Admiral Mullen is still wrong

Posted on 16 September 2009. Tags: Admiral Mullen is still wrong

Admiral Mullen is wrong about Pakistan

Admiral Mullen is wrong about Afghanistan. The rude Admiral Michael Mullen is still wrong on Afghanistan

Admiral Mullen is wrong asking for additional troop “trainers” for Kabul. He has got some–what will be do with them.

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Admiral Mullen’s veiled threats to Pakistan did not sit well with the Pakistanis. His plan for Afghanistan is not liked by a majority of Americans. His request for more troops (trainers) didn’t really fly with Congress. The real question is whether the request for more troops will be accepted by the White House. Why the surge in Afghanistan is doomed to failure?

President Obama is on the horns of a dilemma. He wants to honor his election promises, but the situation on the ground won’t really give him an easy exit strategy.

Mr Obama also rejected claims that Afghanistan was turning into a quagmire akin to Vietnam, but his immediate dilemma is political: approving a surge could trigger a high-level mutiny within his own party. Making matters worse, a new poll showed that public support for the war has slumped since April. “Each historical moment is different,” Mr Obama said in an interview published yesterday.“You never step into the same river twice, and so Afghanistan is not Vietnam.”

American and internation papers are reporting total defeat in Afghanistan. ”I told you so’s” are so sweet. Pakistan was not consulted when an anti-Pakistan cabal of non-Pakhtun minorities, and coterie of corrupt incompetent warlords was imposed on Kabul. Pakistan was not listened to when she gave free advice to make the government more inclusive. Pakistan was not consulted when Mr. Karzai embraced India and opened up 4 Consulates and 13 information centers in Afghanistan.

Now the chickens have come home to roost. The Taliban for the first time in months attacked Kabul with the help of Karzai’s police and “army”. Western capitals are jittery and clearly a rattled Karzai doesn’t know hat to do.

The nation’s top military officer told Congress on Tuesday that the U.S. war in Afghanistan “probably needs more forces” and sought to reassure lawmakers skeptical of sending additional troops that commanders were devising new tactics that would lead to victory over a resurgent Taliban.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that 2,000 to 4,000 additional military trainers from the United States and its NATO partners will be needed to “jump-start” the expansion of Afghan security forces and strongly suggested that more U.S. combat troops will be required to provide security in the short term. “A properly resourced counterinsurgency probably needs more forces,” Mullen said in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Mullen spoke amid a growing political debate over Afghanistan as President Obama weighs a recently completed assessment of the war by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander there. Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), the committee chairman, argued strenuously Tuesday against the deployment of any more U.S. combat forces, while Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the ranking Republican, said a delay in sending more combat forces would “repeat the nearly catastrophic mistakes” that occurred in Iraq before the Bush administration increased troop levels.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates remains undecided on whether more troops are needed. Morrell played down the possibility of disagreement between the Pentagon’s civilian leadership and the uniformed forces, saying that Gates “clearly has a great deal of respect for Admiral Mullen,” who was seeking Senate confirmation for a second term as chairman, after Gates’s recommendation to Obama. But Gates, Morrell said, “is still more in the evolution process in his thinking than having arrived at a decision as to whether or not, yes, significant numbers of additional forces are needed.”

Gates and Mullen are participating in high-level administration discussions of the way forward in Afghanistan, based on recommendations from McChrystal for how to implement the strategy Obama announced in March. Since then, the number of Taliban attacks and U.S. casualties have risen to their highest rates in the eight-year-old war. Mullen: More Troops ‘Probably’ Needed. Joint Chiefs Chairman Testifies Before Senate Panel as Afghanistan Debate Grows By Ann Scott Tyson Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, September 16, 2009

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With public anxiety rising, many Democratic lawmakers are awaiting a decision by the president, and a White House strategy to sell it.

“I want to hear from the president, and not just on combat troops,” Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-Del.) said in an interview. “Combat troops is like the public option” in health care, he said, quoting a conversation with Levin this month when they traveled together to Afghanistan. “Everybody can understand combat troops.”

For most Americans, Kaufman said, eight years “is an eternity, and now they come in asking for another batch of troops? What’s that all about? . . . This is a crescendo growing. At some point in the not-too-distant future, [Obama] has got to do this. The clock is ticking.”

Lawmakers have asked to have McChrystal testify before Congress, but Morrell said Gates does not think it would be the right time.

Obama has ordered an additional 17,000 U.S. combat troops and 4,000 trainers to Afghanistan this year, which will bring the total number of American service members in the country to 68,000 by the end of the year.

Mullen told the Senate panel he did not know what ratio of combat to training forces would be needed. He estimated that NATO contributions would not be large and that it will take two to three years to produce a sufficient number of Afghan soldiers and police.

Morrell, the Pentagon spokesman, said the distinction between trainers and combat forces is sometimes blurry. “As we learned in Iraq, our best training is done not in some sterile environment behind the wire, but rather out amongst the population, operating shoulder to shoulder with our . . . Iraqi or Afghan counterparts. And that often leads to combat situations.”

Gates “believes that we have to provide more counter-IED capabilities to our forces in Afghanistan as soon as possible,” Morrell said, using the abbreviation for improvised explosive device, or roadside bomb. “By that, I mean route clearance teams, explosive ordnance disposal teams, medevac teams, intelligence assets, not to mention the hardware that’s required.”

Mullen emphasized that the key elements of Obama’s strategy are being put into place, citing a new program to offer incentives to persuade low- and mid-level Taliban fighters to abandon the insurgency. The goal would be to win over rank-and-file Taliban fighters and then target the leaders with more lethal means, officials said.

