Petraeus Says No U.S. Troops Going To Yemen

Petraeus: More Security Funds Heading To Yemen, But Not Troops


The U.S. military does not intend to put ground troops in Yemen, a country where al Qaeda operatives have become an increasing threat, Gen. David Petraeus told CNN in an interview to be aired Sunday.

However, the United States plans to more than double its security assistance funding to Yemen, from $70 million to more than $150 million, Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, told CNN's Christiane Amanpour at CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa.

Petraeus, who recently returned from his visit to the Arab nation, said Yemen's foreign minister was "quite clear that Yemen does not want to have American ground troops there. And that's a good -- good response for us to hear, certainly."

Asked on whether there were plans to send troops there, he replied, "No, of course, we would always want a host nation to deal with a problem itself. We want to help. We're providing assistance."

The United States also will provide additional economic aid to Yemen, the heel of the Arabian Peninsula that has also become known for its large ungoverned spaces that provide an oasis to terrorist groups. In addition to U.S. funds, Saudi Arabia reportedly has allocated $2 billion and the United Arab Emirates about $600 million or $700 million, all to help the Yemen government fight terror and promote development within its borders, according to Petraeus.

After the botched Christmas Day attack on a U.S.-bound airliner, Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility, saying the attack was in retaliation for U.S. cruise missile strikes on its camps.

U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, have acknowledged providing intelligence on al Qaeda targets to Yemeni authorities, but won't say whether U.S. aircraft or ordnance played any role in the strikes.

"Again, we haven't discussed the assistance that we have provided in Yemen, and I'm afraid I won't here today," he said.

The general said the United States has been concerned about al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula for several years, saying, "Without question, it has ramped up over the course of the last year or more in particular, with training camps and so forth there."

Still, in comments made off camera, Petraeus said the group "isn't industrial strength."

Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh has told the United States that Yemen rather handle al Qaeda on its own, and the United States plans to honor that, Petraeus said.

"It threatened the embassies of various countries that are important to Yemen and, in fact, assassinated some government officials," Petraeus said, referring to the al Qaeda branch in Yemen. "So there is an enormous incentive here for President Saleh and the government of Yemen, indeed, to confront al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the growth that we have seen in its training camp structure and the other infrastructure that they've been able to establish in recent years."

Petraeus said al Qaeda's growth in Yemen became increasingly worrisome for him two years ago. Washington began to view the ancestral home of al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden as a possible haven for the group as early as 2001.

As al Qaeda was pushed out of Saudi Arabia -- and under pressure in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan -- they took refuge in Yemen, he said.

Last Sunday, the United States decided to briefly close its embassy in Yemen after intelligence suggested that four al Qaeda operatives may be planning an attack on the compound. The embassy reopened Tuesday. Britain, too, closed its embassy Sunday, citing security concerns, while other foreign embassies beefed up security or closed to the public.

Yet, Petraeus said Yemen is not the most important locale in the U.S. war on terror. "That would likely still be the western Pakistan-Afghanistan border area," he said.

"We have not devoted the kind of resources to it that is necessary. I know what it takes. We built an intelligence structure, we built an entire organization overall in Iraq to conduct counterinsurgency operations. And it requires a significant commitment.

"We are now making that kind of commitment to Afghanistan, but we had not before."

The general added that strides have been made in the fight against terrorists.

"I think there's been progress overall over the course of the last year against al Qaeda," Petraeus said. "I think that in general its capability has diminished, but that's only, again, a relative judgment ... Al Qaeda does still have an ability there to carry out periodic horrific attacks, and so we must maintain the pressure on Al Qaeda wherever it is found."


Sources: CNNN, Google Maps

Pres. Obama Admits 2011 Full Troop Withdrawal Won't Happen

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Combative Pres. Obama defends Afghan plans



President Obama tacitly acknowledged in an interview broadcast Sunday that few American troops may actually be withdrawn from Afghanistan in July of 2011, the draw-down date he set earlier this month.

“[A]s Commander in Chief, obviously, I reserve the option to do what I think is going to be best for the American people at that point in time,” Obama said on CBS’s “60 Minutes” in response to a suggestion that many U.S. combat forces will still remain in the country beyond then.

He said it would be clear by the end of next year whether the surge of 30,000 American troops into Afghanistan had been effective in securing the country and bolstering its security forces.

“And if the approach that’s been recommended doesn’t work, then yes, we’re going to be changing approaches,” Obama explained.

His comments seemed to put the stamp of the commander-in-chief on the more direct statement voiced a week ago by Defense Secretary Robert Gates that July 2011 would only mark the beginning of U.S. forces returning home.

Asked by CBS’s Steve Kroft why he was even setting a deadline, Obama said that otherwise “the message we are sending to the Afghans is, ‘It's business as usual. This is an open-ended commitment.’”

Obama, who has sat for a series of high-profile interviews with Kroft dating back to before he even announced his intention to run for president, appeared combative at times with a familiar interlocutor.

When Kroft suggested that Obama seemed to lack emotion in delivering his Afghanistan speech at West Point, the president responded with a jab at the Bush administration.

“[O]ne of the mistakes that was made over the last eight years [was] for us to have a triumphant sense about war,” Obama said. “There was a tendency to say, ‘We can go in. We can kick some tail. This is some glorious exercise.’ When in fact, this is a tough business.”

And when Kroft said the address was “greeted with a great deal of confusion,” Obama interjected.

