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White House Chorus: We Will Occupy South Asia for 'Long Time'
No Firm Plans for a US Exit in Afghanistan
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration sent a forceful public message Sunday that American military forces could remain in Afghanistan for a long time, seeking to blunt criticism that President Obama had sent the wrong signal in his war-strategy speech last week by projecting July 2011 as the start of a withdrawal.
In this photograph provided by 'Meet the Press,' Defense Secretary Robert Gates, left, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton appear with moderator David Gregory, right, in a taping of 'Meet the Press'' Saturday, Dec. 5, 2009 that is to air Sunday, Dec. 6, 2009, at the NBC studios in Washington.
(AP Photo/Meet The Press, William B. Plowman) In a flurry of coordinated television interviews, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other top administration officials said that any troop pullout beginning in July 2011 would be slow and that the Americans would only then be starting to transfer security responsibilities to Afghan forces under Mr. Obama's new plan.
The television appearances by the senior members of Mr. Obama's war council seemed to be part of a focused and determined effort to ease concerns about the president's emphasis on setting a date for reducing America's presence in Afghanistan after more than eight years of war.
"We have strategic interests in South Asia that should not be measured in terms of finite times," said Gen. James L. Jones, the president's national security adviser, speaking on CNN's "State of the Union." "We're going to be in the region for a long time."
Echoing General Jones, Mr. Gates played down the significance of the July 2011 target date.
"There isn't a deadline," Mr. Gates said on CBS's "Face the Nation." "What we have is a specific date on which we will begin transferring responsibility for security district by district, province by province in Afghanistan, to the Afghans."
On NBC's "Meet the Press," Mr. Gates said that under the plan, 100,000 American troops would be in Afghanistan in July 2011, and "some handful, or some small number, or whatever the conditions permit, will begin to withdraw at that time."
In his prime-time address at West Point on Tuesday, Mr. Obama said that even as he planned to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, his administration would "begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011."
The president's speech set off alarms inside Afghanistan and Pakistan, as some officials worried about an American pullout before Afghan troops were ready to fight the Taliban on their own. It also set off a barrage of criticism from Republicans that the president was setting an arbitrary withdrawal date that would embolden Taliban insurgents to wait the Americans out.
On Sunday, the administration's top civilian and military officials marched in lockstep in insisting that July 2011 was just the beginning, not the end, of a lengthy process. That date, General Jones said, is a "ramp" rather than a "cliff."
As they seek to explain the new war strategy, administration officials face the task of calibrating the message about America's commitments in Afghanistan to different audiences, foreign and domestic, each of whom wants to hear different things.
During weeks of wrenching internal debate, administration officials decided on the July 2011 benchmark in part to send a signal to Afghanistan's government that the clock was ticking for Afghan troops to take a greater role against the Taliban. The message was intended equally for domestic consumption: assuring skeptical Democratic lawmakers and many Americans that the United States military presence in Afghanistan was not open-ended.
But the White House has also faced sharp criticism from Republicans, who said it made little military sense to set a withdrawal date 18 months in the future because it handed the American strategy to the enemy.
The announcement of the July 2011 benchmark was also greeted with concern during private conversations among American officials and their counterparts in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and administration officials in recent days have acknowledged that they were surprised by the intensity of the anxiety among Afghan and Pakistani officials that the United States would beat a hasty retreat from the region.
Since the White House strategy was announced, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has publicly pledged to work with the United States to bolster Afghan forces. But he asked for patience and indicated that his country's military might not be ready in 18 months to take responsibility from American troops.
During his recent inaugural address, Mr. Karzai said that Afghan forces would be able to take charge of securing Afghan cities within three years, and could take responsibility for the rest of the country within five years.
So officials try a balancing act as they sell the Afghan strategy. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of United States Central Command, said Sunday that there was a natural "tension" between a message of resolve and the message of impatience after eight years of war. But he said the twin messages were not mutually exclusive.
Appearing on "Fox News Sunday," General Petraeus said that the Obama administration was not planning a "rush to the exits" in Afghanistan, and that depending on the security conditions there could be tens of thousands of American troops in Afghanistan for several years.
