More And More Troops To Afghanistan
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mullen wants to increase U.S. forces in Afghanistan by 30,000 next summer. One wonders where these troops are supposed to come from given that Mullen and other generals are trying to sabotage Obama's plan of retreat there. As the British leave, some troops will now also be needed to cover Basra.
Following their masters, the Brits also plan a troop increase in Afghanistan. This time by 3,000. They may be able to so because the Iraqi parliament just denied them a stay in Iraq beyond January 1.
Not everyone seems to be on board though:
U.S. military officers, speaking privately, concede that the bleak outlook in Afghanistan will probably prompt a scaling back of US goals for the country. There is widespread belief in national security circles that the Bush Administration’s goals for Afghanistan were too ambitious. Whether new boots on the ground will bring anything other than short term tactical gains is the big question to which few in Washington have an answer.
But when in Afghanistan, how will those troops get supplies?
The road war in Pakistan continues. Another convoy of NATO/U.S. supplies was attacked yesterday and three drivers were killed. Additionally:
On Thursday, more than 10,000 protesters in Peshawar demanded Pakistan prevent Western use of the supply route to Afghanistan, saying the equipment transported was being used for attacks on Pakistani soil.
The U.S. will increase the bribe/protection money it is paying the Pakistani military:
The United States will provide more than $300 million a year in military aid to Pakistan over the next five years, diplomatic sources told Dawn.
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[Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell]said the proposal for new assistance for to Pakistan has come from the Central Command and is at early stages. The proposed funding is in addition to existing programmes, including the coalition support fund and foreign military financing.
This may induce the Pakistani military to do more for convoy protection near the Khyber pass. But that would only move the problem down south to the port of Karachi where the convoys start and where a sizable Pashtun refugee population lives.
NATO is negotiating with Russia over opening a new supply route through Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The U.S. plans a different route through Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. There might well be additional ideas behind this plan:
Another dramatic fallout is that the proposed land route covering Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan can also be easily converted into an energy corridor and become a Caspian oil and gas corridor bypassing Russia. Such a corridor has been a long-cherished dream for Washington. Furthermore, European countries will feel the imperative to agree to the US demand that the transit countries for the energy corridor are granted NATO protection in one form or the other. That, in turn, leads to NATO's expansion into the Caucasus and Central Asia.
I doubt that the effort will succeed. Russia will have a say in this no matter how much bribes the U.S. is willing to pay the dictators of those countries.
Posted by b on December 21, 2008 at 13:19 UTC | Permalink
At a CSIS forum aired on C-SPAN yesterday, the moderator asked what we are trying to accomplish in Afghanistan. The question, true to form, the question went unanswered.
NATO ambitions for Afghanistan are the last thing that we are to know.
Posted by: JohnH | Dec 21 2008 16:53 utc | 2
Here in the Happy Little Kingdom (Denmark) we just lost three soldiers in Farawayland (Afghanistan) -- they burned to death after a IED blew up their shit(y) armored car in a convoy.
The Danes have now lost 22 bodies in the Helman Province which they "control" with the Brits. Statistics say that Denmark, %-wise has lost more warm bodies than any other participant (excluding the ragheads and wedding parties...) in this effort to establish, uhmn, Democracy in this, according to Franklin Grahmn, literally god-forsaken country.
With comments than make me pinch myself and wonder if I perhaps am in the US of Arrogance, the gov't poobahs say no, we will not leave, this is as important as fighting the Nazis -- yet, there are mothers here (taking a script from the (then) USSR starting a campaign to "bring our boys home".
My feeling is that Denmark is a bellweather state in many ways. The politico class here is a bunch of cocksuckers, but they have a good nose for which way the wind blows. For example, the PM here suddenly creamed in his jeans about the climate and what "we must do" to prevent/avoid/mitigate the catastrophe.
Posted by: Chuck Cliff | Dec 21 2008 18:49 utc | 3
Question. Does any one know what are the exact aims that the Bush administration has set for Afghanistan, that are considered to be too optimistic by the Pentagon military planners?
Posted by: a | Dec 21 2008 19:50 utc | 4
The US geo-political strategic aim is to flank Iran and prevent Shi'a influence on Sunni majority Pakistan, from there impacting our IT outsourcing ally India. It's aim is to deny China pipeline access to the Gulf through Afghanistan and Pakistan, so directly competing with EU:US plans to tap the Gulf with their own pipelines.