“I disagree with that statement,” the president shot back, observing that “a whole bunch of people understood what we intend to do.”

Obama also made no attempt to conceal his irritation when Kroft brought up the reality TV aspirants who crashed a White House State dinner last month.

It's really a shame that I had to go through a whole 60 Minutes interview without talking about the gate crashers,” Obama said with a laugh. “Good catch.”

Pressed on the incident, Obama offered a bit of unprompted media criticism.

“I don't think that from a policy perspective, this was - the most important thing or even the fifth or sixth most important thing that happened this week, although it got the most news,” he said.

It wasn’t just reporters who seemed to be annoying the president.

He also offered a harsh critique of Wall Street, acknowledging that some banks have paid back the funds they took from the TARP program to avoid compensation restrictions that would prevent them from lavishing big bonuses.

“I think [that] tells me that the people on Wall Street still don't get it,” Obama said… .They're still puzzled why is it that people are mad at the banks. Well, let's see. You guys are drawing down $10, $20 million bonuses after America went through the worst economic year that it's gone through in decades, and you guys caused the problem. And we've got ten percent unemployment. Why do you think people might be a little frustrated?”

The president’s former colleagues on Capitol Hill didn’t go entirely unspared, either.

Asked why new financial regulations had not been implemented, he said with a laugh: “Well, everything appears to take long in Congress. We can talk about health care if you want. This is democracy in action.”

Obama did, though, say he thought the Senate would pass a bill by Christmas.


Sources: CBS, 60 Minutes, Politico, The Daily Beast

Is Obama Another War President? Long Term Afghan Commitment

Gates interview. TODAY’s Matt Lauer talks with Defense Secretary Robert Gates about President Obama’s new strategy.

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Will the U.S. be out of Afghanistan in 18 months? The Morning Joe panel discusses the surge in Afghanistan and whether troops can withdraw by 2011.

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About two years ago Senator Barack Obama said the Iraq US Troop Surge would fail.






Gates reassures Afghans over U.S. commitment


U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday that the Afghan security force needs to be strengthened and more soldiers and police need to be recruited to battle militants, but he added that the U.S. is committed to help Afghanistan for the long haul.

Gates, who met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the presidential palace in Kabul, is the first member of President Barack Obama's Cabinet to visit since Obama announced last week that he is sending 30,000 reinforcements to Afghanistan, but intends to pare down the U.S. role in July 2011.

The defense secretary and other administration officials have described the 2011 date as just the beginning, with the process likely to take at least two or three years to complete.

Finding ways to strengthen and increase recruiting in the beleaguered Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police was among the topics Gates and Karzai discussed. At a joint news conference, Karzai said it would be 15 years before Afghanistan would be able to pay the cost of maintaining the Afghan security forces.


Pledge to Fight Corruption

Karzai also reaffirmed his commitment to fight corruption. The president, who won re-election to a second term in a ballot marred by fraud, is expected to announce his new Cabinet in the next several days. It will be the first test of Karzai's willingness to meet his pledge to reform the government.

He is under intense pressure from the international community to nominate a slate of reformists to help rid his government of bribery and graft.

Despite lawmakers' demand that Karzai submit a full slate of ministers for approval, Karzai said he will send parliament 40 percent of his Cabinet list in the coming days. He said those ministers who have proven track records of service will remain in the Cabinet, although he did not say if they would stay in their same posts.

Karzai has repeatedly argued that while there is corruption in the Afghan government, there is also corruption within international contracting processes.

Gates also said he had talked with the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, and the commander of NATO and U.S. forces about how to improve monitoring and rein in corruption among contractors working on projects funded by the international community.

During his visit, Gates is meeting with troops, but the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, is in Washington to testify about the new U.S. war plan.

"We are in this thing to win," Gates told reporters en route to Kabul.

He said he believes the U.S. mistakenly abandoned Afghanistan in 1989 as it fought the Soviets and understands Afghan concerns that they will be left alone against the Taliban. Gates said he wants to assure Karzai and his advisers "that we are not going to repeat the situation in 1989" and that "we intend to be their partner for a long time to come."

He also said he will press Karzai and Afghan Defense Minister Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak on efforts to recruit and train more Afghan soldiers and police officers. McChrystal has set the goal of building the Afghan security force to 400,000 by 2013. There are roughly 94,000 Afghan police officers and 97,000 soldiers today.



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Sources: MSNBC, Fox News, Youtube, Google Maps

Holbrooke Also Confirms No 2011 Abrupt U.S. Troop Withdrawal...4 More Years

Secretary of Defense Dr. Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton both state: "US Troop withdrawal reduction plan is not an abrupt withdrawal".

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What Holbrooke Thinks


Pres. Obama’s Afghan plan left Afghans and Pakistanis with more questions than answers. Ahmed Rashid spoke with Richard Holbrooke about the region’s biggest worries.

No sooner had President Obama put his Afghan plan out there than his Cabinet started pulling it back. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff hedged on Obama’s commitment to start withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan by July 2011, following an outcry from Congress and rising fears being expressed in Islamabad and Kabul that once again the U.S. was getting ready to abandon the region—just as it did in 1989 after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Afghans and Pakistanis are worried. For eight years, the Afghan army, police, and government has been trying to become more self-sufficient. They’ve failed—and the track record suggests they’ll be nowhere near ready to take over from the Americans in 2011.

Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, tried to calm my fears when he told me from Brussels by telephone that there will be constant reviews. ‘’We are not going to abandon Afghanistan and long-term economic and security assistance will continue, but the use of U.S. combat troops is not open-ended,’’ he said. “If we had an open-ended troops commitment, that would carry with it the seeds of its own limitations and backlash on the ground,’’ he added.

Holbrooke made the point that the Afghans themselves hold very contradictory positions after "30 years of tragedy … where on the one hand they don’t want foreign troops, and on the other hand, they want foreigners to take care of their problems."

The withdrawal date, just 18 months away, seems dangerous—given that the Taliban control 11 out of 34 provinces in Afghanistan at the moment. And they have expanded into northern and western Afghanistan where European NATO forces, bound by caveats that forbid them going on the offensive, have failed to dislodge them.

Another major question mark in the region: What exactly will the so-called civilian surge achieve? What does the U.S. believe can and should be the end state for Afghanistan’s economic development—especially when Obama is, like his predecessor George W. Bush, so loath to use the term “nation-building?”

‘’We don’t use nation-building because it’s become a polarizing word,” Holbrooke told me. “This is a long process and will go on for decades with international support.”

But why should Afghans believe the U.S. can help create a functioning economy that can provide jobs and increase state revenue in 18 months’ time, when it has failed to do so during the past eight years? Again, the fear is that long-term plans will be sacrificed for short-term projects.

Another major concern: Is Afghan President Hamid Karzai up to the job? Will he implement a serious reform agenda? Elected to a second term in office after a widely rigged election, it will be unclear for some months yet whether he will be an effective partner in taking charge of the security of the country.

The other major worry in Kabul and Islamabad is that the Afghan Taliban will just sit it out for the next 18 months, wait for the U.S. withdrawal to start and then make a grab for power. The answer to that conundrum lies in Pakistan where, as President Obama stated categorically, most of the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda leadership is based.

“Where can the Taliban sit it out, except in Pakistan?’’ asked Holbrooke. “They cannot sit it out in Afghanistan, because they will be under intense military [pressure] there. And that is why Pakistan is singled out as the most important issue,’’ he said. The U.S. will be using a mixture of carrots and sticks to persuade the Pakistani military to change its long-term strategic direction and deny the Taliban refuge.

Obama’s speech lacked detail on what the U.S. strategy towards Pakistan will be, although media leaks suggest an expansion of drone attacks and greater CIA actions inside the country. Holbrooke declined to be drawn out on this, except to say, “it is an absolute necessity that we and Pakistan work together against our common enemies.’’

However, the Pakistani establishment does not necessarily see it that way. One dangerous but prevalent thought in Pakistani military circles is that now is the time to hang on to the Afghan Taliban as potential allies, because they could return to power a few years down the road. A Taliban-led government in Kabul would be pro-Pakistan and help ward off rivals such as Iran and India.

That of course would be unacceptable to the vast majority of Afghans and the international community—while destabilizing the entire region. However, Pakistan still differentiates between the Afghan Taliban, which it covertly supports, and the Pakistani Taliban—which Islamabad is fighting against and considers a threat to the state.

Obama has attempted to satisfy both sides of the American debate—sending more troops but giving a date for their return. However he will have to do much more before he satisfies the questions being raised in the region.





Four More Years in Afghanistan?


Defense Secretary Robert Gates put an end to any speculation on a quick exit or a clean break from Afghanistan, saying that the U.S. presence in the country will likely continue for the next two to four years despite a withdrawal date set for 2011.

Gates and Hillary Clinton made the rounds of Sunday morning talk shows to explain President Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan and the eventual handover to local security forces.

"It's an effort to try and let the Afghans know that while we intend to have a relationship and support them for a long time, the nature of that relationship is going to begin to change in July of 2011," said Gates. Clinton spoke less optimistically about progress between the U.S. and the Taliban: “They have to renounce al Qaeda, renounce violence. They have to be willing to abide by the constitution of Afghanistan and live peacefully… I’m highly skeptical that any of them would.”


Sources: The Daily Beast, MSNBC

Inside Pres. Obama's Aghan War Strategy Plan...Deadlines

Secretary of Defense Dr. Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton both state: "US Troop withdrawal reduction plan is not an abrupt withdrawal".

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Problems with the Afghan strategy. Sen. John Thune explains why he feels setting up a troop withdrawal deadline will undercut U.S. efforts in Afghanistan.

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The art of the "tick-tock"



A long reconstruction of President Barack Obama’s Afghanistan “surge” deliberations, splashed on the front page of Friday’s Los Angeles Times, featured the sort of journalistic candy that is the rarest treat on the White House beat: a behind-the-scenes anecdote (from the Situation Room, no less) – with an actual quote from the president.

“To emphasize his desire to speed up the deployment, the president held up a printout copy of the bell curve [a graph projecting a troop buildup over time] and pointed to its apex, indicating the peak of the flow,” the article says, then quotes “one official” as reporting that the president said: “I want to move this to the left. … We need more troops in sooner.”

The front page of Sunday’s New York Times features a much longer reconstruction of Obama’s Afghanistan deliberations, with the same Veterans Day scene and (nearly) the same quote: “‘I want this pushed to the left,’ he told advisers, pointing to the bell curve. In other words, the troops should be in sooner, then out sooner.”

The tidbit neatly serves both the press and the White House: The reporters appear to be getting a juicy scoop – the sort of take-you-there detail that might turn up in a Bob Woodward book years after the fact. And the president’s aides are dishing an irresistible illustration of a take-charge president’s proactive approach to his decision to commit 30,000 more troops to a war that has begun to look like a quagmire.

