July 11, 2009
Rethinking Strategy in Afghanistan
U.S. Officials Want More Afghan Forces to Fight Alongside Marines
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Play CBS Video Video U.S. Troops In Need The U.S. Marines pounded into Afghanistan's Helmand province to take back Taliban territory, but didn't have enough Afghan troops alongside them, which could be a problem. Kimberly Dozier reports.
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An Afghan soldier stands in front of a truck which was damaged when a suicide car bomber struck outside the main NATO base at the airport in Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan, Monday July 6, 2009. (AP Photo/Allauddin Khan)
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Fast Facts Afghanistan Learn about the people, economy and history.
But they only had 600 Afghan troops fighting alongside them, reports CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier.
The Marine commander there said he cannot hold this territory unless he gets more Afghan forces to help win the people's trust.
The top U.S. General in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, agrees, according to defense officials in Washington. He's told the Pentagon he needs to create even more local forces than now planned to provide Afghans security.
"We must protect them from violence, whatever its nature," McChrystal said.
U.S. officials tell CBS News that General McChrystal hasn't decided how many extra troops he's going to need, U.S. or Afghan. They say this is simply a snapshot of his ongoing review, which he's due to report to the White House by early August.
There is currently a surge of 21,000 U.S. troops, which will bring the total to 68,000 in country by the fall. That includes 4,000 U.S. forces devoted to training more Afghan security forces. That training brigade is supposed to boost Afghanistan's army from 85,000 to 134,000, by 2011, at a cost of $7.5 billion a year.
Some of those now advising McChrystal say that's not enough.
"General McChrystal's going to have a tough time figuring out how he's going to protect as much of the population as possible," said Andrew Exum, with the Center for New American Security. "We simply don't have enough troops to surge into all areas."
In an interview with Britain's SKY TV from Africa, the President Barack Obama said depending on how Afghan elections go next month, he hopes to focus on a different type of surge.
"It may not be on the military side, it may be on the development side," Mr. Obama said.
Another group of experts advising McChrystal says you have to have both.
"The problem is you can't have economic development and you can't have good governance if you don’t have security," said Arturo Munoz with the Rand Corporation. "They are all interrelated."
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Michelle Obama tells how her role as the First Lady has changed her perspective.
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See all 35 CommentsObama is the enemy.
WHY WERE IN THE KOREAN WAR??--40,000 DEAD
WHY WERE IN THE VIET NAM WAR??--50,000 DEAD
WHY ARE WE IN THE IRAQ WAR??--4500 DEAD
WHY ARE WE IN AFGHANISTAN??--DEAD YET TO BE TOTALED!!
IN ANY OF THESE WARS--WAS THERE EVER ANY REAL AN DIRECT DANGER TO THE USA??
AS 9/11 SHOWED US--IT CAN COME FROM ANYWHERE AND EVERYWHERE IN THE WORLD.
THESE PAST TRAGEDYS HAVE BEEN A RESULT OF AMBITIOUS POLITIONS AND MISGUIDED GENERALS.
WHEN ARE OUR LEADERS GOING TO LEARN THAT WE JUST CANNOT "PARACHUTE" INTO ALL THE WORLDS HOTSPOTS. IT IS LIKE TRYING TO NAVIGATE THROUGH SWISS CHEESE!!!
Dr Wood's examination was submitted to NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) in the form of a Request For Correction and is also the basis of her Qui Tam case in NYC Federal Court. Dr Wood, represented by mainstream attorney Jerry Leaphart, is suing the sub-contractors hired by the government for the NIST investigation of the WTC claiming, at minimum, "willful blindness" in their contributions to the NIST Report. Dr Wood was already successful in getting NIST to confirm that they did not analyze the "collapses", even though they were mandated to do so by Congress.
Dr Wood's analysis shows, very clearly, that directed energy weapons (DEW) were a causal factor in the destruction of the World Trade Center. In Dr Wood's legal documents, she also notes that some of the defendants in her court case, such as Applied Research Associates (ARA) and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), are founding sponsors of the Directed Energy Professional Society.
Dr Wood has been in contact with the US military's Directed Energy Directorate, located at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, and they do not deny that DEWs destroyed the WTC. Instead they claim "phenomena that we cannot explain here". Their representative also finds ?Dr Wood's investigation interesting and worthy of further consideration?.
