Obama, penny wise but strategically foolish on Afghanistan

Short the UK

Brown and Obama are an utter disgrace on Afghanistan, we have no coherent strategy and no serious communication with the public. They do not back up the troops, we watch while our soldiers are killed, knowing full well that our political leaders don't know what to do. It is a sub prime war led by a political elite that is choking on its own derivatives.

Dennis Churchill

“He has already placed his allies in a near-impossible situation...”
Selectively purchasing key players among his allies should keep them quiet. It works for the E.U.

strapworld

Commeth the hour commeth the ?

"YOU CAN" sounds so hollow now!
Isn't the world empty of leaders now?

Brown the self pitying man of cowardice.
Merkel who will not let her troops fight!
Sarkozi who pulled down the Berlin Wall!
Berlosconi who fiddled (with young girls) whilst doing nothing else.
The list goes on and on and on.

A challenge to fellow scibblers.

Name me ONE statesman/woman who would show real leadership at this so important time.

(Please do NOT suggest Cameron he is such a wet lettuce!)

Austin Barry

I suspect that the coming Israeli attack on Iran and the Hamas redoubts in Lebanon places Obama on the horns of a dilemma: should he commit more troops to the low level insurgency in Afghanistan or postpone deployment until early in the New Year when the Israeli attack is expected and the Middle East explodes. A tough choice for former community organiser.

Nicholas

You can cut six words out of your heading and it will still be true.

Snowman

Going to Afghanistan to kick the al-Qaida and their training camps out - fine, staying there to re-mould the country in our image - no good. This tribal, deeply orthodox land is unlikely to move as America has done ‘from barbarism to decadence without being touched by civilisation’ any time soon. That time may come, it hasn’t come yet.

roman lee

most of the western worlds leading politians are ex public sector workers who have never had to worry about doing a hard days work in there lives, so when things become really difficult as they tend to do in war, unless they can throw money at it they are up the creek. this sorry lot are the direct result of people letting them get away with it as long as it doesnt cost to much. our own lazy attitude to the running of the country will come to haunt us in spades. to the younger readers good luck you will need it.

Frank P

Wise words Austin

sebastian

Writing from the Middle East I'm particulary attentive to Austin's point. The US has a huge, but carefully inconspicuous, presence in the Gulf. Iranian aircraft on any retaliatory sortie would never leave their runways. Long range rockets are a possibility though. More possible still is Shi'ia insurrection in Bahrain and in KSA. There's no love lost between them and the Sunni rulers. Trouble could come from there along with a large spike in oil prices if the Straits of Hormuz were blocked and tankers - both for oil and for Qatar gas - were confined to port. Not hard to do. This could scupper the west's recovering economies. There are powerful incentives to containing Iran short of using force.
The Afghan issue is one partly of Pakistani survival - it shouldn't fall to mohammedan fundamentalism which seemed quite possible prior to Pakistan's civil war against them and their Pakistani supported allies. (It was looking very dicey.) And it's partly an issue of cost. This campaign isn't cheap despite Gordon Brown's efforts to underfund it. But has cost, will cost, in money, lives and reputation with little to show but a corrupt Afghan ruler and a prospect of years of inconclusive conflict. Will the electorate stand a costly but stale-mate war for much longer? Will it bankroll and guard a corrupt Afghan government? Can we win? And who's worth fighting for anyway there? These questions have little to do per se with Iran. This isn't to deny that both are a bloody nuisance, and as such they have much in common. But the world is full of bloody nuisances and the west can't deal with everything. So............is it Afghanistan for the next few years at great expense of one kind? Or Iran very soon and suddenly at great expense of another kind? If the US is in the Gulf in strength - which it is - it could probably already check any conventional Iranian military response to an anti-nuclear strike. The bugeted capability is there. Add to that, though, the vast costs of fighting yet more in that graveyard of armies - Afghanistan - and you can appreciate the slight dilemma.
It's not one I'd like to dwell on over the breakfast cornflakes. That said, Obama will have to decide - before other forces make the decision for him. You can linger over the cereal but you can't dither over a war.

oldtimer

Another ditherer. And bad for the US military as well as for his allies.

Alan Phillips

'bout time Brown told Obama to grow a pair...

Oh I forgot, he hasn't got any either!

Augustus

Does Obama understand Afghanistan? The extent of the civil war that's going on? How Afghan society works, and the split within the Pashtuns? Does he understand the valley mentality, where each community has been self-sufficient for hundreds of years without central government interference? Does he actually believe in the mission itself, or even in victory itself? Doesn't he know that even another 60,000 troops won't defeat al Qaeda? Doesn't he know that they don't specifically need a safe haven in Afghanistan, that they've got safe havens
in a dozen other countries, and they recruit worldwide? And doesn't he know that,
after decades of civil war, after fighting the Soviet Union, and after naturally deciding to stay, rather than flee the country as the urban middle class had done,
a rural mountain tribal people resent the US and NATO presence intervening in their lives? If Obama does actually know any of this, then he'll also know that he will have to apply a unique solution for each location, so with 34 provinces, that's 34 different solutions. Obama will be long gone as US President before Afghanistan and its central governing forces are ever stabilized.

TGF UKIP

To a great extent this fits exactly with the grand strategy of Obama and his politburo of like-minded Marxists - to destroy the American free enterprise system with an accumulation of entitlements and federal debt and to degrade US military and political power.

If the GOP doesn't get its act together and the Congress stays Democrat, stand by for large scale defence cuts "to pay for the priorities of the American people" post 2010.

David Preiser

Remarkable? I don't think so. He's been looking for an excuse for total withdrawal. This is just the latest angle. The more obvious track has already been taken up by your Mr. Brown: we won't waste the lives of our troops if we don't have the strategy to support them. Combine that with "ooh, the costs," and you have your recipe for returning Afghanistan to the Taliban, while enabling the President and the Prime Minister to save face, and blame Bush for not getting it right before.

The BBC has been calling for something like this for nearly two years, and the US media (other than Fox) will happily support anything He comes up with, dutifully explaining the reasons to the masses.

Of course, anyone not caught up in the Cult of Personality will remember that a key point of Campaign Obamessiah was that Iraq was the wrong war - a distraction - and we must focus on and win in Afghanistan. Bush was blamed for letting Iraq distract from success in Afghanistan all throughout last year's election. Now that President Obamessiah has to deal with it, he can easily dance around it all until he finds and excuse to get out entirely. Any desire for success in Afghanistan was just a big phony act for the election. And it worked.

Just about the only thing that turned out to be a moment of honesty during the election was when He told "Joe the Plumber" that He wanted to "take that wealth and spread it around". All the rest was window dressing.

It's no surprise at all that Afghanistan is something the President sees as something to cut out. No surprise at all.

Frank P

Dr Preiser

Correct.

Athanasios

We must look to the Catholic world of Angola and Mexico to show us the way! No one could deny that the Pope is the last hope to the modern world, and heaven is guaranteed afterwards.

Archie

Athanasios: I doubt that Mexico can teach the world anything. A huge proportion of its citizenry is teeming over the US border and any number of towns are riven with murderous drug wars: and have you ever been there? Enough said!

Watt Tyler

Did anyone see that picture of Barack Hussein bowing and scraping to the Japanese Emporer. If you are in the U.S., I would be interested to know what sort of reaction there was from veterans?

Frank P

Watt Tyler

Japanese and and Chinese Dhimmi-ing:

http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/enemies_foreign_domestic/if_a_us_president_had_jus.php

Watt Tyler

Thanks for the link, Frank P

(my favourite comment: "Wow...he really is SO much smarter than Bush!")