This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, August 26, 2009. I'm Caleb Brown, a war of necessity.

That's how President Obama describes the American-led war in Afghanistan.

Malu innocent foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute says Malarki.

I think that the Afghan elections were a political milestone for the foreign-led occupation,

but it doesn't really change the hardcore geopolitical reality on the ground, which is the fact that tribal and ethnic-based warlordism is how Afghanistan has been governed for hundreds of years.

And so when we try and talk about democracy supplanting these structures, that's not the

case at all. In fact, that's not the case at all.

In fact, it's these tribal-based traditional structures that determine political outcomes

and that hasn't changed as a result of these elections.

President Obama, he talked to the VFW recently and was pretty stark in his assessment of the

need to fight on in Afghanistan.

He said that the fight in Afghanistan is fundamental to the defense of our people and that this is not a war of choice it is a war of necessity

that's malarkey that's not true at all the United States does not need to remain in Central Asia and perpetuity in order to make sure that we never again get attacked in a 9-11 scenario.

In fact, all the high-level Al-Qaeda operatives that have been captured has been a result of intelligence sharing with foreign governments, not blunt military force.

In fact, I believe that the United States is in fact exacerbating a lot of the militancy we see in this region

our attempts to stabilize Afghanistan, once again destabilize Pakistan.

Overall, there is a limited amount that we can do in this country, and I think that the Obama administration has not been forthcoming

and has not been truthful to the American people.

On the one hand they say that our objective is to dismantle, disrupt, and defeat Al-Qaeda.

Fine, that's a narrow achievable goal. The second thing they always

say is that we must never again allow Afghanistan to become a terrorist sanctuary. That alone is

too grandiose. To ensure that

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