This type of story – known in the trade as a “tick-tock,” for its heavy reliance on chronology – has become de rigueur for the big papers in the days after a major Washington event. Sunday’s Washington Post also has an Afghanistan tick-tock that posted on the web Saturday afternoon, five minutes after The New York Times’ opus. The L.A. editors rushed the piece into type after a sit-down White House briefing on Thursday, knowing that competitors were working on their own versions.

The White House gets a “mission accomplished” grade for all three stories, each of which amplifies the West Wing’s desired storyline: A smart, probing president cuts through the fog of competing visions to come up with his own unique version of a surge — the in-and-out version that he announced at West Point on Tuesday night.

The implicit message of the material fed to the three papers: This was not just a Potemkin debate over a foregone conclusion. Unlike President George W. Bush, we took a long, hard look at the options and alternatives. And unlike the armchair warriors in the Bush administration, we didn’t let ideology drive strategy. This president knows the cost of war, and wasn’t taking the troop commitment lightly.

“Inside the Situation Room: How a War Plan Evolved” is the dramatic, two-column headline of Sunday’s New York Times, with the article spread over two ad-free pages inside.

The White House Press Office (sorry, no Deep Throat) coordinated a series of tick-tock briefings for individual reporters with top players late last week, explaining the similarity in themes and color among the pieces.

Obama aides pushed — “shopped,” as reporters cynically put it — to multiple reporters a description of a chastened president returning to his deliberations after a visit to Arlington National Cemetery. One reporter, who had resisted the description as too pat, was amused to find it as the lead of The New York Times account.

White House officials were most delighted by The New York Times story, both because it emphasized their desired themes and “moments,” and because it was the most thorough. The Times story was written by Peter Baker, with feeds from 10 other well-sourced reporters in the paper’s Washington Bureau.

The Washington Post had three bylines (Anne E. Kornblut, Scott Wilson and Karen DeYoung and credited two other reporters and a researcher. The L.A. Times version is the most spare -- 1,600 words, compared with 4,500 for The New York Times and 3,330 for The Post -- and carried two bylines (Christi Parsons and Julian E. Barnes), with a credit for one other journalist.

The Post lacks visibility into the thinking of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, an essential player in the deliberations. The New York Times, which Obama reads, got by far the most access. One official who gave tick-tock briefings said he took The Times the most seriously, and was pleased with the result. “It’s the one to stick in the time capsule,” the official said.

A former New York Times editor who helped pioneer the format recalled in an e-mail how the tick-tock became so popular with the paper’s brass: “We realized forcefully that on Sundays we could cream the newsweeklies' inevitable Monday cover stories, and we delighted in doing it. In general terms, the form developed as an antidote to the hyping of minor spot developments to look like big news, and thereby fill out the front page on mostly news-free Sundays.”

White Houses quickly learn to exploit this hunger, and serve up details that bolster the message they’re trying to send. In Bush’s first term, both The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post became suspicious of his aides’ string of accounts of how detail-oriented and take-charge Bush was behind the scenes, and pulled back from writing tick-tocks that relied too heavily on White House anecdotes that could not be verified.

None of the Obama accounts is hostile – all of them hew, more or less, to the line that Obama took his time to make a difficult decision that reflected his priorities and a rigorous internal debate. The Los Angeles Times story reflects that favorable narrative most exactly.

The New York Times and Post are slightly more critical, for different reasons. Baker makes it implicitly clear just how divided the Team of Rivals was. But he closes by emphasizing consensus and the president's serenity in his decision. In the Post's narrative – which starts with an annoyed POTUS telling his advisers he feels less-than-usually “sedate” about the need to speed up the war plan -- Obama comes off as a more impatient leader, and his lack of enthusiasm for a no-holds-barred war plan seems to receive greater attention.

The Post and, to a lesser extent, The New York Times indicate that the administration had to navigate serious civilian-military tensions as Obama shaped his strategy. In Baker's narrative, the leaks of Gen. Stanley McChrystal's initial report on troops and Ambassador Karl Eikenberry's memo recommending against a surge represented the most explosive conflicts between uniformed and civilian staff. But in The Post's telling, there are hints of a more basic level of misunderstanding between an administration that didn't quite grasp how to talk to military leaders

Only the Los Angeles Times hints at the political considerations that were on the minds of some advisers. And none of the stories discerns what sort of internal disagreement about the war may persist.

Each of the three Obama tick-tocks contains buzzy morsels. Here are some key passages:

--N.Y. Times: Vice President Joe Biden “quickly became the most outspoken critic of the expected McChrystal troop request, arguing that Pakistan was the bigger priority, since that is where Al Qaeda is mainly based. ‘He was the bull in the china shop,’ said one admiring administration official. But others were nodding their heads at some of what he was saying, too, including General Jones and Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff.”

--N.Y. Times: “Mr. Obama had read ‘Lessons in Disaster,’ Gordon M. Goldstein’s book on the Vietnam War. The book had become a must read in the West Wing after Mr. Emanuel had dinner over the summer at the house of another deputy national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, and wandered into his library to ask what he should be reading. Among the conclusions that Mr. Donilon and the White House team drew from the book was that both President John F. Kennedy and President Lyndon B. Johnson failed to question the underlying assumption about monolithic Communism and the domino theory — clearly driving the Obama advisers to rethink the nature of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.”

