Thomas H. Johnson and M. Chris Mason, writing in Foreign Policy, are sceptical about the loudly-hailed “victory” for US forces, taking the town of Marja in Helmand Province in Afghanistan, and the detention of Taliban leaders in Pakistan:
The release of Tim Burton’s new blockbuster movie, Alice in Wonderland, is days away. The timing could not be more appropriate. Lewis Carroll’s ironically opium-inspired tale of a rational person caught up inside a mad world with its own bizarre but consistent internal (il)logic has now surpassed Vietnam as the best paradigm to understand the war in Afghanistan.
The war in Afghanistan, as we have written here and in Military Review (pdf), is indeed a near replication of the Vietnam War, including the assault on the strategically meaningless village of Marjah, which is itself a perfect re-enactment of Operation Meade River in 1968.But the callous cynicism of this war, which we described here in early December, and the mainstream media’s brainless reporting on it, have descended past these sane parallels. We have now gone down the rabbit hole.
UPDATE 1525 GMT: Spencer Ackerman has now retracted his original story that the anti-Eikenberry statement — “he has a beef with McChrystal” — came from a National Security Council staffer who was at the NSC meeting on Wednesday, although “my original source for the post stands by the account provided”. Pity that Ackerman doesn’t then ask the follow-up question: “How bad are relations within the White House over Afghanistan that officials are slinging mud by passing on ‘information’ from others who were in the high-level discussions?”
Yesterday we reported on the sudden emergence of the rift within the US Government over military escalation in Afghanistan. This was symbolised by the leaking of the call by the US Ambassador, Karl Eikenberry, for no troop increase because of the instability of the Afghan Government and, more importantly, established by President Obama’s reported “rejection” of all four proposals — ranging from an escalation of 15,000 troops to a fulfilment of US commander Stanley McChrystal’s request for 40,000 — on the table.
24 hours later and the dispute rages on. The immediate reaction was an effort by pro-escalation forces to trash Eikenberry by claiming “he leaked his own cables” because “he has a beef with McChrystal” and alleging that the mess in Afghanistan occurred during Eikenberry’s tenure as military commander between 2005 and 2007. Meanwhile, those inside the White House (note, not inside the US Embassy but inside the White House) are maintaining the pressure against an acceptance of any significant troop increase by criticising both sides of the Af-Pak strategy: “Do we have any assurances of what Pakistan will do? At least in Iraq, you had some functioning government there at the time of the surge. In Afghanistan, there is no government there.” Read the rest of this entry »
Twenty-four hours ago, everything was A-OK in the Obama Administration: “Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton [were] coalescing around a proposal to send 30,000 or more additional American troops to Afghanistan.” OK, maybe “President Obama remain[ed] unsatisfied with answers he has gotten about how vigorously the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan would help execute a new strategy,” but each of the four options on the table provided for some increase in the US military presence. The issues were “how much of Afghanistan the troops would seek to control and different time frames and expectations for the training of Afghan security forces”.
The writing of US military escalation in Afghanistan is on the wall: President Obama has told Congressmen (with his advisors ensuring that the message was featured) that there will be no troop reductions. With that floor in place, the question is now how high the ceiling for the increase in forces. Meanwhile, Obama officials like Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have all but given up on the message of non-military strategy: in the face of financial mismanagement, problems with logistics, and the ill-fated Presidential election, they emphasise Security, Security, Security.
KABUL — It seemed like such a good idea at the time.
At a staff meeting in 2006, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, who was then commander of Combined Forces Afghanistan, took a sip of bottled water.
Then he looked at the label of one of the Western companies that were being paid millions of dollars a year to ship bottled water by the container load into Afghanistan.
And Eikenberry, who is now the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, said, “There must be a way of producing bottled water in Afghanistan.”
HARRY SMITH: Madam Secretary, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us.
CLINTON: Thank you, Harry.
SMITH: The president said, about this secret facility that’s been uncovered in Iran, that it is inconsistent with a peaceful nuclear program. What does the United States think this secret facility is for?
CLINTON: Well, we believe that it is a covert facility designed for uranium enrichment. It has not been disclosed. And therefore it raises additional suspicions about the Iranian intent regarding their nuclear program. Read the rest of this entry »
UPDATE 1000 GMT: The Independent of London offers the “exclusive” that the US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, will ask for 20,000 more troops in his long-awaited report to President Obama.
