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October 31, 2008
Panic about Afghanistan

Panic seems to set in over the situation in Afghanistan.

Two weeks ago people from Obama and McCain campaigns got a special briefing about Afghanistan:

Over two days, according to participants in the discussions, the experts laid bare Afghanistan’s most pressing issues. They sought to make clear that the next president needed to have a plan for Afghanistan before he took office on Jan. 20. Otherwise, they said, it could be too late.
…
The briefing on Afghanistan appears to have been the most extensive that Bush administration officials have provided on any issue to both presidential campaigns.
…
“The intent was to ensure that everyone understand that the situation is very fast-moving, and if the new administration spends three months trying to figure out what to do, it’s too late,” said one administration official who participated in the discussion.

Why couldn’t that wait two or three weeks? The possible decisions are anyway quite limited. There are three possible outcomes in Afghanistan.

  1. The foreign troops retreat under fire.
  2. The foreign troops negotiate a ceasefire with the major Taliban groups and retreat in orderly fashion.
  3. An increase in force to train the Afghan army, hand the problem to them, retreat in orderly fashion while they cover your ass and then watch the Afghan army fail from the outside.

While some prepare for point two, the commander on the ground works on point three and asks for ever more troops:

Military planners now think they may need to send more than double the number of extra troops initially believed needed to help fight the war in Afghanistan.

The buildup in the increasingly violent campaign could amount to more than 20,000 troops rather than the originally planned 10,000, two senior defense officials said Wednesday on condition of anonymity because no new figures have been approved.
…
The Defense Department already has approved the deployment of about 4,000 people — one additional Marine combat battalion and one Army brigade to be sent by January.

…
The number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan has grown from fewer than 21,000 two years ago to more than 31,000 today.

With 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq it is unlikely that the field commander’s request can be fulfilled. It is either Iraq or Afghanistan, not both of them. But even if troops could be moved within a few month, what would they be able to achieve except to anger more Afghan people. More troops with their long and thick logistic tail are certainly not the way to some solution in Afghanistan. The can only delay the necessary retreat.

There are only few journalists in Afghanistan and I assume we only get little news of what is really happening there. The doubling of the reinforcement request and the extraordinary briefing of the campaigns point to some real panic over the situation on the ground.

Posted by b on October 31, 2008 at 17:32 UTC | Permalink
Comments

Maybe this has something to do with what Biden was saying about Obama being tested in the first 6 months and him having to make an unpopular decision. Maybe Obama is going to institute the draft. That would be pretty unpopular, but he has committed to fighting the War On Terror, just a smarter War On Terror. I think they’re scared of losing the Opium Market to the Taliban once again. Can’t have that….the peeps need their fix.

Posted by: Obamageddon | Oct 31 2008 17:42 utc | 1

If there is one American politician who has within himself the ability – through charm and persuasiveness – to institute ‘the draft’, then that politician must be Obama. But even then, surely, would not many an American citizen oppose vehemently such a thing? As an Australian outsider, I’m curious to hear American opinions on this topic.

Posted by: AL | Oct 31 2008 18:01 utc | 2

Funny, I was putting together a post for halloween, and listening to Faust Cantata, while reading b’s post here; needless to say, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, as I am also reminded of, none other than, Brzezinski, Joseph Biden ‘s recent comments,”… that most Americans would give up any and all government assistance in favor of more money for guns and bombs.” and that as Kimberley says, “Obama has been running for president for a very long time and is as much a hawk as his running mate. In January of 2001 he declared that Bush’s nominee for defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was not “. . . in any way out of the mainstream of American political life.”
A faustian bargain, indeed, eh?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 31 2008 18:27 utc | 3

grrr piss on typepad… wait! don’t do that it could be electric..lol
Since I can’t link directly to my MOA ot halloween post, try this.
From Cryptogon.com:

If Obama and Biden are installed, it means that the U.S. will continue to be Sovietized for integration into the ascendant global prison system. Biden is a high priest in ranks of global elite enablers. The glow of the All Seeing Eye shines brightly on this ticket.
Then there’s the generalized zombie cult crack-up factor that surrounds this Obama thing. Votive candles? Panties? I’d suggest investing in smelling salts and organizations that train cult deprogrammers for the aftermath of this one.
If McCain and Palin are installed, it means that the elite would rather overtly collapse the U.S. before proceeding with the Sovietization plan later on. McCain is senile and Palin is as batshit crazy and corrupt as a person can be.
Two paths, two different types of bad.
If I had to guess, I would say that it will be Obama/Biden.
Most of you know that I view the U.S. President as relatively insignificant unit of analysis when it comes to trying to understand events. I also realize that the patterns of ritual abuse that these elections represent have f@cked up a lot of people for good. This is the stuff of religion, and worse. Feel free to use this post as an open thread to unburden yourself on this situation, if you wish. Just don’t expect me to respond to any of it. I’ve said more about this than I wanted to already, and now I have that can’t-quite-vomit feeling in my gut.