--N.Y. Times: “After a meeting where the Pentagon made a presentation with impressive color-coded maps, Mrs. Clinton returned to the State Department and told her aides, ‘We need maps,’ as one recalled. She was overseas during the next meeting on Oct. 14, when aides used her new maps to show civilian efforts but she participated with headphones on from her government plane flying back from Russia.”

--N.Y. Times: Defense Secretary Robert “Gates’s low-wattage exterior masks a wily inside player, and he knew enough to keep his counsel early in the process to let it play out more first.”

--Washington Post: “‘What was interesting was the metamorphosis,’ said national security adviser James L. Jones, the only senior official who agreed to discuss the deliberations on the record. ‘I dare say that none of us ended up where we started.’”

--L.A. Times: “The president wanted to know when the effects of the new strategy would become apparent, based on an ongoing Pentagon analysis of its own plans. ‘When will we know that our concept is working?’ Obama asked, recalled one official who was present. ‘Our best sense,’ replied Gates, ‘will be in late 2010 and into mid-2011.’”


Sources: Politico, NY Times, MSNBC

Where's Osama Bin Laden? U.S. Doesn't Know...No Intel In Years

Report: Bin Laden was "within our grasp". Msnbc's Alex Witt talks with military analyst Jack Jacobs about the Senate report.

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Where is bin Laden? Secretary Gates Says No Intel in Years


Defense Secretary Robert Gates told me that the U.S. has not had any good intelligence on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden in "years."

He also couldn’t confirm reports that a detainee in Pakistan had claimed that he had information on where bin Laden was earlier this year. He made the startling admission during my interview with him for "This Week" airing Sunday.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: "The Pakistani Prime Minister shrugged off any concerns about that this week, about whether or not he’d done enough to go after Osama bin Laden. He said he doesn’t believe Osama is in Pakistan. Is he right and do you think the Pakistanis have done enough to get him?"

DEFENSE SECRETARY ROBERT GATES: "Well, we don’t know for a fact where Osama bin Laden is. If we did, we’d go get him"

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: "What was the last time we had any good intelligence on where he was?

DEFENSE SECRETARY ROBERT GATES: "I think it’s been years."

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: "Years?!"

DEFENSE SECRETARY ROBERT GATES: "I think so."

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: "So these reports that came out just this week about a detainee saying he might have seen him in Afghanistan earlier this year, we can’t confirm that?
Gates: No."



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Sources: CBS News, MSNBC, AP, Youtube, Google Maps

Is Obama's Afghan War 2011 Deadline More So About Victory In 2012?

Problems with the Afghan strategy. Sen. John Thune explains why he feels setting up a troop withdrawal deadline will undercut U.S. efforts in Afghanistan.

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Pres. Obama's False Ally



Is the president's Afghanistan timetable about victory there in 2011—or here in 2012? M.J. Akbar on Obama's cynical calculation, and his missed chance to get India fighting on his side.

Barack Obama is clearly a post-modernist commander-in-chief. He announced the date of defeat in the Afghan war on the day he sent more troops in the hope of victory. The day American forces begin to leave Afghanistan in 2011, as promised by President Obama, the Taliban will begin its countdown to Kabul.

It is now clear to the Taliban what has been obvious to many observers. Obama is not interested in an American victory in Afghanistan by 2011. He is interested in an Obama victory in America in 2012. He wants to campaign as the president who brought the boys home without giving the impression that he has been weak in the process. He inherited an Afghan war with some 10,000 American soldiers in combat. That figure has been short-tracked to upwards of 100,000, partly because Obama purchased his way into the muscular pro-war segment of the American vote by criticizing Iraq and upgrading Afghanistan into the war of necessity. He is paying his dues to that section of American opinion by fighting a cosmetic war. The Taliban have often said that while NATO has a clock, they have time. In 2011, irrespective of ground conditions, the NATO clock will go into reverse sweep.

The enigma of this Afghan war, the fifth against a Western power since 1840, is located exactly where it was in the other four. It lies in the meaning of victory and defeat. For the occupier, victory means subjugation of the ruling authority to its will. For the defenders, it means the departure of foreign troops from Afghan foreign soil. Afghan fighters in the 19th century did not want to shape the way the British Raj should be run, and they resented the idea that they should be told how Afghanistan should be run. In the 20th century, the Jihadis did not want to destroy Communism in Moscow (that they played a great role in actually doing so is incidental). They simply did not want Communist soldiers in Kabul and Kandahar and Mazaar-i-Sharif.

The Afghan war of the 21st century could have been, and should have been, different, because a terrorist group with sanctuary from the Taliban provoked America. Eight years later, roles are getting reversed for the Taliban and its allies have, in the Afghan mind, begun to occupy nationalist space. Washington made a basic error at the outset, when it confused Al Qaeda with the whole of Afghanistan, gradually shifting the focal point of the war. This was understandable in the heat of 2001, but less so with the passage of time. Privately, former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf would surely have suggested this, but subtleties were lost on the Bush White House.

Obama may be erring in the other direction. He has announced the three pillars of his Afghan policy: a strategic partnership with Pakistan empowered by finance and weapons; the creation of a “military condition” within 18 months that will enable “transition”; and “a civilian surge that reinforces positive action.” The third is the kind of gobbledygook that bemuses friends and consoles office-bearers of the speechwriters union. Does Obama expect Hamid Karzai to surge towards Kandahar in 2011, wafting on doves of peace?

