Sen. Levin comes out against more troops for Afghanistan

[TayTay]

Sen. Carl Levin delivered a speech on the Senate floor today (Friday, 09/11/09) in which he announced that he we not in favor of backing any requests for more troops, beyond what is already in the pipeline.

C-span recording of the speech: http://tinyurl.com/lql928">Sen Levin on Afghanistan

Sen Levin's office: http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=317685">transcript of his speech today.


Sen. Levin chairs the Armed Services Committee and they are holding hearings on reconfirming Adm Mike Mullen as Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff this http://armed-services.senate.gov/e_witnesslist.cfm?id=4037">coming Tuesday, Sept 15 at 9:30.


Sen. John Kerry at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is holding two very important hearings on Afghanistan after the Levin Armed Services hearing.

Wed Sept 16th at 2:30 pm EXPLORING THREE STRATEGIES FOR AFGHANISTAN

Thursday, Sept 17th at 10 am COUNTERING THE THREAT OF FAILURE IN AFGHANISTAN
The witness lists for these hearings is not posted yet.


I think this could be a very interesting week to discuss what is going on in Afghanistan. A great many Democrats have begun to question the idea of putting more American troops into that country and to deeply question the strategy of the overall effort. It is no easy thing to question the Commander in Chief when that person is from your own political party. It has been done in the past and it can be a very divisive thing. I wonder how this is going to play out for Sen. Levin and how the Afghanistan hearings are going to go for Sen. Kerry, who seems to have more and more questions about the US role in Afghanistan.

[YvonneCa]

1. At least it will be an intelligent discussion. I have...

...much respect for both Senator Kerry and Senator Levin. :)

[MH1]

2. Obama campaigned on Afghanistan being critical, being the "right" war

I think Bush f*cked us more than many people realize, when he abandoned the effort there immediately after the Taliban was overthrown. It was an action that made NO sense, at least if you actually cared about strategic success for this country. (Yeah I know most if not all of us in this group realize what a huge f-up it was. But I think a lot of other people don't get the magnitude of it.)

I have mixed feelings about more troops. I think it's important to get the strategy right, including a lot of things outside the military realm (like how we handle the opium issue). If we don't get the strategy right, more troops will probably do more harm than good. But to implement the right strategy requires a certain number of troops and I'm not convinced we have enough there now. We can't afford to stay there and fail; yet if we just leave, I am convinced that the Taliban will eventually get control of most of the country again, and that would be horrible both strategically and morally.

It's a difficult dilemma and I wouldn't be surprised if W. is having a good laugh about the mess he left for Obama.

[wisteria]

3. I agree with you. I will add that it is time for our President to explain to the American public

just what the mission is, and what we want to achieve.

We can not afford to to just send more troops to Afghanistan and have them risk their lives on what has become a very ill defined mission.

[beachmom]

4. A majority of Americans want out of Afghanistan.

The situation is not good there, and it is getting worse.

Good for Levin being Independent. Kerry is a little different given his closeness with the President. He will be a little more patient than Levin, but not much.

[wisteria]

5. Sometimes the American public reacts instead of first searching out facts.

The violence over there now has got to rattle people, but I would like to hear from our President first on why and what. We are trying to contain the Talaban and other terrorist groups which are a threat to the US. I don't think it is wise to just pull out and ignore this threat.

[YvonneCa]

6. This is going to sound cynical, but...

...it's the ignorance of the American people that got us eight years of GWB. Judging by the McCain campaign, the health care rallies, the Obama school speech reaction and a million other things, I don't think their collective judgment has improved.

Obama was elected...IMHO...because many of us wanted a smart, intelligent President to make better decisions on the war(s), the economy, and on national security. I hope Obama DOES communicate to the American people what he is doing and why...but I'm way past wanting him to check with us for our collective approval before he makes his decisions. He was elected to act...within the law, of course...to set this country on a better course for the future. I think, to that end, he has surrounded himself with many knowledgeable people as advisors. I doubt seriously he would ever ignore the threat posed by either the Taliban or nuclear proliferation.

[beachmom]

8. Well, upping the ante and escalation is feeling less right to me

the more this goes on. Thing is, I am not suggesting a pull out tomorrow. And certainly, we need to remain engaged in the region (especially Pakistan) for years to come. But I am going to be blunt here: this is one of the poorest least developed countries in the world; and probably the most provincial and suspicious of outsiders. There is a reason it was called the Soviet Union's Vietnam. I think an exit strategy needs to be worked on now. I hope Sen. Kerry is doing just that the way he crafted a rough outline in 2006 of what is now our current Iraq exit strategy.

[TayTay]

9. I will write some more about this later on, but this discussion is getting really interesting.

Those hearings this week are starting to look really interesting. Sen. Kerry has scheduled a hearing for Wed afternoon for a battle of the experts to define the strategies. They basically are:

pursue a counter-insurgency strategy. This is the troop-intensive strategy that seeks to, well, nation-build our way out of trouble in Afghanistan. The Long War, defined. (decades, maybe?)

pursue a counter-terrorism strategy. Maintain a small but very supple force of specialized forces to pursue and eliminate the enemy. Leave the nation-building to NGO's. Our troops are not trained in nation-building. (Three cups of tea is not doable by an armed forces.)

recognize the limits of our power, delineate our place in the greater area and maintain as small a footprint as possible. We have no way to "win" in Afghanistan and Al Qaeda is not confined to that area any more that it is confined to any other place on earth. (Bacevich position of classical conservatism that seeks to keep the US out of these struggles in the first place.)

This is a setup hearing that defines the terms that are being debated. What exactly are all the talking heads talking about when they refer to a strategy in Afghanistan. Well, these are 3 strategies and Sen. Kerry means to lay them all out. (And I could construct an argument from existing Kerry speeches to adopt/dismiss all 3 strategies, btw.)


The next hearing on Thursday morning takes this information and talks about how to avoid failure in Afghanistan. This should be fascinating because we don't know yet what the Chairman considers "failure" to be.

[TayTay]

7. Good prosecutors build a case

step by step, or hearing by hearing. Then the case itself is rock solid.

Maybe that is what we are going to see. I would be surprised at a process that isn't methodical, well researched and extremely well presented.