Afghanistan Mission Creep Watch Posted by Michael Cohen

President Obama, March 27th, 2009:

We are not in Afghanistan to control that country or to dictate its future.  We are in Afghanistan to confront a common enemy that threatens the United States, our friends and our allies, and the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan who have suffered the most at the hands of violent extremists. So I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal:  to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future.  That's the goal that must be achieved.

 . . . I've already ordered the deployment of 17,000 troops that had been requested by General McKiernan for many months.  These soldiers and Marines will take the fight to the Taliban in the south and the east, and give us a greater capacity to partner with Afghan security forces and to go after insurgents along the border.

General Stanley McCrystal yesterday in Afghanistan:

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who took over Monday as the top commander in Afghanistan, said he will launch a broad assessment of how U.S. and NATO troops are arrayed in the country to ensure his forces are focused on safeguarding key population centers and not hunting down Taliban fighters.

In judging the effect his strategy was having on security, McChrystal said he will avoid such measurements as the number of insurgent attacks, enemies killed or raids initiated by U.S. forces. Instead he pledges to focus on indicators that shed light on local governance and economic development.

"One indicator might be how well commerce is moving," McChrystal said. "If an individual can move his product to market right away from his village or town, that is telling. If he's got to go through six checkpoints and pay a bribe at each one, that is a sign that you've got abuse of governance or an insurgency, depending on who's doing it."

"The Afghan people are at the center of our mission," he said. "In reality, they are the mission. We must protect them from violence -- whatever its nature. We must respect their religion and traditions."

Comments

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I think we're starting to blur the lines between strategy and tactics again with this analysis.

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I would guess that the before-majority tends to reflect a consensus opinion, the arguments in favor of which are probably more commonly encountered in everyday life. Most of the arguments and ideas that are new to the audience would then be coming from the anti-consensus side, so more weakly-decided people would break for the side bringing previously unconsidered information to the table.

[Burt]

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[jim dangle]

There are no sewers in Kabul. People place human waste in the streets. These knuckleheads need to start by digging some ditches and getting rid of the human waste in the streets. Talk about winning the hearts and minds! Start by saying "today we will start getting rid of all the human waste lying around." How simple is it? Pay a guy 4 bucks a day to dig a ditch and bury sewer pipes. Get the job done. 8 years already in country and these guys cant even find the time to stabilize the country. You try breathing in human waste particulates in the hot sun all day and see if you wouldn't be angry at the world. What a shame, these people in charge are not doing anything positive. What a sick shame.

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