Military growing impatient with Obama on Afghanistan

Source: McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Six months after it announced its strategy for Afghanistan, the Obama administration is sending mixed signals about its objectives there and how many troops are needed to achieve them.

The conflicting messages are drawing increasing ire from U.S. commanders in Afghanistan and frustrating military leaders, who're trying to figure out how to demonstrate that they're making progress in the 12-18 months that the administration has given them.

Adding to the frustration, according to officials in Kabul and Washington, are White House and Pentagon directives made over the last six weeks that Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, not submit his request for as many as 45,000 additional troops because the administration isn't ready for it.

In the last two weeks, top administration leaders have suggested that more American troops will be sent to Afghanistan, and then called that suggestion "premature." Earlier this month, Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that "time is not on our side"; on Thursday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates urged the public "to take a deep breath."

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/75702.html

of blindly going forward. Thought is required at this point, not action.

Just 'maybe' we shouldn't even be there.

while your Messiah diddly daddles on a war that he himself called a "war of necessity."

Thank the gods Obama wasn't President during World War II.

No more dilly-dallying. Just bring them home.

"Messiah" is a RW framing of the president. Have you gone to the dark side or are you in the wrong place?

Do a DU search on her posts and you will see how this poster berates other posters for being less than enthusiastic.

BTW, the Indiana National Guard is in Afghanistan so this is more than just an academic issue to me. People are dying!

NO ONE SAID THIS IS MERELY AN ACADEMIC ISSUE!!!

YOU are suggesting the same tactic utilized by the USA during the 80's (PULL-OUT) EXCEPT at that time we did a proxy war rather than WAR.

NOW, you are suggesting we completely abandon a nation WE DESTROYED?

I am not talking, "academic",...I am talking about OUR OBLIGATION TO REBUILD.

You think we can rebuild without providing security?

Stop doing the "either/or" terms of those you condemn every damn day and START being realistic and practical.

If our military is directed to secure the rebuilding of that nation, they will,...they know how to do that.

Our job is to ensure the Afghan people are given the money to rebuild their own nation: not the war lords or the private contractors who are BOTH destructive.

There are somewhat over 60,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan now. With about 23 million Afghanis, they are outnumbered about 380 to 1. If you add 45,000 troops, they would be outnumbered 220 to 1.

Even if you assume that only the Pashtuns are hostile, they will be outnumbered by about 100 to 1.

Plus it is a landlocked country, with supplies coming in via Russia or Pakistan. It is either very expensive to supply them by air, or very dangerous on the ground through Pakistan or through northern Afghanistan.

The status quo is unacceptable.

"I mean, the drug, muutions, and mercenary profits for Republicon cronies were just amazing. Lib-ruls can't do nothing profitable. Smirk."

- xCommander AWOL (R)

Oh, wait...it didn't. But I don't recall any "military growing impatient" or "military frustrated" reports about not finding the WMDs that Bush and Cheney swore Saddam had. So let's see, six months into Obama's administration policy on Afghanistan and the military is growing impatient with his policies; six years of Bush administration lies and no gripe whatsoever...

lets just get the hell out of both places.

.

nt

My nephew is deployed in Afghanistan -- he and his troops are spread very thin and routinely work 12-16 hour days getting 4-5 hours of sleep if he's lucky. Obama either needs to send more troops to provide support and relief to those in country or bring them home. I prefer the latter. Maintaining the present course only guaranteers that the US will fail even more spectacularly than the Russians did.

We want them home, but the Republicans and other idiots would call it "cut-and-run". However, not matter how they might spin it, it's BushCo*s failed war, not Obama's. We should have left as soon as the Taliban was out of power.

If the Republicans want to go over and fight, let 'em. But only as long as they're willing to fund it, too. Who doesn't want to see Rush, Hannity and Beck reporting from the front lines?

I am sorry for your nephew and sadened by the thousands of US troops in his situation. I still have friends in the military and I feel for them as well but always remember THAT is what US soldiers do, 12-16 hrs a day of war with at times little resources and no sleep. That has been going on since the birth of this nation.

Things must change in Afghanistan and the troops must leave as soon as possible BUT Afghans (non-Taliban) need to be reassured that we are not the same nation we were one year ago and we will not makepolitical decisions but have in mind the interest of those exploited by the Taliban. We are not Russia, maybe the Bush administration's nation but not now. Obama has lots of people handpicked to take care of both Afghanistan and Iraq. They are already making progress in Iraq (or at least that is what it seems) and now we all want the same for Afghanistan. Troops are indeed needed but a new strategy with more troops would be a great way to redeem the US and help those who want to live in peace in Afghanistan.

Need to check with the repubs and see how the media feels 1st...

I hope you are joking. They got us to where we are at right now and are getting us further from a comprehensive health care plan.

They need to recalibrate their objectives and limit their operations.

I'm online in a family chat right now looking at him on a webcam. Very tired looking.

He is the one that needs to make the decisions. Those folks in Iraq and Afghanistan follow his orders. They are the ones that live and die based on his judgement.

There is a whole command chain between the soldier in Afghanistan and Obama.

Most likely there is some Major or Colonel trying to look good, bucking for a promotion, between the soldier and Obama.

All that happens in Iraq and Afghanistan ultimately come back to the oval office. We hanged Japanese officers that were thousands of miles away from the war crimes that they were acuse of committing. We executed them because they were held as the responsible officer for the actions of their subordinates (even if thy had not ordered those actions).

Obama escalated the war, calling it a "war of necessity", and now he needs to follow through. Either provide the needed reinforcements to help our troops already under great stress, or he needs to pull them all out.

