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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=tanstl@aol.com href="mailto:tanstl@aol.com">David Sladky</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=undisclosed-recipients:
href="mailto:undisclosed-recipients:">undisclosed-recipients:</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, February 24, 2010 7:38 AM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> Marjah Offensive Aimed to Shape US Opinion on
War</DIV></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV><FONT face=arial color=black size=2><FONT
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"></FONT>
<DIV><FONT style="FONT-SIZE: 20pt" size=5> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="FONT-SIZE: 20pt" size=5><STRONG>Marjah Offensive Aimed to
Shape US Opinion on War</STRONG></FONT></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in"><FONT size=4><STRONG>by </STRONG><A
href="http://original.antiwar.com/author/porter/"><STRONG>Gareth
Porter</STRONG></A><STRONG>, February 24, 2010 </STRONG></FONT></DIV>
<DIV id=navcontainer dir=ltr>
<DIV style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in"><STRONG><A
href="http://original.antiwar.com/porter/2010/02/23/marjah-offensive-opinion/">http://original.antiwar.com/porter/2010/02/23/marjah-offensive-opinion/</A></STRONG></DIV></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>Senior military officials decided to launch the current
U.S.-British military campaign to seize Marjah in large part to influence
domestic U.S. opinion on the war in Afghanistan, the <I>Washington Post</I>
</STRONG><A
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/21/AR2010022104201_pf.html"><STRONG>reported
Monday</STRONG></A><STRONG>.</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>The <I>Post</I> report, by Greg Jaffe and Craig Whitlock, both of
whom cover military affairs, said the town of Marjah would not have been chosen
as a target for a U.S. military operation had the criterion been military
significance instead of impact on domestic public opinion.</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG><IMG height=240 src="" width=120 align=bottom
name=Object1></STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>The primary goal of the offensive, they write, is to "convince
Americans that a new era has arrived in the eight-year long war." U.S. military
officials in Afghanistan "hope a large and loud victory in Marjah will convince
the American public that they deserve more time to demonstrate that extra troops
and new tactics can yield better results on the battlefield," according to Jaffe
and Whitlock.</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>A second aim is said to be to demonstrate to Afghans that U.S.
forces can protect them from the Taliban.</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>Despite the far-reaching political implications of the story, the
<I>Post</I> buried it on page A9, suggesting that it was not viewed by editors
as a major revelation.</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>Jaffe and Whitlock cite no official sources for the report, but the
evidence supporting the main conclusion of the article clearly came from
information supplied by military or civilian Pentagon sources. That suggests
that officials provided the information on condition that it could not be
attributed to any official source.</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>Some advisers to Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the commander of the
International Security Assistance Force, told him last June that Kandahar City
is far more important strategically than Marjah, according to Jaffe and
Whitlock.</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>Marjah is a town of less than 50,000 people, even including the
surrounding villages, according to researcher Jeffrey Dressler of the Institute
for the Study of War in Washington, D.C.</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>That makes it about one-tenth the population of Kandahar City.
Marjah is only one of a number of logistical centers used by the Taliban in
Helmand province, as Dressler observed in a study of Helmand province published
by the Institute last September.</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>Kandahar, on the other hand, is regarded as symbolically important
as the place where the Taliban first arose and the location of its leadership
organs even during the period of Taliban rule.</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>Nevertheless, McChrystal decided to commit 15,000 U.S. troops and
Afghan troops to get control of Marjah as the first major operation under the
new strategy of the Barack Obama administration.</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>That decision has puzzled many supporters of the war, such as
author Steve Coll, who wrote a definitive history of U.S. policy toward
Afghanistan and is now executive director of the New America Foundation. Coll
wrote in the <I>New Yorker</I> last week that he did not understand "</STRONG><A
href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/stevecoll/2010/02/strategic-withdrawal.html"><STRONG>why
surging U.S. forces continue to invest their efforts and their numbers so
heavily in Helmand</STRONG></A><STRONG>."</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>Coll pointed to the much greater importance of Kandahar in the
larger strategic picture.</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>The real reason for the decision to attack Marjah, according to
Jaffe and Whitlock, was not the intrinsic importance of the objective, but the
belief that an operation to seize control of it could "deliver a quick military
and political win for McChrystal."</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>Choosing Kandahar as the objective of the first major operation
under the new strategy would have meant waiting to resolve political rivalries
in the province, according to the <I>Post</I> article.</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>In public comments in recent days, CENTCOM chief Gen. David
Petraeus has put forward themes that may be used to frame the Marjah operation
and further offensives to come in Kandahar later this year.</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>Last Thursday, an unnamed "senior military official" told
reporters, "This is the start point of a new strategy," adding, "This is our
first salvo."</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>On Sunday, Petraeus appeared on NBC’s <I>Meet the Press</I> and
said the flow of 30,000 new troops that President Obama recently ordered to the
region is starting to produce "output." Marjah is "just the initial operation of
what will be a 12-to-18-month campaign," he said, calling it the "initial
salvo."</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>Petraeus suggested that Taliban resistance to the offensive in
Marjah was intense, as if to underline the importance of Marjah to Taliban
strategy. "When we go on the offensive," said Petraeus, "when we take away
sanctuaries and safe havens from the Taliban and other extremist elements …
they’re going to fight back."</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>In fact, most of the Taliban fighters who had been in Marjah before
the beginning of the operation apparently moved out of the town before the
fighting started.</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>Petraeus seemed to be laying the basis for presenting Marjah as a
pivotal battle as well as a successful model for the kind of operations to
follow.</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>The <I>Post</I> article implies that Petraeus and McChrystal are
concerned that the Obama administration is pushing for a rapid drawdown of U.S.