Regular EA readers won’t be surprised, as only last Sunday we featured the public-relations offensive by two Administration officials pointing towards an increase of 25,000 soldiers. The question: will the US press for some of the increase to come from NATO allies or will it provide all of the additional forces?
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The post-election situation drags on in Afghanistan, with the result of the Presidential vote descending into a protracted delay amidst allegations of fraud. The electoral commission has now suspended daily briefings, and stories have emerged of a heated row between President Hamid Karzai and President Obama’s envoy Richard Holbrooke, apparently over the attempt of the Karzai camp to alter the vote so the President would be re-elected in the first round.
Our suspicion has been that, for many in Washington, this political quagmire would merely be the backdrop (and indeed the pretext) for an intensified military campaign. Robert Dreyfuss of The Nation shares our fears. Particuarly notable in his account below is the large presence of Bruce Riedel, who helped design the Obama strategy of intervention in Afghanistan at the start of 2009.
Afghanistan Apocalypse
Yesterday afternoon at the Brookings Institution, four analysts portrayed a bleak and terrifying vision of the current state of affairs in Afghanistan in the wake of the presidential election. All four were hawkish, reflecting a growing consensus in the Washington establishment that the Afghanistan war is only just beginning.
Their conclusions: (1) A significant escalation of the war will be necessary to avoid utter defeat. (2) Even if tens of thousands of troops are added to the US occupation, it won’t be possible to determine if the US/NATO effort is succeeding until eighteen months later. (3) Even if the United States turns the tide in Afghanistan, no significant drawdown of US forces will take place until five years have passed. Read the rest of this entry »
Our readers, who are a pretty sharp bunch, might have noticed that I was none too happy when I posted the video and transcripts of the Sunday interviews with the Obama Administration’s Dynamic Duo on Afghanistan, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, and the US Ambassador to Kabul, General Karl Eikenberry.
In part, that was because of the insipid set-up questioning of CNN’s John King and the asinine opener of NBC’s David Gregory, “Have the American people lost the will to fight this war?”. In part, it was because Mullen and Eikenberry were hopeless once they got beyond their scripted talking points (to Gregory’s credit, he exposed the limitations with the challenge, “We’re rebuilding this nation?….Is that what the American people signed up for?”).
But, mainly, I’m angry, concerned, resigned because the strategy of Mullen was so blatant: “You know, let’s just aside this complicated politics stuff and throw in some more soldiers.” Read the rest of this entry »
We commented earlier on the Obama Administration’s double act selling the war in Afghanistan, Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen and US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, on CNN. As disturbing as this appearance was, this one might be worse.
Like the CNN interview, this exchange started not with consideration of Afghanistan’s political situation but with the question of how many troops the US should put into the country. And to set that up, host David Gregory asked a fatuous, leading question about weak-willed US public opinion to which Mullen invoked both Al Qa’eda and 9-11.
To give Gregory some credit, he did get to the serious issues of Afghanistan’s political and economic development and whether the US was “nation-building”. When he did, Mullen and Eikenberry floundered helplessly. Granted I am not a fan of the Obama policy, but even a supporter of the US effort should have concerns after this performance.
DAVID GREGORY: first, in addition to waging political battles at home, the President is faced with two ongoing wars abroad. Read the rest of this entry »
Thomas H. Johnson and M. Chris Mason, writing in Foreign Policy, are sceptical about the loudly-hailed “victory” for US forces, taking the town of Marja in Helmand Province in Afghanistan, and the detention of Taliban leaders in Pakistan:
And no, that is not too dramatic a headline.
The writing of US military escalation in Afghanistan is on the wall: President Obama has told Congressmen (with his advisors ensuring that the message was featured) that 
HARRY SMITH: Madam Secretary, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us.
UPDATE 1000 GMT: The Independent of London offers the “exclusive” that the US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, 
Our readers, who are a pretty sharp bunch, might have noticed that I was none too happy when I posted the video and transcripts of the Sunday interviews with the Obama Administration’s Dynamic Duo on Afghanistan, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, and the US Ambassador to Kabul, General Karl Eikenberry.
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