Both Mr. Gates and General Petraeus also have the job of easing concerns among military commanders about rigid withdrawal timetables. Mr. Gates has said in public that he opposed firm timelines, and during the administration's Afghanistan strategy review he insisted that any decisions about troop withdrawals be based on security conditions inside the country.
Administration officials on Sunday were also asked about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, the leader of the Qaeda network and the reason that the United States entered the war in Afghanistan in 2001.
Mr. Gates said it had been "years" since the United States had had reliable intelligence about Mr. bin Laden, but he said it was still the assumption of American intelligence agencies that he was hiding in North Waziristan, in Pakistan. General Jones said that Mr. bin Laden was believed to cross the border into Afghanistan occasionally, but he gave no further details about American assessments of his location.
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46 Comments so far
Show AllThe White House is a museum. The Pentagon is anti-Americans.
It is Monty Python brought to Americans live.
Come back to reality Americans. Dispense with them!
Got any advice on How to do it?
Ensure all D.C. restaurants serve only Broccoli?
Jim, as Raul Julia answered Redford's question in "Havana" about why the revolutionaries had to actually fight the Batista enforcers of American corporate empire, "They will not leave by asking NICELY".
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
PS neither would the British Empire, remember?
It took team Obama only a few days to jettison the nonsensical propaganda that the troops would begin coming home in 18 months and admit they'll be there in great numbers for a decade or more.
And the Obama supporters who were duped yet again are nowhere to be found.
Both these actions/inactions were 100% predictable.
Not all of us that voted for Obama did so because we wanted him in office or believed his BC. I voted for him in a desperate attempt to keep McCain from winning. In that, we were a success.
Congratulations.
The Obamabots are still here, now making stealth arguments (several layers inside their purported Obama criticisms) that "it's too early" to judge Obamastein's presidency, "there were reasons" for voting for Obamastein, and Obamastein doesn't set his administration's policies, his advisers do.
Who hired Obama's advisors?
If I kill somebody, then tell the judge my advisors told me to do it, I will go to jail or the gallows, not my advisors.
That's because you're one of the plebs.
"It took team Obama only a few days to jettison the nonsensical propaganda that the troops would begin coming home in 18 months and admit they'll be there in great numbers for a decade or more".
Cygnus, I wonder whether you listened to the President's speech. I for one realized immediately that the so-called "withdrawal of troops in 18 months" was full of holes; in other words a sham because it would all depend on "the situation on the ground".
If you intend to listen to any interview with Robert Gates or Hillary Clinton, be sure to wear your boots.
Rubber boots...and have a scoop shovel handy.
These war hawks are not even attempting to pretend that the U.S. is actually going to withdraw its troops. As James Jones stated "We're going to be in the region for a long time."
And just where exactly were the antiwar voices to offer their opposition to the administration's bellicose policies? This barrage of propaganda by the hawks was not simply seen on Fox "News"; the voices of the hawks were seen and heard throughout the other Sunday talk shows. Apparently the hawks took comfort in the fact that the network and cable shows would allow them to push their war message on the American public without any hint of a challenge by any doves whatsoever.
"They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason."-Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961], American writer
"Literature has invented a fiction which still inspires boys and old men and romanticists. Vague remembrances of Marathon and Thermopylae blend with medieval tales of chivalry. Pictures of hand-to-hand conflict according to the rules, of chivalrous reconciliations, of mutual honor and respect, move confusedly before the imagination. The sentiment and ethic of a method of war as extinct as the Stone Age are applied to what has long ago become a matter of cold-blooded calculation and organized butchery by machines."-Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson [1862-1932], English historian and political activist
Someone should put these quotes outside the recruiting offices. And to imagine that Hemingway had said what he said in that quote before the Vietnam war...
**The president's speech set off alarms inside Afghanistan and Pakistan, as some officials worried about an American pullout before Afghan troops were ready to fight the Taliban on their own.
--Notice how the NY Times doesn't report on the Af/Pak officials who want NATO troops and private contractors out of their countries immediately. I bet there are more of them than not.
**As they seek to explain the new war strategy, administration officials face the task of calibrating the message about America's commitments in Afghanistan to different audiences, foreign and domestic, each of whom wants to hear different things.
-- Poor wittle babies have to update their propaganda because the carefully spun lies Obama told the nation just last week need to be amended.
