{"id":184109,"date":"2012-08-01T21:22:00","date_gmt":"2012-08-02T02:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/08\/01\/if-putin-wants-us-to-stay-in-afghanistan\/"},"modified":"2012-08-01T21:22:00","modified_gmt":"2012-08-02T02:22:00","slug":"if-putin-wants-us-to-stay-in-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/08\/01\/if-putin-wants-us-to-stay-in-afghanistan\/","title":{"rendered":"If Putin Wants Us to Stay in Afghanistan\u2026\u2026\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The &#8220;Graveyard of Empires&#8221;, it&#8217;s a pretty good indication that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/2012\/08\/01\/us-russia-nato-afghanistan-idUSBRE8700RO20120801\">our continuing involvement is not in our benefit<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: blue;\"><p>NATO forces should stay in Afghanistan until their job is done, Russia President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday, suggesting they should stay beyond a planned withdrawal of most combat troops in 2014.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is regrettable that many participants in this operation are thinking about how to pull out of there,&#8221; Putin said at a meeting with paratroopers in the Russian city of Ulyanovsk. &#8220;They took up this burden and should carry it to the end.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>He isn&#8217;t suggesting this because he cares about the Afghan people, and he isn&#8217;t suggesting this because it&#8217;s in the interest of the US or its NATO allies.<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s doing this because it places stress on the US military and NATO, and as such it serves to ameliorate the threat that he perceives from them.<\/p>\n<p>Say what you will about Putin, but our best interests is ths <b>last<\/b> thing that he has on his mind,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The &#8220;Graveyard of Empires&#8221;, it&#8217;s a pretty good indication that our continuing involvement is not in our benefit: NATO forces should stay in Afghanistan until their job is done, Russia President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday, suggesting they should stay beyond a planned withdrawal of most combat troops in 2014. &#8220;It is regrettable that many &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1153,964,1033],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-foreign-relations","category-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184109"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184109\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}