“There’s a very big opportunity here to reduce violence by reaching out to some of the lower-level guys, to give them an opportunity to see a life that’s better than fighting for the Taliban,” said a senior official at the NATO command in Kabul who discussed the program on the condition of anonymity. “What’s really important is to get a feel for where the Afghans are” on reintegration, the official said.

No decisions have been made on what the incentives would be, although the official said they could include cash and jobs.

The major challenge is to develop a program the Afghan government accepts and implements from the start — in contrast to Iraq, where the United States paid former fighters and then struggled to persuade the Iraqi government to integrate them into its security forces and other jobs, the senior official said. “It has to be owned and driven by them.”

Retired British Lt. Gen. Graeme Lamb, who worked on the reconciliation of fighters in Iraq, is in Afghanistan heading the initiative for McChrystal, Mullen said, although he stressed that the planning is still in the early phases. “We’re not very far down that road,” he said. Mullen: More Troops ‘Probably’ Needed. Joint Chiefs Chairman Testifies Before Senate Panel as Afghanistan Debate Grows By Ann Scott Tyson Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, September 16, 2009

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If Admiral Mullen, Mr. Gates and General Patraeus had been right, NATO would not be in the pickle that it is in.

Obviously Admiral Mullen is a not a diplomat. He should therefore continue to perform his military services and not put his foot in his mouth on national television. His comments on the networks were beyond the pale and harmed US Pakistani relations. His comments in front of the Senators also did not help the relationship. Admiral Mullen knows that in the end it has to work with the Pakistani intelligence services. By publicly picking a fight with the ISI, he has done no one any favors. he has actually helped the enemies of the Pakistan-US relations. The level of cooperation may not be optimal.

Admiral Mullen then turned President Obama’s policy on its head by asking for 10,000 more troops. Doesn’t this smell like a military solution. Perhaps it is a desperate move to reverse the status quo.

Even with 80,000 troops, the result with the same!

Mullen said he and other senior military leaders — including McChrystal; Gen. David H. Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command; and the chiefs of military services — believe that executing Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan will require not just killing insurgents but succeeding in a wide-ranging campaign to provide security, government services and economic rebuilding for the Afghan population.

“The president has given us a clear mission: disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda and its extremist allies and prevent Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven again. You can’t do that from offshore, and you can’t do that by just killing the bad guys. You have to be there, where the people are when they need you there, and until they can provide for their own security. This is General McChrystal’s view, and it is my view — and that of General Petraeus and the Joint Chiefs,” Mullen said in his opening remarks.

McChrystal is “alarmed by the insurgency” in Afghanistan, Mullen said, and “needs to retake the initiative from the insurgents, who have grabbed it over the last three years.” Mullen said he spoke with McChrystal on Monday. “Quite honestly, he found conditions on the ground tougher than he had thought,” Mullen said.

Warned by lawmakers that U.S. public support for the war was waning, Mullen said he understood that urgent action was needed. “I worry a great deal that the clock is moving very rapidly,” he said.

“Do you understand you’ve got one more shot back home? Do you understand that?” asked Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.)

“Yes, sir,” Mullen replied. Staff writers Karen DeYoung and Rajiv Chandrasekaran contributed to this report. Mullen: More Troops ‘Probably’ Needed. Joint Chiefs Chairman Testifies Before Senate Panel as Afghanistan Debate Grows By Ann Scott Tyson Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, September 16, 2009

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Pakistan cheese for Western whine: Defeat in Afghanistan. Pakistan can cooperate with the US in some areas, but it cannot be expected that the Pakistanis toe the US line on every aspect. The US wants the Pakistani armed forces moved away from Bharat. The US wants the ISI to only concentrate of doing America’s bidding. Pakistan cannot leave its Eastern borders naked. India already occupies Kashmir, Siachin, Sir Creek. If The Pakistani army is to have a different demeanor, the US should eliminate the occupation of Pakistani territory. If the US wants the Pakistan army to concentrate on the Eastern borders, then the US should stop Bharat from stopping Pakistani waters in Kashmir.

If he accepts his commanders’ recommendations, Mr Obama will have to remake the case for a war that had overwhelming public support until this year. He has a tough fight to persuade fellow Democrats that new troops are needed. Democratic senators lined up yesterday to reject calls for more US combat troops. Senator Russ Feingold warned that he and “a growing chorus” of Democrats would refuse to back sending more reinforcements. Calling for a flexible timetable for withdrawal, he insisted that “continuing to build up troops in Afghanistan is the exact formula to increase support for the Taliban”. The argument was echoed in London by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, which warned that the continued presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan could be more destabilising than withdrawal. Admiral Mullen’s appearance before the Senate Armed Forces Committee was ostensibly an uncontroversial renomination for two more years as America’s most senior uniformed officer. In practice, he had to walk a tightrope, defending General McChrystal’s recent assessment of the Afghan security situation while explaining his failure so far to state the number of extra troops he needs, and making the case for a surge without prejudging the decisions of his Commander-in-Chief. “I support a properly resourced, classically pursued counter-insurgency strategy,” he told the committee. “You can’t do that from offshore and you can’t do that just by killing the bad guys.

Justifying the Banality of a brutal Occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan: The Thinktanks attempt to complete the circle of complicity between a sycophantic press, and a non-inquisitive servile public. The nation is forced to accept the only argument that it is being repeatedly inundated with . While Bruce Reidel and others understand the Pakistani point of view, but they still went public with their criticism of the Pakistani agencies. In diplomatic circles this is considered highly unusual. This public grand standing will bring the cooperation between the ISI and the CIA down a few notches. Convincing the US tin ear of the Pakistani point of view

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