Defense Secretary: Surge Not Our ‘Last Chance’
Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that if the surge goes badly, the military will probably move troops "out of harm's way." Why wait? He also said the surge is not the "last chance" to get it right in Iraq. Let's hope Congress stops quibbling and makes him wrong.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that if the surge goes badly, the military will probably move troops “out of harm’s way.” Why wait? He also said the surge is not the “last chance” to get it right in Iraq. Let’s hope Congress stops quibbling and makes him wrong.
Dig, Root, GrowLos Angeles Times:
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates acknowledged Tuesday that Pentagon planners were considering alternative war plans in case the current buildup of forces in Iraq failed to quell ongoing violence in Baghdad, saying the administration strategy “is not the last chance” to salvage the war-torn country.
Although he insisted the administration would give the new offensive the time and funding it needed, Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee that if the strategy did not show the hoped-for results, the military would probably shift its efforts to a strategy centered on moving U.S. troops “out of harm’s way.”
“I think that if this operation were not to succeed — and we clearly are hoping it will succeed, planning for it to succeed, allocating the resources for it to succeed — but I would tell you that I think I would be irresponsible if I weren’t thinking about what the alternatives might be if that didn’t happen,” Gates testified.
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Trump has lifted restraints on field commanders and let the military send more personnel to the Middle East.
Key to Barack Obama's surge is his expansion of targeted assassinations taking place under the guise of unmanned aerial drones operating in the Af-Pak region. Obama's senseless Afghanistan strategy will expand the use of targeted assassinations by aerial drones.
Something just doesn't add up about the stated logic of sending 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, says Jamal Dajani, who has a theory about the president's real reason for escalating the war.
Even if the surge works, why wouldn't al-Qaida -- or some like-minded group -- simply set up shop in Somalia? Or in Yemen, another failing state?
The other "peace candidate" in the 2008 Democratic primary isn't thrilled with the president's order to radically escalate the war in Afghanistan, no matter if there's an exit strategy: "What are we going to learn in 18 months that we haven't already learned in the last eight years?"Rep. Dennis Kucinich asks: "What are we going to learn in 18 months that we haven't already learned in the last eight years?"
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