McChrystal's Unclassified Afghan Assessment
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AgNoStiC MuSliM
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The tone of the relationship was set by US double standards - the US chose to penalize Pakistan for its pursuit of a nuke, Pakistan broke no international treaties or commitments on that count."Logic would dictate that Pakistan and the US would most certainly have shared a more harmonious 'political trajectory' had the US decided to stay committed to the region and to Pakistan."
Really?
Logic dictates to me that your pursuit of a nuclear weapon would have made impossible our seeing eye-to-eye with your nefarious ambitions in Afghanistan. These issues could not be disconnected. NOTHING could be disconnected from that tiny conumdrum and you know it.
Tone for our relationship had been set by Pakistan for the nineties.
I fully disagree.
Thanks.
The US should have attempted to prevent the acquisition of the nuke through less confrontational means (which it also did, by influencing other nations to deny Pakistan nuclear technology) - a far more reasonable approach with an ally that did nothing to harm US interests and sacrificed and took great risk in pursuing a joint mission in Afghanistan.
The 'tone' was entirely that of the US's choosing - our weapons were never targeted at the US, nor did we have any conflict with the US.
Nailed it right there.
Sorry, Back to topic - discussing the assessment.
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Righteous_Fire
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Note: this is a fresh development from the white house based on this report, so instead of making a thread I deemed it convenient to post it here, Sorry if this maybe considered off topic
==============Obama Considers Strategy Shift in Afghan War
President Obama is exploring alternatives to a major troop increase in Afghanistan, including a plan advocated by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to scale back American forces and focus more on rooting out Al Qaeda there and in Pakistan, officials said Tuesday.
The options under review are part of what administration officials described as a wholesale reconsideration of a strategy the president announced with fanfare just six months ago. Two new intelligence reports are being conducted to evaluate Afghanistan and Pakistan, officials said.
The sweeping reassessment has been prompted by deteriorating conditions on the ground, the messy and still unsettled outcome of the Afghan elections and a dire report by Mr. Obama’s new commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal. Aides said the president wanted to examine whether the strategy he unveiled in March was still the best approach and whether it could work with the extra combat forces General McChrystal wants.
In looking at other options, aides said, Mr. Obama might just be testing assumptions — and assuring liberals in his own party that he was not rushing into a further expansion of the war — before ultimately agreeing to the anticipated troop request from General McChrystal. But the review suggests the president is having second thoughts about how deeply to engage in an intractable eight-year conflict that is not going well.
Although Mr. Obama has said that a stable Afghanistan is central to the security of the United States, some advisers said he was also wary of becoming trapped in an overseas quagmire. Some Pentagon officials say they worry that he is having what they called “buyer’s remorse” after ordering an extra 21,000 troops there within weeks of taking office before even settling on a strategy.
Mr. Obama met in the Situation Room with his top advisers on Sept. 13 to begin chewing over the problem, said officials involved in the debate. Among those on hand were Mr. Biden; Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates; Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; James L. Jones, the national security adviser; and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
They reached no consensus, so three or four more such meetings are being scheduled. “There are a lot of competing views,” said one official who, like others in this article, requested anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations.
Among the alternatives being presented to Mr. Obama is Mr. Biden’s suggestion to revamp the strategy altogether. Instead of increasing troops, officials said, Mr. Biden proposed scaling back the overall American military presence. Rather than trying to protect the Afghan population from the Taliban, American forces would concentrate on strikes against Qaeda cells, primarily in Pakistan, using special forces, Predator missile attacks and other surgical tactics.
The Americans would accelerate training of Afghan forces and provide support as they took the lead against the Taliban. But the emphasis would shift to Pakistan. Mr. Biden has often said that the United States spends something like $30 in Afghanistan for every $1 in Pakistan, even though in his view the main threat to American national security interests is in Pakistan.
Mr. Obama rejected Mr. Biden’s approach in March, and it is not clear that it has more traction this time. But the fact that it is on the table again speaks to the breadth of the administration’s review and the evolving views inside the White House of what has worked in the region and what has not. In recent days, officials have expressed satisfaction with the results of their cooperation with Pakistan in hunting down Qaeda figures in the unforgiving border lands.
A shift from a counterinsurgency strategy to a focus on counterterrorism would turn the administration’s current theory on its head. The strategy Mr. Obama adopted in March concluded that to defeat Al Qaeda, the United States needed to keep the Taliban from returning to power in Afghanistan and making it a haven once again for Osama bin Laden’s network. Mr. Biden’s position questions that assumption.
Mrs. Clinton, who opposed Mr. Biden in March, appeared to refer to this debate in an interview on Monday night on PBS. “Some people say, ‘Well, Al Qaeda’s no longer in Afghanistan,’ ” she said. “If Afghanistan were taken over by the Taliban, I can’t tell you how fast Al Qaeda would be back in Afghanistan.”
