[Marxism] Pres. Obama nixed full Afghan "surge" after quizzing brass

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

US-AFGHANISTAN: Obama Nixed Full Surge After Quizzing Brass
By Gareth Porter*

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45838
WASHINGTON, Feb 20 (IPS) - President Barack Obama decided to approve only
17,000 of the 30,000 troops requested by Gen. David McKiernan, the top
commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, and Gen. David Petraeus,
the CENTCOM commander, after McKiernan was unable to tell him how they would
be used, according to a White House source.

But Obama is likely to be pressured by McKiernan and the Joint Chiefs to
approve the remaining 13,000 troops requested after the completion of an
Afghanistan-Pakistan policy review next month.

Obama's decision to approve just over half the full troop request for
Afghanistan recalls a similar decision by President Lyndon B. Johnson to
approve only part of the request for U.S. troop deployments in a parallel
situation in the Vietnam War in April 1965 at a comparable stage of that
war. Johnson reluctantly went along with the request for additional troops
within weeks under pressure from both the field commander and the Joint
Chiefs of Staff.

The request for 30,000 additional troops, which would bring the U.S. troop
level in Afghanistan to more than 60,000, had been approved by the Joint
Chiefs of Staff as well as by Defence Secretary Robert Gates before Obama's
inauguration. A front-page story in the Washington Post Jan. 13 reported
that Obama was ready to "sign off" on the deployment request.

On Jan. 30 Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said between
20,000 and 30,000 more troops would "probably" be sent to Afghanistan and
the figure would "tend toward the higher number of those two".

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