Interesting article from the "AP of Pakistan"

[karynnj]

Stability in Pakistan is going to be a key consideration in the United States decision on a viable way forward in Afghanistan, Senator John Kerry said Sunday as he underlined the need to weigh regional implications of a larger American footprint in the war-torn country. “We need to also guarantee that the Taliban and our own presence don’t become a destabilizing factor with respect to Pakistan and their efforts to fight against their own Taliban as well as other extremist groups that threaten their government”, Kerry, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said.

Kerry said that President Barack Obama will decide on the future strategy on the basis of U.S national security interests and not domestic American politics. He argued that with the Afghan presidential election still undecided, it is too early to commit to U.S. commander General Stanely McChrystal’s proposal to add thousands of more troops to the mission.

< snip>
Kerry said there was legitimacy in the question about “whether or not a certain number of troops, depending on their mission, might drive people into Pakistan, and thereby present further difficulties in the western part of that country or even fuel the extremism there.

“That is a legitimate question. And it is raised by a number of Pakistanis and it’s one of the reasons why I wanted to come over here to talk to people on both sides of the border about that perception.”

http://www.app.com.pk/en_/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=88036&Itemid=1
This is a really thoughtful summary of things said that seems to capture the seriousness rather than going for the catchy one sentence spin.

[wisteria]

1. Thank you for posting. The American media spins things like no one else. n/t

[TayTay]

2. The profile on Gen. McCrystal in the NYTimes is also very good

and very complex. This is a general who was a very different commander in the early stages of the Iraq conflict a few years ago. His entire strategy has changed, as has his attitude toward how to conduct warfare.

I would recommend this article. This is such a complex subject.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/magazine/18Afghanistan-t.html

[karynnj]

3. Thanks for the recommendation - I'll read it

I agree with you this is incredibly complex and the more I read, the less I think I understand what they should do. The one thing I really think is that there is no obvious perfect solution. This really is an amazingly complex puzzle.

Senator Kerry's op-ed made the process of testing all the assumptions seem straight forward and his outline, which the hearings followed, created a framework. Within that framework, what was clear was that people holding different views, could defend them and were well intentioned - and every possibility had dangers. To me, the article on the interviews written in the Pakistani paper best showed the nuances and the difficulties they faced with any policy.

[TayTay]

5. Just so.

During the awful Bush years, people who expressed genuine doubt about what was going on in Iraq were relegated to the status of "cut and runners." Senators took to the floor to rail against others who merely wanted to discuss what was going on in Iraq to denounce them as near cowards and traitors. (Remember Sen. Allard in 2006 saying that Kerry was being "spun in the political winds" and how angry Kerry was in retort? ) This is not what should be going on in a real democracy and the lack of truthful debate hurt our country and hurt the mission in Iraq. (And this is a life or death cause for so many people.)

Debate is a wonderful thing. Secretary of State Clinton and SecDef Gates and so many others are not on one intractable side and Sen. Kerry and VP Biden and so forth on another intractable side. They are not "fighting" in the sense the media wants. The media wants to report this in the simplest possible terms as a "turf war" for the ear of the President with "democrats in disarray" again as a headline. This is simply not what is happening. Healthy argument and insight into a problem is not "disarray"; it is the needed discussion that we never had in the Bush years. I wish the media could report that, but only a small number of news outlets do.

The NYTimes article shows that Gen. McChrystal is not some blood-thirsty monster slaughtering civilians in Afghanistan. He is genuinely trying to figure out a way to safeguard Afghanis so that they can begin to rebuild infrastructure. From his point of view, he needs more troops to carry out the basics of that mission. (That mission is light years away from what he did in Iraq and show some serious "lessons learned" from our experience at war these past 8 years.) Sen. Kerry would not disagree with safeguarding the Afghani people. Kerry has serious reservations that the Afghani Govt is on the same page and invested in safeguarding their own people. He doesn't see evidence of that, he see corruption and outright fraud happening. Kerry believes this undermines, fundamentally, what McChrystal wants to do in such a way that it PREVENTS McChrystal from doing his stated job. Kerry believes the mission is un-doable, cannot be done, until the govt becomes a credible entity. That is the disagreement. It is hardly a simplistic "hawk" against "dove."

I have serious reservations about everything in Afghanistan. As stated on DUJK in many posts over the last few days, so do a lot of others. This is a terrible situation with no good answers. Kerry, I think, with the blessing of all the other players, is trying to get Karzai to resolve the election issue and get some sort of stability and credibility into his govt. Until that happens, we can't even think of adding troops. What good are more troops if the Afghan people remain unconvinced that they will help? What can the NATO forces do if the Afghanis believe that only the Taliban has shown a continuing interest in bringing about order and the semblance, however harsh and awful, of law and order? This is Karzai's call. It is no bad reflection on McChrystal and his desire to safeguard the Afghani people. And it is no bad thing for Sen. Kerry to point out that the United States cannot be seen as propping up a fake govt.

I wish everything didn't devolve into a fake "us against them" argument. It's childish and silly and set up to accommodate people who want to have "talking head" fights on cable tv. But it's not real.

[karynnj]

6. This is really insightful

I also realize that it is not just the media that fuels these battles pitting allies against allies. I also can see that I have personally done that. I am attempting to stop that - as of now. It hurts the country and Obama if any member of his cabinet does poorly - actually feeling justified when it happens in the case of one I didn't want is childish and wrong. (It also likely makes it harde to make other points I want to make.

[sandnsea]

4. Interview with Canada's Ambassador to Afghanistan

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20091015/ambassador_QandA_091015/20091015?hub=World

He seems to think we should give it more time.