The biggest problem may lie in the first proposition. Pakistan does not have the good fortune of being 8,000 miles from Afghanistan. Islamabad’s ruling elite, including the armed forces, will display full commitment in the war against Al Qaeda, where and when it can be found, and against the Pak Taliban, because both are serious threats to the Pakistan state and system. But it will have unexpressed reservations about America’s war against the Afghan Taliban, since the latter have been and will continue to be Pakistan’s ally in the geopolitics of South Asia. Pakistan’s war within its own country has become, willy nilly, America’s war, but America’s war in Afghanistan has not become Pakistan’s war. Washington, for reasons unknown and incomprehensible, does not get this.

America’s primary partner in the war against the Afghan Taliban should be India, not Pakistan, since both nations have an ideological commitment against the forces of theocracy, as well as a strategic interest in keeping Taliban out of Kabul. Pakistan has no such motivation. The best period in the troubled history of Pak-Afghan relations was when Taliban was in power, since the Taliban looked at foreign policy through the prism of Islamic brotherhood rather than just the compulsions of national interest.

The real war in Afghanistan is between modernity and theocracy, but the wrong side is winning that battle. In the last eight years, for many Afghans, modernity has become synonymous and identified with corruption, cronyism and non-Pakhtun warlords—the three hallmarks of the Karzai regime—while the Taliban has revived its image as God-fearing, honest, clean, and able to offer stability and security in the villages. It is an American tragedy that while it seeks friends across the world who reflect its own values, the country continues to join those who ruin its reputation.



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Sources: The Daily Beast, MSNBC

Operation "Cobra's Anger" & Drones...War Against The Taliban

U.S. launches Afghan offensive to combat the Taliban and interrupt Afghanistan's illegal drug trade.

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Drones and their purpose in the Afghan War.

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U.S. surge is big, but Afghan army is crucial


President Barack Obama has his troop surge. Afghanistan's beleaguered security forces have theirs.

While the new U.S. war strategy was unveiled with worldwide fanfare, Afghan's defense force has been quietly planning its own troop buildup to break the Taliban's tightening grip on swathes of the nation. The Afghan surge is the one to watch because the success of Obama's new war plan is inextricably hinged to Afghanistan's ability to recruit, train and retain security forces that can eventually take the lead in defending the nation.

Afghan Defense Minister Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak told The Associated Press in an interview Saturday that he's already assigned one brigade to a new three-brigade seventh corps of the Afghan National Army. Corps 215 Maiwand is based in the Helmand capital of Lashkar Gah, where most of the 30,000 U.S. reinforcements will be deployed.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown says the Afghans have promised to send 5,000 members of the new corps to partner with British troops in Helmand. Wardak insists that will be achieved with ease. He said he's already begun staffing the command's second brigade.

Moreover, he said nearly 44 additional companies of Afghan soldiers are being added to battalions in the south and east. Another Afghan commando battalion, which will graduate in January, is also headed to Helmand — the scene of a major weekend offensive by 1,000 Marines and 150 Afghan soldiers.

117 percent strength levels vowed

"We are bringing the strength level of every unit in the south to 117 percent of its authorized strength so there will be a significant increase in the number of troops," Wardak said in his office at the Ministry of Defense.

Building up the Afghan army, plagued by inefficiency, a lack of trainers and corruption, is a precursor to a U.S. troop pullout. While Obama set July 2011 as the date for the beginning of a withdrawal, he said it would happen "taking into account conditions on the ground."

That caveat was what Afghan leaders needed to hear.

"It is in the speech," Wardak said. "I don't believe the international community will just leave us like they did once before — after all these sacrifices. This enemy is not only terrorizing Afghanistan, it is terrorizing the whole international community. The nature of the threat is such that no one country will be able to deal with it."

Initially, the size of the Afghan army was scheduled to swell from 85,000 to 134,000 by 2013. That target now is expected to be reached earlier — by Oct. 31, 2011.

"We are increasing our level of recruitment and there are going to be improvements in retention," he said. "We are going to go at a very fast speed."

Goal of 240,000 not easy

However, even the defense minister acknowledges that 134,000 will not be enough. He agrees with Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, who has recommended a 240,000-member Afghan army.

Getting there will be a steep uphill battle, says retired. Marine Col. Jeff Haynes, who in 2008 headed a command that advised the Afghan National Army.

"The rapid expansion of the Afghan National Army will likely undermine the fragile success that has been achieved to date," Haynes wrote in an essay on the Web site defpro.com. "It will also set back, not hasten, its assumption of the lead role in defeating a resurgent Taliban.

Unfortunately, too many of the people who are developing Afghan security strategy have never worked with the Afghan National Army and do not have a clear understanding of their strengths and weaknesses.

"The reality is that ANA effectiveness is already suffering because of an inadequate number of competent leaders and staff officers. ... Growing the army too fast will only exacerbate this leadership deficit."

Candace Rondeaux, senior Afghan analyst for the International Crisis Group, said the army is facing a a shortage of military trainers and is fighting endemic corruption. The question is how many troops can the Afghan government sustain in an aid-dependent country where the annual budget is under $10 billion.

"If the goal is to build a quality force of some 134,000 Afghan army soldiers by the end of 2011, then the addition of some 4,000 U.S. military trainers under the new troop levels will certainly help," she told the Council on Foreign Relations Web site. "But when it comes to expanding the Afghan National Army to 250,000 ... then stress on the system is inevitable and may blunt the positive impact that extra U.S. troops will have in the long term."