Can you imagine Obama as commander in chief of the British troops trapped at Dunkirk? Churchill didn't hesitate to rescue them!

My son is in Helmand province.

This crap about 'not ready to be asked' for more troops sucks bigime. Sounds like Shrub's MO: "The generals have all the troops they asked for" because they were told not to ask for more.

Grow a pair, Mr. President.

Churchill didn't hesitate to muster all the resources in Britain to rescue the troops. Obama would have hesitated.

Why can't they show som determination on these critical issues? Reminding me more and more of Big Dog's waffling.

call it the central front on terror and then get back to Afghanistan when we get a chance.

can really screw the pooch.

The bad part for the President is that his deliberation will be portrayed as timidity because he was so vocal during his campaign regarding raising troop levels in Vietnamistan. Of course, the military and their Congressional sycophants are going to "grow impatient" with President Obama. They ALWAYS want more troops, more weapons, more war wherever they can get it. DUH.

Tbe republicans are experts at transformational politics - they even managed to blame liberals for 911 and an important number of voters believe it. They have also convinced 10 or 20 million voters that FDR was responsible for great depression. With their non-stop media message that liberals are the cause of every problem, they will convince people that democrats are responsible for failures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

By having Obama stay on message that we are all one big happy family and we are one political party, he is not drawing enough distinction and differentiation and soon the voters will hold him responsible for all the failures of last 80 years.

Its hard to sit back and watch the train wreck after so much grass roots effort to get this man elected.

Either he starts showing some courage and directs speeches and lectures to the right people or we will continue to watch republicans get organized and quickly work their way back into power where all this bi-partisan BULLSHIT will be dispensed with, we will have NOTHING to show for 4 years and the legacy of American right-wing extremism will continue.

healthcare reform and the President is "reaching out" to the Republicans to help with that, we are operating in the Twilight Zone.

Obama is doing what Bush/Rumsfeld never did, leave the war to those who know how it is conducted. I am reading various books (for a class) about what went wrong in Iraq/Afghanistan and I am amazed at the amounts of people that came forward to BushCo. with concrete plans to run the war and their deep concerns about how it was conducted. They we all alarmed at the poor planing and all the cronies taking care of the war. Iraq was run by an ARMY of Brownies (Heck-of- a -job-Brown). The people that came forward were real americans that put politics aside to salvage what the prior clusterfuck administration was doing and not one person in the WH listen to them. Caution is needed indeed in the hopes that what was done horribly wrong can be taken back at least a bit.

These two wars aren't about us anymore but about those who are suffering as a result of having their countries destroyed because of some neoconservative dream.

fought on our home soil in modern times, we Americans view war as something abstract--a teevee show affecting others. Those who have family or friends who have been wounded, killed, or screwed up are the only ones who have experienced one of the true costs of any and every war.

Our naivete allows us to be manipulated into thinking that we are "saving" others or sowing the seeds of democracy, when in fact we are simply enforcing the laws of the empire.

The illusion of running the war in Vietnamistan or Iraq in a "better" or "more effective" way is just a parlor game for high-level administrators and career military types. It's one more distraction for the corporate media propagandists to use to make us think we're doing it better, but really we're doing the wrong thing better. Where's the sense in that?

Wartime is not fucking around time. If you sit around waiting to see which way the wind will blow, even more people will die without reason. Either send what is needed to overwhelm the enemy, or, if that won't happen for whatever reason, bring them home. But MAKE A DECISION.

Heard a General on TV say that we don't even have enough ammunition for our soldiers rifles. Our factories are shut down. We have to beg Brazil and Korea to manfacture some ammo.

Ya.. let's start another war.. that's a dandy idea. If Israel wants a war.. let them send their kids to fight it.

Stimulus package anyone ?

Last I checked, $787 Billion is a little more than a penny.

People say stuff without the slightest clue of anything. It satisfies them to be yipping and yapping.

projection

Dictionary: pro·jec·tion (prə-jĕk'shən) pronunciation

1. The act of projecting or the condition of being projected.
2. A thing or part that extends outward beyond a prevailing line or surface: spiky projections on top of a fence; a projection of land along the coast.
3. A plan for an anticipated course of action: “facilities are vital to the projection of U.S. force . . . in the Pacific” (Alan D. Romberg).
4. A prediction or an estimate of something in the future, based on present data or trends.
5.
1. The process of projecting a filmed image onto a screen or other viewing surface.
2. An image so projected.
6. Mathematics. The image of a geometric figure reproduced on a line, plane, or surface.
7. A system of intersecting lines, such as the grid of a map, on which part or all of the globe or another spherical surface is represented as a plane surface.
8. Psychology.
1. The attribution of one's own attitudes, feelings, or suppositions to others: “Even trained anthropologists have been guilty of unconscious projection—of clothing the subjects of their research in theories brought with them into the field” (Alex Shoumatoff).
2. The attribution of one's own attitudes, feelings, or desires to someone or something as a naive or unconscious defense against anxiety or guilt.

Which is sad.

deliverd to the troops there. And you know those armored vehicles don't get good mileage.

Adding 45,000 more troops, at the rate that US Army/Marines burn through consumables, may simply not be feasible logistically.

at the criminally negligent stupidity of the prior administration

better.

going on for over 5 years.

The issue is simple: send more troops to help our over stretched troops in Afghanistan, or pull everyone out ASAP!

The war is unwinnable no matter what we do.

hearings at SFRC.

.
.
.

My friend asked, after some heated discussion regarding Obama's behavior;

"OK Dave, what happened to the last President that bucked his own military?"

My response

"You mean JFK?"

His response

"Exactly"

(sigh)