Obama: US does not Seek Permanent Bases in Afghanistan
President Obama said on Friday that the US has no long-term goal of keeping US troops in Afghanistan. (See below).
In contrast to Obama's pronouncements on getting out of Iraq, he has not announced a timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan. (The full text of Obama's remarks on the withdrawal from Iraq is here.)
Meanwhile, the Afghan Interior Minister estimated Friday that there are 10,000 to 15,000 Taliban guerrillas active across 17 provinces. (This is a big increase from a couple of years ago, when the estimates were 3,000 - 5,000).
Afghan president Hamid Karzai may call snap elections for April, rather than waiting until August.
Aljazeera English reports on a demonstration in Ghazni Province against the US and NATO. The crowd say they were upset about a NATO bombing of a mosque. The USG denies that there were GIs operating in that area:
Wikileaks discovered that the password for several pages on how to finesse reporters regarding Afghanistan at the Pentagon web site was "progress." What a weak password. Anyway, they posted the documents, which give some insight into how the Department of Defense hopes to influence the public on the Afghanistan War.
Brave New Films is launching a new film on Afghanistan that asks what exactly the US's objectives there are:
Obama's interview with Jim Lehrer on the planned Iraq pullout and other issues is here:
Clip 1 (Iraq):
and here:
Clip 2 (Challenges):
End/ (Not Continued)
posted by Juan Cole @ 2/28/2009 12:48:00 AM
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9 Comments:
So, the Taliban have been able to increase their size from 3,000 to 5,000 up to between 10,000 and 15,000.
Hummmmm---how did they do that? Can anyone explain why they can recruit so much support and we are not able to do that? Also, if they can increase their size at will; then apparently, we can send in the troops and kill and capture as many Taliban leaders as we can, but the Taliban will simply continue to replace them with two or three others.
All of the Taliban have political leaders. They are probably not totally wild insane maniacs; otherwise, they would not be able to recruit so much support.
I know that often, guerrilla forces can intimidate and draft recruits just as governments do, but they cannot do that without initially gaining local political support.
With all of this, I think that our strategy is really out of whack.
I assume that Zbigniew Brezezinski continues to be an influential advisor for the President. On page 60 of his book, THE CHOICE, he talks about how the region is of important interest to the U.S. He outlines several credible issues why he argues that the region severely needs stability.
Escalating the military parts of our intervention demonstrates a failure to skillfully intervene or influence an increase in regional stability. I can think of several reasons why it would add to instability.
We need to get back to the basics of help the region’s governments develop their political functions so that they can attain more stability. These functions include examples of penetration into local communities, recruitment, coalition building and helping communities to articulate their interests.
Bob Spencer
Obama's Camp LeJeune speech was very uplifting, and sincere.
Could our long nightmare be over?
"Permanent" is a loooong time.
Why do I suspect it's just so many 'weasel words'? Copper is important in the industrial West, and I understand Afghanistan has one of the largest un-tapped reserves in the world(See! It isn't JUST about oil and NG)
Meanwhile, in the 'finesse' department, General JC Christian, patriot, liveblogs the CPAC convention via twitter and discovers 'Joe the Plumber" arguing with the bartender whether "Democrat" is a country in Europe.
http://twitter.com/JC_Christian
Juan - I'm dying to know what Canada's largest Public Union thinks about this.
When Obama talks about the importance of resolving Iraq's political issues, one might wonder what tools the US, aka the Defense Department, has to influence outcomes.
In my conspiratorial view, a main objective of the Surge was to emasculate al Sadr by destroying his base in Sadr City. We definitely prefer to deal with politicians rather than popular leaders - the likes of al Sadr.
But you cannot use smart bombs, imprisonment, rendition, etc to mold the new Iraqi political class. If Maliki starts looking like a new Saddam, or Kurdistan proclaims independence, or the Iraqi Army stages a coup, what good is US military might. We didn't rent sovereignty to Iraq, we gave them back what was theirs to begin with.
We've killed enough Sunnis, Shiites, and, by proxy via Turkey, Kurds. We've starved a huge number of children with our embargo, we've created millions of refugees, we've managed to destroy the professional class. That seems to be enough.
If 200,000 Iraqi soldiers, all knowing the local language, can't handle a few thousand bad guys, then what can we do?
Yes, smallrat, your nightmare is over. But while you were sleeping, Bush pursued the enemy while many claimed the surge was a stupid idea and worse. He defeated an insurgency and brought freedom and democracy to Iraq, in the heart of the Muslim world while many told him this was crazy, another Vietnam. America can't win small wars they said. "You can't defeat an idea", "the Muslims are crasy and not capable of Democracy". Even Obama has said it succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. We watched as pro American goverments were elected in Germany and France and Bush got Moammar Kadafi to abandon his nuclear program. I hope Obama will be as successful for America with his challenges in Afghanistan, Iran and with the economy.
I found Obama's speech at Camp LeJune rather depressing. First, he has determined a "combat operations are over" some time in the future and therefore put off drawdown of US troops until Aug 2010. Further he is going to leave 50K troops there, which means this occupation of Iraq will go on throughout his presidency.
But what really upset me was his listing of what the US military "accomplished" in Iraq. They only accomplished one thing: the destruction of Iraq.
That part of the speech made me want to throw up. We have millions of refugees and orphans in Iraq, millions of damaged people, only one in three children attending school, infrastructure and jobs in the toilet, hundreds of thousands o people dead --- and they want to talk about SUCCESS?
This justification of what was a massive war crime just shows that Americans will continue to commit war crimes and will continue to murder innocent people in the millions, just like they have my entire life. It sickens me that we are so evil here in this country.
And the sending of 17K more troops to an unwinable war in Afghanistan is very sickening too.
I will be sending pictures of the dead children from Iraq and Afghanistan to Obama on postcards, just like I did with Bush. I will include a note saying: This is what you did.
Al Jazeera has a couple of good videos on the corruption in Iraq and the missing billions on 2-27-09. Makes Madoff look like peanuts.
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Has anyone in this community sent a FOIA request to CENTCOM to get the Strategic Communications Plan for Iraq ?
I'd find that just as interesting, now that we know what to ask for.
Student
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The oratory is slicker. Instead of misunderestimating Bush, we can now overestimate Obama.
Look. He told us what to expect. A "withdrawal" from Iraq that would leave a puppet state such as the British ran until 1958 in Iraq, supervised by a brutal American garrison of 50,000 or so, and a war forever in Afghanistan. And that's what we'll get unless national bankruptcy or some other shattering disintegration frees the rest of the world from the tender mercies of this empire, this self-anointed savior of the world.
The military-industrial-congressional complex is completely out of control, and Obama isn't even trying to do anything about it. Is he even able?
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