“If I were a Jew, I would be a Zionist. I am a Zionist. You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist.” — Sen. Joseph Biden

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 31 2008 18:37 utc | 4

There is one other possibility–although it is extremely unlikely in this age of technological progress in absence of extraordinary leadership blunders, I’d consider it well within grasp of the current US/NATO leadership, both political and military, who have shown singular lack of competence. The foreign forces might be forced into a precipitous retreat under extremely adverse conditions (say, no fuel) and are annihiliated along the way, as per 1848, without making it out.

Posted by: kao-hsien-chih | Oct 31 2008 18:51 utc | 5

Well – that’s what they do best, stir panic. Seems to have worked.
Part 2 of Rachel Maddow’s Oct. 31 interview with BO covers Afghanistan at 3:20 and is totally disheartening.
BO: “We can’t allow bin Ladin and AQ to plot to kill Americans … got to make Afgh. stable enough, capable enough to control its borders, add more troops, convince govt of Pakistan that terrorism is a threat to you”.
BO responds to RM’s question “Wouldn’t more troops exacerbate the situation?” with a nonanswer, ending with “military power is necessary but not sufficient”.
From what I’ve read, the military doesn’t want a draft – too difficult and costly to train people who don’t want to be there, also too potentially subversive. But they just can’t quit the ultimate self-licking ice cream cone. Bacevich’s last 3 grafs:

Yet the existing strategic vacuum is also an opportunity. When it comes to national security at least, the agenda of the next administration all but sets itself. There is no need to waste time arguing about which issues demand priority action.
First-order questions are begging for attention. How should we gauge the threat? What are the principles that should inform our response? What forms of power are most relevant to implementing that response? Are the means at hand adequate to the task? If not, how should national priorities be adjusted to provide the means required? Given the challenges ahead, how should the government organize itself? Who – both agencies and individuals – will lead?
To each and every one of these questions, the Bush administration devised answers that turned out to be dead wrong. The next administration needs to do better. The place to begin is with the candid recognition that the “war on terror” has effectively ceased to exist. When it comes to national security strategy, we need to start over from scratch.

Doom the Obama admin from the get-go with more war on terror. Sounds like a plan.

Posted by: Hamburger | Oct 31 2008 19:02 utc | 6

Hamburger, Obama’s not even president yet, and we’re already fomenting blame for his impending failure? It’s bipartisan…and has been since at least the Carter years. Zinn does a nice job of making this clear with empirical evidence.

Posted by: Obamageddon | Oct 31 2008 19:23 utc | 7

That a Mad Cain administration would be a catastrophe on steroids is obvious.
That a Bulimo Charisma admin would be bright and light seems just as obvious. However, it could easily become darker than I dare to think — especially in the case of a partially successful assasination.
Please excuse my not being more explicit, but think about the fact that the present (mis)administration laid the groundwork for an executive with absolute power. Add in the ever growing meme that the Prez is the Commander in Chief, not of the military, but of every Arrogant citizen and a nightmare awaits.

Posted by: Chuck Cliff | Oct 31 2008 19:41 utc | 8

“The next president needed to have a plan for Afghanistan before he took office.” It would be nice if the US had a clearly stated strategic mission and measurable objectives, too. Unfortunately, US foreign policy needs a lot more than a rushed bandaid in Afghanistan.
Reading Andrew Bacevich, I concluded that the US now has what can only be described as a post-modern foreign policy, strong in style but lacking any clear function. As Bacevich says, GWOT is “to a considerable extent, [an] enterprise [that] has become a fiction, a gimmicky phrase employed to lend an appearance of cohesion to a panoply of activities that, in reality, are contradictory, counterproductive, or at the very least beside the point.”
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/10/30-10
Bacevich goes on to point out the lack of coherence in Bush’s other foreign policy priorities. Emblematic of US foreign policy’s total lack of purpose or cohesion is “Condi Rice, [whom] history will remember…as America’s least effective secretary of state since Cordell Hull spent World War II being ignored, bypassed, and humiliated by Franklin Roosevelt. She will depart Foggy Bottom having accomplished nothing.”

