By Steve Hynd
It looks like the neo-whatever interventionist crowd might wait a long while for their troop escalation.
The White House has said that it will take no decision on sending more troops to Afghanistan until it determines the new government is a "true partner".
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told CNN TV it would be "reckless" to take such a decision without a thorough analysis of the new government.
... Speaking to CNN, Mr Emanuel said the US would want first to be sure that the government was capable of becoming a "true partner" able to govern the country.
"It would be reckless to make a decision on US troop level if, in fact, you haven't done a thorough analysis of whether, in fact, there's an Afghan partner ready to fill that space that the US troops would create and become a true partner in governing the Afghan country," he said.
Which is exactly what Senator John Kerry said yesterday, as Abdullah supporters said they'd bever accept a Karzai government as legitimate.
And now today comes a report that the Karzai-loyal Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) is actively trying to block any statement of election results from the UN's Election Complaints Commission (ECC) as Karzai's supporters reject any result they don't like too.
"The IEC is trying to pick holes in every conceivable calculation and detail to try and hold things up," said one official with knowledge of the discussions.
As thousands of Karzai's supporters took to the streets in Kandahar province to denounce "foreign meddling" in the election result, IEC officials admitted they were looking into legal challenges to the ECC's decision.
A rejection of the ECC ruling would dramatically escalate the political crisis in Kabul and western powers have spent the last few days frantically pushing Karzai, who is thought to control the IEC, to accept the final outcome.
On Saturday, US senator John Kerry had a late-night meeting with Karzai, but members of the president's entourage indicated that the Afghan leader remains opposed to a second round.
Yesterday , Karzai's spokesman, Waheed Omar, said there was "political interference by outsiders" in the fraud investigation.
"We are certain that if the technical process is followed through correctly Mr Karzai will receive more than 50% of the vote," he said.
The White House might wait forever for those "true partners" to show up - and deferring any troop increase indefinitely in such circumstances would be the right thing to do.
As you know, Steve, I oppose additional troops in Afghanistan (because I'm skeptical about the counter-insurgency strategy). However, the particular statement you cite above struck me as incoherent. The missing link seems to be an alternative strategy.
ReplyDeleteEither there are objectives in Afghanistan that are in our national interest or there aren't. If there are such objectives, they shouldn't be held hostage to a possibly unachievably good Afghan government.
President Obama ran for office for two years, a substantial component of his platform being that there were such objectives.
If there are such objectives, what is the strategy for achieving them? We don't seem to have one. If there are no such objectives, then either President Obama's judgement on foreign policy is suspect or his motives making those objectives part of his campaign are suspect.
I hear you, Dave, but the point is that any troop escalation would be for COIN ops and COIN cannot work without a legitimate host government - which we're about as likley to get now as a pony.
ReplyDeleteSo whatever alternate strategy is developed, it doesn't need more troops. Probably it needs less, to reduce the appearance of being an occupying power, a major driver of the insurgency.
Regards, Steve