forces after mid-2011. The military believes, according to Jaffe and Whitlock,
that a public perception of U.S. military success "would almost certainly mean a
slower drawdown."</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>As top commander in Iraq in 2007-2008, Petraeus established a new
model for reestablishing public support for a war after it had declined
precipitously. Through constant briefings to journalists and congressional
delegations, he and his staff convinced political elites and public opinion that
his counterinsurgency plan had been responsible for the reduction in insurgent
activities that occurred during this command.</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>Evidence from unofficial sources indicates, however, that the
dynamics of Sunni-Shia sectarian conflict and Shia politics were far more
important than U.S. military operations in producing that result.</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>McChrystal himself seemed to be hinting at the importance of the
Marjah offensive’s potential impact on the domestic politics of the war in
remarks he made in Istanbul just before it began.</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>"This is all a war of perceptions," McChrystal said. "This is not a
physical war in terms of how many people you kill or how much ground you
capture, how many bridges you blow up. This is all in the minds of the
participants."</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>McChrystal went on to include U.S. citizens as well as Afghans
among those who needed to be convinced. "Part of what we’ve had to do is
convince ourselves and our Afghan partners that we can do this," he
said.</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>The decision to launch a military campaign primarily to shape
public opinion is not unprecedented in U.S. military history.</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>When President Richard M. Nixon and his National Security Adviser
Henry A. Kissinger launched a major bombing campaign against the North
Vietnamese capital in late December 1972, they were consciously seeking to
influence public opinion to view their policy as much tougher in the final phase
of peace negotiations with Hanoi.</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>The combination of the heavy damage to Hanoi and the
administration’s heavy spin about its military pressure on the North Vietnamese
contributed to broad acceptance of the later conclusion that Kissinger had
gotten a better agreement in Paris in February 1973.</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>In fact, Kissinger had compromised on all the demands he had made
before the bombing began. But the public perception was more important to the
Nixon White House. </STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG>(Inter Press Service)</STRONG></DIV></FONT>
<DIV style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in"><FONT size=4><B>by <A
href="http://original.antiwar.com/author/porter/">Gareth Porter</A>, February
24, 2010 </B></FONT></DIV>
<DIV id=navcontainer dir=ltr>
<DIV
style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in">http://original.antiwar.com/porter/2010/02/23/marjah-offensive-opinion/</DIV></DIV>
<DIV>Senior military officials decided to launch the current U.S.-British
military campaign to seize Marjah in large part to influence domestic U.S.
opinion on the war in Afghanistan, the <I>Washington Post</I> <A
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/21/AR2010022104201_pf.html">reported
Monday</A>.</DIV>
<DIV>The <I>Post</I> report, by Greg Jaffe and Craig Whitlock, both of whom
cover military affairs, said the town of Marjah would not have been chosen as a
target for a U.S. military operation had the criterion been military
significance instead of impact on domestic public opinion.</DIV>
<DIV><IMG height=240 src="" width=120 align=bottom name=Object1></DIV>
<DIV>The primary goal of the offensive, they write, is to "convince Americans
that a new era has arrived in the eight-year long war." U.S. military officials
in Afghanistan "hope a large and loud victory in Marjah will convince the
American public that they deserve more time to demonstrate that extra troops and
new tactics can yield better results on the battlefield," according to Jaffe and
Whitlock.</DIV>
<DIV>A second aim is said to be to demonstrate to Afghans that U.S. forces can
protect them from the Taliban.</DIV>
<DIV>Despite the far-reaching political implications of the story, the
<I>Post</I> buried it on page A9, suggesting that it was not viewed by editors
as a major revelation.</DIV>
<DIV>Jaffe and Whitlock cite no official sources for the report, but the
evidence supporting the main conclusion of the article clearly came from
information supplied by military or civilian Pentagon sources. That suggests
that officials provided the information on condition that it could not be
attributed to any official source.</DIV>
<DIV>Some advisers to Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the commander of the
International Security Assistance Force, told him last June that Kandahar City
is far more important strategically than Marjah, according to Jaffe and
Whitlock.</DIV>
<DIV>Marjah is a town of less than 50,000 people, even including the surrounding
villages, according to researcher Jeffrey Dressler of the Institute for the
Study of War in Washington, D.C.</DIV>
<DIV>That makes it about one-tenth the population of Kandahar City. Marjah is
only one of a number of logistical centers used by the Taliban in Helmand