Posted by: JohnH | Oct 31 2008 20:47 utc | 9

The secret briefing about the future of Afghanistan, I note, included no Afghan briefers. I guess that’s because it was secret. Anyhow there’s no sense involving the locals when we know best, or at least we should be able to figure it out in the next ninety days. How many more troops will it take? Perhaps the Russians can advise us.

Posted by: Don Bacon | Oct 31 2008 22:19 utc | 10

Long and informative:
The Coming Change of Course in Afghanistan [by] China Hand

[snip]
The political will inside the United States to remain in Afghanistan is not lacking, especially since the Taliban insurgency is tangled up with the unresolved issue of Osama bin Laden, who has still escaped American retribution in the Taliban-controlled or Taliban-friendly areas of eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan.
Barack Obama, the likely victor in the upcoming presidential elections, has made support for the “Good War” in Afghanistan the necessary counterweight to his condemnation of the “Bad War” in Iraq, and has vowed to send two to three more brigades to Afghanistan in order to turn around the situation there. He is not going to put his administration on the wrong side of the “Are the Democrats too weak on national security” debate by trying to disengage from Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time.
The US is going to be in Afghanistan for years to come.
The only thing that’s going to change in Afghanistan is the objectives.
[big snip – last 3 grafs below]
Given the likelihood that a Taliban with safe havens inside Pakistan is unlikely to put the Afghan government and NATO in the “position of strength” that Britain’s General Richards believes is a necessary pre-condition for talks, it is quite possible that the United States will look at the turmoil and division in the Zardari administration, recoil at the possibility that new elections will elevate Nawaz Sharif—a client of Saudi Arabia and strongly committed to decoupling from the US war on terror and negotiations with the Taliban—to power, and find itself encouraging a Pakistani general to step forward and to implement the policies that the United States believes necessary.
And, when one considers that General Petraeus might find it desirable—as the British ambassador already believes– to have a boss with genuine military heft replace Hamid Karzai in Kabul in order to affirm the authority and credibility of the Afghan government, the US may be faced with the ironic choice of eliminating two South Asian democracies in the name of a continued struggle to bring freedom to the region.
If the objective of General Petraeus’ struggle turns out to be merely to gain the advantage in a negotiated settlement with the Taliban forces we swore to destroy after 9/11, the irony will be deep—and, to many, bitter.

Oy vey.

Posted by: Hamburger | Oct 31 2008 23:05 utc | 11

Found via Uruknet,
Advocate of Afghan “troop surge” selected as head of British Army

(snip)
More significant is the fact that with the selection of Richards to head the British Army, the political and military elite is cementing the so-called Washington/London “Afghan consensus”: namely that only a massive military deployment into Afghanistan and the brutal crushing of all opposition can save the US-led occupation regime.
Richards has long been a vocal proponent of a “surge” of foreign forces into Afghanistan, and has called for an increase of 30,000 troops. In an interview with the BBC recently he said, “I think militarily there is a case for more troops. They don’t all have to come by any means from the UK. NATO ISAF nations between them have a large number of troops, so I think perhaps we would be looking at others in the first instance.”
(snip)

Posted by: Alamet | Nov 1 2008 0:26 utc | 12

Missile Attacks, Apparently by U.S., Kill 27 in Pakistan, Including Qaeda Operative

Missiles believed to have been fired by remotely piloted American aircraft slammed into two villages close to the Afghan border on Friday, killing 27 people, including an operative with Al Qaeda and other foreign militants, intelligence officials said.
The new strikes raised the number of such attacks to at least 17 since August. The attacks have angered many Pakistanis and put strains on a seven-year alliance between the United States and Pakistan, where rising violence is exacerbating economic problems and threatening the country’s stability.

