Obama Afghan strategy to stress non-military role

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.khaleejtimes.ae/DisplayArticle08.asp?xfile=data/international/2009/January/international_January1608.xml§ion=international

(Reuters)

28 January 2009

WASHINGTON - U.S. President Barack Obama will press Afghan President Hamid Karzai to extend government control beyond the capital and fight corruption under a new U.S. policy with a “significant non-military component,” a White House official said on Wednesday.

The White House is reviewing all aspects of Afghan policy and Obama is expected to discuss it with military chiefs at the Pentagon later in the day.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates this week named Afghanistan as the new administration’s greatest military challenge. The United States is considering almost doubling its force to more than 60,000 to battle an intensifying insurgency.

Obama is focused on a “more-for-more” strategy, said a White House official who asked not to be named.

[Peace Patriot]

1. "Aides Say Obama's Afghan Aims Elevate War Over Development"

I'm looking at the front page of the NYT today, print version. That's what it says.

by Helene Cooper and Thom Shanker 1/28, 2009

Sorry, don't have the url. My possessing a copy of the NYT is an accident. I've been boycotting them ever since Judith Miller.

Anyhoo...what to make of these diametrically opposite headlines?

[Peace Patriot]

2. Oh, man, have we got a hot one! Get this! (Is NYT already trying to sabotage Obama?)

Later in Khaleej article:

"The New York Times on Wednesday said a new U.S. approach to Afghanistan would emphasize war over development. The White House official said it was premature to suggest that Obama had reached any such conclusion.

“'There is no purely military solution to the challenge in Afghanistan so there will be a significant non-military component to anything that we seek to undertake,' the White House official said.

"Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman also disputed elements of the New York Times story, which said it was not clear if Obama intended to support Karzai in a reelection bid.

“'That story, to me, seemed to suggest that we had some sort of view on the specific outcome of the election in Afghanistan. I don’t believe that to be true,' he said."

[Peace Patriot]

3. The opposing views on war vs. dev'ment are both coming from anonymous officials

in the administration. The NYT's anon source(s) said that Obama was going to put the burden of non-military development on EU allies, so the US can concentrate on fighting insurgents. It mentions Gates saying they will double US troop levels to 60,000 done slowly over the year. And that's about it, as to justification of the headline ('war over development'). The rest of the story doesn't really support it.

In the NYT article, Biden and Holbrook are both cited, with Biden hostile to Karzai (apparently long standing hostility, since a Biden visit there), and Holbrook tasked with pressuring Karzai to arrest Karzai's drug trafficking brother, and clean up corruption in Kabul. It also mentions, rather menacingly, that US-trained Afghan generals/army pose a threat to Karzai. And it says that US continued support for Karzai is questionable (anon source).

Deja vu. I've just read James Douglass' book, "JFK and the Unspeakable," and this all sounds so much like the divisions in the JFK government on Vietnam, partly over our puppet Diem and his very troublesome brother, with the US-trained So. Vietnamese military poised to carry out a CIA-instigated coup, the escalation of US troops (not to these levels, though--yet), the unclear objectives, the difficulties JFK had with people lying to him and disobeying him (especially ambassador Lodge), that I just want to weep, at the uncanny resemblance, and what this may mean as to yet another US military quagmire (and the horrendous impacts on civilians). No doubt, too, the US military wants more of a dictator-type, someone less concerned with Afghan independence and sovereignty--as the CIA and the military wanted in Vietnam as well. The CIA, Lodge and the Pentagon (but not McNamara) were fucking JFK over in Vietnam, and trying to force him into troop escalations. His resistance to it, and determination to pull out of Vietnam, was an important part of the motives for the CIA murdering JFK. Afghanistan is a much more advanced mess than Vietnam was, with JFK as president, but the similarities are haunting.

And just as in Vietnam, our purpose, our legitimacy in killing people, our sinking into the quicksand of a completely different culture, our big military presence in a foreign land--all because the Bushwhacks refused the Taliban's offer to turn over OBL--is appalling. There is no one we can kill in Afghanistan that will make us "safer"--NO ONE! There is no military solution in Afghanistan, just as their wasn't in Vietnam. If Alexander the Great couldn't conquer the Afghan tribes, and China couldn't conquer Vietnam, what makes us think that we can? It is hubris, arrogance and, above all, war profiteering, and it is nuts. But if Obama ever comes to that realization--as JFK did--and tries to get us out of there, will he suffer the same fate as JFK, or perhaps just be Diebolded in 2012? (--same purpose, more updated method).

Clearly, the NYT is on the side of the Dark Lords of War Profiteering, and is already trying to fuck up Obama's policy, or is permitting someone to use their front page for that purpose. Ye Gods! What a rotten enterprise the NYT has become! I remember their glory days as journalists, with the publication of the Pentagon Papers. And they have gotten me very upset.

[bigtree]

4. then there's the other report that says they're dropping nation-building for warfare