[Marxism] President said to be questioning Afghanistan "surge"

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Following, in lieu of an introduction, are the introductory comments of
Professor Mark Jensen of the Snow-News list and United for Peace of Pierce
County, who does an excellent job of educating this little circle and quite
a few beyond about aspects of world events and crises. (One difference: I
thought the Times article today on Karzai was in many ways a cover-up for
the Afghan "leader." -- Fred

[The *Times* of London reported Sunday that "The Pentagon was set to
announce the deployment of 17,000 extra soldiers and marines last week but
Robert Gates, the defense secretary, postponed the decision after questions
from Obama."[1]  --  

Sarah Baxter and Michael Smith said that "Obama has demanded that American
defense chiefs review their strategy in Afghanistan before going ahead with
a troop surge."  --  They said that he was "concerned by a lack of strategy
at his first meeting with Gates and the U.S. joint chiefs of staff last
month in 'the tank,' the secure conference room in the Pentagon," and
British leaders are said to share the concern.  --  

In suggesting that Obama is raising questions about "the endgame," Baxter
and Smith went much further than an account published two days earlier by
Reuters that cited "officials who spoke on condition of anonymity" and said
that there was "a debate within the Obama administration about the timing of
the deployment" but that the Pentagon "was still on track to send three
additional combat units to Afghanistan by midsummer."[2]  --  

On Sunday, the *New York Times* published a front-page profile of Afghan
President Hamid Karzi that portrayed him as unreliable, ineffective,
unpopular both at home and in Washington, D.C., and corrupt.[3]  --Mark]

http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/8374/

1.

World news

OBAMA PUTS BRAKES ON AFGHAN SURGE
By Sarah Baxter and Michael Smith

Times of London
February 8, 2009

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5683681.ece


President Barack Obama has demanded that American defense chiefs review
their strategy in Afghanistan before going ahead with a troop surge.

There is concern among senior Democrats that the military is preparing to
send up to 30,000 extra troops without a coherent plan or exit strategy.

The Pentagon was set to announce the deployment of 17,000 extra soldiers and
marines last week but Robert Gates, the defense secretary, postponed the
decision after questions from Obama.

The president was concerned by a lack of strategy at his first meeting with
Gates and the U.S. joint chiefs of staff last month in "the tank,"
the secure conference room in the Pentagon.  He asked:  "What's the
endgame?" and did not receive a convincing answer.

Larry Korb, a defense expert at the Center for American Progress, a
Washington think tank, said:  "Obama is exactly right.  Before he agrees to
send 30,000 troops, he wants to know what the mission and the endgame is."

Obama promised an extra 7,000-10,000 troops during the election campaign,
but the military has inflated its demands.  Leading Democrats fear
Afghanistan could become Obama's "Vietnam quagmire."

If the surge goes ahead, the military intend to limit the mission to
fighting the Taliban and Al-Qaeda and leave democracy building and
reconstruction to NATO allies and civilians from the State Department and
other agencies.

The United States has been pushing Britain to send several thousand more
troops but there is just as much disagreement and confusion among British
defense chiefs over the long-term aim.  Gordon Brown is set to receive a
full briefing this week.

General Sir Richard Dannatt, the army chief who will step down this summer,
has insisted that troops need a rest and believes he can send only one
battlegroup, senior defense sources said.

General Sir David Richards, his successor, believes that the two extra
battlegroups the Americans have asked for is the minimum the U.K. should
send, the sources said.

2.

U.S. ON TRACK FOR AFGHAN TROOP DEPLOYMENTS -- PENTAGON

Reuters
February 6, 2008

http://wire.antiwar.com/2009/02/06/us-on-track-for-afghan-troop-deployments-
pentagon/

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon said Friday it was still on track to send three
additional combat units to Afghanistan by midsummer, despite a debate within
the Obama administration about the timing of the deployment.

President Barack Obama had been widely expected to approve as early as this
week a plan to deploy up to 17,000 combat troops as part of an anticipated
buildup that could nearly double the U.S. force in Afghanistan to about
60,000 troops over the next 12 to 18 months.

The additional forces are needed to combat an intensifying insurgency by the
Taliban and other militant groups.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has spoken publicly about sending two
additional combat units by the end of spring and a third by midsummer.

"That is still the goal," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters.

There are currently 36,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, including 17,000 who
operate as part of a 50,000-strong NATO force.

But officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the plan for
Afghanistan was still being debated in the White House National Security
Council, where it has come under scrutiny at a time when the Obama
administration is also considering options for withdrawing forces from Iraq
where there are 144,000 U.S. troops.

The Obama administration is separately conducting a wide-ranging review of
U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.

Pentagon officials say the expected buildup in Afghanistan would have to be
coordinated with the drawdown of forces from Iraq because of the strains
both conflicts have placed on the structure of the U.S. military.

"We need to get troops to Afghanistan soon because the spring fighting
season begins in April.  But there has been concern that a large initial
deployment could force their hand in Iraq," said one official familiar with
the debate.

Pentagon officials have provided Obama with a set of options for withdrawing
U.S. forces from Iraq, including one that keeps to the 16-month timetable
for the drawdown of combat troops that was his campaign centerpiece.

But no decisions on Iraq have been made and the ongoing debate has led to
speculation the initial Afghan deployment had been delayed, an assertion the
Pentagon was quick to reject.

"You're looking for something that's not there yet," Whitman told reporters.
"I don't see this as a postponing of anything.  This is not on a particular
timeline."