province, as Dressler observed in a study of Helmand province published by the
Institute last September.</DIV>
<DIV>Kandahar, on the other hand, is regarded as symbolically important as the
place where the Taliban first arose and the location of its leadership organs
even during the period of Taliban rule.</DIV>
<DIV>Nevertheless, McChrystal decided to commit 15,000 U.S. troops and Afghan
troops to get control of Marjah as the first major operation under the new
strategy of the Barack Obama administration.</DIV>
<DIV>That decision has puzzled many supporters of the war, such as author Steve
Coll, who wrote a definitive history of U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and is
now executive director of the New America Foundation. Coll wrote in the <I>New
Yorker</I> last week that he did not understand "<A
href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/stevecoll/2010/02/strategic-withdrawal.html">why
surging U.S. forces continue to invest their efforts and their numbers so
heavily in Helmand</A>."</DIV>
<DIV>Coll pointed to the much greater importance of Kandahar in the larger
strategic picture.</DIV>
<DIV>The real reason for the decision to attack Marjah, according to Jaffe and
Whitlock, was not the intrinsic importance of the objective, but the belief that
an operation to seize control of it could "deliver a quick military and
political win for McChrystal."</DIV>
<DIV>Choosing Kandahar as the objective of the first major operation under the
new strategy would have meant waiting to resolve political rivalries in the
province, according to the <I>Post</I> article.</DIV>
<DIV>In public comments in recent days, CENTCOM chief Gen. David Petraeus has
put forward themes that may be used to frame the Marjah operation and further
offensives to come in Kandahar later this year.</DIV>
<DIV>Last Thursday, an unnamed "senior military official" told reporters, "This
is the start point of a new strategy," adding, "This is our first salvo."</DIV>
<DIV>On Sunday, Petraeus appeared on NBC’s <I>Meet the Press</I> and said the
flow of 30,000 new troops that President Obama recently ordered to the region is
starting to produce "output." Marjah is "just the initial operation of what will
be a 12-to-18-month campaign," he said, calling it the "initial salvo."</DIV>
<DIV>Petraeus suggested that Taliban resistance to the offensive in Marjah was
intense, as if to underline the importance of Marjah to Taliban strategy. "When
we go on the offensive," said Petraeus, "when we take away sanctuaries and safe
havens from the Taliban and other extremist elements … they’re going to fight
back."</DIV>
<DIV>In fact, most of the Taliban fighters who had been in Marjah before the
beginning of the operation apparently moved out of the town before the fighting
started.</DIV>
<DIV>Petraeus seemed to be laying the basis for presenting Marjah as a pivotal
battle as well as a successful model for the kind of operations to follow.</DIV>
<DIV>The <I>Post</I> article implies that Petraeus and McChrystal are concerned
that the Obama administration is pushing for a rapid drawdown of U.S. forces
after mid-2011. The military believes, according to Jaffe and Whitlock, that a
public perception of U.S. military success "would almost certainly mean a slower
drawdown."</DIV>
<DIV>As top commander in Iraq in 2007-2008, Petraeus established a new model for
reestablishing public support for a war after it had declined precipitously.
Through constant briefings to journalists and congressional delegations, he and
his staff convinced political elites and public opinion that his
counterinsurgency plan had been responsible for the reduction in insurgent
activities that occurred during this command.</DIV>
<DIV>Evidence from unofficial sources indicates, however, that the dynamics of
Sunni-Shia sectarian conflict and Shia politics were far more important than
U.S. military operations in producing that result.</DIV>
<DIV>McChrystal himself seemed to be hinting at the importance of the Marjah
offensive’s potential impact on the domestic politics of the war in remarks he
made in Istanbul just before it began.</DIV>
<DIV>"This is all a war of perceptions," McChrystal said. "This is not a
physical war in terms of how many people you kill or how much ground you
capture, how many bridges you blow up. This is all in the minds of the
participants."</DIV>
<DIV>McChrystal went on to include U.S. citizens as well as Afghans among those
who needed to be convinced. "Part of what we’ve had to do is convince ourselves
and our Afghan partners that we can do this," he said.</DIV>
<DIV>The decision to launch a military campaign primarily to shape public
opinion is not unprecedented in U.S. military history.</DIV>
<DIV>When President Richard M. Nixon and his National Security Adviser Henry A.
Kissinger launched a major bombing campaign against the North Vietnamese capital
in late December 1972, they were consciously seeking to influence public opinion
to view their policy as much tougher in the final phase of peace negotiations
with Hanoi.</DIV>
<DIV>The combination of the heavy damage to Hanoi and the administration’s heavy
spin about its military pressure on the North Vietnamese contributed to broad
acceptance of the later conclusion that Kissinger had gotten a better agreement
in Paris in February 1973.</DIV>
<DIV>In fact, Kissinger had compromised on all the demands he had made before
the bombing began. But the public perception was more important to the Nixon
White House. </DIV>
<DIV>(Inter Press Service)</DIV><BR><BR>
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