The President and Gates: Looking for results in Afghanistan or 'sending a message' ?

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Gates seems to be making the Nixonian 'American prestige' argument that the posturing of our troops in Afghanistan is more important than any concrete action and result . . .


from Adam Rawnsley at the Danger Room: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/10/gates-fight-afghan-war-to-deny-qaeda-propaganda-win/

SPEAKING alongside Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at a George Washington University forum moderated by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour and GWU professor Frank Sesno, Gates plead agnosticism as to whether al-Qaeda would move its headquarters from Pakistan to Afghanistan but said “what’s more important than that, in my view, is the message that it sends that empowers al Qaeda.”

The Afghanistan-Pakistan border area, Gates said, represents the “modern epicenter of jihad.” A place “where the Mujahedeen defeated the other superpower,” and in his estimation of the Taliban’s thinking, “they now have the opportunity to defeat a second superpower.”

Defining al-Qaeda as both an ideology and an organization, Gates said their ability to successfully “challenge not only the United States, but NATO — 42 nations and so on” on such a symbolically important battlefield would represent “a hugely empowering message” for an organization whose narrative has suffered much in the eight years since 9/11.

President Obama signaled a different view of our troops' role in Afghanistan in commenting on the 'leaked' McCrystal recommendation, Sept. 20 on Meet the Press . . .

"I'm not interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of being in Afghanistan or saving face or, in some way, you know, sending a message that America is here for the duration."

How much of the argument for continuing in Afghanistan will center on our troop presence and activity 'sending a message to al-Qaeda', as opposed to a strategy which expects concrete results from any future mission or escalation? What's more important? What message ARE we actually sending?

[Kolesar]

1. What would be the strategy with concrete results? eom

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3. I would think

. . . that prosecuting the search for remnants of the fugitive terror suspects associated with the 9-11 attacks in a more direct and 'law-enforcement' fashion (as opposed to the nation-building, massing of troops approach) would fall under the category of a supportable strategy which expects concrete results.

At any rate, there should be measurable goals and timetables for achieving them in any deployment of this size and scope.

[Kolesar]

6. That would deprive "our enemy" of the propagandistic victory

If they were still "on the run" from a sustained and well crafted hunt for Osama's Al Qaida.

I still cannot imagine what kind of stable government could exist in Afghanistan. We might just have to let the Taliban have free reign again and hope they don't last this time around. The public might reject them like a pustulent boil.

I think a lot of the problem is that bush took the CIA operatives out of Afghanistan in 2003 in preparation for his war on Iraq.

[ShortnFiery]

2. The President and Mr. "Amnesia" Iran-Contra: What possibly could go wrong?

:crazy:

Robert Gates was an integral part of the gun-running, drug-running, and death squad murders lumped under the heading of the Iran-Contra scandal. Gates started in Iran-contra as a stooge of William Casey, and continued under Bush the elder.

According to former CIA Director Robert Gates's memoir From the Shadows, the big expansion of the US covert operation in Afghanistan began in 1984. During this year, "the size of the CIA's covert program to help the Mujaheddin increased several times over," reaching a level of about $500 million in US and Saudi payments funneled through the Zia regime in Pakistan. As Gates recalled, "it was during this period <1985> that we began to learn of a significant increase in the number of Arab nationals from other countries who had traveled to Afghanistan to fight in the Holy War against the Soviets. They came from Syria, Iraq, Algeria, and elsewhere, and most fought with the Islamic fundamentalist Muj groups, particularly that headed by Abdul Resaul Sayyaf. We examined ways to increase their participation, perhaps in the form of some sort of 'international brigade,' but nothing came of it. Years later, these fundamentalist fighters trained by the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan would begin to show up around the world, from the Middle East to New York City, still fighting their Holy War only now including the United States among their enemies. Our mission was to push the Soviets out of Afghanistan. We expected a post-Soviet Afghanistan to be ugly, but never considered that it would become a haven for terrorists operating worldwide." (Gates 349) But the international brigade Gates talked about was in fact created as the group now known as al Qaeda. (Tarpley, 9/11 Synthetic Terror, pp.139-140 )

This is the same al Qaeda which provided the troupe of patsies, psychotics, and double agents (bin Laden, Atta, Moussaoui, etc.) which were used to pin the 9/11 attacks on Arabs and Moslems ­ instead of the US bankers' rogue network which actually carried out 9/11 for geopolitical reasons. Gates is up to his ears in the terror apparatus of this rogue network, the September criminals who created 9/11.

There can be no question of approving such a candidate. Even the Senate's willingness to hold hearings for so compromised a figure amounts to an obscene farce. In the recent election, Democrats campaigned against the rubber-stamp Republican Congress. These same Democrats dare not rubber stamp the Gates nomination now. In particular, Democratic presidential candidates in the Senate are reminded that if they fail to filibuster Gates, the aroused anti-war base of the Democratic Party will demand accountability on the campaign trail. We do not want bi-partisan sellouts, but rather a real opposition to the Bush regime and its crimes. Above all, we want 9/11 truth as the essential precondition for restoring lawful government.

Webster G. Tarpley
Washington DC

http://www.tarpley.net/

[bigtree]

4. I don't see much cohesion between the two

He may not be staying on long.

[Kolesar]

5. No "gun-running, drug-running, death squad murders" in your description of the AntiSoviet campaign

You have been posting about how much you hate Gates in several posts today. I was hoping that you would put a point on it, but you missed with this one.