Afghan War meetings haunted by fears of defeat

By Gareth Porter -InterPress Service- | Last updated: Oct 14, 2009 - 2:22:44 PM

In a series of appearances on Sunday talk shows Sept. 20, Mr. Obama signaled that he wants to avoid getting more deeply involved in Afghanistan, although he left the door open to approving more troops. “Until I'm satisfied that we've got the right strategy,” he said on NBC's Meet the Press, “I'm not going to be sending some young man or woman over there—beyond what we already have.”

WASHINGTON - Following a series of high-level meetings over the next few weeks, President Barack Obama will determine whether the United States will proceed with an escalation of the Afghanistan War or adjust the strategy to reduce the U.S. military commitment there.

The meetings have been scheduled in light of a request from Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, for 40,000 additional troops, which reached Washington over the last weekend in September. That would bring the total U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan to 108,000—nearly a 60-percent increase.

President Obama has suggested he has serious doubts about being drawn more deeply into the war in Afghanistan, and administration officials have signaled that a key issue is whether the proposed counterinsurgency war could be won.

A plan backed by Vice President Joe Biden to scale back U.S. forces in Afghanistan and to focus more narrowly on al-Qaeda was one of the options discussed at a Sept. 13 meeting of top administration officials, according to a report in The Age (Melbourne) Sept. 26. That plan would reportedly depend on U.S. Special Forces to track down al-Qaeda and ratchet down the counterinsurgency war.

But the decisions that emerge from the coming meetings are more likely to be shaped primarily by the concerns of the military and of the White House about being blamed for a defeat in Afghanistan that now seems far more likely than it did just six months ago.

In that regard, the approaching White House meetings recall similar consultations in June 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson and his civilian advisers responded to a request from Gen. William Westmoreland and the Joint Chiefs of Staff for a major troop increase in South Vietnam by discussing ways to limit the U.S. military commitment in South Vietnam.

President Johnson, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara and National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy were all doubtful that the war could be won even with a much larger troop commitment.

Mr. Johnson, like Mr. Obama today, also had an alternative to further escalation of the war—a proposal for a negotiated settlement from Undersecretary of State George Ball, which was strongly opposed by others in President Johnson's national security team, including Sec. McNamara.

But a few weeks later, President Johnson went along with an open-ended troop commitment in Vietnam because he was unwilling to face the likelihood of charges by the military that he was responsible for the loss of South Vietnam.

In a series of appearances on Sunday talk shows Sept. 20, Mr. Obama signaled that he wants to avoid getting more deeply involved in Afghanistan, although he left the door open to approving more troops. “Until I'm satisfied that we've got the right strategy,” he said on NBC's Meet the Press, “I'm not going to be sending some young man or woman over there—beyond what we already have.”

In a Sept. 25 news conference, Mr. Obama raised the issue of whether there is “a sense of legitimacy... among the Afghan people—for their government,” without which, he said, the U.S. task would be “much more difficult,” obviously referring to President Hamid Karzai's alleged rigging of the August election.

Mr. Obama is questioning whether a counterinsurgency war is feasible under the existing conditions in Afghanistan. In a Sept. 21 interview with Josh Rogin of The Cable that was obviously cleared with the White House, Assistant Secretary of Defense Michele Flournoy referred to “an uncertain outcome” in Afghanistan.

In an initial round of debate on Afghanistan during President Obama's first weeks last January and February, Mr. Biden argued that the war plan would be far too costly and might not succeed, as Michael Crowley reported in the Sept. 24 New Republic.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Afghanistan coordinator Richard Holbrooke supported the military's proposal, however. In the end, Mr. Obama compromised with the military, approving 17,000 of the 30,000 troop request, even in the absence of a clear strategy.

But the White House let it be known that it was not committed to a full-fledged counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan. Mr. Obama's insistence in his March 27 speech that the U.S. objective in Afghanistan was to defeat Al Qaeda now appears to have been a sign that he was determined to keep his options open.

Gen. McChrystal's “initial assessment” declaring that “failure to provide adequate resources” would probably result in “mission failure,” was sent to Washington Aug. 31, but weeks passed without any signal from the White House that it was ready to entertain a troop request.

That provoked complaints from McChrystal's staff expressing unhappiness with the delay, according to a report by McClatchy newspapers Pentagon correspondent Nancy Youssef Sept. 18.

Then McChrystal's assessment was leaked to the Washington Post's Bob Woodward, generating a big headline in the Sep. 21 Washington Post about Gen. McChrystal's warning of “mission failure.” That leak was obviously aimed at making it more difficult for Mr. Obama to turn down his eventual troop deployment request.

But Gen. McChrystal's “initial assessment” presents such a formidable array of obstacles to the success of a counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan that it could be seen as an invitation to the president to reject the strategy.

Both leaking such a relatively bleak assessment and requesting 40,000 more troops may have been aimed primarily at ensuring that Gen. McChrystal and his boss, Gen. David Petraeus, cannot be blamed for defeat. Gen. Petraeus and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have closed ranks behind Gen. McChrystal's strategy and can be expected to endorse his troop request.

U.S. lacks capacity to win over Afghans, experts say (FCN, 05-15-2009)

The "War on Terror" Exposed (FCN/Minister Farrakhan, 05-03-2004)

Afghanistan, the Taliban and the United States (Media Monitors Network, 05-02-2001)

FinalCall.com Exclusive Interview with Taliban Ambassador (FCN, 01-09-2001)

Taliban in Texas for talks on gas pipeline (BBC News, 12-04-1997)