**But the White House has also faced sharp criticism from Republicans, who said it made little military sense to set a withdrawal date 18 months in the future because it handed the American strategy to the enemy.
--Of course no reporting whatsoever about what peace activists, those who hold the moral high ground and were right about almost everything for the past ten years demand.
Very good point, Cygnus: "Notice how the NY Times doesn't report on the Af/Pak officials who want NATO troops and private contractors out of their countries immediately. I bet there are more of them than not." I certainly won't take that bet.
No longer than the next real Commander-in-Chief's election: 1140 days to go!
It's going to take the total destruction of the Democrats, of Obama and his lackeys in congress and the return of the neo-fascist Republicans to power, for there even to be the remotest one-in-a-million chance that the Democrats can become progressive once again. That's how bad, how catastrophic, things have become in the United States.
I am not a big fan of breaking eggs, but this is not the omelette Dem voters ordered.
American imperialism will be everywhere in the world forcing it's elite fascist agenda down everyone's throats with torture, rape, theft, and murder as it is doing in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan and in other regions as well. Divest, Boycott, and Sanction the U.S.A. and Israel until they decide to join human civilization!!
I hate these war-mongers and representatives of the weapons industry. How horrible to lie and make things up so they can continue to kill and sell and sell and kill.
Joe
Listen people, we have to Boycott the mass media that is spewing out the war propaganada and the elite fascist messages....it is the only way to end their madness! The military industrial complex is another matter. Start a serious movement now to Boycott all American enterprises that support the war machine. Start with Fox and CNN as well as any other news outlet!!!
Great idea. Now what we need is to find a place on the web where people can log what companies they've notified that they'll be boycotting their products until they stop sponsoring the purveyors of war propaganda. That way anyone who is interested can find out how many people are participating in a boycott. Any ideas on where we could do this? I'm a non-tech web user; I tried to find a place to log a climate change boycott but couldn't come up with a site.
Somebody call the cops... a crime has been committed.
“Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski publishes a book [1997] in which he portrays the Eurasian landmass as the key to world power, and Central Asia with its vast oil reserves as the key to domination of Eurasia…’The attitude of the American public toward the external projection of American power has been much more ambivalent. The public supported America’s engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.’, he says.
Because of popular resistance to US military expansionism, his Central Asian strategy can not be implemented ‘except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat.’"
-The Terror Timeline by Paul Thompson p.333
Brzezinski and Kissinger - both foreign born, having somewhat of an identical ideology and worldview, but serving as advisors to presidents from different parties...and continuing to offer their "wisdom"...And yet there's this whole charade every four years of "electing" a president.
BTW, if your scree-name is in anyway related to Mohandas Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi), please note that the correct spelling is "Gandhi" (not "Ghandi" - a common mistake :)
Bring America Back !!!!
****Did all the Progs & Libs notice that last week, Sec State Hillary Clinton had another child !!!!
****Yes, Mrs Clinton adopted the Neocon password, the Logo,
the trademark of Prince Dick and King George==as she echoed loud and clear: "We are not going to 'cut and run' from
Afghanistan". FOX TV sent Hillary's new child bright red mittens; AIPAC sent it baby blue combat booties; the Congress sent Hillary a bill for wartime infant life insurance; and Hubby Bill sent in an application to become the US foreign agent of Afghan. Daddy Bill.
****This new addition for Mrs Clinton is fairly original for someone who lied about coming under gunfire in Baghdad, and whose accomplishment on Iran so far is her own words: "We will just obliterate them." !!!!
SO, DON'T CUT AND RUN FROM AFGHAN, BUT GET OUT OF IRAQ !
AND, STAY OUT OF IRAN !!!!!
This is truly disgusting. I think it's safe to say that Obama's mask has fallen off definitively, and there is no more pretense to fairness, justice, or humanity on the part of his Realpolitik-inspired administration. The neocon mafia set the agenda under Bushco, and we are still following it. It is time for massive boycotts, demonstrations, and strikes.
All War. All The Time. Forever.
So, Gates and Clinton appear on "Press The Meat". Gates presses the meat and splidges all over Clinton's dress (or is she wearing a pant suit?). Quick, we need a DNA test and a move for impeachment.
