Council split complicates Obama's Afghan decision

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

Source: AP

By PHILIP ELLIOTT, Associated Press Writer Philip Elliott, Associated Press Writer – Thu Oct 1, 10:18 am ET
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is confronting a split among his closest advisers on Afghanistan, reflecting divisions in his own party over whether to send in thousands more U.S. troops and complicating his efforts to adopt a war policy he can sell to a public grown weary of the 8-year-old conflict.

With top military commanders and congressional Republicans pushing for a troop increase, Obama pressed key members of his national security team Wednesday for their views during an intense, three-hour session in a packed White House Situation Room.

The meeting didn't include specific discussions of troop levels, a senior administration official said. At its conclusion, Obama reminded the crowd that he hadn't reached a decision and that his war council should return twice next week with more details and ideas, the official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private deliberations.

The talks revealed the emerging fault lines within the administration, with military commanders solidly behind the request for additional troops and other key officials divided.



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091001/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_us_afghanistan

[thunder rising]

1. emerging fault lines? How about insisting on including all sides of the debate. I love it.

[Selena Harris]

3. Fault lines?

How about emerging RESPONSIBILITY lines??

[rayofreason]

2. Hmm....

...quoting an unnamed "senior administration official"

Is this a case of those who know don't say, those who say don't know? If not, is the Administration concerned with info leaking one day after a top-shelf meeting?

[Braulio]

4. Ponder what to do

One could guess they're signaling the decision is very hard to make, and they're weighing every factor very carefully. I'm opposed to all these wars, which I think are a result of American exceptionalism, and tendency to want to be an imperial power (most Americans ARE imperialists, they think somehow they ought to lord it over the galaxy, but they don't do it consciously, this is an attitude shared by both left and right wingers, it's just that each side has their own pet cause and reasons to go intervene in other nations' affairs).

Americans just need to think hard to figure out why they should stay on and on, fighting their wars, because they're so imbued with their own subsconcious need to stick their noses elsewhere. And this is the reason why these guys in the White House are going to sit there and argue endlessly over something that a person with a clear thinking head can see is so easy to do: the USA ought to get the hell out of Afghanistan, Iraq, and so on.

These "Bush" wars are a result of a very ill-thought US Middle East policy driven largely by the US need to please lobbies/special interests which benefit from wars which pit the USA versus Muslims. And I put "Bush" in because it should be clear the Democrats in Congress (ie Hillary et al) backed these wars, and continue to make the right noises to please the Israel lobby, the Military Industrial Complex, and the brainwashed lemings who think the US should fight on just to make sure people respect its military might.

If you're American, don't feel too bad about this problem, it's something anybody else would have if they could be an 900 lb bully/gorilla with focused special interest group which have a lot of influence over the government (as the lobbies I mentioned before have over America's).