The Pakistanis will be furious …

Posted by: b | Nov 1 2008 6:07 utc | 13

Some sane view from William Pfaff

Afghanistan by January is likely to bear little resemblance to today’s situation, and there is even a remote possibility that the talks that have been going on (and off) among Afghan and Pakistani governments, the American command, tribal leaders and certain Taliban leaders, may stop the fighting before then — or change it into something worse.
Obama’s exceedingly ill-advised promise to make Afghanistan the “real” war, and “go in and get” Osama bin Ladin if the Pakistanis won’t produce him, may sound very hollow by then, as may McCain’s demands for “victory” over terrorism (victory over just whom, where, how decided, and to what actual political result?).
Civil war could be going on in Pakistan by January, American troops in the middle of it, (even fighting the Pakistani army to seize control of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons). Pakistan today, as the analysts say, provides a “scenario-rich” situation, fraught with unpleasant possibilities, and far better left to the peoples involved, while Americans and NATO leave as discreetly as possible. But this last is unlikely to happen unless they are forced out.
The fundamental question that should be put to the candidates is whether they are committed to a program of continuing American unilateral military and political interventions in the Muslim world intended to make despotic and “failed” states into democracies on good terms with the United States. They undoubtedly would both say yes.
That’s too bad for the rest of us, who will be among those paying the price. Such a policy is the conventional wisdom in Washington, and certainly that of the array of former Clinton advisers so far reported as associated with Obama. The people publicly connected with McCain are all or nearly all survivors of the neo-conservative wing of the Bush administration (and not the brightest lights among the neo-cons either).
They all seem determined to press forward with the democracy offensive of the discredited Bush administration. Naturally they intend to make a better job of it, having noticed that under Bush the record thus far consists exclusively of failures.
Since the candidates currently seem agreed on this policy, the final question is not who would do it better, but which of them would be quickest to realize that it is impossible. Intelligence isn’t everything; but Obama is seriously smart and seems to have common sense as well.

Posted by: b | Nov 1 2008 8:22 utc | 14

I seem to remember an earlier post on this site about how we are always taking those Afghan militants out twenty at a time.
In that case, we have antoher standard-issue press release here:
19 militants killed → msnbc news report

Posted by: ralphieboy | Nov 1 2008 12:24 utc | 15

There really isn’t anything news worthy here. All standard de rigueur pre-election briefings to both candidates on national security issues, and the fine etiquette
of which is the oyster fork, and which the caviar spoon. I mean, really, come on!!
If you want to know what’s going on in Afghanistan: EIN subscription or use a RSS feed and in pre-digested narrative form, left-wing: Small Wars, or right-wing: CFR.
Any Afghan with financial means to do so is getting the hell out of the country.
Now that US:UK have 50-cal sniper rifles capable of hitting at far beyond a mile,
and show every inclination to assassinate any adult male, SNAFUBAR. Good job, men!

Posted by: Shah Loam | Nov 2 2008 3:48 utc | 16

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Filipinos Protest Global Neo-Exodus as Holocaust(TM) on Steroids
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Posted by: Shah Loam | Nov 2 2008 8:15 utc | 17

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Raising the stakes on Afghanistan insurrection, the first Afghan donkey bomb! [Scroll down after the fold] And upping the ante on civilian populace protest, the first Afghan political cartoon!

Posted by: Shah Loam | Nov 2 2008 17:25 utc | 18

Shah Loam, thank you for the Afghanistan news round up. Is this, Small Wars Journal,one of the links you wanted to give at # 16?

Posted by: Alamet | Nov 2 2008 21:30 utc | 19

legalize growing poppies in the U.S. to:
create jobs and small business opportunities starting opium houses
increases global supply decreasing price and global demand
takes away funding of Taliban
get out of there…it’s hopeless and will just add more to our national debt and death toll.

Posted by: rose | Nov 4 2008 23:22 utc | 20

Maybe this has something to do with what Biden was saying about Obama being tested in the first 6 months and him having to make an unpopular decision. Maybe Obama is going to institute the draft. That would be pretty unpopular, but he has committed to fighting the War On Terror, just a smarter War On Terror. I think they’re scared of losing the Opium Market to the Taliban once again. Can’t have that….the peeps need their fix.If there is one American politician who has within himself the ability – through charm and persuasiveness – to institute ‘the draft’, then that politician must be Obama. But even then, surely, would not many an American citizen oppose vehemently such a thing? As an Australian outsider, I’m curious to hear American opinions on this topic.

Posted by: Mustafa | Nov 5 2008 10:44 utc | 21

Richards has long been a vocal proponent of a “surge” of foreign forces into Afghanistan, and has called for an increase of 30,000 troops. In an interview with the BBC recently he said, “I think militarily there is a case for more troops. They don’t all have to come by any means from the UK. NATO ISAF nations between them have a large number of troops, so I think perhaps we would be looking at others in the first instance.”

moth….meet flame…

Posted by: melo | Nov 5 2008 11:03 utc | 22

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