Holbrooke: I Can’t Be Certain Afghan Troop Build-Up Won’t Be Counterproductive

[babylonsister]

http://washingtonindependent.com/42549/holbrooke-i-cant-be-certain-afghan-troop-build-up-wont-be-counterproductive

Holbrooke: I Can’t Be Certain Afghan Troop Build-Up Won’t Be Counterproductive
By Spencer Ackerman 5/12/09 11:39 AM


Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) cut through the pleasantries. How can Amb. Richard Holbrooke be sure that the troop buildup in Afghanistan wouldn’t “escalate, rather than diminish the threat” by pushing insurgents eastward into Pakistan?

If this were the Bush administration — and Peter Feaver can disagree with me here — an emissary would have denied Feingold’s premise. Holbrooke didn’t. “The additional amount of American troops, particularly if they’re successful, could end up creating pressure” on Pakistan that could lead to “additional instability.” During the administration’s strategy review, he continued, he raised that prospect with the White House, “and I was not alone in raising it.” At Central Command, Gen. David Petraeus is “well aware” of the risks of using a NATO hammer against the insurgents without a Pakistani anvil to strike against, and so the administration is having “very intense discussions with the Pakistani Army so they’re prepared this time as they were not prepared in 2002″ when the Taliban and al-Qaeda, driven out of Kabul, Kandahar and then Tora Bora, flooded into the Pakistani tribal areas.

Feingold continued: are you sure the build-up won’t be counterproductive?

“No,” Holbrooke said. “I am only sure that we are aware of the problem” and so are the Pakistanis. Indeed, the current Pakistani military offensive will probably have the effect, Holbrooke said, of driving insurgents back to the border area with Afghanistan, so the United States has to be seized by the problem. “We’re aware of the consequences,” Holbrooke said, which was “not true seven years ago.”

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), chairman of the hearing, called it an “honest answer.”

[shadowknows69]

1. Another story from the "NO SHIT" file

[dflprincess]

3. At least Feingold asked the question

so even if everyone knew the answer, it still had to go on the record.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. "We're aware of the consequences" but, what the hell, we'll do it anyway.

These idiots are sure free with other people's lives.

[Lilith Velkor]

7. MIC's gotta eat

Can't make a New Cold War omelet without breaking a whole lotta eggs.

[pansypoo53219]

4. is there a way just to give afghans

security? guard schools?

[bigtree]

5. "we're probably going to be up to our waists in quicksand

" . . . but let's press on anyway."

[Karenina]

6. I AM CERTAIN Afghan Troop Build-Up

will be COUNTERPRODUCTIVE in the extreme. LOVED his use of the negative. ;-)

[gratuitous]

8. Okay, so we don't know if it will work

It didn't work last time. And it may/will not work this time. But at least he gave an "honest answer," so let's go ahead! Sen. Kerry, who are you asking to die for this mistake? I'm so old, I remember a time when things like that bothered you.

[karynnj]

10. Why do you think that Kerry is having that hearing

and the other 2 hearings on Afghanistan. He has been warning of the dangers of not having the policy right in all of them. You are twisting Kerry's comment to mean something it doesn't.

You might even want to watch the hearings.

[gratuitous]

12. Talk and hearings are cheap

Will Kerry's committee recommend not funding something he knows won't work? Will Kerry speak out against something he knows won't work? I'm content to wait, but if the past is any sort of prologue, Kerry will keep his lip zipped, and a whole bunch of people will die carrying out a futile strategy. As I said, asking people to die needlessly for policies that won't work used to bother John Kerry. I'm not so sure it does anymore.

[karynnj]

14. Do you remember who took the bulk of the abuse because of Kerry/Feingold?

That was Kerry speaking up against a policy that he thought was not working - that was 2006 - not 1971. He even said in his April 22, 2006 Dissent speech that he would not stay quiet while people were dying with a policy that is not working. There is NO time that Kerry kept his lips "zipped".

The fact is that Kerry - in those hearings has been addressing with others, including soldiers who were there - which you likely weren't (and I definitely wasn't) what is working and what is not. The Obama administration has been reviewing the policy and has only very recently adopted a new policy from what Bush was doing. The fact is that Kerry's hearings were one input - Jones mentioned the first Afghanistan one.

You twist Holbrooke's answer - that he doesn't know if the new policy will work - to it won't work. That is not what he said. Nor did he OR Feingold say it was futile or that the funding should be eliminated. In fact, just the opposite - every Senator there has spoken of the importance to get it right. I've heard Kerry's comments in the committee hearings - and it is beyond presumptuous for you to state that "he knows this won't work". He has never said that. Feingold actually was a sponsor to a bill to INCREASE the troop levels in Afghanistan - in 2006 and I think he reindroduced it in 2007 - for the Congress that just ended.

[gratuitous]

15. I didn't twist Holbrooke's answer at all

He said he didn't know if this little scheme was going to work. In reviewing the history, it turns out that the last time we tried it, it didn't work. We're still bogged down in Afghanistan, we're still killing civilians by the score, and our troops are dying at an increasing rate. So I surmised quite reasonably that it may not or even will not work this time, based on the fact that it didn't work last time.

But, rather than recommending something new, Kerry appeared satisfied with Holbrooke's "honest answer," and there's absolutely no indication that another troop surge in Afghanistan isn't in the works, that it will work any better than it did last time, or that we're going to see anything substantive come out of these hearings in terms of a new way forward. Hearings are a necessary step, a building block for developing the record on what we've done and how effective it's been. But if nothing more comes out of the hearings than the vague hope that by doing the same thing all over again we'll arrive at a different result, then the entire thing is a charade and a dumbshow. To this point, I don't see any indication from any of the distinguished gentlemen that we're going to do any such thing.