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Sources: MSNBC, Rachel Maddow Show, Google Maps

Parallels Exist Between Obama & Bush's War Strategies

About two years ago Senator Barack Obama said the Iraq US Troop Surge would fail. Now he's sending a Troop Surge to Afghanistan. Hmmm. Something to think about.




Senator Barack Obama opposed the Iraq US Troop Surge.




Senator Barack Obama on the Bill O'Reilly show discussing Al-Qaida and the US Troop Surge to Iraq.





Problems with the Afghan strategy. Sen. John Thune explains why he feels setting up a troop withdrawal deadline will undercut U.S. efforts in Afghanistan.

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Similarities to Iraq Surge Plan Mask Risks in Afghanistan



President Obama strongly opposed President George W. Bush’s surge in Iraq during his presidential campaign, and even now he has never publicly acknowledged that it was largely successful.

But in the White House Situation Room a little more than a month ago, he told his aides, “It turned out to be a good thing.” And as many of Mr. Obama’s own advisers have recounted in recent days in interviews, the decision on the surge of 30,000 troops to Afghanistan by next summer was at least partly inspired by the success of the effort in Iraq, which Mr. Bush’s aides say is their best hope that historians will give them some credit when the history of a highly problematic war is written.

In fact, Iraq analogies have been flying back and forth so furiously in recent days that Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, the only holdover from the Bush-era cabinet, told Congress, “This is the second surge I’ve been up here defending.”

But probe beneath the surface, and it becomes clear that Mr. Obama is heading into his new strategy with his ears ringing with warnings — from some of his own aides and military commanders — that many of the conditions that made the Iraq surge work do not exist in Afghanistan.

As one of the strategists deeply involved in the White House Situation Room debates put it, “We spent a lot of time discussing the fact that the only thing Iraq and Afghanistan have in common is a lot of sand.”

Still, the similarities in the surges are striking. The absolute number of additional troops is roughly the same: 30,000. The Iraq figure, 28,500 troops, was 7,000 more than Mr. Bush first announced; Mr. Obama’s team says that will not happen in this case.

The deployment time in the case of Iraq was six months; when the Pentagon first came to President Obama two months ago with a plan that stretched over 18 months, he offered up some withering questions. He turned to Gen. David H. Petraeus, now the head of Central Command and the commander in Iraq during the Bush surge, and asked: “What takes so long? What’s so hard about this?”

White House officials say it was Mr. Obama himself who pressed the idea of a surge of his own, openly acknowledging in a meeting that he had criticized it harshly during the campaign.

Both surges aimed to knock back an insurgency that had gained territory and caused high casualties, and to buy time and space to train local forces for combat. “Neither one of these surges,” said one officer involved in both decisions, “was born to exploit success. They were designed to reverse momentum.”

No one in the Obama White House voices much admiration for the inheritance left by Mr. Bush, so it was probably unintentional that when the Afghanistan strategy was announced on Tuesday, the rollout had echoes of the earlier one. Mr. Bush’s fact sheet on the surge carried the headline “The New Way Forward in Iraq.” Mr. Obama’s speech carried the title “The Way Forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

But the commonalities end there. The Iraq surge worked in large part because there was powerful support in Anbar Province from the so-called Awakening, the movement by local Sunni tribes who rose up against extremists who were killing people, forcibly marrying local women and cutting off the hands of men who smoked in public. In Iraq, American officials believed that most leaders of a vigorous opposition, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, were foreigners.

The United States remains hopeful that it can capitalize on Afghan militias that have taken up arms against the Taliban in local areas, but a series of intelligence reports supplied to Mr. Obama since September found no evidence in Afghanistan of anything on the scale of the Iraqi Awakening movement. What’s more, in Afghanistan the extremists, the Taliban, are natives.

“They are part of the furniture in Afghanistan; they have always been there,” one of Mr. Obama’s counterterrorism experts said, explaining why Mr. Obama’s goal is simply to degrade the Taliban’s power, not to defeat the group. In Iraq, the aim was to defeat the insurgents, a goal that has been largely achieved.

Then there is the question of whether Afghanistan’s military is trainable. Iraq’s forces were in a shambles, but the country had a tradition of military order. Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reminded senators this week that in Iraq it took several years to get traction, and that in Afghanistan it could take longer.

“It was really late ’07 before the police in Iraq really started to step out,” he said, adding later, “we have to be careful with comparisons.”

Perhaps the biggest difference between the two surges is this: Mr. Bush never said how long his would last, and Mr. Obama went out of his way to declare that starting in July 2011, the tide would begin to flow out. The administration — mostly Mr. Gates — spent much of the week explaining the twin logic of going in strong and then signaling the beginning of a departure, emphasizing many times that if conditions were poor, the reduction in American forces would be slow.

The theory of the deadline was that it was the only way to show President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan that American patience was limited and that its commitment was not open-ended.

Mr. Gates again drew analogies to Iraq, saying, “I think, as we turn over more districts and more provinces to Afghan security control, much as we did with the provincial Iraqi control, that there will be a thinning of our forces and a gradual drawdown.”

But to Republican critics of that approach — and some architects of the Iraq surge — the announcement sows the seeds of failure before the process begins. “The question is: Is it fatal to the overall strategy?” asked Meghan O’Sullivan, the deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan in the Bush administration, and now a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School. “I think it may be.”

