The right war, in the right place, at the right time

[jimpeel]

Weeeeeellllll ... maybe not.

It seems that now Kerry believes that the Afghan war is "too far, too fast".

What a difference the occupant of the White House makes.

SOURCE

McChrystal's Call for Additional Troops Goes 'Too Far, Too Fast,' Kerry Warns
The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said Monday he doubts the U.S. has reliable Afghan forces to partner with but doesn't want to add 40,000 more U.S. troops to conduct counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan.

FOXNews.com

Monday, October 26, 2009

Gen. Stanley McChrystal's proposal to send 40,000 additional U.S. combat troops to Afghanistan "reaches too far, too fast," Sen. John Kerry warned Monday.

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said that three conditions must be met before the Obama administration decides to deploy more troops to the region: assurance that the Afghan forces are reliable enough to partner with U.S. troops, assistance from the country's local leaders, and the cooperation and support of the Afghan people.

"Under the right circumstances, if we can be confident that military efforts can be sustained and built upon, then I would support the President should he decide to send some additional troops to regain the initiative," Kerry told the Council of Foreign Relations.

Kerry said that while he believes McChrystal understands "the necessity of conducting a smart counterinsurgency in a limited geographic area," his current plan to send additional troops to the region "reaches too far, too fast."

"We have already begun implementing a counterinsurgency strategy, but I believe that right now it needs to be as narrowly focused as possible. We must be very wary of overextension," he said.

Kerry's position would appear to rebut anti-war Democrats and others who question calls to deepen the U.S. stake in the country. At the same time, the Democratic senator would not endorse a major military increase as advocated by the commanding U.S. general in Afghanistan.

Kerry said the U.S. does not have the "critical guarantees of governance and development capacity."

"I also have serious concerns about the ability to produce effective Afghan forces to partner with, so we can ensure that when our troops make heroic sacrifices, the benefits to the Afghans are clear and sustainable," he said.

Kerry, who returned Wednesday from a seven-day trip to Afghanistan and Pakistan, also criticized the Bush administration for neglecting the eight-year-old war, saying, "You cannot understate the degree to which the Bush administration turned its back on Afghanistan completely."

Speaking of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who recently criticized President Obama's approach to redefining military strategy in Afghanistan, Kerry said that Cheney had boasted in 2002 that "the Taliban regime was out of business permanently."

"This is one time I wish he was right," Kerry said.

Kerry was responding to recent remarks from Cheney, in which the former vice president blasted Obama for "dithering" over the decision to send additional troops to the region.

As Obama weighs his options on the military side, the State Department said Monday it was on track to meet the goal of tripling the size of U.S. civilian workersr in Afghanistan by year's end or very early 2010.

That will bring the number of agronomists, lawyers, diplomats and development experts in the country from 320 in January to 974, Deputy Secretary of State for Management Jack Lew told reporters.

Lew said he did not expect Obama's decision on troops to have a significant effect on the civilians except in cases where additional troops might secure new areas of the country for them to work safely.

Three civilian Drug Enforcement Administration agents died Monday during the crash of a U.S. military helicopter that also killed seven U.S. service members, an official said. The craft went down in the west of Afghanistan.

The casualties mark the first DEA deaths in Afghanistan since the drug agency began operations there in 2005.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because no formal announcement has been made. Officials say the helicopter had left the scene of a firefight with insurgents.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

 

[Cerise]

What happened to the pre-election "A-stan is a war of necessity." Kerry is giving obam cover while he dithers and soldiers die.


President Barack Obama has only been in office for just over nine months, but he's already hit the links as much as President Bush did in over two years.

 

[MrBishop]

I guess taht Obama likes golf more than Bush...how shocking!!

"We have already begun implementing a counterinsurgency strategy, but I believe that right now it needs to be as narrowly focused as possible. We must be very wary of overextension,"

Makes sense...now what?

 

[Cerise]

What exactly is this "counterinsurgency strategy" anyway?

To increase American and coalition deaths while he plays golf?

 

[MrBishop]

Pretty much the same that the Brits and us Canuckis have been doing. Take a village, clear it of insurgents, repair infrastructure and hold the village. Then push on to the next village or area until you control a larger portion of the country. Install local troops/police to stop the insurgents from moving back in..withdraw most of the troops from there and keep pushing back the border of the safe zones until you push the insurgency completely out of the country...lock down the borders. Voila!

 

[MrBishop]

If you stretch too far or move too fast,you risk losing the villages/areas that you secured..then when you head back to those villages to take'em back, the insurgents have had a chance of setting up boobie traps on the roads and paths that you need to take to get back in...and you end up losing more troops to secure a village that you already had secured.