At the time he announced his new approach, Mr. Obama described it as “a stronger, smarter and comprehensive strategy,” and said “to the terrorists who oppose us, my message is the same: We will defeat you.” The administration then fired the commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David D. McKiernan, and replaced him with General McChrystal, empowering him to carry out the new strategy.
But the Afghan presidential election, widely marred by allegations of fraud, undermined the administration’s confidence that it had a reliable partner in President Hamid Karzai. Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden already had raised doubts about Mr. Karzai, which were only exacerbated by the fear that even if he emerges from a runoff election, he will have little credibility with his own people.
“A counterinsurgency strategy can only work if you have a credible and legitimate Afghan partner. That’s in doubt now,” said Bruce O. Riedel, who led the administration’s strategy review of Afghanistan and Pakistan earlier this year. “Part of the reason you are seeing a hesitancy to jump deeper into the pool is that they are looking to see if they can make lemonade out of the lemons we got from the Afghan election.”
Representative Ike Skelton, Democrat of Missouri and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, sent Mr. Obama a six-page letter arguing the case for more troops for General McChrystal. “There is no strategy short of a properly resourced counterinsurgency campaign that is likely to provide lasting security,” he wrote.
Mr. Obama now has to reconcile past statements and policy with his current situation.
“The problem for President Obama is he has made the case in the past that we took our eye off the ball and we should have stayed in Afghanistan,” said former Defense Secretary William S. Cohen. But now that he is in charge of the war, Mr. Cohen said, Mr. Obama is discovering “he doesn’t have much in the way of options” and time is of the essence.
Mr. Cohen added, “The longer you wait, the harder it will be to reverse it.”
The options under review are part of what administration officials described as a wholesale reconsideration of a strategy the president announced with fanfare just six months ago. Two new intelligence reports are being conducted to evaluate Afghanistan and Pakistan, officials said.
The sweeping reassessment has been prompted by deteriorating conditions on the ground, the messy and still unsettled outcome of the Afghan elections and a dire report by Mr. Obama’s new commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal. Aides said the president wanted to examine whether the strategy he unveiled in March was still the best approach and whether it could work with the extra combat forces General McChrystal wants.
In looking at other options, aides said, Mr. Obama might just be testing assumptions — and assuring liberals in his own party that he was not rushing into a further expansion of the war — before ultimately agreeing to the anticipated troop request from General McChrystal. But the review suggests the president is having second thoughts about how deeply to engage in an intractable eight-year conflict that is not going well.
Although Mr. Obama has said that a stable Afghanistan is central to the security of the United States, some advisers said he was also wary of becoming trapped in an overseas quagmire. Some Pentagon officials say they worry that he is having what they called “buyer’s remorse” after ordering an extra 21,000 troops there within weeks of taking office before even settling on a strategy.
Mr. Obama met in the Situation Room with his top advisers on Sept. 13 to begin chewing over the problem, said officials involved in the debate. Among those on hand were Mr. Biden; Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates; Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; James L. Jones, the national security adviser; and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
They reached no consensus, so three or four more such meetings are being scheduled. “There are a lot of competing views,” said one official who, like others in this article, requested anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations.
Among the alternatives being presented to Mr. Obama is Mr. Biden’s suggestion to revamp the strategy altogether. Instead of increasing troops, officials said, Mr. Biden proposed scaling back the overall American military presence. Rather than trying to protect the Afghan population from the Taliban, American forces would concentrate on strikes against Qaeda cells, primarily in Pakistan, using special forces, Predator missile attacks and other surgical tactics.
The Americans would accelerate training of Afghan forces and provide support as they took the lead against the Taliban. But the emphasis would shift to Pakistan. Mr. Biden has often said that the United States spends something like $30 in Afghanistan for every $1 in Pakistan, even though in his view the main threat to American national security interests is in Pakistan.
Mr. Obama rejected Mr. Biden’s approach in March, and it is not clear that it has more traction this time. But the fact that it is on the table again speaks to the breadth of the administration’s review and the evolving views inside the White House of what has worked in the region and what has not. In recent days, officials have expressed satisfaction with the results of their cooperation with Pakistan in hunting down Qaeda figures in the unforgiving border lands.
A shift from a counterinsurgency strategy to a focus on counterterrorism would turn the administration’s current theory on its head. The strategy Mr. Obama adopted in March concluded that to defeat Al Qaeda, the United States needed to keep the Taliban from returning to power in Afghanistan and making it a haven once again for Osama bin Laden’s network. Mr. Biden’s position questions that assumption.
Mrs. Clinton, who opposed Mr. Biden in March, appeared to refer to this debate in an interview on Monday night on PBS. “Some people say, ‘Well, Al Qaeda’s no longer in Afghanistan,’ ” she said. “If Afghanistan were taken over by the Taliban, I can’t tell you how fast Al Qaeda would be back in Afghanistan.”