See Dr Wood's website for full information, including that of exotic weaponry, the Hutchison Effect, and Hurricane Erin which was mysteriously parked outside NYC on the morning of 9/11 and headed back out to sea afterwords:
http://www.drjudywood.com
Also, one must be aware of the propaganda that has spread through the "truth movement". See the following article and remember to keep an open mind:
9/11: Distinguishing The Propaganda From The Smoking Guns
http://www.checktheevidence.co.uk/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=199&Itemid=60
Those interested in knowing the truth of things are encouraged to check the evidence for themselves instead of believing what they are told to believe.
The use of Nuclear Weapons to inialate the enemy, breaking their will.
In this age, that will never be done unless humanity is ready for it's entire destruction. Besides, war makes money, that's what the bottom line is. Sad but true. Bush always talked about spreading Democracy throughout the world, which meant more money for corporations.... the rich get richer.
These days all of our troops are volunteers. Don't like war and the militay? Don't join. Simple as that.
The bad thing about? The places where these wars take place. Civilians are killed, buildings are destroyed, some time historic buildings. Old saying from the Vietnam days. The Vietnamese would say, Why should we fight, we have the American to fight for us. You good guys.
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Why are ANY Marines there? Why do we constantly sacrafice our sons and daughters to save Islam from itself? WE have always moved to protect muslims; in Somalia, Bosnia, Croatia, Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc, etc. Yet muslims hate the West. Let them kill each other, just bring the kids home. Obama's just another murderer.
Wars are fought to make money. Guess what? it works.
"We must protect them from violence, whatever its nature,"
The problem is that the local forces will gladly accept the US Dollar as long as they don't have to get their hands dirty in any fighting, but will sell themselves to the first Kharzai drug baron who buys them off once the Americans and British have gone.
a) Assign more Afghan army units to fight the Taliban. Afghan recruits don't want to kill their countrymen for the U.S. They serve
for an occupying power for the meagre salary it pays because the only
economy now in Afghanistan is the U.S. salaries - nothing else.
b) The U.S. bombing of villages with B-52 and killing hundreds of civilians, or forcing Afghan villagers to become lookouts for the U.S., is a bedlam strategy. If the villagers don't cooperate with the U.S. their villages are bombed; if they do they are executed by the Taliban as American spies! It is a lunatic thinking for U.S. commanders, and it shows their desperation for their inability to subdue ragtag insurgents with all the modern weaponry in their disposal. Well, Afghanistan is not called the "graveyard of the empires" for nothing!
The elections next month are a joke. Hamid Karzai is just a cosmetic
U.S. appointed figurehead who is too busy complaining about U.S. air-strikes than kill innocent civilians rather than straightening out his corrupt bureaucracy. He was told to shut up by the U.S. - if he wanted to be re-elected- and he did. But he has no credibility in
Afghanistan as a leader. He just put the Afghanistan's stamp on U.S. decisions, and if he refuses, the U.S. will replace him immediately.
His salary, and the salaries of his government and his army are paid by the U.S. He, therefore, acts as an agent of the U.S. - not as a leader elected freely by his people, nor as a president who has any say or control on the operation of foreign forces in his country.
Rethinking of U.S. policy in Afghanistan? That's impossible - unless the U.S. decides to forget about and pull out. Everything else will be just a "re-labeling" of the same strategy - something akin to put the same wine in a different bottle. But that will not change the fortunes in the Afghan battlefield.
Baraq Obama accused the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin recently of keeping "One Leg" in the Cold War era, and the "Other Leg" in the present. But Obama is blind to see that he doing worse by still standing on George Bush's policies, and still cannot decide which way to go. I hope the "Re-thinking" doesn't last until 2012!
Nikos Retsos, retired professor
WOW I bet you believe Osama and Ron Jeremy planned 9/11/01. I bet you believe steel buildings start falling down several stories above where a plane hits in some magic way. I bet you believe large airliners crash leaving less parts than a Piper Cub. By the way Osama has been real dead for many years. All those CIA tapes are fake. For sure the government does not fear YOU.
U.S. Officials Want More Afghan Forces to Fight Alongside Marines"
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Seems like DeJa Vu but this strategy was attempted by the previous administration in another region.
I'm not having DeJa vu regarding the press's response however.
And WHY did you put troops in Afghanistan and give them orders:
Not to shoot...shoulder your gun under attack...
Don't disturb the poppy bulbs...the Afghani's need them to support terroist activity....we don't want to pixx off the poppy farmers they might vote wrong..
Don't even so much as look at person wearing a burqa....much less stop them for questioning....
Before you arrest any of these terrorists...Mirandize them and tell them what rights US citizens have under our Constitution...
Now please, these orders make about as much sense as electing a man who has never run so much as popsicle stand to our White House....
IT'S NONSENSE!
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