":"2009-10-18T10:20:00","slug":"kerry-opposes-afghanistan-troop-increase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2009\/10\/18\/kerry-opposes-afghanistan-troop-increase\/","title":{"rendered":"Kerry Opposes Afghanistan Troop Increase"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think more Democrats weed to speak out on this.<\/p>\n

\n

\"asianmap\"<\/a> During an interview with CNN\u2019s John King, Sen. John Kerry argued that it would \u201c<\/font>irresponsible<\/a>\u201d to commit more troops to Afghanistan at a time when the legitimacy of the Afghanistan government is in doubt. Kerry\u2019s comments came in the context of arguing that Obama shouldn\u2019t be \u201ccornered\u201d into making a hasty decision:<\/font><\/p>\n

It would be entirely irresponsible for the president of the United States to commit more troops to this country, when we don\u2019t even have an election finished and know who the president is and what kind of government we\u2019re working in with.<\/font><\/p>\n

When our own commanding general tells us that a critical component of achieving our mission here is, in fact, good governance, and we\u2019re living with a government that we know has to change and provide it, how could the president responsibly say, \u201cOh, they asked for more, sure \u2014 here they are\u201d?<\/font><\/p>\n

Watch it:<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/font><\/p>\n

\u2026 [emphasis original<\/em>]<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Think Progress<\/a>><\/p>\n

I agree with Kerry\u2019s key contention.  Although the conflict in Afghanistan is still so small that it does not compare to Vietnam, we need to avoid making a similar mistake.  In Vietnam, we supported a series of virtual dictators, beginning with Diem instead of supporting populist leaders.  Karzai, a Unocal employee, was installed by the Bush\/GOP regime.  The corruption that pervaded the recent election demonstrates that supporting him will only turn Afghanis more against us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think more Democrats weed to speak out on this. During an interview with CNN\u2019s John King, Sen. John Kerry argued that it would \u201cirresponsible\u201d to commit more troops to Afghanistan at a time when the legitimacy of the Afghanistan government is in doubt. Kerry\u2019s comments came in the context of arguing that Obama shouldn\u2019t […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}