At the time he announced his new approach, Mr. Obama described it as “a stronger, smarter and comprehensive strategy,” and said “to the terrorists who oppose us, my message is the same: We will defeat you.” The administration then fired the commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David D. McKiernan, and replaced him with General McChrystal, empowering him to carry out the new strategy.
But the Afghan presidential election, widely marred by allegations of fraud, undermined the administration’s confidence that it had a reliable partner in President Hamid Karzai. Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden already had raised doubts about Mr. Karzai, which were only exacerbated by the fear that even if he emerges from a runoff election, he will have little credibility with his own people.
“A counterinsurgency strategy can only work if you have a credible and legitimate Afghan partner. That’s in doubt now,” said Bruce O. Riedel, who led the administration’s strategy review of Afghanistan and Pakistan earlier this year. “Part of the reason you are seeing a hesitancy to jump deeper into the pool is that they are looking to see if they can make lemonade out of the lemons we got from the Afghan election.”
Representative Ike Skelton, Democrat of Missouri and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, sent Mr. Obama a six-page letter arguing the case for more troops for General McChrystal. “There is no strategy short of a properly resourced counterinsurgency campaign that is likely to provide lasting security,” he wrote.
Mr. Obama now has to reconcile past statements and policy with his current situation.
“The problem for President Obama is he has made the case in the past that we took our eye off the ball and we should have stayed in Afghanistan,” said former Defense Secretary William S. Cohen. But now that he is in charge of the war, Mr. Cohen said, Mr. Obama is discovering “he doesn’t have much in the way of options” and time is of the essence.
Mr. Cohen added, “The longer you wait, the harder it will be to reverse it.”
===============
===============
Reference:
NYT Afghan Strategy Shift===============
muse
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Overall what can one say about the US in Afghanistan? When we said that there is real trouble there, we heard that 41 nations Blah, Blah, Blah - but what is the net? Is it any other than what we said ??
How does the US extricate itself without leaving Pakistan holding the bag, yet again? More American Blood and treasure? Yes, unfortunately this is the case, unless the US wants to see even more serious repercussions arising from a rethink among it's major non-NATO ally.
The Karzai coalition has created a major problem with the US and it remains to be seen who will emerge victorious, Karzai or the US.
Increased attacks against the leadership of various Talib and AlQa-eeida
should be increased, and while the US COIN policy is one that it can financially afford, the best way to deal with insurgents remains to kill them. If the US is not "politically" upto that job, then let lend full unqualified support and "encouragement" to Pakistan to do that.
How does the US extricate itself without leaving Pakistan holding the bag, yet again? More American Blood and treasure? Yes, unfortunately this is the case, unless the US wants to see even more serious repercussions arising from a rethink among it's major non-NATO ally.
The Karzai coalition has created a major problem with the US and it remains to be seen who will emerge victorious, Karzai or the US.
Increased attacks against the leadership of various Talib and AlQa-eeida
should be increased, and while the US COIN policy is one that it can financially afford, the best way to deal with insurgents remains to kill them. If the US is not "politically" upto that job, then let lend full unqualified support and "encouragement" to Pakistan to do that.
Righteous_Fire
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If there was one word to answer you and this whole post including my new post from the White House, it would be:
EGO
Correction, a "super inflated, highly irritable and in considerate Imperial Ego"
Those ^ by the way are Robert Fisk's words not mine.
This is incredibly ridiculous - I expect to see much better from you, my Pakistani brothers.
muse
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Seagull
The best way to deal with insurgents remains to kill them - this is reality. COIN gurus have suggested a variety of methods, in particular seperating the insurgent from the population in which he hides and hopes to sperate from the government - makes great sense, but in the end, for the govt to prevail, the insurgent must either surrender/ disarm or be dead - yes, it's just that complicated.
The best way to deal with insurgents remains to kill them - this is reality. COIN gurus have suggested a variety of methods, in particular seperating the insurgent from the population in which he hides and hopes to sperate from the government - makes great sense, but in the end, for the govt to prevail, the insurgent must either surrender/ disarm or be dead - yes, it's just that complicated.