There are two ways of keeping those freed villages/area clear. Either secure them with your troops, which means bringing in more troops from overseas in order to continue the counter-insurgency. (The fast way) OR you can train local troops and transitition the security to them before moving on (the slow way).

 

[2minkey]

who cares what kerry thinks?

 

[Gonz]

I guess taht Obama likes golf more than Bush...how shocking!!

Obama golfed, troops died.

"We have already begun implementing a counterinsurgency strategy, but I believe that right now it needs to be as narrowly focused as possible. We must be very wary of overextension,"[/B]

Makes sense...now what?

Kerry is a military strategist & terrorism expert that Obama said was the right man for the job?

 

[spike]

Obama golfed, troops died.

THere's that hypocrisy again.

 

[2minkey]

and of course eight years of essentially directionless involvement in afghanistan have nothing to do with the current predicament.

 

[spike]

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN— According to sources at the Pentagon, American quagmire-building efforts continued apace in Afghanistan this week, as the geographically rugged, politically unstable region remained ungovernable, death tolls continued to rise, and the grim military campaign persisted as hopelessly as ever.


In fact, many government officials now believe that the United States and its allies could be as little as six months away from their ultimate goal: the total quagmirification of Afghanistan.

"We've spent a lot of time and money fostering the turmoil and despair necessary to make this a sustaining quagmire, and we're not going to stop now," President Barack Obama said in a national address Monday night. "It won't be easy, but with enough tactical errors on the ground, shortsighted political strategies, and continued ignorance of our vast cultural differences, we could have a horrific, full-fledged quagmire by 2012."

Added Obama, "Together, we can make Afghanistan into a nightmarish hell-scape Americans will regret for generations to come."

The U.S. plan to build a lasting quagmire in Afghanistan calls for the loss of at least 5,000 coalition troops, nearly 1,500 of whom have already been killed, and a wasted investment of nearly $1 trillion, a quarter of which has thus far been spent.

With more than 80 percent of the country currently under Taliban control, Defense Secretary Robert Gates argued that U.S. nation-dismantling efforts are actually proceeding ahead of schedule.

"We've made a complete mess of local institutions, and moving forward this substantial lack of infrastructure will be the cornerstone of our strategy to ensure long-term chaos in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region," said Gates, gesturing to a complex, 6-foot-tall wall map of what were either newly established al-Qaeda bases in Waziristan, tribal trade routes over the Hindu Kush, or perhaps U.S. military outposts of some kind. "I couldn't be happier with our progress. This place is a complete clusterfuck."

More of the article..

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/u_s_continues_quagmire_building

 

[catocom]

wow, what an optimistic outlook from the ever inspiring onion.
not

 

[Cerise]

OBAMA'S AFGHAN DELAY COSTS U.S. LIVES

In the name of God, Mr. President, just decide.

Before your dithering costs any more American lives, pull your finger out of the air and decide on a strategy for Afghanistan. You sought the presidency, for crying out loud, now exercise it.

If you’re going to be commander in chief, dammit, command!

That’s the simple message to Barack Obama. But it is a message which, astoundingly, he seems content to ignore. Seldom has indecision been raised to such a fine art, or been boasted of as a matter of pride.

In an historic display of uncertainty masquarading as deliberateness, the fundamental weakness of our leadership is shown. When the problem is more complex than taking over a company or raising taxes – or leading throngs in a rousing “Yes We Can!” – the president is stumped, stuck at a fork in the road without either a clue or a GPS.

Which is surprising for a guy who campaigned for two years on what to do in Afghanistan. He told Democratic primary voters, as well as general-election voters, that he was going to win in Afghanistan and that he knew how to do it. That was a cornerstone of his platform.

But it seems like his thinking hadn’t gone much past promising.

In March, when he implemented his now-failed Afghanistan strategy, he did so with great confidence. Like he knew what he was doing.

But that having failed – and having done so at an escalating cost in American lives – he seems completely flumoxed. And so, for several weeks now, he has been deciding. In between golf outings and weekends at Camp David and swell concerts at the White House, and various trips around the country to play the Yes-We-Can game, he has met with legions of his advisors – several times. On Friday, he is meeting again with the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

This is the most discussed, chewed-over, politicked, lobbied, pondered decision ever made.

And it stands in stark contrast to vastly more difficult and consequential decisions made by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. Those presidents, facing true pressure, decided things, sometimes in minutes, that affected hundreds of thousands of people and changed the course of history.

Yet, unflinching, day after day they decided.

And Obama dawdled.

And, incredibly, he dawdled in public – which means: In front of our enemies.

