Terror, War & Twilight (10/9/09)

Didja think you'd ever see the day when the Washington bleeping Post would be calling its deity an incompetent partisan hack who had not the foggiest notion of what he was doing or getting himself into when he put himself over as an Afghanistan hawk over the last two-plus years?:

In early March, after weeks of debate across a conference table in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, the participants in President Obama’s strategic review of the war in Afghanistan figured that the most contentious part of their discussions was behind them. Everyone, save Vice President Biden’s national security adviser, agreed that the United States needed to mount a comprehensive counterinsurgency mission to defeat the Taliban.

That conclusion, which was later endorsed by the president and members of his national security team, would become the first in a set of recommendations contained in an administration white paper outlining what Obama called “a comprehensive, new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Preventing al-Qaeda’s return to Afghanistan, the document stated, would require “executing and resourcing an integrated civilian-military counterinsurgency strategy.” …

To some civilians who participated in the strategic review, that conclusion was much less clear. Some took it as inevitable that more troops would be needed, but others thought the thrust of the new approach was to send over scores more diplomats and reconstruction experts. They figured a counterinsurgency mission could be accomplished with the forces already in the country, plus the 17,000 new troops Obama had authorized in February.

“It was easy to say, ‘Hey, I support COIN,’ because nobody had done the assessment of what it would really take, and nobody had thought through whether we want to do what it takes,” said one senior civilian administration official who participated in the review, using the shorthand for counterinsurgency.

The failure to reach a shared understanding of the resources required to execute the strategy has complicated the White House’s response to the grim assessment of the war by the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, forcing the president to decide, in effect, what his administration really meant when it endorsed a counterinsurgency plan. General Stanley A. McChrystal’s follow-up request for more forces, which presents a range of options but makes clear that the best chance of achieving the administration’s goals requires an additional 40,000 U.S. troops on top of the 68,000 who are already there, has given senior members of Obama’s national security team “a case of sticker shock,” the administration official said.

If I may summarize, the above could also be put like this: "Holy #$%^, you mean Bush was RIGHT?!?"  I don't know what else to conclude, personally.  I mean, sure, Obama was against the "Surge," thought it would fail, was a waste of resources and lives, could never succeed, Iraq was irretreivably lost and we should just admit defeat and leave the country to al Qaeda....except none of that happened.  Quite the comprehensive opposite, in fact.

Yet the same man spent the very time that Iraq was being salvaged and won advocating those very same tactics to be applied in Afghanistan.  Now, of course, Barry O was doing that so as not to come across during the campaign as the Ameriphobic weakling he revealed himself to be on Iraq, but one would think that a man of his alleged stupendous mental acumen would notice that the "Surge" tactics he rejected in Iraq yet embraced for Afghanistan - both for political expediency - actually worked, but also realize what it took to make them successful.

So, the latest sixty-four dollar question: How can Barack Obama be "surprised" that the general he appointed to implement his own COIN strategy in Afghanistan is requesting 40,000 additional troops when that is proportional to the additional boots on the ground that General Petraeus required to accomplish the same objective in Iraq?  How can The One have his head completely up his ass when there are so many sychophantic worshippers vying for the same annointed rectal holy ground?

Well, you know the saying - Stupid is as stupid does:

Though aides stress that the president’s final decision on any changes is still at least two weeks away, the emerging thinking suggests that he would be very unlikely to favor a large military increase of the kind being advocated by the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal…

Obama’s developing strategy on the Taliban will “not tolerate their return to power,” the senior official said in an interview with the Associated Press. But the U.S. would fight only to keep the Taliban from retaking control of Afghanistan’s central government — something it is now far from being capable of — and from giving renewed sanctuary in Afghanistan to al-Qaida, the official said…

Bowing to the reality that the Taliban is too ingrained in Afghanistan’s culture to be entirely defeated, the administration is prepared, as it has been for some time, to accept some Taliban role in parts of Afghanistan, the official said. That could mean paving the way for Taliban members willing to renounce violence to participate in a central government — though there has been little receptiveness to this among the Taliban. It might even mean ceding some regions of the country to the Taliban…

Obama kept returning to one question for his advisers: Who is our adversary?, the official said.

Translation: How do I get out of this mess?  Somebody please throw me a lifeline!

But wait - this White House even has an example they want to follow:

Some inside the White House have cited Hezbollah, the armed Lebanese political movement, as an example of what the Taliban could become. Hezbollah is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government, but the group has political support within Lebanon and participates, sometimes through intimidation, in the political process.

Some White House advisers have noted that although Hezbollah is a source of regional instability, it is not a threat to the United States. The senior administration official said the Hezbollah example has not been cited specifically to President Obama and has been raised only informally outside the Situation Room meetings.

“People who study Islamist movements have made the connection,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

The Hezbos aren't a threat, hmm?:

[T]he FBI’s been eyeing Hezbollah sleeper cells in Canada and even inside the U.S. for years now in anticipation that they’ll make a move if/when tensions with Iran come to a head. No less a figure than Bob Mueller testified before Congress that Hezbollah was caught smuggling people across the Mexican border. Fox News produced an entire special devoted to Hezbollah’s presence in the U.S. focusing on a cell in Charlotte, North Carolina.

And just for a litle historical perspective, remember the Beirut Marine barracks bombing in 1983?  That was the Hezbos' work.

I try to picture George Patton's reaction if FDR had panicked during the Battle of the Bulge and decided to "bow to the reality that the Nazis are too ingrained in German culture to be entirely defeated" and ordered a Western-front-wide halt at the German border to sue for peace talks with Hitler instead.  Then I picture taking Doc Brown's Delorian back to 1945, bringing Blood & Guts forward sixty-four years, and getting his take on Light-Bringer's latest "miracle".  I'm assuming General Patton would have the volcanic eloquence to describe this cowardly, dishonorable, hairbrained idea, because I'm frankly at a loss.

The London Times had an answer, though:

Some analysts say that the Taliban and Al Qaeda have actually grown closer since the first American bombs fell on the Shomali Plain north of Kabul eight years ago Tuesday.

“The kind of separation that existed between the Taliban and Al Qaeda in 2001 really doesn’t exist anymore,” said Anthony H. Cordesman, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who has advised General McChrystal. “You have much more ideological elements in the Taliban. In the east, they’re really mixed in with Al Qaeda.”

Frances Fragos Townsend, who was President George W. Bush’s homeland security adviser, said the two groups remained linked.

“It’s a dangerous argument to assume that the Taliban won’t revert to where they were pre-9/11 and provide Al Qaeda sanctuary,” she said. Referring to General McChrystal, she added, “If you don’t give him the troops he asked for and continue with the Predator strikes, you can kill them one at a time, but you’re not going to drain the swamp.”

Ditto Lara Logan of....CBS News:

And last, but certainly not least, this hardcore, rock-ribbed, right-wing conservative:

C'mon, Barry, you know the old saying: If you can't trust yourself, whom CAN you trust?