[Peace-discuss] Obama's plan for more killing in AfPak

[C. G. Estabrook]

["...red, yellow and green indicators..."?]

	Obama sharpens war goals
	By: Mike Allen
	August 8, 2009 04:40 PM EST

President Barack Obama next month will send Congress a new plan for measuring 
progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan, in an effort to build confidence among 
wavering Democrats and give sharper direction to a costly and increasingly 
bloody war, White House officials told POLITICO on Saturday.

The administration has begun seeking feedback on the plan from lawmakers and 
their staffs. The finished version is to be delivered to Capitol Hill by Sept. 
24, a congressionally mandated date for a report on Afghanistan.

"There's an intense impatience here for results, and I think an absolutely 
understandable impatience among the American people for results," said a senior 
administration official who requested anonymity, as did other officials and 
aides interviewed for this story, to speak freely about a policy that's still 
being formulated. "In the course of August, these plans will be complete."

Along with an array of dozens of numerical indicators, a system of red, yellow 
and green indicators will help White House and congressional policymakers spot 
which objectives are in trouble, which are unchanged since the last report and 
which are showing significant progress.

"We don't have a long track record here in terms of measuring progress and then 
sharing that assessment with Congress," a second official said. "I think they 
are all from Missouri right now: They want us to show them. Matter of fact, they 
want to see the effects."

A senior administration official said Saturday: "Because we believe the American 
people deserve clarity on our progress in Afghanistan, we have compiled a 
comprehensive set of metrics based on the objectives laid out by the president 
and informed by a stringent intelligence review. We have briefed members of 
Congress and their staffs over the past few weeks. Work has already started on 
the first quarterly round of measurements, and we expect to continue engaging 
Congress in the months ahead."

The matrix is referred to in the West Wing as "the SIP" — Strategic 
Implementation Plan. Officials says it's ambitious enough that they joke it 
should have been named the GULP.

"[National Security Adviser James] Jones's signature is actually on the 
document, and it directs actions here in Washington, so [there'll be 
accountability] among departments and agencies, State, Defense, the intelligence 
community, various parts of the intelligence community," an official said. "It 
also, however, specifies some actions that we expect to be taken by the first 
tier of American leaders in theater."

The official said one measurement is "the proportion of the Afghan population 
that is now secured." Others will put demands on Obama's new commander in 
Afghanistan, Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal; the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, 
Karl W. Eikenberry; and the ambassador to Pakistan, Anne W. Patterson.

"On the military side, there have been 21,000 additional troops requested," the 
official said. "The president has approved the movement of those troops, and 
we're going to track and make sure they arrived. On the civilian side, there's 
an order of magnitude less than 21,000 civilians who have been requested, and 
we're going to track their progress."

The document will include specific metrics under nine broad objectives — some of 
them classified, and divided roughly half for Afghanistan and half for Pakistan. 
The list has not been released but is likely to leak after it goes to lawmakers.

Aides say that behind the scenes, Obama is demanding in his expectations for 
Afghanistan, which he has called the "central front ... in the battle against 
terrorism."

One aide said part of the accountability built into the new plan is "walking 
into the office over there" — the Oval — and responding to the president when he 
says, 'Where are we on my nine [objectives]?'"

Another official added: "And, 'What do you mean you only have progress on this 
objective? What about the other eight? And how are these nine coming together in 
an integrated way?'"

A pair of upcoming events is about to push Afghanistan to the forefront of the 
news, after months in the background while Congress wrangled over the 
president's domestic agenda:

— President Hamid Karzai faces reelection on Aug. 20 in a what an administration 
official called "a chance to reset the Afghan political stage." Karzai has two 
serious challengers, although many allied officials think he will hold on.

"The United States is impartial: We do not support or oppose any particular 
candidates," an aide said. "Our priority is that the Afghan people choose their 
president from a level playing field and under conditions that create an 
election outcome accepted as legitimate by the Afghan people and by the world."

— McChrystal, the commanding general, is expected to call for additional troops 
in a strategic review to be delivered to the Pentagon in late August or early 
September. That's going to be a momentous and painful decision for Obama, who 
already has encountered resistance from his own party to the wider commitment he 
announced in March.

Officials say a call for new troops would be a tough sell, both in the Oval 
Office and on Capitol Hill but are leaving their options open. The 143 reported 
American military fatalities so far this year mean 2009 is almost certain to 
replace 2008, when there were 155 American fatalities, as the bloodiest year to 
date in a conflict that's approaching its eighth full year.

One aide said: "If the only thing you could change is add more troops and 
everything else stays the same as today, I think that would be a tough sell 
because the president would say, 'Well, wait a second. Do you mean we're going 
to throw more troops at this problem? Where's the civilian effort? Where's the 
economic development effort? What's going on in Pakistan that influences what's 
going on in Afghanistan? And how about our international partners? What exactly 
have they ponied up?'


"So, if I were to take to the president of the United States a solution that 
said, 'Look, let's dial up the troops,' he's going to say, 'Wait a second. This 
is like one tenth of the problem here. What about the rest of the story?'"

The nine objectives are subsets of the big goal that the president set in his 
big speech on March 27 outlining a new strategy referred to internally as 
"Af/Pak": "to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan 
and to prevent their return to either country in the future."

Different parts of the government have begun gathering information to fill into 
the plan to form a statistical baseline that will allow policymakers to measure 
progress. "There are nine plans that are due to us," an official said. "The 
first one was due [July 31], and they actually did what we told them to do on 
time."

The official said the plan "will, over time, hold us accountable for what it is 
we are trying to do."

"There is a metrics portion here that says that we are going to measure our 
progress in routine intervals, and then we are going to assess how we are doing, 
where we are making progress and where we are not making progress and where 
adjustments need to be made," the official said.

"So it is a bit of an unusual Washington document in the sense that it holds 
people accountable, puts them on a timeline, and it describes very carefully 
what is required against that timeline, and then it says, 'Oh, by the way, we 
are going to review your progress.'"

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