Karl Eikenberry Dissents On Afghan Troop Increase

Ahead of today's meeting of Obama's national security team to discuss Afghan war strategy, Karl Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and a member of the war council, sent a pair of classified cables to Washington expressing deep reservations about the possibility of sending more U.S. troops to the country, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

Eikenberry's concerns about the deployment of more troops centered around Afghan President Hamid Karzai's unwillingness to clamp down on rampant corruption throughout the country, a situation that has helped the Taliban re-establish itself there, the Post states. Eikenberry's memos were skeptical of plans to send more troops until Karzai's government steps up its efforts to root out corruption.

But Karzai''s corruption is not the only thing keeping the Taliban in business, according to an explosive new story by reporter Aram Roston for The Nation, which alleges that hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military funds are making their way to Afghan insurgents, including the Taliban. Roston reports that the U.S. is paying off insurgents to persuade them from attacking U.S. supply lines.

In this grotesque carnival, the US military's contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes. It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting. And it is a deadly irony, because these funds add up to a huge amount of money for the Taliban. "It's a big part of their income," one of the top Afghan government security officials told The Nation in an interview. In fact, US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon's logistics contracts--hundreds of millions of dollars--consists of payments to insurgents.

Read more from the Nation.

As reported earlier today, four troop options were scheduled to be reviewed at today's meeting, with numbers ranging from 10,000 to 40,000 more troops. As the New York Times reported this morning, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are said to be leaning toward an option of around 30,000 troops.

Comments

[dtmfman]

Thank you Mr. Karl Eikenberry for having the stones to stand up and tell it like it REALLY is! You don't actually have to see the stars to know a person is a General....I salute you General!

[vegasjack]

this is what we get for our defence $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

http://warbaby-vegasjack.blogspot.com/

[SPQR1775]

I am an officer currently in Iraq and will be until Octo 2010. I work for Gen Eikenberry years ago on his staff in Hawaii. He is not only a great General but also a very capable and able General. Pres OBAMA was wise to place him as Ambassador to Afgnaistan, after all he served there previously under Bush as NATO CDR of both NATO and US forces, he KNOWS the area and the issues. I also agree with him that NO MORE TROOPS should be sent there. We created the Taliban and by proxy Al quadea by the weapons and millions we gave to them during the Carter, Reagan and Bush administrations. It is time we use logic, reason and WILL POWER to do the right thing and get these troops out. The irony is, the GOP and all these so called WAR profiteers to include our elected officials want to continue wars and do nothing at home to fix the economy. Hillary is a DIPLOMAT as SoS and she is gunning for war, Hillary is a closet GOP and has been for years. The way forward in Afghanistan is to get out, when Pres O send more troops, then he will be asked to continually increase again in 2011 and then the GOP and Hillary herself or her proxy will use it to wage a run for the white house. McCrystal and Petraeus cannot be trusted, they are all snakes in the grass.

[brady61995]

nice post, its nice to hear dissent from officers that are in the feild. be safe and thanks for the post.
buddy of mine is a doctor and has served 3 tours and is now out. his first tour as so many he was excited and ready to kick a s s etc... he came home humbled and matured, he hated the war but loved saving lives and loved his fellow soldiers.

[trubluelefty]

I hope you are for real as I fav'd this and want to repost. Take care and keep waging the good battle.

[acudoc]

Gee, it's beginning to look like the Federal Government doesn't know what it is doing.

Try reading the Constitution. The delegated powers are few in number.

But if you love the state and partisan politics and wheeling and dealing and not working for a living at something productive, this is what you get: a bloated bureaucracy, a leviathan that attempts to intervene everywhere, at home and abroad, provoking the very issues it supposedly needs to justify its existence. And behind it all, making it all possible, the fractional-reserve banking scam and the empowerment of a financial elite to issue fake money by a bought and paid for Congress since 1913, the year the Federal Reserve Act was passed.

Read the Constitution, if you want a way out. If not, continue bankrupting our experiment in liberty.

[VillainUs]

This war is not supposed to end, ever. Read Orwell.

[UncleJimbo]

This War will end....someday! But the concept of it as an extension of National Policy & Ambition will not....Ever!

[MrJoyboy]

We're so stupid we're trying to buy off the Taliban, and the Taliban is using the money to kill us because they're religious fanatics and can't be bought off with money. This strategy will make the Vietnam strategy look brilliant in comparison.

[dhinds]

"the Taliban is using the money to kill us" because we invaded their country, which makes us fair game.