To achieve this requires a perpetual US presence in Afghanistan, and with that, perpetual border skirmishes with Iran / Pakistan, and with that, perpetual supply and troop deployment problems, leading to a VietNamized war budget and recruiting crisis, which then can only bog down, caught between the Democracy and the Deep Blue Sea almost halfway around the world, and centuries, eons apart in mind-space.
Besides, colonialization doesn't suit the American people, it certainly doesn't suit them as 2012 voters, so that will require new instigation, new black ops deep inside Pakistan, new All Media psy-ops demonization of Islam, and risking all out Northern Hemisphere nuclear war. It's Viet Nam Jade rolled up in Cold Warriorism.
There are two Pentagons, the civil arm with their IDIQNB civil contractors looking at AF:PK as a perpetual preferred profit center, and boots on the ground military, strung out in a mountainous wasteland on a supply line thread, with troop morale at impossible lows, and just wanting to come home. In other words, profits over blood.
So it's SNAFUBAR if they escalate, but it appears that's already been decided upon. And that's why the military planners are trying to de-Xanax their civil overlords. What I could never understand is why the military would put on a good show for the visiting House Armed Services Committee, except I guess those field generals would be quietly reassigned by DoD's civil arm, if they showed Congressmen the Real Deal.
Then you have to ask yourself... ...incoming!!
Posted by: Yellow Tiber | Dec 21 2008 22:05 utc | 5
Another failed policy and unnecessary war because bloody American elite can't find the way to corrupt leadership of the countries of their interest. And they have to wage war somewhere to employ their biggest industry , military, anyway...So expect more of it...Of course because they are so deep in debt it's going to be on our expense...working people of the world. Forget your superannuation’s, your houses, your savings. It all is going to burn for the Empire.
Posted by: vbo | Dec 22 2008 5:54 utc | 6
U.S. Military on Iraq: "Fuck the SOFA": Trying to Redefine Role of U.S. Military in Iraq
Even though the agreement with the Iraqi government calls for all American combat troops to be out of the cities by the end of June, military planners are now quietly acknowledging that many will stay behind as renamed “trainers” and “advisers” in what are effectively combat roles. In other words, they will still be engaged in combat, just called something else.“Trainers sometimes do get shot at, and they do sometimes have to shoot back,” said John A. Nagl, a retired lieutenant colonel who is one of the authors of the Army’s new counterinsurgency field manual.
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For his part, General Odierno made clear that the Iraqis still needed help — and that the United States would hardly disappear. “What I would say is, we’ll still maintain our very close partnership with the Iraqi security forces throughout Iraq, even after the summer,” he told reporters.
@7
Like we didn't know that...Who is that much of the monkey to trust what Americans are saying or signing...
Posted by: vbo | Dec 22 2008 7:38 utc | 9
Alex Strick van Linschoten from Kandahar
Back out in the desert, people started to arrive as word had spread that some musicians had come to perform at Ibrahim Khalifa Baba, the shrine of an old ’saint’. I sat next to the head of one of Kandahar’s government administrations, who had also come out to the shrine. He received a call from one of the police checkpoints further north of where we were.“I have 8 Taliban with weapons in a car who say that they want to come to Ibrahim Khalifa Baba. What should we do with them?” the policeman asked. “Let them come!” my friend replied. “They’re probably just coming to enjoy the music. Who are we to stop them?”
And so they came. The reader should note at this point that nobody sitting out there in the desert was worried. In Kandahar, the Taliban are a fact of life; not necessarily liked, but there nonetheless. The traditional Pashtun recourse to healthy dollops of pragmatism means that a government official can enjoy live music at a shrine just as much as a Talib can, and in fact they do it both knowing who the other is.
re: Fuck the SOFA
Here's SecDef Gates on the subject, Dec 14, 2008:
"We're going to have to be out of the cities, out of populated areas by the 30th of June. That represents a really significant change of mission. And it calls for us to have all of our combat units out by the end of 2011. . . And the president-elect, as everybody knows, has talked about 16 months, but he's also talked about the drawdowns being responsible, and he's also talked about wanting to listen and hear from commanders on the ground. . . . And I think the president-elect means exactly what he says. He wants to do it in a responsible way, a way that is safe for our soldiers and with the advice of our commanders."
http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=4333:
@Don - so you do believe Gates?