muse
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Sada Jernail, on the Job, Much appreciated:
Musharraf to discuss Afghan war with US lawmakers
WASHINGTON: Former military ruler General (r) Pervez Musharraf will meet privately with US lawmakers on September 29 to discuss the changing US strategy for fighting the war in Afghanistan, according to an email obtained by AFP on Wednesday. Representative Steve Buyer, the top Republican on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, has invited fellow lawmakers to sit down with the former Pakistani president, according to the message from his legislative director. The message notes that the top US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, recently delivered his assessment of the situation in Afghanistan and recommendations for winning the nearly eight-year-old war. afp
Musharraf to discuss Afghan war with US lawmakers
WASHINGTON: Former military ruler General (r) Pervez Musharraf will meet privately with US lawmakers on September 29 to discuss the changing US strategy for fighting the war in Afghanistan, according to an email obtained by AFP on Wednesday. Representative Steve Buyer, the top Republican on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, has invited fellow lawmakers to sit down with the former Pakistani president, according to the message from his legislative director. The message notes that the top US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, recently delivered his assessment of the situation in Afghanistan and recommendations for winning the nearly eight-year-old war. afp
Gin ka Pakistan
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batmannow
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i think, US commander in afghanistan!has no other choice to make, but the problm is , even that cant finish the desired job, which means a victory!
durring the last of his days in the WHITE HOUSE , president BUSH partialy acceptd the fact tht, US will never win the war in afghanistan, & thats why SAUDIARABIAN support was thrown into battle ground.
now the situation is worse thn ever, insurgents had denied the grounds of AFGHANISTAN to both NATO & US forces, which is worrying the new US president OBAMMA, i guss in the end of the day, USA had to talk with those, ragtag TALIBAN commanders, who were ready for talks but , with having KARAZAI govt in place in kabul, it seems imposible!
i think, if USA gives pakistan a major role to play on the grounds & behind the shadows, it will going to work for sure!
but just simply throwing the militry might, was never a solution itself!
durring the last of his days in the WHITE HOUSE , president BUSH partialy acceptd the fact tht, US will never win the war in afghanistan, & thats why SAUDIARABIAN support was thrown into battle ground.
now the situation is worse thn ever, insurgents had denied the grounds of AFGHANISTAN to both NATO & US forces, which is worrying the new US president OBAMMA, i guss in the end of the day, USA had to talk with those, ragtag TALIBAN commanders, who were ready for talks but , with having KARAZAI govt in place in kabul, it seems imposible!
i think, if USA gives pakistan a major role to play on the grounds & behind the shadows, it will going to work for sure!
but just simply throwing the militry might, was never a solution itself!
Gin ka Pakistan
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Indian lobby will never want that
both nations have conflict of interest in Afghanistan.
gambit
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Like it or not...This is how the world operate...Some 'democracies' are more 'democratic' than others. Some muslims are more 'Islamic' than others. Some cars are more fuel efficient than others. And the list goes on. So yes...When the people are offered choices, they will not immediately assess each of those choices against the abstract but against each other. For politicians, who is the lesser evil that will do the least harm, not who is truly the pure, will be the people's opinions.
MastanKhan
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Hi,
How I wish that Tommy Franks had the same vision and assessment that Mcrystal has----a lots of us knew it at that time that you need troops in afghanistan---a lots of troops and don't change the balance of power from pashtun to northern alliance.
At least a hundred k troops in the begining and the same power structure would have kept the afghans more focussed in building their nation than otherwise----once the balance of power changedfrom majority pashtun to the minority no alliance---it became a recipe of disaster and doom.
The u s needs at least 150 k troops to make its presence felt---it has to seal all the cross border illegal trafic and stop the cultivation of poppy----.
A majlis a shura needs to be created on the similiar basis as was at the time of King Zahir Shah----without giving the power to the majority and keeping the ministerial posts in proportion to the populace--afghanistan is not going anywhere.
Once the u s has total control of the l;aw and order situation and development projects in place and the afghans being able to find jobs and an easier life----that is when the things will turn around for good.
Now anybody in handwriting or anyone who reads into signatures----
Gen Mcrystal's signature has a downward slope---must be under a lots of stress and duress.
But looking at the signature otherwise---he is a very clear headed and open kind of man---a level thinking man who cuts it right through.
How I wish that Tommy Franks had the same vision and assessment that Mcrystal has----a lots of us knew it at that time that you need troops in afghanistan---a lots of troops and don't change the balance of power from pashtun to northern alliance.
At least a hundred k troops in the begining and the same power structure would have kept the afghans more focussed in building their nation than otherwise----once the balance of power changedfrom majority pashtun to the minority no alliance---it became a recipe of disaster and doom.
The u s needs at least 150 k troops to make its presence felt---it has to seal all the cross border illegal trafic and stop the cultivation of poppy----.
A majlis a shura needs to be created on the similiar basis as was at the time of King Zahir Shah----without giving the power to the majority and keeping the ministerial posts in proportion to the populace--afghanistan is not going anywhere.
Once the u s has total control of the l;aw and order situation and development projects in place and the afghans being able to find jobs and an easier life----that is when the things will turn around for good.
Now anybody in handwriting or anyone who reads into signatures----
Gen Mcrystal's signature has a downward slope---must be under a lots of stress and duress.
But looking at the signature otherwise---he is a very clear headed and open kind of man---a level thinking man who cuts it right through.
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