The Prof
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I would hate to be in his position right now.
so would he
unfortunately, he is
I would hate to be in his position right now.
My confidence in him as a military lead is skyrocketing.
who cares about your personal proclivities?
OMG I cannot believe I missed that post.Indecision is not a good military trait.
Thousands of lives and billions of dollars are at stake.
Yes,lives are at stake....By indecision.
About the article by RightinNYC. Click on the link prof. You will see that same day, at 10 PM the whitehouse said it was a false report.
Why does he need to make a descision now? If you read the article we cannot even begin to deploy troops for a year anyways. He might as well weigh all his options and make the best decision he can by hearing all of the arguments. It is completely irrational to make a rushed decision in this case.
I completely disagree with anyone saying he does not have guts because he is actually taking time to make an informed descision with more than one persons opinion. It takes more guts to stand up to a general than to just give him everything he wants.
He does not "want out." He wants to make a smart decision.
One more thing; who is playing politics? The president by weighing different options from different people and trying to implement the best strategy, or the people who are trying to marginalize him by calling this "indecisive" when there is no reason for a rushed descision.
I believe Ambassador Eikenberry is raising urgent and relevant questions.
Although I agree that additional manpower is needed, I believe a full discussion needs to examine, among other things, the past experiences concerning Czarist, British, and Soviet forces in Afghanistan, the failure of earlier "surges" to bring about a stable outcome, and Afghanistan's historically decentralized framework in which tribal leaders/local institutions play a larger role than its central government. Former Soviet President Gorbachev's warning, while unpleasant, goes to the heart of the convergence of Afghanstan's history and lack of governance structure. The Soviets had much greater manpower and much freer operating constraints and still failed to pacify Afghanistan.
Currently, Kabul is defined by corruption, cronyism, and incompetence, if not leadership that may not adequately represent all of Afghanistan's various ethnic or tribal groups. Afghanistan remains closer to a failed state than a viable national unit. The leadership issue is one that the military planners need to address. In the wake of previous failed strategies, they have a genuine burden to address the issues as to why the previous troop surges in Afghanistan, including one from earlier this year, proved ineffective, why their earlier plans failed to foresee how events unfolded to date, why one should have confidence that the outcome this time around will be different given Afghanistan's historic experience and current dynamics. They need to identify who specifically will be the key tribal leaders whose efforts will be leveraged in implementing the plan and how reliable have they been in the past. They need to identify what local institutions will be relied upon to complement the efforts of the additional troops, among others.
The historic experience, failure of earlier troop surges, and, arguably worst of all, previous strategies' failure to come close to anticipating the overall evolution of events does not inspire much confidence. Neither do the realities associated with failed or failing states. As a result, difficult questions need to be raised and addressed.
The assumptions on which the strategy is based must fit reality. Those assumptions need to be sober, not excessively optimistic. The new strategy cannot simply be a "patch" that changes one or two variables but does not fit the current environment nor address issues raised by the historic and recent experience, otherwise it will rapidly become obsolete well short of achieving its goals as happened with the previous strategies. It also needs to specifically identify and address a wide range of contingencies.
Experience with failing or failed states with a history of highly fragmented leadership/multiplicity of tribal leaders with widely varied interests e.g., Somalia, illustrate the enormous difficulties involved in Afghanistan. Historic and recent experience in Afghanistan demonstrate the reality of those difficulties.
In the end, it seems to me that Ambassador Eikenberry is asking the difficult questions that need to be asked. It would be prudent for the President to give those questions and issues a thorough review in the planning exercise, even if the exercise requires some additional time.
And a decision will put tens of thousands of lives at stake.
Not something to be taken lightly.