You may want to google a bit of his history before doing so ... Iran, Contra, Gates for starters.
And could you please stop to spam for that alleged ecotravel? Otherwise I may delete your comments.
And could you please stop to spam for that alleged ecotravel? Otherwise I may delete your comments.
b, be my guest. Anytime. Frankly, I don't know what you're talking about, and more frankly, I don't care.
Don Bacon
you have linked your name to a website called wegoeco.com
Posted by: dan of steele | Dec 22 2008 22:46 utc | 14
And it calls for us to have all of our combat units out by the end of 2011
the sabotage link (g porter)in b's post deals w/this play on words.
WASHINGTON - United States military leaders and Pentagon officials have made it clear through public statements and deliberately leaked stories in recent weeks that they plan to violate a central provision of the US-Iraq withdrawal agreement requiring the complete pullout of all US combat troops from Iraqi cities by mid-2009 by reclassifying combat troops as support troops.The scheme to engage in chicanery in labeling US troops represents both open defiance of an agreement which the US military has never accepted and a way of blocking president-elect Barack Obama's proposed plan for withdrawal of all US combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of his taking office.
By redesignating tens of thousands of combat troops as support troops, those officials apparently hope to make it difficult, if not impossible, for Obama to insist on getting all combat troops of the country by mid-2010.
Posted by: annie | Dec 22 2008 23:20 utc | 15
re Don @13 and b earlier
Frankly, Odierno has admitted that the US will probably be out of Balad by 2011 (http://www.balad.afcent.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123128665), according to Juan Cole.
The arguments as to whether the US will obey the "Withdrawal Agreement" are just that, arguments. Of course, there is resistance on the US side. "Can we rename combat troops as trainers?". And the same doubts remain on the Iraqi side. However the absolute date of the end of 2011 for final withdrawal is very absolute.
Coming back to Afghanistan, b has to be right, the "surge" of 30,000 troops proposed by Obama cannot be supplied. Most of the effort will be devoted to clearing the supply routes through the Khyber, and Quetta. Will anything be left for eliminating the Taliban?
Posted by: Alex | Dec 22 2008 23:31 utc | 16
My hunch is, though I hope it's dead wrong, that Obama ran as a candidate who opposed the war in Iraq in order to win the democratic ticket. And now that he has won the presidency at large, he's free to join those who support this godforsaken war! And when he announces that he won't withdraw troops from Iraq, he'll throw a Clinton-esque form of argument at us. So analogous to the way Clinton argued that a blow job has nothing to do with sex per se, Obama will argue that support troops don't have anything to do with combat per se.
Posted by: Cynthia | Dec 23 2008 0:46 utc | 17
@ dan of steele,
You are truly a master detective and thanks for the publicity.
@ b,
My guess is that you uncarefully read my Gates quote w/o realizing that he "mis-spoke" by saying that the SOFA requires "combat units" rather than "all forces" to be out of Iraq in three years. Subject of course to the drawdowns being responsible, the advice of our commanders, blah blah.
so you do believe Gates?
btw, something else in porter's article that caught my attention.
Obama's decision to keep Gates, who was known to be opposed to Obama's withdrawal timetable, as defense secretary confirmed the belief of the Pentagon leadership that Obama would not resist the military effort to push back against his Iraq withdrawal plan.A source close to the Obama transition team has told Inter Press Service that Obama had made the decision for a frankly political reason. Obama and his advisers believed the administration would be politically vulnerable on national security and viewed the Gates nomination as a way of blunting political criticism of its policies.
my hunch (hope) all along has been that obama kept gates as a calculation a withdrawal would be accepted more readily by the stay behind crowd if implemented by gates. his top deputies have not been invited to stay on. ultimately, doesn't gates/pentagon have to carry out the prez plan, not the other way around?
Posted by: annie | Dec 23 2008 2:51 utc | 19
Uppity puppet: Afghan leader presses US military on strategy
President Hamid Karzai pressed America's top military leader Monday on the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and preparations to pour up to 30,000 more forces into the country, reflecting Karzai's concerns over civilian casualties and operations in villages. Karzai asked Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, what kinds of operations the newly deployed troops would carry out and told him that the Afghan government should be consulted about those missions.
