{"id":4966,"date":"2008-12-12T11:15:58","date_gmt":"2008-12-12T18:15:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/?p=4966"},"modified":"2008-12-12T11:18:24","modified_gmt":"2008-12-12T18:18:24","slug":"military-force-in-afghanistan-the-problem-not-the-solution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/2008\/12\/12\/military-force-in-afghanistan-the-problem-not-the-solution\/","title":{"rendered":"Military Force in Afghanistan the Problem, Not the Solution"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" border=0 src=\"graphics\/listen.gif\"\/> <ul class=\"inline-playlist playlist\" title=\"\"><li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.archive.org\/download\/DailyDigest-121208\/2008_12_12_gopal.mp3\">Listen to  this segment <\/a><\/li><\/ul>| <a href=\"http:\/\/www.archive.org\/download\/DailyDigest-121208\/2008_12_12_uprising.mp3\">  the entire program<\/a> <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" align=right width=55% src=\"http:\/\/www.armytimes.com\/xml\/news\/2008\/03\/army_afghanistan_deploy_031408w\/031408_afghanistan_800.JPG\" alt=\"US in Afghanistan\" \/>Defense Secretary Robert Gates has just arrived in Afghanistan to further his case for 20,000 extra US troops by next Spring. The increase in troops has been a foreign policy center piece of the incoming Obama administration during the election campaign and after. There are currently 34,000 troops in the country, fighting alongside a similar number of troops from various NATO countries. Gates criticized the fact that US soldiers are present in greater proportion than any other NATO country. The US has for years been urging NATO nations to commit more troops. When asked how long US troops would be in the country, he responded, &#8220;I think that we are in many respects in an ideological conflict with violent extremists&#8230;The last ideological conflict we were in lasted about 45 years,&#8221; referring to the Cold War. But many experts on Afghanistan believe that rather than helping win the war in Afghanistan, military force is the problem itself. In fact, civilian deaths by US\/NATO forces rival those by the Taliban. Why then is Barack Obama opting for more troops?<\/p>\n<p><em>GUEST: Anand Gopal is a journalist focusing on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the &#8220;War on Terror.&#8221; He is a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, based in Afghanistan. His website is  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.anandgopal.com\">anandgopal.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>| the entire program Defense Secretary Robert Gates has just arrived in Afghanistan to further his case for 20,000 extra US troops by next Spring. The increase in troops has been a foreign policy center piece of the incoming Obama administration during the election campaign and after. There are currently 34,000 troops in the country, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-program"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4966\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}