But the moneys not going just to the Taliban. Most of it goes to feudal, tribally based, war lords. Religious fundamentalism provides an added twist for the Taliban, but most of those involved with the "insurgency" are simply bandits, charging the invaders (i.e. the USA) passage through their territories - and that includes the Taliban.

www.thenation.com/doc/20091130/roston

IOW, the Privatization Model (biznez as usual) GWB established (as did his grandfather Prescott) is nothing more than an extension of the same mentality - and the terms "global jihad" and "democrati­cally-elec­ted government of Afghanistan" are simply window dressing to justify the US Military presence in a country where a few predatory US vultures can make a little money.

[themidnightreview]

It's nice to see Fox take only one side of the story... Obama is doing the right thing in making the correct decision, not rushing in, only to have to correct it later on, costing more lives...
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http://www.themidnightreview.com

[rancone]

Ike would not be a blue dog he would not even like blue dogs not supporting his massive spending and taxing to build a socialist highway system or to send troops to federally support the law of the land against those state's righters.

[nippyfan]

These days, seems like we need to bring the troops home to protect other troops.

[Bardmess]

Just show us how to get out.

[backagain2day2]

Must have gotten a phone call from BO for a diversion.

[jrfunkenstein]

Yeah, it wouldn't have anything to do with the reality of the nightmare situation there or anything.

[Ahsanm]

if we have to bribe the enemy to protect our troops then i can only deduct one thing i.e the enemy is stronger than us. We need to get the hell out of there.

[allenosuno]

Obama is throwing good money after bad and sacrificing for nothing the lives of our troops. It is ridiculous. The war there is not even defined as to a mission and even if it were, Obama and the Pentagon are committing the mistake of thinking that fighting the Taliban is the same as eradicating the nexus of Al Qaeda terrorism. The "War on Terror" is a stupid slogan, not the basis for an intelligent policy. The Afghan Taliban is preferred by most Afghans to continued American occupation. This stupidity of "we stand down when they stand up" is folliy. The Karzai government is nothing but a corrupt drug-lord posing as a government. The same idiocy that we did in Iraq is set to be repeated here, where the US feeds the insurgency money and legitimizes them by our mere presence there. The Taliban is nationalist and fundamentalist. They are not interested in conquering Europe or the USA. They want all foreigners out and they want to implement their twisted version of Sharia law there. That is a civil war problem of the Afghan people and the US shoudn't be involved in it. Our outsourced, financially collapsed economy can't afford this expensive folly and our presence there only inflames anti-American, anti-Western hatred.

[BigFootJesus]

I agree 100%.

[jrfunkenstein]

You forget about the vast natural gas reserves and the longed for pipeline that has fed Western interests there ever since the Soviets gambled and lost that their powerful military might could easily crush any Afghan resistance, but wound up destroying their economy and their empire.

The U.S. may never leave Afghanistan, no matte what Obama decides to do now; there's simply too much money hanging in the balance to dissuade the corporate interests that backed the initial invasion and occupation, which Bush managed to utterly mangle by ignoring the country for over 7 years while he focused on destroying Iraq and the U.S. economy. Implanting and fostering a heinously corrupt government in the form of Karzai was probably the most destructive component of the entire debacle.

The only options now available to Obama range from disastrous to catastrophic.

[RogerHWerner]

The natural gas pipeline of course presents Obama with the real dilemma. Had the Taliban government agreed to pipeline, it is certainly possible that an invasion n ever would have occurred. I recall that they were willing to eject the bin Laden but they simply wouldn't arrest and hand him over to US forces and that gave Bush the pretext for an invasion. One of his first actions as president, Karsi a former Unocal executive, signed a treaty allowing the construction of a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to India. The war has prevented its construction but the plans and intent remain. The need for this resource obviously complicates matters but frankly, it's never been explain why since the US already possesses one of the larest gas reserves in the world. Sending additional troops in support of a sock puppet president isn't going to turn this situation around: Karsi's government is probably doomed but that won't stop the US from maintaining its support. Extracting ourselves from Afghanistan won't be easy but it makes a damn sight more sense then escalation.

[dtmfman]

allenosuno said "Obama is throwing good money after bad and sacrificing for nothing the lives of our troops"
You're joking right? Obama is doing this?....Hell Bush did it for 8 yrs....HE STARTED THIS BS...so how is it that you're blaming Obama for bush's folly? The only thing bush did good in 8 yrs was come to the end of his term! At the least...we have a President who is intelligent...and not some TX cowboy/ninkumpoop who couldn't get anything right if God demanded that he do it!

[Coyote777 7]

It is easy to win this debate. All you have to do is prove my arguments incorrect by coming up with historical examples (long periods of peace) that prove that PEACE is the normal state of humanity.

"In fact long periods of peace are so rare that we name them, eg: Pax Romana (90 years, ancient Rome), and Pax Americana, this exceptional period of peace between western nations since WW-2.
The problem is that, instead of seeing this 60-year period of relative peace as a gift, our generation has succumbed to the illusion that peace is the norm."