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Karzai has signaled he is wary of more U.S. forces operating among ordinary Afghans.The U.S. next month will deploy around 3,500 forces into two provinces on Kabul's doorstep — in Wardak and Logar, two areas that have seen a massive infiltration of militants in the last year. But Karzai says U.S. troops are not needed there.
"Sending more troops to the Afghan cities, to the Afghan villages, will not solve anything. Sending more troops to control the border, is sensible, makes sense," Karzai told the Chicago Tribune last week. "That is where I need help. I don't need help anywhere else."
U.S. to Fund Afghan Militias, Applying Iraq Tactic
KABUL, Afghanistan -- The Afghan government will formally start a U.S.-funded effort to recruit armed local militias in the battle against the Taliban in remote parts of the country, exporting the tactic to Afghanistan from Iraq.The article starts with a lie. The Afghan government does not want these militia. If one reads further down:The first militias will be established in Wardak Province, in eastern Afghanistan, in coming weeks, officials said. If the effort in Wardak is successful, U.S. commanders hope to create similar forces in other parts of Afghanistan in early 2009
The militia push is part of a growing American effort to bypass the struggling Afghan central government and funnel resources to Afghan villages and provinces. Senior American officials have stepped up their criticism of Afghan President Hamid Karzai in recent weeks, making clear that they believe his government needs to do more to fight corruption and deliver basic services
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The militia push is controversial. Mr. Karzai vetoed an earlier American proposal to create local forces because he feared they might one day fall under the sway of regional warlords, according to a senior official in the Interior Ministry.Some U.S. allies also oppose the idea. Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay told the Canadian Press news agency this week that creating local forces could prove "counterproductive" and said the Canadian government was "not on board" with the idea.
Afghanistan's President Karzai laments coalition use of 'thugs'
What do you mean, the coalition hired thugs?[Karzai:] They hired [Afghan] thugs . . . thugs or warlords or whatever. They created militias of those people who had no limits to misbehavior and who were sent to people's homes to search their homes, to arrest them and to intimidate them. And we've been trying to tell them for seven years now that that is wrong. We've tried to control it. There has been some improvement, but still it continues to happen. . . . This has to stop if you want to succeed. Only then we can begin to build the Afghan government. If they go to the Afghan homes and burst in and arrest or kill, does that leave the Afghan people with the feeling that they have a government? No. That is actually the destruction of the Afghan government. If Afghanistan is a sovereign country, if Afghanistan has an elected government, if Afghanistan has a constitution, if Afghanistan has laws, and if there is the slogan of strengthening the Afghan democracy and institutions, then the Afghan sovereignty and the Afghan laws must be respected, and not violated in such an extreme manner as it is being done today.
The hypocrisy of Karzai knows no bounds. He admits that the USuk forces have been destroying afghan society by bombing villages and sending thugs in to rape loot and pillage, but his solution is not to stop doing that, it is to move the operation over the border into Pakistan.
The invasion infection spreads.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Dec 23 2008 12:13 utc | 23
ultimately, doesn't gates/pentagon have to carry out the prez plan, not the other way around?
I'm not so sure about that.
Posted by: Cloud | Dec 23 2008 17:54 utc | 24
wsws: Obama, the military and the threat of dictatorship
With his choice of Admiral Dennis Blair as director of national intelligence, President-elect Barack Obama has now named three recently retired four-star military officers to serve in his cabinet. This unprecedented representation of the senior officer corps within the incoming Democratic administration is indicative of a growth in the political power of the US military that poses a serious threat to basic democratic rights.As head of the US military’s Pacific command in 1999-2000, Blair was distinguished by his efforts to solidarize the Pentagon with the military of Indonesia as it carried out butchery in East Timor, effectively vetoing the half-hearted human rights concerns voiced by the Clinton administration.
Before tapping Blair, Obama named former Marine Gen. James Jones as his national security adviser and former Army chief of staff Gen. Erik Shinseki as secretary of veterans affairs. It is also reported that the incoming administration may ask retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden to stay on as director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
The Washington Post last Saturday described this concentration of former senior officers in the administration as “an unusual trend for a Democratic administration and one that has surprised both political camps.”
