Senator John Kerry has just posted a piece on The Democratic Daily entitled "Not a Forgotten War", about how Afghanistan has become a sideshow to the war in Iraq, and it is now falling apart.
A few quips:
As I spent the last weeks working and writing on national security, what jumped out at me over and over is that while I believe we are slowly, painfully forcing a better debate on Iraq, the war we began in Afghanistan after 9/11 has become kind of a forgotten war -- even though it is the real epicenter of the terror threat. I was struck by how much in meeting after meeting I heard that Afghanistan was falling apart. But where's the sense of urgency?
As he references in the post, there doesn't seem to be much urgency in killing the leadership of the Taliban.
And, he sounds very furious at the administration's not focusing on Afghanistan, while Iraq remains their focal point:
You could get whiplash watching the Administration policy change from day to day. On Sunday, asked which of the 26 countries in the alliance were dragging their feet in Afghanistan, NATO's top commander General James Jones, a four-star general and former commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, replied, "All of them." Tuesday, Secretary Rice said we'll "pay for it" if Afghanistan again devolves into a terrorist stronghold.
Guys, this is Democrats showing once and for all that we are the Party that hasn't taken our eye off the ball -- it was al Qaeda in Afghanistan and their Taliban hosts who killed our people on 9/11. And Bush has meanwhile started a war with nothing to do with 9/11, trying to market it as the the center of the war on terror when in fact it never was; meanwhile, Afghanistan has gotten worse and worse, amidst the neglect.
And, finally -- I think you know what he means here:
You need to raise some hell about this.
UPDATE: Now here is a story from the AP where John Kerry just finished speaking at Howard University.
"The administration's Afghanistan policy defines cut and run," Kerry said in remarks prepared for delivery at Howard University on Thursday. "Cut and run while the Taliban-led insurgency is running amok across entire regions of the country. Cut and run while Osama bin Laden and his henchmen hide and plot in a lawless no-man's land."Afghanistan has been plagued by an upsurge in violence by the Taliban, which is trying to topple the U.S.-backed government in Kabul. Military commanders have called for an extra 2,500 troops to help the NATO force in Afghanistan.
Kerry wants at least 5,000 additional troops sent there, contending that the Bush administration has focused on Iraq while failing to respond forcefully to threats in Afghanistan and Iran.
"The central front in the war on terror is still in Afghanistan, but this administration treats it like a sideshow," said Kerry, adding there are seven times more troops in Iraq than Afghanistan.
"When did denying al-Qaida a terrorist stronghold in Afghanistan stop being an urgent American priority?" Kerry said. "How is it possible that we keep sending thousands of additional U.S. troops into the middle of a civil war in Iraq but we can't find any more troops to send to Afghanistan?"
And this is my favorite part:
"The White House did not immediately return a call seeking comment on Kerry's remarks.
Stumped is what that pathetic administration is!!
Attacking Bush, and by association George Allen, from the right on Afghanistan PROVES that Democrats are dead serious about the terrorists, and that unlike Bush, they haven't lost focus on the people who killed 3,000 Americans on 9/11. It was Bush that weakened us by going into Iraq, and George Allen is just as guilty for allowing both Iraq and Afghanistan to descend into disaster, when the Congress abdicated its role for oversight.