The wars won't end because the people who pay the politicians are making a killing off of all that killing.
I didn't vote "for Obama." I voted against Sarah Palin. As for how long we'll be in Afghanistan, probably longer than Obama's 4 year Presidency. We need to be working NOW on building support for a progressive candidate that isn't part of the corporate party, not as a "third party" candidate but as representative of a movement that will back her or him.
"We have strategic interests in South Asia that should not be measured in terms of finite times," said Gen. James L. Jones, the president's national security adviser, speaking on CNN's "State of the Union."
So did the USSR, but the USA was all up in arms when THEY occupied Afganistan...what makes the USA so special that they think they can plant their fat asses wherever the hell they want?
We should be thankful that Obama is already a one termer, and we will have another Dwight D Eisenhower in 2012. Let's stop all this BS about fascists coming to power. They already were in power at the beginning of this millennium. Actually they still are thanks to Hilary Rodham Klanton and some others. Some Rip Van Winkles need to wake up.
AD
The USA didn't seem to have any plans for ending the Korean War in 1952, but in 1953 with a GOP president we got a negotiated end to that war, not a military victory.
AD
Did you say that the Korean War had ended? Do you need a hug?
Obama was not as advertised. Was it deliberate or was he already outflanked? Doesn't really matter, does it? Young America get ready for slavehood.
The pipeline will be built.
>>>"We have strategic interests in South Asia that should not be measured in terms of finite times," said Gen. James L. Jones, the president's national security adviser...
Afghanistan became Af-Pak, and now it's South Asia? Or maybe that's what it was all along, and we're only hearing about it now? Perhaps it just slipped out? Afghanistan represents the western-most boundary of what is technically known as South Asia - which includes Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives (Burma is counted as part of South East Asia, which includes Philippines). Come to think of it, there has been no official presence of the US military in "South Asia" - other than in Afghanistan. For all their bickering among themselves, the South Asian nations have not permitted ANY western military base in their countries - other than in Afghanistan, of course. So this is an effort to fill that "void"?
China has long had an ongoing military relationship with Pakistan. Pakistan has long ago handed over a part of Kashmir under its control for use by the Chinese military - mainly to build a highway for its troop movement in western China, close to India. Now there are plans to upgrade this highway and to build a fibre-optic network AND an oil pipeline from western China into Pakistan. The pipeline will reach a Pakistani port, thus connecting land-locked western China to a sea port, courtesy Pakistan. And you know how it is when it comes to oil, gas and pipelines? The Americans (and the British and the French) are God's chosen people - even when "their" oil happens to be under other countries' sand...India has already been told to back off from its plan to build a gas pipeline from Iran through Pakistan - that would have benefited all three nations. Iran has gas, India and Pakistan need gas, Pakistan also needs the money which the Indians are willing to pay - for transit rights through Pakistan, BUT this sort of arrangement bypasses western oil companies. And if this sort of collaboration starts to improve relations between India and Pakistan, there would be less sales for the American, British and French weapons manufacturers. Overall, that's a big no-no.
The other area that gets mentioned is Africa. And with the increase of US military presence in South America (a whole bunch of new military bases in Colombia), there's much more than meets the common eye? Although each "theater" will have its outward reason (war on drugs, war on terror, etc.), the overarching theme is one of empire-building. Maybe preparing for the day when things get really messy - due to climate change, peak oil, resource depletion, and so on? Or it's part of the plans for a New World Order? Someone please tell me I'm being paranoid and reading too many conspiracy theories...
It's been less than a week and Obama's already pathetic excuse for a strategy in Afghanistan has been duck walked backward by several years, termed by Clinton and Gates merely a “process toward 'transition ', and limited to a 'conditionally based' transition at that, plus scripted into supposed 'demands' and ‘pressure’ to expand into war in Pakistan. At this rate, what will 6 months bring? War with ten countries and a 20 year timeframe?
The reason that Obama, Clinton and Gates are all having extreme difficulty defending this faux strategy is exactly the same ---
The key to understanding the impossibility of Obama’s dilemma is that he is trying to defend a Global Empire with American blood and treasure.
Obviously Obama will not articulate this reality, and thus his plan entails seminal incongruities, which are seen by a few, but sensed by the wider audience of Americans.