So can you prove, that this period since WW2, is a returning to normalicy from an unnatural state of conflict of the preceding hundreds of years???

[elfish]

The way the question is framed it is impossible not to agree with you. There are 195 countries in the world. As a consequence, it is highly unlikely that there won't be some conflict somewhere in the world.

Here I'll frame the question differently:

1. How long has been since Switzerland had been at war with any nation? Is the natural state of Switzerland peace? Are the Swiss genetically different from other humans?

2. How long has it been since the United States has been in a "declared" war with another country?

[Coyote777 7]

1)- I don't know. research is needed.

2)- WW2; 60 years.

To simplify, try western societies only.

See majority of argument below.

[cgoodie]

If we were as small and insignificant as Switzerland, we could have been at peace too.

[GrrlCanada]

fights, battles, wars will always occur so long as the mind believes there is some kind of lack--lack of resources, lack of respect, lack of land, lack of mates, lack of self-respect. Battles will always occur until there is something that will stop the feeling of lack... You and I both know that this is highly unlikely given the state of the world for the past several thousand years.
However, I will grant the idealists one gambit: We can't know the state of peace in places that never kept any kind of recorded history. It's really the only thing I can think of to which my idealistic desires cling

[ProfessorDuh]

We do not have to go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.

[warnerj5000]

Modern humans have existed for what.. about 200,000 years?
The level of social organization required for large-scale sustained warfare wasn't reached until something on the order of 10,000 years ago.

So there you go. Most of human history would have been spent in a peaceful state.

[Veeve]

Coyote777 7-- that is a very Eurocentric view you have. In the west, the competing tribes have always fought over limited water and fertile land. If you travel to the east, India was in a state of virtual peace from the Aryan migrations of 8000-10000 years ago until the Mongol invasions started up in the late 1300s. The subcontinent had plenty of fertile land and fresh water.

I'd say your argument just went down the drain.

[RogerHWerner]

As someone who has studied history for a couple of decades I have to say that the question itself seems moot because it is so vague as to be impossible to answer. Even if one records it to include just western society, it is still to vague. Europe was largely at peace between the Congress of Vienna 1815 and the outbreak of WWI in 1914. Yes, their were imperial wars of a minor nature fought in 'the colonies' but Europe was at peace. Before 1814, Europe engaged war in almost every century beginning with the 11th--Crusades [10th-13th], Albigensian Crusade [13th], Mongol Invasion [12th], 100 Years War [14th-15th], Ottoman invasions [15th-16th], 30 Years War [17th], and 200 years of dynastic wars [17th-18th]. Except for the Albigensian and 30 Years Wars, these conflicts were seasonal campaigns separated decades of peace. If one restricts the question of peace to America, we may then ask, "is war the normal state of affairs for America." Examining 230 years, there has been conflict in virtually every decade of our national existence and one could reasonably argue that the normal state of US life is conflict.

[imusintheevening]

MoreDimensions I'm a Fan of MoreDimensions I'm a fan of this user 204 fans permalink

Wow Imus.

My grandfather went at the age of 18. His little brother had to follow him and lied about his age. He entered and left the army at the age of 16.

My grandfather saw him one day in Germany while walking past each other on the road. They slapped hands and kept going as one went to the front and the other back from the front. Later that day his brother was gone.

That teared me up MD

[MoreDimensions]

Thank you for appreciating the meaning.

My Mom had me read my Grandfathers diary when she thought I was old enough to understand. I still feel sadness when I think about this. I now have my Great Uncle's medals as a reminder of what sacrifice is.

[MoreDimensions]

Thank you for understanding.

[SouljahBoy]

I am a die hard Obama Supporter. I will not be pleased with all his decisions. But Mr. President please think about this. The Afghan people having been fighting each other and everyone else for 100's of years. There is no central government. It's warlords and drug dealers. WE CAN'T WIN. Well, we could if really didn't tried to win wars while making friends. PULL OUT. Fight Al Queda in Pakistan. Get the troops out. Bring That Money Home. The afghan war money alone would pay for ten years of true health care reform. The whole damn country including Karzi is corrupt. Bomb the Poppy fields over and over before every harvest. You cannot pull this off. DECLARE VICTORY AND LEAVE.

[TiredOleMen]

I agree! Bring the troops home NOW! The reason for being there has evaporated. There are other ways to fight the war. Drones, warplanes, and other remote weapons can be used to 'harrass' the enemy! No use dying over a corrupt Karzai gov't. Peace!

[christopherflynn]

"Peace'? you mean with drones, warplanes and other remote weapons???