Although the word is already out that Gen. Stanley McChrystal is about to submit a formal request to the White House to send more American troops to Afghanistan, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the Pentagon has told McChrystal to wait, perhaps to let the Obama administration reconsider its next move. —KA
The Wall Street Journal:
The administration’s call for a further strategic review—which official said could take weeks—comes as military commanders in the field say the campaign is running out of time and U.S. congressional and public support for the war is flagging.
After weeks of speculation, details of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s report on Afghanistan were released. What’s striking about his assessment, WSJ’s Peter Spiegel reports, is the urgency of his message.
In a new assessment of the war submitted to the Pentagon last month and made public Monday, Gen. McChrystal wrote that if the Taliban insurgency’s momentum isn’t reversed in the next 12 months, defeating it may no longer be possible. “Time matters; we must act now to reverse the negative trends and demonstrate progress,” Gen. McChrystal wrote in a “Commander’s Summary” at the start of the assessment.
The senior defense official said the reviews are scheduled to be completed within the next few weeks. “There’s a danger if you do this too quickly,” he said. “But we all feel the sense of urgency.”
[...] Geoff Morrell, a spokesman for Mr. Gates, acknowledged that the defense secretary and other top officials are “working through the process” of how Gen. McChrystal’s request will be submitted.
Gen. McChrystal’s call for quick action appears to be increasingly at odds with comments from President Barack Obama, who has insisted in recent days that he won’t be rushed into approving more U.S. troops for the war.
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By KDelphi, September 24, 2009 at 8:23 pm Link to this comment
General McChrystal is a war criminal.
Good links PSSmith, ands here ‘s another counterpunch article:
http://www.counterpunch.org/jacobs09222009.html
Ron Jacobs, 9/23/09
“...There is a sentence in the report that is laughably ironic and represents the fantastical foundation on which the report is built. That sentence reads: “We must never confuse the situation as it stands with the one we desire..” Yet, this is exactly what the paper does. Its primary impetus is one that targets the Afghan population’s perception of the foreign military presence in their land. It defines the US and NATO occupation of Afghanistan as different from the previous Soviet occupation, as if the 2001 invasion and the subsequent eight years of Washington’s war had not killed thousands of Afghans, thereby stoking the resentment of the local population and consequently increase support for the resistance. ....
...In short, the strategy outlined in the McChrystal paper is just another remake of standard counterinsurgency strategies. Despite its newspeak regarding the need to change strategies and its occasionally dire tone in terms of the threat to Washington’s success in the country, its true conclusion is that in order for Washington to win its war is by increasing troops, stepping up covert and black ops, and changing the perception of the war on the home front while trying to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people.”
The only way out of this quadmire, per usual, is a draft—but this time, no exclusions, no deferrements, and the sons and daughters of DC political elites go first.
If “young people” are so crazy about Obama lets see how much they like him after they get a draft card in the mail with no college deferrments.
It is indeed a shame that that is what it takes to get people to give a damn. But it seems to hold true. Look at how resistance to Vietnam droppped off after the draft was cancelled.
Only one of McChrystla’s war crimes:
http://socialistworker.org/2009/05/19/commander-of-cover-up
“... McChrystal, whose background is in the nefarious and shadowy world of “black ops,” is that his actions in the Tillman cover-up feel emblematic instead of exceptional….
When an anonymous Army interrogator “at great personal risk” blew the whistle to Esquire in August 2006 on an extensive torture enterprise at Camp Nama, he described the then-unknown McChrystal as being an overseer who knew the ugly truth. Torture at Camp Nama included using ice water to induce hypothermia. It was not a rogue operation unless we consider generals like McChrystal “rogues.” As Esquire reported:
Once, somebody brought it up with the colonel. “Will [the Red Cross] ever be allowed in here?” And he said absolutely not. He had this directly from General McChrystal and the Pentagon that there’s no way that the Red Cross could get in—they won’t have access, and they never will. This facility was completely closed off to anybody investigating, even Army investigators. ....
...Later in the piece, when asked where the colonel was getting his orders from, the interrogator said, “I believe it was a two-star general. I believe his name was Gen. McChrystal. I saw him there a couple of times.”
Dave Zirin
Report thisBy rental, September 22, 2009 at 9:29 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
What to do obama ....more troops or resign…..
Report thisBy Jean Gerard, September 22, 2009 at 5:00 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Rush or not, McChrystal’s goals read like a sure-fire mission impossible—every element of nation-building was itemized. Some slight attention was paid to difficulty and danger due to cultural differences and misunderstantings,etc. The entire charade was made to appear possible—by killing more people, of course! But as a matter of fact, his list is a bald-faced pipe-dream, everything considered.
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