A Stalled Strategy & Doubts, even in the Military, that Afghanistan Can Be Won

[amborin]

McChrystal’s Fate in Limbo as He Prepares to Meet Obama

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s top commander in Afghanistan flew to Washington on Tuesday to find out whether he would be fired for remarks he and members of his staff made that were contemptuous of senior administration officials, laying bare the disarray and enmity in a foreign-policy team that is struggling with the war.

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The firestorm was fueled by increasing doubts — even in the military — that Afghanistan can be won and by crumbling public support for the nine-year war as American casualties rise.

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At a time when violence in Afghanistan is sharply rising and several central planks of the president’s strategy to “disrupt, dismantle and defeat” the Taliban and Al Qaeda have stalled, many of the president’s top advisers have continued to criticize one another to reporters and international allies alike, usually in private conversations, and almost always off the record.
“Yes, we do hear them disparage each other,” said a senior European diplomat who works closely with the United States on Afghanistan strategy. “It’s never good to hear that.”
Bruce O. Riedel, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution who helped the administration formulate its initial Afghan policy, added, “This flap shows once again that his team is not pulling together, but is engaging in backbiting.”

The many Afghanistan team conflicts include complaints from the American ambassador, Karl W. Eikenberry, about Richard C. Holbrooke, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, who has been portrayed by some as disruptive and whose relationship with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan chilled last year after difficult meetings following the August election. For his part, Ambassador Eikenberry has had his own tensions with the mercurial Mr. Karzai.
In one episode that dramatized the building animosities, Gen. James L. Jones, the national security adviser, wrote to Ambassador Eikenberry in February, sympathizing with his complaints about a visit Mr. Holbrooke had recently made to Afghanistan. In the note, which went out over unsecure channels, officials said, General Jones soothed the ambassador by suggesting that Mr. Holbrooke would soon be removed from his job.
The Jones note prompted Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to complain to Mr. Obama, and her support for Mr. Holbrooke has kept him in his job. In the article, which was posted on the magazine’s Web site on Tuesday, one of General McChrystal’s aides is quoted as referring to General Jones as a “clown.”
The infighting has been made more severe by the increasingly perilous situation on the ground. Violence in Afghanistan is on the rise. The mission to pacify Marja and Kandahar is far off track. And the effort to create a viable Afghan government is increasingly in doubt because of widespread corruption. Criticism is mounting on Capitol Hill, even among the president’s backers, and many allies have announced that they are looking for the exit, with others expected to do the same in the coming months.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/world/asia/23mcchrystal.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=all

[doc03]

1. Other that a few hundred less American lives lost

and few hundred billion less dollars spent what would be the difference in Afghanistan if we pulled today rather than in 2011?

[Selatius]

2. A draft lottery would solve this problem.

Because then everybody inside the White House would have to scream instead of whisper disparaging remarks about each other over the loud screams of angry anti-war protesters outside.

:silly: