Attacks on Remote Posts Highlight Risks in Afghanistan

[IndianaGreen]

Attacks on Remote Posts Highlight Risks in Afghanistan

By SABRINA TAVERNISE and SANGAR RAHIMI
Published: October 4, 2009

KABUL, Afghanistan — Insurgents attacked a pair of remote American military bases in Afghanistan over the weekend in a deadly battle that underscored the vulnerability of the kind of isolated bases that the top American commander there wants to scale back.

The commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, is pressing for a change in strategy that would shift troops to heavily populated centers to protect civilians and focus less on battling the insurgents in the hinterlands.

As though to reinforce his point, insurgents carried out a bold daylight strike on two bases on the Pakistani border, killing eight Americans and four Afghan security officers in the deadliest attack for American soldiers in more than a year, Afghan and American officials said Sunday.

The assault occurred less than 20 miles from the site of a similar attack that killed nine Americans last year, which had already become a cautionary tale at the Pentagon for how not to win the war in Afghanistan.

And it came as the debate within the administration over the war sharpened Sunday, as President Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, seemed to distance himself from General McChrystal, saying that he did not believe that Afghanistan was in “imminent danger of falling” to the Taliban.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/world/asia/05afghan.html?hp

[thunder rising]

1. Same shit the generals did in Vietnam. Put teaser size outposts to bait attacks and generate news

so they could demand escalation.

[EmeraldCityGrl]

2. Read in another report McChrystal was days away from moving these troops

to a more populated area. I'm not comfortable with McCrystal at all. I'm listening to Repub. Sen. Kyl on CNN tell us if anyone knows what's needed in Afghanistan it's McC.
Seems like McC is minipulating the media and I hope to God he's not creating the news.

[EmeraldCityGrl]

3. Comments from Gen. James Jones

Retired Gen. James Jones said that decisions on how best to stabilize Afghanistan and beat back the insurgency must extend beyond troop levels to development and governance. And the request by Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, for up to 40,000 more troops is just one of three key elements advisers must consider as they meet this week to plot the way ahead.
He added that it is "better for military advice to come up through the chain of command," rather than off a public stage, referring to McChrystal's speech in London last week making a case for more troops. But Jones also beat back suggestions that the open campaign could jeopardize the general's job.


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20091004/us-us-afghanistan/

[IndianaGreen]

4. Jones is now acting like a political hack in the White House

while McChrystal is thinking of the safety of the troops under his command.

Each day Obama spends consulting the gods, is a day in which our troops are getting killed or are seriously wounded. British commanders that served in Afghanistan, as well as a former ambassador to Kabul, all say that the war is already lost. Obama must fish or cut bait. Further delays are unacceptable.