"We're certainly not in a window that endangers that desired goal at this
point," he said.

Whitman said U.S. military planners could deploy forces to Afghanistan
without drawing down in Iraq but added that could require the unwelcome
option of reducing the time at home between combat missions, which the
Pentagon wants to avoid.

"There's any number of force management tools that you can use to maintain
the level of effort, if you decided to hold in one (theater) and increase in
the other.  Some of those options aren't particularly attractive,"
Whitman said.

(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Source: Reuters North American News Service

3.

World

Asia Pacific

AFGHAN LEADER FINDS HIMSELF HERO NO MORE By Dexter Filkins

New York Times
February 8, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/world/asia/08karzai.html

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A foretaste of what would be in store for President
Hamid Karzai after the election of a new American administration came last
February, when Joseph R. Biden Jr., then a senator, sat down to a formal
dinner at the palace during a visit here.

Between platters of lamb and rice, Mr. Biden and two other American senators
questioned Mr. Karzai about corruption in his government, which, by many
estimates, is among the worst in the world.  Mr. Karzai assured Mr. Biden
and the other senators that there was no corruption at all and that, in any
case, it was not his fault.

The senators gaped in astonishment.  After 45 minutes, Mr. Biden threw down
his napkin and stood up.

"This dinner is over," Mr. Biden announced, according to one of the people
in the room at the time.  And the three senators walked out, long before the
appointed time.

Today, of course, Mr. Biden is the vice president.

The world has changed for Mr. Karzai, and for Afghanistan, too.  A White
House favorite -- a celebrity in flowing cape and dark gray fez -- in each
of the seven years that he has led this country since the fall of the
Taliban, Mr. Karzai now finds himself not so favored at all.  Not by
Washington, and not by his own.

In the White House, President Obama said he regarded Mr. Karzai as
unreliable and ineffective.  Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said
he presided over a "narco-state."  The Americans making Afghan policy,
worried that the war is being lost, are vowing to bypass Mr.
Karzai and deal directly with the governors in the countryside.

At home, Mr. Karzai faces a widening insurgency and a population that blames
him for the manifest lack of economic progress and the corrupt officials
that seem to stand at every doorway of his government.  His face, which once
adorned the walls of tea shops across the country, is today much less
visible.

Now, perhaps crucially, an election looms.  Mr. Karzai says he will ask the
voters to return him to the palace for another five-year term.  The election
is set for Aug. 20, after what promises to be a violent and eventful summer.
In a poll commissioned by a group of private Afghans, 85 percent of those
surveyed said they intended to vote for someone other than Mr. Karzai.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration will have to decide what it wants from
Mr. Karzai as it tries to make good on its promise to reverse the course of
the war.  Or whether it wants him at all.

With the insurgency rising, corruption soaring and opium blooming across the
land, it perhaps is not surprising that so many Afghans, and so many in
Washington, see President Karzai's removal as a precondition for reversing
the country's downward surge.

"Under President Karzai, we have gone from a better situation to a good
situation to a not-so-bad situation to a bad situation -- and now are going
to worse," said Abdullah, a former foreign minister in Mr. Karzai's
government who may now challenge him for the presidency (and who, like many
Afghans, has only one name).  "That is the trend.

"So let us say Karzai stays in power through the summer and that nothing
serious happens and then he wins re-election," Dr. Abdullah said.  "Then
there will be two scenarios, and only two scenarios -- a rapid collapse or a
slow unraveling."

People close to Mr. Karzai say the man is exhausted, wary of his enemies and
worried for his physical safety.  He feels embattled and underappreciated,
they say, but is utterly determined, in spite of it all, to run again and
win.  In recent weeks, the growing American dissatisfaction with Mr. Karzai,
coupled with a simmering frustration among Afghans over what they regard as
the reckless killing of civilians by American forces, has prompted
extraordinary reactions from Mr. Karzai.

At a news conference on Tuesday at his marble-floored palace, Mr. Karzai
appeared side-by-side with Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary
general.  Mr. Karzai wore his signature outfit of fez and cape, but his
visage was wan and slack.  Asked by an Afghan reporter about his relations
with American leaders, Mr. Karzai sprang to life, accusing unnamed people in
the American government of trying to "pressure" him to stay silent over the
deaths of Afghan civilians in attacks by Americans.

"Our demands are clear -- to stop the civilian casualties, the searching of
Afghan homes, and the arresting Afghans," Mr. Karzai said of the Americans.
"And of course, the Americans pressured us to be quiet and to make us
retreat from our demands.  But that is impossible.  Afghanistan and its
president are not going to retreat from their demands."

Mr. Karzai did not touch on larger frustrations, which Afghan and Western
officials here say he harbors, about the overall American effort, namely,
the relegation of Afghanistan to second-tier status after the invasion of
Iraq.  Many Afghans and Western officials here believe that it was the Iraq
war, more than any other factor, that deprived Mr. Karzai of the resources
he needed to help the Afghan state stand on its own, and to prevent the
resurgence of the Taliban that Mr. Obama is now vowing to contain.


Yet for all the doubts about Mr. Karzai -- and for all the strains he labors
under -- he remains by far the strongest politician in the country.
 He commands the resources of the Afghan state, including the army and the
police, and billions of dollars in American and other aid that flows into
the treasury.
[snip] Full: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/world/asia/08karzai.html





________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: 
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40archives.econ.utah.edu