Yet another plea for Afghanistan Posted by Patrick Barry

Go ahead and add another key military figure to the rostrum of those who think we need more troops in Afghanistan.  Today Secretary Gates let reporters know that he advised the President to pledge more deployments to the troubled region at the NATO summit in Bucharest, even while cognizant of the fact that such deployments would not occur till Bush was out of office in 2009:

I put this in front of the president as a possibility, as something that I thought we ought to be willing to say and do…

Putting aside the fact that Gates’ comments may or may not have any real bearing on our strategy because the next President will be the ultimate arbiter over whether such commitments actually take place, let’s examine the thrust of his statement, especially as it relates to the mounting frustration coming out of the Pentagon – frustration stemming from our inability to address pressing strategic needs when our soldiers are overburdened trying to prop up a fractured and ham-fisted government in Iraq. 

The not-so-subtle pleas for a shift in strategy have been moving steadily up the chain of command.  First you had Admiral Fallon (whose assessments of our strategic priorities have been less than sanguine) resigning because of the “perceptions of differences” between him and the President, which arose from a controversial Esquire article. Then, just last week, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mullen appeared on NPR and said that "clearly" we need a stronger troop footprint in the region.  Now we have the Secretary of Defense essentially intimating to our NATO allies that they need just hold out a little longer until the President leaves office to get the commitments they need.

It’s mind boggling to me that the President (and John McCain for that matter) can't grasp this relatively simple point – that a ceaseless presence in Iraq must be weighed against other imperatives that necessitate the availability of soldiers to counter threats to the United States.  This, astonishingly, is what makes being the President kind of a tough job – the fact that you have an array of extremely complex challenges, laden with consequences that impact millions of lives, but few resources with which to address them.  Based on what we’ve heard from conservatives, who seem incapable of wrapping their heads around that concept, I see absolutely no reason to trust their judgment on National Security.

Comments

[Don Bacon]

It’s mind boggling to me that the President (and John McCain for that matter) can't grasp this relatively simple point – that a ceaseless presence in Iraq must be weighed against other imperatives that necessitate the availability of soldiers to counter threats to the United States.

I just cast a glance at my National Geographic globe and noted the geographic positions of Iraq and Afghanistan. On the one hand is Iraq at the center of the Middle East, and Afghanistan kind of out of it, out of the way, so to speak. When you take into account all that Iraqi oil, you readily understand, or should understand, why Iraq is more important.

Now saying that Iraq is more important geo-politically and oil-wise than Afghanistan doesn't mean that it follows that the US should militarily occupy either one, or any one. The military occupation of both countries is wrong and we need a political/diplomatic solution to both. Military solutions are not possible, which we should have realized by now, in our seventh year in one country and our sixth in the other, with no hope of success.

Oh, you say, the Taliban of Afghanistan, former allies of the US, are more dangerous than the Iranian Shiites in Iraq? Really? How do you measure danger? Actually it is US belligerency toward Islam and Arabs, primarily in Palestine, that has fomented any danger that does exist, which, by the way, is statistically miniscule to the average American.

US peace-seeking diplomacy should be focused right now on Iraq, and next on Afghanistan. The problem is that the US does not seek peace, but war. In that case, send troops wherever you want. It'll do no good, as has been proven.

True conservatives, as a matter of fact, have wrapped their heads around this concept but, like progressives, have been cast aside for the glory of the "center." I'm thinking Paul, Edwards and Kucinich.

More troops in Afghanistan? More food in Afghanistan, more attention to local needs, more power to local agencies who are trying fruitlessly to improve the lot of Afghanis, more diplomacy with Iran, Pakistan and China, yes. More troops, no. More troops means more killing and more resistance to foreign occupation, as the Russians and the Brits before them have learned the hard way.

The subject of Somalia hasn't even come up, a country we are destroying after we overthrew the government. What other country acts this way?

Finally, don't be silly, there is no "threat to the United States." And quoting the go-along Bob Gates as a "key military figure" doesn't make it so. There is some danger to Americans, which doesn't apply to, say, Brazilians or Chinese, but that is a result of wrongful US behavior, like aggression in foreign countries and supporting repressive regimes.

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[Franchises in Africa]

Do we really think, the Taliban are just going to lay down there weapons and help rebuild? If this is the case, we need to give them just a minute of stability, and get the hell out, and let them figure it out. After that, if we are terrorized from them, we shell the hell out of them from afar, and flatten. I'm sure some cruse missiles from the Indian Ocean will reach and do just fine.