And if our leader is unable to decide how to act in Afghanistan, the various sheiks, elders, chiefs and mullahs we face have no such difficulty. They have lustily attacked, day after day, location after location, all across the country. They know what they want and they know how to get it.

Seeing the weakness of indecision and uncertainty – the public advertisement of our abandonment of the battlefield initiative – the other side has gone on the offensive. We have surrendered the initiative and our foe has seized it.

That is why this month is already the bloodiest in our history in Afghanistan. That is why last month was only slightly less deadly for American GIs. It is because the enemy, seeing the faltering president and recognizing his indecisiveness and vulnerability to political pressure, has decided to increase that pressure by killing as many Americans as they can.

Why the onslaught of IED attacks and ambushes of recent weeks? Because of Obama. If he can’t make up his mind, the Afthan mountain men want to help him.

And they are sending their message in American blood.

Damn them for that. But damn the president for giving them the opportunity.

His administration is debating this in public, second guessing the military in full view of the enemy, dragging this out in a fashion that hurts our troops and helps our enemies.

Yes, it is a big decision. Yes, there are strong feelings and strong arguments on both sides. Yes, a lot is riding on this decision. There is no doubt this is a difficult and fateful decision.

But it is the job of a president to decide such things, and to do so in a fashion and in a time frame that assist our cause and serve our national interest. Unfortunately, that is not happening here. Unfortunately, while American heroes fight and die, the muddler in chief says it’ll be another week or two.

Obama and his party, to include the news media, mocked George W. Bush when he said that he was the “Decider.” That mockery seems particularly bitter now given Barack Obama’s reluctance or inability to be the decider.

No strategic or tactical decision made by Abraham Lincoln took this long to make. No strategic or tactial decision made by Franklin Roosevelt took this long to make. Harry Truman didn’t take this long to decide to drop the nuclear bomb.

And if John F. Kennedy had taken this long to decide how to handle the Cuban Missile Crisis, we’d be speaking Russian today.

The lone military decision of modern history that was wrestled over this long by an American president was made by Jimmy Carter, and that ended in a disaster in the desert.

Failure to act is, first and foremost, failure. Barack Obama is demonstrating that. For the sake of our national defense, for the sake of his presidency, for the sake of the American servicemen who will be targeted until he makes a decision, let us pray that Barack Obama makes up his mind soon.

Because time means American blood, and he’s already wasted too much of both.

 

[2minkey]

wow. i really can't give much thought to these ideas about dithering now, since we've been dithering without a real strategy there for YEARS.

hey maybe it's kinda is important to come up with the right strategy - or, shit, some strategy - first before you commit a bunch of american lives to something. "look before you leap." hmmm...

nah, we'd never send a bunch of american troops into somewhere, unequipped and understaffed for the job that turns into something far more complicated than anticipated... nah, never happened before...

 

[catocom]

http://www.otcentral.com/forum/showpost.php?p=643336&postcount=10

"

 

[2minkey]

1. while foxnews and similar co-conspirators trumpet the views of some in the military, i'm sure there are also plenty military personnel who want to have some idea of what the fuck the mission is before they start making important changes.

2. forest through the trees. it might seem great to have more boots on the ground right now, but if we adopt short-term, reactionary ways of doing things we'll be... hey, right where we are right now!

weeeeeee!

 

[Cerise]

wow. i really can't give much thought to these ideas about dithering now, since we've been dithering without a real strategy there for YEARS.

Change, change, change, change. Well, now is his chance to make a Change.

Al Qaeda is still a threat. We cannot pretend somehow that because Barack Hussein Obama got elected as president, suddenly everything is going to be OK.

 

[2minkey]

hmmm. have you noticed the recent terror arrests that have been made?

did you notice that obama has ALWAYS talked about afghanistan as a priority and fighting al quaeda more directly THERE (and pakistan) rather than spending the rest of eternity bogged down in iraq?

yes, change, praise farking jesus.

and thank jebus as well that we now have a leader who is at least smart enough to ask around about the prostitute before sticking his wang in her.

 

[Cerise]

did you notice that obama has ALWAYS talked about afghanistan as a priority and fighting al quaeda more directly THERE (and pakistan) rather than spending the rest of eternity bogged down in iraq?

yes, change, praise farking jesus.

and thank jebus as well that we now have a leader who is at least smart enough to ask around about the prostitute before sticking his wang in her.

He's taking his time and thoughtfully considering all options before committing? Please.

He's all hat and no cattle when it comes to A-stan.

No surprise that it's a black hat.

 

[2minkey]

wasn't it jim that mentioned ad homs recently?