Saturday, December 18, 2010

Majority of Public Deems Afghanistan War 'Not Worth Fighting' from The Takeaway: Early Edition by feedback@thetakeaway.org (Public Radio International and WNYC Radio)

The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll shows that 60 percent of Americans say the Afghanistan war is "not worth fighting." This is a record low in public support of the war. Mary Galeti, the wife of Afghanistan veteran First Lieutenant Russell Galeti, and Gideon Rose, editor of Foreign Affairs and author of "How Wars End: Why We Always Fight the Last Battle," describe their observations of public opinion, and what it might mean for the Obama administration's efforts in Afghanistan going forward. We asked how your support for the War in Afghanistan has changed since it started nine years ago. Here are some of the responses we got by text message.
Download that podcast here. With The Atlantic, Rose recently opined on the whole issue of Wikileaks:
"It's actually pretty striking how generally intelligent and sensible and straightforward the officials involved have been," said Foreign Affairs Editor Gideon Rose. "U.S. policy turns out to be pretty much what we say it is on the surface. There are not secret, nefarious, hidden agendas behind the scenes." The cables revealed a diplomatic corps made up not of soulless, colorless bureaucrats but of perceptive, human, and well-intentioned people, Rose said. If anything, the cable dump makes the U.S. look weak (and incompetent in preventing leaks) rather than hegemonic or scheming. "The United States is seen as trying to do sensible things but blocked by the intractability of various situations and the obduracy of other currents. This does portray a world in which the U.S. is not dominant," Rose said, while noting that such an interpretation may be realistic, given the truth that "diplomacy is always a matter of getting a less bad option."

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