YUCK - Keeba.org

Afghanistan Death Toll Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Los Angeles Times
KABUL, Afghanistan -- A roadside bomb killed four U.S. soldiers in eastern
Afghanistan yesterday, adding to the toll in what has already been the
conflict's deadliest month for Western forces. The latest deaths push the
number of coalition troops killed in July to at least 55 -- 30 of them
American.
August 6, 2009 - 4 U.S. Marines were killed
August 10, 2009 - 3 people died (unknown if they were US troops...)
August 18, 2009 - 2 American soldiers killed
August 19, 2009 - 6 US troops killed
UPDATE: Deaths in Afganistan:
US 49
Other NATO Troops 26
75 UPDATE: Deaths in Afganistan:
US 180
Other NATO Troops 127
TOTAL 307
September 1, 2009: 1st death of September 2009 Afghanistan Council split complicates Obama's Afghan decision
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.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and special Afghan and Pakistan
envoy Richard Holbrooke appeared to be leaning toward supporting a troop
increase, the official said.
White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and Gen. James Jones, Obama's
national security adviser, appeared to be less supportive, the official
said. Vice President Joe Biden, who attended the meeting, has been
reluctant to support a troop increase, favoring a strategy that directly
targets al-Qaida fighters who are believed to be hiding in Pakistan.
The meeting, the second of at least five Obama has planned as he reviews
his Afghanistan strategy, comes after a critical assessment of the war
effort from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the man he put in charge of the war
earlier this year. McChrystal declared that the U.S. would fail to meet its
objective of causing irreparable damage to Taliban militants and their al-
Qaida allies if the administration did not significantly increase American
forces.
McChrystal is widely believed to want to add between 30,000 and 40,000 to
the current U.S. force of 68,000.
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. David
Petraeus, the top commander for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, both
support McChrystal's strategy, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates is on the fence, the spokesman said.
White House officials say it may take weeks more before the president
decides whether to overhaul the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan or send more
troops.
Jones told senators in a classified briefing after the White House meeting
that the administration's evolving Afghanistan strategy depends in large
part on the outcome of the disputed Afghan election. Those decisions are
expected in a matter of weeks.
"It's not just the election but the reaction to the election that we'll be
watching for," said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I.
As Obama deliberates, key Democrats in Congress have begun voicing concern
about the U.S.-led effort in Afghanistan, questioning whether a further
commitment of blood and treasure is wise or necessary. The most vocal
support for continuing or even expanding the conflict comes from
Republicans.
Support for the war has fallen off sharply among Americans, with just more
than half now saying the conflict is not worth the fight.
___
Associated Press writers Steven R. Hurst, Lara Jakes, Pamela Hess and
Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.
Afghanistan Two Arguments for What to Do in Afghanistan
By PETER BERGEN AND LESLIE H. GELB Peter Bergen And Leslie H. Gelb -
October 1, 2009
Give It Time
Peter Bergen
In August, President Obama laid out the rationale for stepping up the fight
in Afghanistan: If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even
larger safe haven from which al-Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So
this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense
of our people. Obamas Af-Pak plan is, in essence, a countersanctuary
strategy that denies safe havens to the Taliban and al-Qaeda, with the
overriding goal of making America and its allies safer. Under Obama, the
Pentagon has already sent a surge of 21,000 troops to Afghanistan, and the
Administration is even weighing the possibility of deploying as many as
40,000 more. (See pictures of a photographer's personal journey through
war.)
This is a sound policy. If U.S. forces were not in Afghanistan, the
Taliban, with its al-Qaeda allies in tow, would seize control of the
country's south and east and might even take it over entirely. A senior
Afghan politician told me that the Taliban would be in Kabul within 24
hours without the presence of international forces. This is not because the
Taliban is so strong; generous estimates suggest it numbers no more than
20,000 fighters. It is because the Afghan government and the 90,000-man
Afghan army are still so weak.
The objections to an increased U.S. military commitment in South Asia rest
on a number of flawed assumptions. The first is that Afghans always treat
foreign forces as antibodies. In fact, poll after poll since the fall of
the Taliban has found that a majority of Afghans have a favorable view of
the international forces in their country. A BBC/ABC News poll conducted
this year, for instance, showed that 63% of Afghans have a favorable view
of the U.S. military. To those who say you cant trust polls taken in
Afghanistan, its worth noting that the same type of poll consistently finds
neighboring Pakistan to be one of the most anti-American countries in the
world.
Another common criticism is that Afghanistan is a cobbled-together
agglomeration of warring tribes and ethnic factions that is not amenable to
anything approaching nation-building. In fact, the first Afghan state
emerged with the Durrani Empire in 1747, making it a nation older than the
U.S. Afghans lack no sense of nationhood; rather, they have always been
ruled by a weak central state.
A third critique is that Afghanistan is simply too violent for anything
constituting success to happen there. This is highly misleading. While
violence is on the rise, it is nothing on the scale of what occurred during
the Iraq war - or even what happened in U.S. cities as recently as 1991,
when an American was statistically more likely to be killed than an Afghan
civilian was last year. Finally, critics of greater U.S. involvement
suggest that there is no realistic model for a successful end state in
Afghanistan. In fact, there is a good one relatively close at hand:
Afghanistan as it was in the 1970s, a country at peace internally and with
its neighbors, whose towering mountains and exotic peoples drew tourists
from around the world.
These flawed assumptions underlie the misguided argument that the war in
Afghanistan is unwinnable. Some voices have begun to advocate a much
smaller mission in Afghanistan, fewer troops and a decapitation strategy
aimed at militant leaders carried out by special forces and drone attacks.
Superficially, this sounds reasonable. But it has a back-to-the-future
flavor because it is more or less the exact same policy that the Bush
Administration followed in the first years of the occupation: a light
footprint of several thousand U.S. soldiers who were confined to
counterterrorism missions. That approach helped foster the resurgence of
the Taliban, which continues to receive material support from elements in
Pakistan. If a pared-down counterterrorism strategy works no better the
second time around, will we have to invade Afghanistan all over again in
the event of a spectacular Taliban comeback?
Having overthrown the ruling government in 2001, the U.S. has an obligation
to leave to Afghans a country that is somewhat stable. And a stabilized
Afghanistan is a necessary precondition for a peaceful South Asia, which is
today the epicenter of global terrorism and the most likely setting of a
nuclear war. Obamas Af-Pak plan has a real chance to achieve a stable
Afghanistan if it is given some time to work.
Bergen, a frequent visitor to Afghanistan since 1993, is the author of Holy
War, Inc. and The Osama bin Laden I Know.
See pictures of the battle in Afghanistan.
See pictures of Afghanistan's TV election.
Turn It Over
Leslie H. Gelb
Hawks on Afghan policy - those who favor defeating al-Qaeda through a full-
blown counterinsurgency strategy involving up to 40,000 more U.S. troops -
have divined a politically clever line of argument: Win or get out.
Its a phony choice. The hawks know there's no chance of our simply pulling
out of Afghanistan. That option isn't even on the White House table,
despite growing public desire to end the war. The true aim of the hawks, or
all-outers, in this maneuver is to discredit the real policy alternative -
the middle ground. Their ploy is to portray the middle way as simply a
cover for getting out. (See pictures of Gitmo detainees.)