The Obama administration announced on Monday there would be no pullout of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, but a poll released the next day indicated that the American people had already come to that conclusion.

The survey by the Clarus Research Group, conducted October 1-4, showed 68 percent of respondents believed the United States would neither win nor lose the war, but that it would go on without a resolution. Meanwhile the President continues to ponder a request for additional troops for Afghanistan, despite a warning from the American commander of the NATO mission there that the mission may fail without the reinforcements. General Stanley McChrystal last week also offered a pointed and public rebuttal to a strategy said to be under consideration at the White House of scaling back the mission in Afghanistan to focus on going after al-Qaeda, rather than defending the Afghan government from the insurgent Taliban forces. Vice President Joe Biden said at a meeting of NATO allies earlier this year that the United States would consider such a strategy.

But McChrystal called that idea "short-sighted" when he spoke last week at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. Asked by a member of the audience if he would support such a shift in strategy, McChrystal said, "The short answer is no. " He added, "You have to navigate from where you are, not where you wish to be. A strategy that does not leave Afghanistan in a stable position is probably a short-sighted strategy." McChrystal said any notion of abandoning efforts to bring stability and security to the nation and its government would be a mistake.

"A paper has been written that recommends that we use a plan called 'Chaosistan' and that we let Afghanistan become a Somalia-like haven of chaos that we simply manage from the outside," he said. Asked if a refusal to send more troops into the country would lead to failure in Afghanistan, McChrystal said, "I think if you don't align goals and resources you will have a significant problem. If we don't do that, we will."

Obama was said to be furious over McChrystal's comments when the President and the general met in private over the past weekend. But Obama has yet to announce a decision about the request to commit more units into the fighting in Afghanistan. Early this year he approved a personnel increase of 17,000. There are now 62,000 Americans in that country, and McChrystal's request for 30,000 to 40,000 more, if granted, would bring the troop level to near or beyond the 100,000 mark. Withdrawing from the eight-year old war is not among the options under consideration in the president's strategy review, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said on Monday.

"I don't think we have the option to leave," Gibbs told reporters. "That's quite clear." Yet recent polls have indicated a decline in public support for the war that began under President George W. Bush eight years ago this month after terrorists, reportedly based in Afghanistan, carried out the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Obama has called Afghanistan both the "good war" and the "necessary war" to contrast it with the war Bush launched against Iraq starting in March of 2003. Obama and other critics of the Iraq War have argued both that it was unnecessary and that it diverted military personnel and resources away from the effort to rout al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and create a stable regime there.

But even without a war on another front, America may have its hands full dealing with Afghanistan for a long time. Called "the graveyard of empires," the rugged land and its tribal populations have proved unconquerable to many an invading army, including Napoleon's in the 19th century and the Soviet Union's in the 1980s. Moscow's invasion in December of 1979 led to a 12-year war that bled the Russians militarily and financially and contributed to the collapse of the Soviet empire.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said the reassessment of America's role in Afghanistan is critical to the Obama presidency as well as to U.S. military strategy. "I believe that the decisions that the president will make for the next stage of the Afghanistan campaign will be among the most important of his presidency," Gates said. But strategists may have a hard time defining, let alone achieving, victory in the war now entering its ninth year.

Speaking at NATO headquarters in Brussels in March, Biden said a minimum definition would be an Afghanistan that is no longer a haven for terrorists, with a regime that can survive and provide for its own defense. Whether that goal is attainable and how long it will take to reach it is likely to be the subject of much debate in the months, and possibly years, to come.  

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DDW

October 08, 2009

173.74.213.85

Votes: +1

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It's very strange

How the people I know who voted for Obama and were so certain that he would solve this quagmire and pull our troops out and bring them home have nothing at all to say now; nothing at all. Typical.

David Stewart

October 15, 2009

71.145.163.91

Votes: +0

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Richard Maybury and term CHAOSTAN

Regarding McChrystal's reference to 'Chaosistan', the shorter word Chaostan was coined by investment writer Richard Maybury as far back as 1992. Maybury was mentioned in the Oct 19 Newsweek report that referred to a 1998 speech Maybury gave at a New Orleans investment conference, but Maybury has said that for at least 15 years he has heard rumors that his EARLY WARNING REPORT newsletter is circulated under the table in the Pentagon. He has written about Chaostan continually since 1992, and is regarded as the top expert about the subject. He is a friend of Ron Paul. I've read that speech. No wonder things are shaking up in the foreign policy establishment.

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