---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine
Date: Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 10:44 PM
Subject: re: Similarities to Iraq Surge Plan Mask Risks in Afghanistan
To: letters@nytimes.com
To the Editor:
From: barry levine
Date: Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 10:44 PM
Subject: re: Similarities to Iraq Surge Plan Mask Risks in Afghanistan
To: letters@nytimes.com
To the Editor:
Our Iraq experience is unreliable ground on which to build an Afghanistan strategy. If the Surge in Iraq is judged a success, it is because--in the game of ever-changing criteria of success there--the spinner now points to "minimize monthly death-toll". Consider how such a criterion would have sounded in January 2003, when zero American servicemen died in Iraq, and it had been zero for a decade. It wouldn't have passed any one's giggle-test, yet that was the time when we needed to enunciate a definition of success.
President Obama isn't responsible for the messes he inherited, but he is responsible for reading our history responsibly as he commits the lives of American troops looking forward. He has told us that we can succeed in Afghanistan. What will that success look like?
Barry Levine
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