What's new

Petraeus if confirmed CIA Chief will fight 3rd war in Pak

won ? wow , why dont you take a visit to this land which you claimed to have won ?? Texans are famous for there bravery and brazenness so why dont you sit on a Us army humvee and take a visit of down town kabul ? leave alone the rest of the country ! or the easy way , if you know any ask a US solider that has returned from hid duties in Afghanistan that have you WON or LOST ?
p.s terrorist are only in Pakistan because your fearless leader mr G w Bush decided to go suck on Iraqi's oily **** before finishing or even establishing what he started in Afghanistan ...Dear sir , even on recored Taliban control 70% of Afghanistan ask any civilian contractor they all pay money to Taliban for any kid of safe movement , even many nato troops have done it so many times .

---------- Post added at 03:05 AM ---------- Previous post was at 03:04 AM ----------

Not only the Haqqani network, the LeT and its ilk too.

yeah America does not care about that ..so thats just a day dream .
 
My country does not call him that. Only the traitors of the Democratic Party call him that. If he becomes CIA chief, I hope the drone strikes triple and add B-2 bomber runs as well. The Haqqani Network in North Waziristan should be annihilated.

Man republicans are funny some time , so half your country is made up to Traitors ??? ones mind set can be seen from here its never our fault its always the others fault , we have no control over Afghanistan but lets put all the blame of a tiny proportion of Taliban that comes from a shity town on Afghan and Pakistan Border !!
i have no sympathy for Taliban or haqqani network to me there are as evil as it could get , but to be honest the fault lies with Us foreign policy they should have finished one thing first then jump of the horse and went to Iraq ... or was that done by Democratic Traitors aswl ?
you guys are even more dumber then us Pakistanis who blame every thing on Us , Israel and India, because your military and Government can actually do some thing but instead all they do sit on there Fat*** and use Drones to attack a tiny tiny proration of your enemies (because its easy) while real Afghan taliban are butchering your troops in increasing number every day .
while you the internet soldiers and other common public is made believe that wow Drones are the only solution and the only enemy that is left in this world is Haqqani network and Pakistan .
 
They couldn't win, but they still managed to ravage the land, its institutions and military.

I don't really think that's true. Pakistani Army & all the other institutions still are in control of Pakistan in every way, but this cannot be said about the US & the rest of the NATO forces in Afghanistan.
 
win?

we already won...

these terrorist are in Pakistan

Wasn't Pakistan accused of aiding the extremists in the first place? :what: Or are you saying the NATO forces let the terrorists infiltrate from Afghanistan to Pakistan?
 
My country does not call him that. Only the traitors of the Democratic Party call him that. If he becomes CIA chief, I hope the drone strikes triple and add B-2 bomber runs as well. The Haqqani Network in North Waziristan should be annihilated.

true true... but you got to admit his name sounds soooo much like betray-us haha
 
If the US & NATO forces cannot even stop the Taliban supporters infiltrating into the forces in Kabul (Afghan pilot shot 8 NATO troops), or if it employs security personnel that are Taliban supporters & let 500 Taliban out of a prison in Kandahar, it shows the US is losing badly in Afghanistan.
 
The objective behind wars has never been morality, but it is so funny to see people still believe that it matters who are the terrorists and who is aiding them :lol:

The ISI and the CIA are in fact enemy organizations, but prefer to fight each other with proxies, killing those that are caught inbetween. All my American friends tell me that the US is doing the job of India, but they don't realize that the US security and interests are undermined by the ISI more than by any other organization. They didn't have it classified as a terrorist organization for nothing.
 
So tough statements are to come out from both sides in near future, followed by more drones than usual. Though the relationship may get more strained, but I think it is not likely to evolve into an open war, because at the moment the US cannot afford another adventure in this region.
 
All terrorist group should be destroyed and terrorist should be brutally killed.Go US GO.Indian government should help USA in all possible manner and bring Russia, US and India closer that will help this war to continue. Winning WOT is important for world peace,destruction of TERRORIST and their SUPPORTIVE COUNTRY is important for world.WE support USA.
 
My country does not call him that. Only the traitors of the Democratic Party call him that. If he becomes CIA chief, I hope the drone strikes triple and add B-2 bomber runs as well. The Haqqani Network in North Waziristan should be annihilated.

And I hope your C-130s have to work overtime lifting the bodies of your dead soldiers back to US.

---------- Post added at 12:10 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:09 PM ----------

All terrorist group should be destroyed and terrorist should be brutally killed.Go US GO.Indian government should help USA in all possible manner and bring Russia, US and India closer that will help this war to continue. Winning WOT is important for world peace,destruction of TERRORIST and their SUPPORTIVE COUNTRY is important for world.WE support USA.

Now go and change your diapers, you have been watching too much of Tom cruise lately :lol:
 
The Trouble With Petraeus

Posted by Michael Cohen

So I'm still having a hard time getting my head around the fact that President Obama has chosen David Petraeus to be his new director of central intelligence. Was Joe Lieberman busy? Here's someone who became a public advocate, rather than advisor, during presidential deliberations on Afghanistan policy; someone who misled the President about the ability of the military to turn things over to the Afghan security forces by the summer 2011 and someone who repeatedly used media leaks and public media appearances to advocate for a counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan that by all accounts is failing spectacularly.

I mean I understand the concept of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer, but this is sort of ridiculous.

This issue, notwithstanding, my concern about this move is two-fold: one is that it continues the further militarization of our intelligence agencies, away from intel gathering to covert operations; and second I fear for the impact on Afghanistan policy.

On the first point, Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti have a smart article on how these moves continue the process of basically turning the agency into a militarized, operational arm of the Pentagon. So not only do you have someone at Langley who seems to be a big advocate of special operations; but you put someone at DoD (Leon Panetta) who built up the covert action capability at the CIA. Hard to imagine that either will suddenly slow down the cooperation between the two agencies on this front. And if one of the goals of the Obama Administration was to shift attention away from terrorism as the focus of US foreign policy I'm not sure how giving top national security jobs to the guy who built up the CIA's clandestine service over the past two years and the guy who managed the last two American wars achieves that goal. If anything it ensures that two of the Administration's top strategic thinkers (and I use those words guardedly) will have an intimate and perhaps overweening focus on terrorism as the focal point point of US national security policy.

Also it's worth remembering here that the CIA is primarily a civilian, espionage agency - not a hornet's nest of covert ops (no matter what Hollywood movies might tell you). How is Petraeus going to fare in that part of the job; managing the CIA's intel gathering mandate? Maybe this is the direction that the Administration wants to take the agency, but it does raise the very serious question of whether the Petraeus's likely focus on military operations and cooperation with DoD will have a deleterious impact on the intel-gathering part of the CIA's mandate. Does Petraeus have any track record of being able to effectively manage this fairly significant aspect of what the CIA does? Might be a question worth exploring at this confirmation hearings.

On Afghanistan, there is another more serious concern. While I am glad to see Petraeus out of day-to-day management of the war (if only because it would theoretically allow the White House to establish more control over the mission) I do wonder about the impact on the future of that policy.

Today there is something of a divide in the Obama Administration between those who think the time has come to being political reconciliation with the Taliban - and a more influential group that believes military pressure against the Taliban must be maintained and that the time is not right for negotiations. It appears, from the outside, that Petraeus comes down on the latter camp; believing that continued pressure will wring eventual concessions out of the Taliban.

It's worth asking what effect this will have on analysis about Afghanistan with the agency. Knowing that Petraeus is an advocate for a very specific policy choice in Afghanistan could have a potentially chilling effect on analysts in the agency. After all, there is some evidence that Petraeus has weighed in heavily on these matters in the past (the White House's December Af/Pak review comes to mind). How this affects the tenor and tone of intelligence analysis that gets passed up the chain of command to the White House and elsewhere is not an insignificant issue. It seems for the sake of Afghanistan policy that it might be better if the person in charge at Langley didn't have his thumb on the scale.

In the end, the White House seems to be adopting the view that it's better to have Petraues inside the tent pissing out, then pissing in. But there is a cost for doing so - and I'm not sure that the White House fully appreciates it.

So I hadn't quite realized how unpopular David Petraeus was in Pakistan until I read this piece in the New York Times today:

The appointment of Gen. David H. Petraeus as director of the Central Intelligence Agency puts him more squarely than ever in conflict with Pakistan, whose military leadership does not regard him as a friend and where he will now have direct control over the armed drone campaign that the Pakistani military says it wants stopped.

Pakistani and American officials said that General Petraeus’s selection could further inflame relations between the two nations, which are already at one of their lowest points, with recriminations over myriad issues aired publicly like never before.

The usually secretive leader of the Pakistani Army, Gen.Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, has made little secret of his distaste for General Petraeus, calling him a political general.

Now it almost goes without saying that the CIA's relationship with Pakistan is the most important US agency relationship to any other country in the world. And on a good day, that relationship stinks (a situation only further inflamed by the Davis incident and Pakistan's general disinclination to do anything helpful for the United States in regard to the war Afghanistan and fighting al Qaeda). But it does beg the question, will the Petraeus selection make that relationship better or worse?

Now in a sense perhaps we shouldn't dwell on the issue. After all, the US relationship with Pakistan is in terrible shape and I genuinely don't think there is a good way to improve upon it unless we dramatically shift US strategy in Afghanistan. But if Petraeus is being picked in part because of his knowledge of the operational arts; if those operational arts are most relevant when it comes to the US relationship with Pakistan and in particular the fight against al Qaeda; and if Petraeus is mistrusted by the Pakistanis . . . well then what exactly is the value added of putting Petraeus in the DCI job? I'm not asking the question in jest; behind some fuzzy notion of "leadership" I'm at a loss in understanding why Petraeus is the best person for the job, especially since there seem to be a number of indicators that would point to him being the wrong man (not to mention the fact that it's impossible to believe that anyone at the White House actually trusts him).

Aha, but perhaps I've missed David Petraeus's most obvious attribute - over to you Mr. President:

I'm also very pleased that Leon's work at the CIA will be carried on by one of our leading strategic thinkers and one of the finest military officers of our time, General David Petraeus.

Petraeus is one of our leading strategic thinkers? Interesting. Now clearly generals occasionally show some level of strategic enlightenment. Eisenhower comes to mind; so to does George Marshall, even Colin Powell for a brief moment - but field commanders? Isn't Petraeus's greatest skill on the tactical level? Where has he shown great strategic thinking? As a person who thought (among others) that the US not only could, but should conduct armed social work and nation building in Afghanistan, well I'm not sure that "great strategic thinker" is the description that comes to mind.

So aside from the obvious political advantage of keeping Petraeus inside the tent I'm just having hard time seeing why Petraues got picked . . . unless of course the political advantage is the reason why. But who would ever accuse the Obama Administration of putting the politics of foreign policy ahead of actual foreign policy decision-making?
 

Pakistan Affairs Latest Posts

Back
Top Bottom