And guess what? We won!
"US commanders are upbeat about Afghan war progress" by Robert Burns |
Associated Press, December 16, 2012
KABUL — US commanders are offering glowing reviews of their 2012 war
campaign, upbeat assessments that could be interpreted as leeway for
President Obama to order another round of troop withdrawals next summer.
If lies mean removing troops, let's do it! Let's just declare victory and get the hell out, 'eh?
Obama faces a tension between calls by Democrats and even some
Republicans to wind down the war more quickly and the military’s desire
to avoid a too-fast pullout that might squander hard-won sacrifices.
US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has not yet recommended to Obama a
specific pace of withdrawals for 2013. But during the Pentagon chief’s
two-day visit to the war zone this past week, commanders suggested that
things are going better than is generally believed by an American public
weary of war after 11 years.
We are not just weary of them, we hate and despise them now.
Major General Robert Abrams, for example, cited ‘‘astounding’’
progress in the Zaray district of Kandahar province, where the Taliban
once held sway. Abrams, the top coalition commander in southern
Afghanistan, said Afghan forces are now ‘‘dominating’’ in that district.
He told reporters he foresees a smaller coalition force by next
summer, but he was not recommending or predicting any US reductions. He
was arguing that Afghan forces are performing so well that they should
be able to hold their ground in 2013 with less coalition combat power.
No decision on 2013 US troop withdrawals is likely to be announced
until after Afghan President Hamid Karzai meets with Obama in Washington
in early January. The United States now has 66,000 troops in
Afghanistan.
Panetta announced in Kabul on Thursday that Karzai had agreed to go
to Washington the week of Jan. 7 to discuss the pace of withdrawals as
well as a US military role in his country after December 2014, when the
international coalition’s combat mission is to end.
Obama withdrew 23,000 US troops this year, following a drawdown of
10,000 in 2011. There have been calls in Congress for Obama to
accelerate the withdrawal next year, and from commanders’ own
assessments of progress, it appears such a speedup could be coming.
Commanders portrayed the Taliban as fraying and failing, though not defeated.
Related: An Undefeated Insurgency in Afghanistan
It's one of the things that happens when you live there.
Major General Larry Nicholson, the international coalition’s deputy
chief of staff for operations, said the Taliban had aspired to pull off a
series of high-level assassinations in 2012 and regain territory they
lost in 2011. ‘‘They have failed at every one’’ of those objectives,
Nicholson told reporters.
Nicholson also said that in the former Taliban stronghold of Helmand
province, US Marines are now complaining of boredom because there is so
little fighting for them to do.
They just have to watch their backs.
And if this is true WHY are they STILL THERE?
He was not arguing for further US troop reductions in 2013 but
observing that if Helmand is a model for Afghanistan, it may show that
coalition forces can step back and give Afghan forces the lead role
without sacrificing security and giving the Taliban new hope for a
revival.
--more--"
Related: Afghan attacks down, but insider threat rises
Also see: Afghan attacks down overall, insider threat rises
"US pushes allies to make good on Afghan pledges" by Bradley Klapper |
Associated Press, December 06, 2012
BRUSSELS — The Obama administration pressed its allies on Wednesday
to follow through on their pledges to Afghanistan’s security after most
international troops withdraw in 2014, fearful of being left with the
check in an era of austerity budgets and cutbacks.
At a summit in May, donors pledged $4.1 billion a year to support
Afghan forces from 2015 to 2017, firming up a key plank of the US
strategy to leave behind a secure Afghanistan. But many governments have
yet to come up with the cash.
Speaking at NATO headquarters, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton told allies it is ‘‘crucial for every nation to follow through
on their commitments, and for those who haven’t yet committed any
funding to do so.’’ To make her point, she invoked Afghanistan’s
troubled history of chasing out the Soviet Union in the 1980s only to
descend into civil war and the oppression of an extremist Taliban
government.
‘‘All of us here have an interest in ensuring this region does not
once again become a safe haven for international terrorists,’’ she said.
‘‘We cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of 1989 and disengage. That’s
why we made an enduring commitment, and it’s why we have to follow
through on it today, tomorrow, and for years to come.’’
Related:
"The U.S. government was well aware of the Taliban's reactionary program, yet it chose to back their rise to power in the mid-1990s. The creation of the Taliban was "actively encouraged by the ISI and the CIA,"
according to Selig Harrison, an expert on U.S. relations with Asia.
"The United States encouraged Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to support the
Taliban, certainly right up to their advance on Kabul," adds respected
journalist Ahmed Rashid. When the Taliban took power, State
Department spokesperson Glyn Davies said that he saw "nothing
objectionable" in the Taliban's plans to impose strict Islamic law,
and Senator Hank Brown, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations
Subcommittee on the Near East and South Asia, welcomed the new regime:
"The good part of what has happened is that one of the factions at last
seems capable of developing a new government in Afghanistan." "The
Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis. There will be Aramco [the consortium of oil companies that controlled Saudi oil], pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with that," said another U.S. diplomat in 1997."
She sure has an interesting take on what is a mistake. Maybe it was the clot.
For the United States, supporting Afghanistan’s army of about 230,000
men is also an issue of economics. Hoping to map the way out of an
unpopular war, the United States and NATO brought in dozens of other
countries earlier this year to build as broad a funding base as possible
for Afghanistan’s army. The argument was straightforward: Even $4
billion a year to prop up the Afghan military is far cheaper than
maintaining a foreign army in the country....
--more--"
Yup, war almost over but you will still be paying for it, Americans.