Her argument is that many in Afghanistan, and the leadership in Pakistan, will decide that the date is a slow-motion repeat of 1989, when the United States began to pull back from Afghanistan after the Soviets left in defeat. In the next few weeks, members of the Obama war cabinet are expected to show up in Islamabad and Kabul with one message: We’re not leaving. Really.


Sources: NY Times, CBS News, Fox News, Bill O'Reilly Show, The Daily Beast, MSNBC, Youtube, Google Maps

US Troop Withdrawal Deadline May Undercut Afghan War Efforts...Is 2011 Realistic?

Problems with the Afghan strategy. Sen. John Thune explains why he feels setting up a troop withdrawal deadline will undercut U.S. efforts in Afghanistan.

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Sources: MSNBC

NATO Is Sending 7,000 Troops To Afghanistan...Global War

There are still many skeptics of Pres. Obama's Afghan War Strategy Plan.

The skeptics doubt Pres. Obama's Timeline for exiting Afghanistan is realistic for his goal and they don't trust Karzai.

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NATO to add 7,000 troops to Afghan effort


While acknowledging "our people are weary of war," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told her NATO counterparts Friday that an infusion of allied troops in Afghanistan is crucial to turning the tide in a war that has been deteriorating for years.

Before Clinton spoke, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen of Denmark told reporters at NATO headquarters that at least 25 countries would provide an estimated 7,000 more troops in Afghanistan in 2010, "with more to come." And he said the 44 countries now involved are "absolutely united" in their commitment to seeing the eight-year war through to a successful outcome.

"The strongest message in the room today was solidarity," he said. "Nations are backing up their words with deeds."

U.S. Navy Adm. James Stavridis, the top NATO and U.S. commander in Europe, said in an Associated Press interview during a break in the talks that he believes several thousand non-U.S. troops may be contributed next year, in addition to the 7,000 cited by Fogh Rasmussen.

"What we are all underlining to potential troop contributors is that we are truly asking for emphasis in the training area," Stavridis said. "And what I'm hearing is that we'll get very good responses."

Clinton: "Urgent Need"

Clinton told allied foreign ministers that it was essential that contributions to the war effort be provided as quickly as possible. She thanked Italy and Britain for their announcements of new troop contributions and said non-military assistance is equally important.

"The need for additional forces is urgent, but their presence will not be indefinite," she told the North Atlantic Council, NATO's highest political council.

She cited President Barack Obama's pledge on Tuesday to begin withdrawing U.S. forces in July 2011.

"At that time, we will begin to transfer authority and responsibility to Afghan security forces removing combat forces from Afghanistan over time with the assurance that Afghanistan's future, and ours, is secure," Clinton said, according to a copy of her prepared remarks to the closed-door meeting.

"The pace, size, and scope of the drawdown will be predicated on the situation on the ground. If things are going well, a larger number of forces could be removed from more areas. If not, the size and speed of the drawdown will be adjusted accordingly."

In his remarks to reporters, Fogh Rasmussen made a similar point.

"Transition (to Afghan control) does not mean exit," he said.

"Our people are weary of War"

Clinton acknowledged the sacrifice, in blood and treasure, that many allied countries have paid in Afghanistan over the past eight years.

"Today, our people are weary of war," she said. "But we cannot ignore reality. The extremists continue to target innocent people and sow destruction across continents. From the remote mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan, they plot future attacks. As Secretary General Rasmussen said earlier this week, `This is our fight, together.' And we must finish it together."

She thanked Italy for its announcement that it will send another 1,000 troops, and for Britain's pledge of another 500.

"I look forward to discussing further commitments with many of you today and in the coming days," she said. "Additional troops, enhanced support for the vital training mission, and added civilian assistance will help deny al-Qaida a safe haven, reverse the Taliban's momentum, and strengthen the capacity of the Afghans to take responsibility for their own security."

Clinton sought to strike a delicate balance between stiffening allied resolve for hard combat in Afghanistan while also promising that it will not last for decades.

"Even as we signal resolve through the deployment of additional forces and a long-term civilian commitment, we want to send a signal that our combat presence is not permanent, and to provide a sense of urgency to the Afghans to do for themselves what we know they're capable of doing," she said.

"But I want to stress that this timeframe does not mean that we can or will end our commitment to Afghanistan, Pakistan, or the region. Our political, economic, and diplomatic presence in the region will endure. I know that this has not always been the case in the past, but we intend the future to be different than the past."

The central theme of her remarks was a need for unity of purpose.

"We are in this together. And only together can we succeed," she said.


McChrystal prepares for testimony

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander in Afghanistan, also attended the meeting of NATO's main political council to explain the 43-nation military mission, which he has sought to revise and reinforce since he took over command last June. He has described conditions in the fight against Taliban extremists as serious and deteriorating.

McChrystal was headed to Washington afterward to prepare for congressional testimony next week — his first since assuming command in Kabul last June.

Allied governments need to be able to sell their publics on the idea of enlarging the war, and particularly those countries in which political parties share power have to be sure "the political stars are in alignment" before they announce new commitments, Clinton told reporters before she arrived in Brussels.

The British foreign secretary, David Miliband, sketched out the threat to Europe posed by Afghanistan's instability.

"We all know that in the 1990s, Afghanistan was the incubator of international terrorism, the incubator of choice for global jihad," he said. "The badlands of the Afghan-Pakistan border are a threat to people everywhere, whatever their religion, and that's why it's very important that we make progress."



Sources: MSNBC