The appointments follow the announcement that Robert Gates, Bush’s defense secretary, will stay on at the Pentagon, where multiple “transition teams” are at work to assure that continuity is maintained in America’s ongoing wars of aggression and that the immense power of the military remains unchecked.
Earlier this month Obama spelled out his subservience to the Pentagon by declaring, “To ensure prosperity here at home and peace abroad, we all share the belief we have to maintain the strongest military on the planet.” To that end, he has pledged to increase the size of US ground forces by 100,000 soldiers and Marines and made it clear that there will be no significant cuts to a military budget that is gobbling up some $850 billion annually under conditions of soaring deficits and an intensifying financial crisis.
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A report that appeared in a magazine published by the US Army War College last month, just weeks after the election, indicates that the Pentagon is preparing its own “transition,” a process that is being driven not by Obama’s vague promises of “change” but by what the military command sees as a historic crisis of the existing order that could require the use of armed force to quell social struggles at home.
Entitled “Known Unknowns: Unconventional ‘Strategic Shocks’ in Defense Strategy Development,” the monograph was produced by Nathan Freier, a recently retired Army lieutenant colonel who is a professor at the college, the Army’s main training institute for prospective senior officers. According to the magazine, he “continues to provide expert advice to key actors in the security and defense policymaking and analysis communities.”
One of the key contingencies for which Freier insists the US military must prepare is a “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States,” which could be provoked by “unforeseen economic collapse” or “loss of functioning political and legal order.”
He writes: “To the extent events like this involve organized violence against local, state, and national authorities and exceed the capacity of the former two to restore public order and protect vulnerable populations, DoD [Department of Defense] would be required to fill the gap.”
Freier continues: “Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order … An American government and defense establishment lulled into complacency by a long-secure domestic order would be forced to rapidly divest some or most external security commitments in order to address rapidly expanding human insecurity at home.”
In other words, a sharp intensification of the unfolding capitalist crisis accompanied by an eruption of class struggle and the threat of social revolution in the US itself could force the Pentagon to call back its expeditionary armies from Iraq and Afghanistan for use against American workers.
Given such conditions, he adds: “DoD might be forced by circumstances to put its broad resources at the disposal of civil authorities to contain and reverse violent threats to domestic tranquility. Under the most extreme circumstances, this might include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United States. Further, DoD would be, by necessity, an essential enabling hub for the continuity of political authority in a multi-state or nationwide civil conflict or disturbance.”
This peculiar phrase—“an essential enabling hub for continuity of authority” —is a euphemism for military dictatorship.
He concludes this section of the article by noting, “DoD is already challenged by stabilization abroad. Imagine the challenges associated with doing so on a massive scale at home.”
from https://iwc.jfcom.mil/Directives/Uniified%2520Command%2520Plan%25202008.pdf+pandemic + influenza">UCP 2008
U.S. Northern Command
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d. Specific Responsibilities
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(4) Pandemic Influenza. USNORTHCOM is responsible for synchronizing planning for DOD efforts in support of the U.S. government response to pandemic influenza, and will do so in coordination with other combatant commands, the Services, and, as directed, appropriate US government
agencies.' USNORTHCOM's specific responsibilities include:
(a) Providing military representation to U.S. national agencies, U.S. commercial entities, and international agencies for matters related to pandemic influenza, as directed.
(b) Advocating for capabilities to respond to pandemic influenza.
(c) Integrating theater security cooperation activities, deployments, and capabilities that support the U.S. government response to pandemic influenza in coordination with the geographic combatant commanders, and making priority recommendations to the Secretary.(5) Homeland Defense. USNORTHCOM is responsible for planning, organizing, and as directed, executing Homeland Defense operations within the USNORTHCOM AOR in concert with missions performed by the North American Aerospace Defense Commander.
Posted by: b real | Dec 24 2008 6:11 utc | 26
The comments to this entry are closed.
This is your big chance, Kerls: NATO coalitions that curtail European involvement and let the Afghans bleed the US white; aggressive multilateral prudential regulation that restricts foreign investment in US assets; regional trade and currency blocs. This is your last chance to get the US under control because when the far right takes power again, it will be messianic and genocidal like you never dreamed.
Posted by: ...---... | Dec 21 2008 15:19 utc | 1