Saturday, March 03, 2012

Afghanistan: the Return of the Bright Shining Lie?


Where is the line between truth, optimism, spin, happy-talk, and lies?

Those of us who have served in Afghanistan and those serving now all have our stories. Our guest this Sunday has a few as well.
"Over the course of 12 months, I covered more than 9,000 miles and talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces.

What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground.

...

When it comes to deciding what matters are worth plunging our nation into war and which are not, our senior leaders owe it to the nation and to the uniformed members to be candid — graphically, if necessary — in telling them what’s at stake and how expensive potential success is likely to be. U.S. citizens and their elected representatives can decide if the risk to blood and treasure is worth it.

Likewise when having to decide whether to continue a war, alter its aims or to close off a campaign that cannot be won at an acceptable price, our senior leaders have an obligation to tell Congress and American people the unvarnished truth and let the people decide what course of action to choose. That is the very essence of civilian control of the military. The American people deserve better than what they’ve gotten from their senior uniformed leaders over the last number of years. Simply telling the truth would be a good start."
Using his article in Armed Forces Journal; Truth, Lies, and Afghanistan as a starting point - please join EagleOne and me this Sunday,04 MAR from 5-6pm EST with our guest for the full hour, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis, US Army.

Join us live if you can, but i
f you miss the show you can always listen to the archive at blogtalkradio - the best way to get the show and download the archive to your audio player is to get a free account and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

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