Bait-and-Switch in Afghanistan -- Petraeus' Latest Power Play

[Octafish]

Who's in command of the armed forces?

Petraeus' Latest Power Play

Bait-and-Switch in Afghanistan

By GARETH PORTER
CounterPunch
September 20, 2010

In interviews in recent weeks, Gen. David Petraeus has been taking a line on what will happen in mid-2011 that challenges President Barack Obama’s intention to begin a troop withdrawal from Afghanistan by that date. This new Petraeus line is the culmination of a brazen bait and switch maneuver on the war by the most powerful military commander in modern U.S. history.

It represents a new stage in the process by which Petraeus, abetted by his allies in the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen, has appropriated much of the power over decisions on war policy that rightly belongs to the commander-in-chief.

SNIP..

Alter reports precisely what happened in the climactic meeting of November 29, 2009:

Inside the Oval Office, Obama asked Petraeus, “David, tell menow, I want you to be honest with me. You can do this in 18months?”

“Sir, I’m confident we can train and hand over to the ANA in that time frame,” Petraeus replied.

“Good. No problem,” the president said. “If you can’t do the things you say you can in 18 months, then no one is going to suggest that we stay, right?”

“Yes, sir, in agreement,” Petraeus said.

Petraeus was agreeing that, if the counterinsurgency strategy was not going well at the end of the 18-months, he would not use that as an argument that he needed more time to demonstrate the success of the strategy. Obama was using a JFK-like tactic to “box in” Petraeus.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/porter09202010.html

I thought "We the People" meant civilians.

[Octafish]

1. Petraeus beats the drums for endless war in Afghanistan

Who is in command of the armed forces? Gates and Petraeus?

Petraeus beats the drums for endless war in Afghanistan

By Patrick Martin
WSWS.org
17 August 2010

In a series of interviews with the US media this weekend, General David Petraeus, the new US commander in Afghanistan, indicated that he is not compelled to withdraw any US troops in July 2011, despite the deadline set by President Obama last December.

Petraeus was clearly aiming his media blitz at the mounting domestic opposition to the US war in Afghanistan. He gave interviews to the New York Times and Washington Post and to several network television correspondents in Kabul, the Afghan capital, as well as making an extended appearance on the NBC television program “Meet the Press,” broadcast Sunday morning.

Each interview conveyed the same talking points, apparently worked out in advance with the Pentagon and White House. Petraeus claimed marginal “progress” in the Afghanistan war, praised the performance of the Afghan military and the government of President Hamid Karzai, and reiterated that the size and timing of future withdrawals of American troops would be “condition-based.”

In none of the interviews was Petraeus challenged about the goals of the US conquest and continued occupation of Afghanistan, or asked to address the revelations by the Internet-based WikiLeaks group about American military atrocities in that country. Instead, in each case, he was pressed for assurances that his military strategy was viable and that the war could be won, as though military success was the sole criterion for judging US policy in Afghanistan.

CONTINUED...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/aug2010/petr-a17.shtml

What's up with war? Anyone still give a damn?

If not, I have a real problem with this.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. And, the results will be "We just need more troops, more money, and more time."

And, he (or, his replacement)with the aid of the lapdog congress, will get them..unless we're completely broke.

[Octafish]

3. Runaway Defense Spending Not Winning Any Wars

This dog sniffs Vietnam all over again. Same class of lapdogs. Same class of contractors making a killing.

Runaway Defense Spending Not Winning Any Wars

By William Pfaff
TruthDig
Posted on Jun 22, 2010

In Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, the major places of military interest to the United States today (disregarding the hundreds of other places where American soldiers and agents or mercenaries have been dispatched to suppress one or another outbreak of ethnic, tribal, religious or territorial conflict, the United States having appointed itself the enemy of Disorder), there are indications that things are coming apart.

In Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal has chosen casual insubordination; the American-sponsored Afghan president talks of making peace with the Taliban enemy and ordering the United States and NATO to leave the country (just when billion-dollar lodes of lithium, gold and the other minerals a modern nation and its leaders covet have been discovered).

There are disputes among Kurds, Turks, Iranians and Iraqis in Iraq, which the U.S. had considered more or less pacified, if still government-free. There is trouble in Somalia, Yemen and the Sahara. You might think the United States was not the most powerful nation on Earth.

In May, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates delivered a number of largely unpublicized talks on defense spending, which has been at flood tide for a number of years now, and not just since the 2001 al-Qaida attacks on New York and Washington—although those events “opened a gusher in defense spending that nearly doubled the base budget over the last decade.” American arms spending is meant to make Americans safe from its problems, but this is not working.

The secretary said that “the gusher has been turned off, and will stay off for a good period of time.” Congressional attempts to turn off or reduce military spending over the years have consistently failed because military spending is an electorally irresistible cause, even when the results are irrational, or even approach the ludicrous.

CONTINUED...

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/runaway_defense_spending_not_winning_any_wars_20100622/

The mint's printing presses could run white-hot and there still wouldn't be enough money to satisfy the War Party.