Obama's escalating disaster

[IndianaGreen]

Obama's escalating disaster

October 7, 2009

The U.S. war on Afghanistan began eight years ago, and yet today, the U.S. seems further than ever from achieving its goals. The Obama administration is now embroiled in a debate over whether to carry out a further escalation on top of the 21,000 troops Barack Obama ordered to Afghanistan earlier this year.

Gareth Porter is an investigative journalist who writes regularly for Inter Press Service about U.S. foreign policy in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. His latest book is Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam.

He spoke to Eric Ruder about where the debate in the political and military establishment is headed, and what that will mean for Afghanistan.

WHAT'S THE intent behind Gen. Stanley McChrystal's report on Afghanistan? The tone of the report was much more pessimistic than past ones, and it was attached to a request for 40,000 more U.S. troops. Is this the Pentagon's attempt to demand something of Obama that he can't deliver and thus--as in the Vietnam era--shift blame for the crisis to "political leaders" who "tied the hands" of the military?

I'M VERY much persuaded that this is one of the things that McChrystal is thinking about. His report is so remarkably candid in terms of acknowledging the obstacles within Afghan society and the government to the success of any possible counterinsurgency war the U.S. might conceivably wage.

The report has to be considered an effort to paint a very pessimistic picture so that if, in fact, McChrystal is forced to go ahead with the troops he now has, or even if he gets more troops, he is able to point to the report that outlines a situation where failure, if it should occur, wasn't his fault. I think he suspects very strongly that the mission isn't going to work.

DO YOU think there's any chance that McChrystal will get the 40,000 additional troops?

I THINK there's zero chance he's going to get 40,000 troops. The figure is a tip-off that he's almost inviting rejection by Obama.

I suspect that he was already picking up clear signals from his contacts in Washington and in Florida at the Centcom command headquarters that Obama and some of his civilian advisers were very much disillusioned with the idea of fighting a long counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan.

I think that was certainly part of the context in which he wrote that assessment and asked for a number of troops so high that he must have known there was little chance he would actually get it.

http://socialistworker.org/2009/10/07/obamas-escalating-disaster