Obama has tried to gloss over these incongruities by using the historical techniques of Empires’ salesmen --- he has engendered fear by characterizing the enemy as a “spreading cancer”, or ‘falling dominos’ like communism --- but the real spreading cancer is the Global Empire that hired him to guilefully defend it with American blood and treasure.
Historically, the salesmanship of Empire has always been based on promising the domestic population that they will share the ‘spoils of war’, or the ‘safety of winning’, in return for fighting, and paying, for imperialist adventures.
But Obama, although a consummate salesman, will encounter increasing resistance from the American populus because of the unique incongruities of fighting and paying for a Global Empire with domestic dollars and dead, and without any benefits actually accruing to the American public.
Obama’s dilemma in selling and defending the escalation of war first in Afghanistan, and then in Central Asia and the greater Middle East, is precisely the same as his dilemma regarding his escalating defense of the very same Global Empire on Wall Street ---- that all the benefits are privatized and all the costs are socialized.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
"White House Chorus: We Will Occupy South Asia for 'Long Time'
No Firm Plans for a US Exit in Afghanistan"
That's the article's title, and NO kidding!
Want to learn about escalation? If you do, then you really want to make sure to read the following article.
Want to learn about the "LONG war"? If you do, then you also want to make sure to read this article.
Want good news? If you want that and not bad news, then you don't want to make sure to read the following article. BUT do it anyway.
"The Great Game: U.S., NATO War In Afghanistan
Fifty or more countries in a single war theater"
by Rick Rozoff, Stop NATO, rickrozoff.wordpress.com, Dec 5 2009
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16422
Here's an excellent and very important article to read about evidently many veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This reveals more very important information that I had not previously read in articles on the PTSD that many troops are suffering from and it being made plenty worse while located on military bases in the U.S. and needing very urgent and expert treatment, but getting treatment that I suppose can certainly make the troops' PTSD worse than it was from serving in the wars.
Dahr Jamail considerably quotes from a psychiatrist of 25 years of experience and who worked, while hired through a contracting company, at Camp Lejeune, and who was fired for being a real and caring psychiatrist. He has very important things to relate to readers and everyone should careful read his words.
"The Psychological Implosion of Our Soldiers"
by Dahr Jamail, Dec 7, 2009
http://www.truthout.org/1207092
I got that based on a copy at www.globalresearch.ca and wonder why we hardly ever seen articles by Dahr Jamail posted at CD anymore; it's been quite a long time, now, that CD's not posting any of his articles and he's now written plenty of important pieces on what the troops are going through on bases in the U.S. after having served in the wars. There seems to hardly ever be any articles on that topic by any authors at CD and I thought that there used to be one or more now and then. Dahr Jamail used to regularly have articles posted at CD; when he was writing for IPS, anyway.
See the Chris Hedges article....
O = W
KABUL, Afghanistan (AFP)--Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Tuesday that his country lacked the resources to fund its own security forces for the next 15 to 20 years.
"For 15 to 20 years, Afghanistan will not be able to sustain a force of that nature and capability with its own resources," Karzai told a joint news conference with visiting U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates.
He was speaking following talks with Gates on how Washington intends to implement a sweeping new war strategy to send 30,000 extra American troops to fight the Taliban, in a bid to start withdrawing U.S. forces from July 2011.
...or maybe in 2032...
So the US is going to be in Afghanistan for a very long time. At 1 million dollars a year per soldier having a hundred thousand soldiers in that country is going to finally bankrupt the US and they deserve it. The American hubris knows no bounds but it comes with its just desserts. I hope they have enjoyed their moment in the sun lording it over everyone else on earth because those days are numbered.
Unfortunately, if the US does go down, they'll take a whole bunch of others with them. Or, more likely, the elite in the US will survive or escape with their loot someplace else. Or they might start another war out of desperation. Or steal resources from others (Canada, watch out). What's happening in Afghanistan (South Asia) maybe the neocon approach to avoid an immediate collapse - because they never learned the lesson to stop digging when they're already in a hole. Maybe they think they are encircling Russia while laying the groundwork to grab the oil and gas in Central Asian countries. It doesn't help the average Joe in any way. The average Joe must, however, know what's happening and stop supporting the empire just because it feeds him in the short run.