[Peace-discuss] Liberal organization promotes AfPak killing

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Hayden ignores the long-standing US policy that dictates control of AfPak and 
instead speaks of a "quagmire," which since Vietnam has meant a situation that 
the US gets into accidentally and then can't get out of. That wasn't Vietnam, 
nor is it AfPak. The geopolitical goal of the USG -- control of Mideast energy 
resources -- is clear; they just don't want to talk about it, because they know 
that, if they do, the US populace will oppose it -- especially when they learn 
that we get very little oil from the Mideast. --CGE]


	Tom Hayden
	Posted: August 14, 2009 11:17 AM
	Holbrooke Projects Long Occupation of Afghanistan, Pakistan

The conference on Afghanistan with Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, sponsored by 
the Center for American Progress on August 12 turned into a disappointing press 
conference promoting the virtual nation-building plan being integrated into the 
US military operations in that country.

It was an opportunity for CAP to begin distancing itself from the military 
occupation which has claimed 781 American lives thus far, and at this rate will 
cost one trillion dollars by the end of President Obama's first term.

CAP continues to call Afghanistan a "war of necessity" against al-Qaeda safe 
havens, an argument which could just as easily apply to Hamburg, Germany, where 
the September 11 highjackers plotted, or many other locations in failed-states 
around the globe.

Podesta sat at Holbrooke's side during a 90 minute discussion that was mainly 
promotional. Podesta did ask the only pointed question of the day, which was 
whether the Afghan mission has expanded well beyond President Obama's early 
focus on neutralizing Osama Bin Ladin and any terrorist cell focused on 
attacking the United States.

Holbrooke joked about the previous evening's Stephen Colbert show which featured 
an interview with Clintonite operative James Carville, now the campaign 
consultant for Ashra Ghani, a Western-educated World Bank economist running at 
four percent in recent polls against Hamid Kharzai. Aren't you campaigning 
against America's favorite client?, Colbert asked. The following day the New 
York Times reported that Ghani was likely to be appointed prime minister if 
Karzai wins, putting the US deeper in the drivers seat after Afghanistan's 
elections next week. Holbrooke joked that Colbert and Carville "got it right."

Holbrooke's team, most of whom were present, includes senior State Department 
diplomats, former advisers to the John Kerry campaign, counterinsurgency 
liaisons from the Pentagon, CIA and FBI counter-terrorism operatives, AID and 
agricultural experts, a British diplomat, a former Soros official in Kabul, 
women's rights advocates, an Air Force commander, and well-known authors Barnett 
Rubin and Vali Nasr. This was described as "the civilian side" by Holbrooke, 
though he noted that his CIA adviser "can't be surfaced" for public events.

This was a nation-building team, a parallel government, assembled for the very 
long haul.

There was virtually no acknowledgement that "the civilian side" depends entirely 
on the success of "the military side" in killing, capturing and defeating the 
insurgencies raging in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Nearly ninety percent of 
US funding goes for military purposes, and General Stanley MacChrystal soon will 
be asking the White House for more troops.

Barnett Rubin described the American policy goals in terms that put security -- 
military success -- first: to enable Afghanistan to gain control of its 
territory and make the entire region more secure.

It is little wonder that the Obama White House lobbied in recent months to kill 
Rep. Jim McGovern's simple resolution calling for a report on an exit strategy 
from the Pentagon by December.

There is no exit strategy, even though President Obama once offered his opinion 
that one was needed, and a majority of House Democrats voted for the McGovern 
bill. [John Burton, chairman of the California Democratic Party, recently sent 
an email to 100,000 Democrats endorsing McGovern's measure, a sure sign of 
discontent at the grass-roots of the party].

Holbrooke, a highly-educated and articulate diplomat who long ago was an author 
of the Pentagon Papers, wriggled in trying to answer Podesta's question about 
mission creep. "It's a good question why we are in Afghanistan if al Qaeda is 
largely not there," he began. "The connections between al Qaeda and the Taliban 
are 'very elusive'", he added. But Afghanistan could become "recruiting 
territory" for al Qaeda in Pakistan if the US left Afghanistan, he claimed, so 
if you abandon Afghanistan you will suffer somewhere else.

Podesta asked another question: can America settle for a "weak Afghanistan" 
combined with military intervention in Pakistan? The commitment is not 
"open-ended" but will take a "long time," came the answer.

"I don't use the word 'victory', but 'success' instead", Holbrooke noted. And 
what is the "success" that will allow an exit? You cannot define success, he 
mused, "but we'll know it when we see it." Success will not involve a battleship 
surrender or a Geneva conference, he predicted.

The biggest problem will be "strengthening the police after the military does 
the clearing", he noted, which sounds like subcontracting the war to local 
forces once we have paid for, armed and trained them.

The sense one got from this presentation was that Holbrooke is assembling an 
infrastructure which will be in place if and when the troops have finished their 
"clearing", which may not be anytime soon.

What Holbrooke didn't say is that quagmire is more likely than success in the 
predictable future. And then he will be presiding over Dayton-style talks as he 
did in the Balkans a decade ago. "We feel the impatience of the public and the 
Congress", he admitted in response to a question.

Like success, a quagmire will be known when the public sees it. Forty-five 
Americans were killed in Afghanistan in July, a rate that is continuing in 
August. For every one of those dead American soldiers, not to mention the 
uncounted dead Afghan and Pakistan civilians, the quagmire already has begun.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-hayden/holbrookes-projects-long_b_259234.html