So let's all cross our fingers and hope that this time more troops, more weapons, more casualties, more mayhem, and more destruction will bring about progress beyond seeing that more troops, more weapons, more casualties, more mayhem and more destruction didn't work again.

[karynnj]

17. I did not mean you twisted Holbroke's answer - I was speaking of Kerry

and you twisted his response. The point of that hearing was oversight into what Holbrooke was doing. The comment to me was simply pointing out that Holbrooke's response was truthful - as it painfully was. Have you watched the hearings that Kerry has had - starting with a roundtable on February 5th. In addition, Kerry already has another upcoming hearing where Admiral Mullen will testify. Could it be that Holbrooke, who is working the diplomatic piece might be the wrong person to pursue this with.

You are ignoring that they are changing the effort - so they are NOT doing what they have done in the past. In addition, in hearing a few years ago, both Kerry and Feingold spoke of more troops not being equivalent to more destruction - but rather providing the security needed to allow the regional leaders to secure and rehabilitate their areas. (The female soldier, a vet of the Afghanistan war, recommended something like this.)

From all his statements, Kerry does not agree with you that we should just leave now, nor does Feingold. He also likely is one person (of many) who the President listens to - so I assume that any recommendations he has have been made to the President - and he is continuing to provide oversight in these hearings.

[DemReadingDU]

9. morning kick

[pleah]

11. K&R

[Beam Me Up]

13. Why do we pretend there is ANY LEGITIMACY for this fake "war"?

Someone please explain to me WHY we're in Afghanistan again? To stop "the database" (al Qaeda) of all bin Laden's associates??? To stop terror by blowing up poor people and pouring white phosphorus on their children????

Give me a fucking break. We are there to secure the ME and South Asia markets in petroleum and heroin and to establish an imperial beach head for global market dominance. THAT IS WHY OUR MILITARY IS THERE -- it has nothing to do with terrorism. nothing! WE -- the US military industrial complex, driven by the insatiable need of the American citizens for an "affordable" wasteful, polluting and consumerist society -- ARE THE GLOBAL TERRORISTS.

Explain this to me: Why is it better to LIE about our global intentions? Why is it better to throw hundreds of billions of dollars at an out of control military industrial complex RATHER THAN paying a fair market price for the oil rights and the pipeline rights to the nations that sit atop them? Why don't we END the global black-market opium trade that is closely aligned with international organized crime and international armaments trade, the funding of covert operations (terrorism) and is leveraged through money laundering in Wall Street and international banking consortiums?? Do we really BELIEVE that it would cost us MORE than the way its being done now??

I'm sick of this. Truly sick. This world we've created is making ME sick and it is making ALL of us sick. It wrecks our bodies, it deranges our minds and kills our humanity. It is driving us insane. The whole thing has to CHANGE -- real, deep, meaningful change. And that isn't going to come so long as we keep pretending there is ANY legitimacy to the old, narcissistic, US imperialism that has shackled ALL OF US to TRILLIONS of dollars in debt, created insatiable demand for polluting and non-renewable hydrocarbons and is FUNDING international crime syndicates.

What is destroying our world is US. You, me, all of us who are living in a make-believe world based on lies, lies, and damn lies. DELUSIONS that we can build a global civilization fed by non-renewable energy and RUN by CRIMINAL ENTERPRISES that have infected our Republic to its very core. Take off your blinders! Take off your exceptionalist and elitist rose colored glasses. Get REAL people! This isn't going to stop until WE stop it, until we DEMAND that those who represent us put an end to it -- all of it. You want single payer health care? GIVE ME A BREAK! You can't have that UNTIL you break the strangle hold that corporations have over the other MIC, the medical industrial complex. You want an end to war? You can't have that until you recognize what ROLE you play in demanding MORE CHEAP OIL. You want an end to international terrorism? Then you have to stop USING the US military to insure the market value of global resources. You have to put an end to the global black market trade in opiates -- by legalizing them and controlling those markets. You have to be willing to acknowledge the REAL COSTS of the life style you're living, snap out of the media driven hallucination that our "pleasant valley" suburbia has become.

We ARE in a war. And that war, indeed, IS a war against terrorism. But to fight that war, we have to see who the real terrorists are and what drives their insatiable need to DISTROY everything that gets in the way of their delusional belief that they have a divine right to destroy every beautiful, living, breathing thing on this planet FOR THEIR OWN INSATIABLE GREED. And we have to realize it isn't "THEM" -- they can only do what we LET them do, what we in our ignorance and apathy ALLOW them to do in our name, for our momentary satisfaction.

It is ALL ONE THING -- one big stinking, rotten, blind, violent, ignorant, all-consuming monster. And we keep feeding it day in and day out because we DO NOT want to take ANY responsibility for everything that is going on. We don't even believe we CAN take control of it, reign it in, bring it down and put in its place a world of peace, a world of fair trade, a world that would VALUE human life and the life of this planet.

IF WE DO NOT DO THIS our civilization is going to become increasingly repressive, increasingly destructive, increasingly insane and disease ridden until it finally destroys itself. THAT is where we're headed. THAT is NOW the evolutionary imperative that lies before us. EITHER we -- all of humanity but especially those in the consumerist west and especially those of us in the US -- break out of this delusion or we will be the un-doing of all that is good, beautiful, loving, kind, generous and peaceful on this Earth. And in our death throws we'll probably CRY OUT and LASH OUT at all the wrong "enemies" having not grasped our own ignorance, our own greed, our own apathy, depravity, debauchery, criminality and insanity.

[Overseas]

16. Kicking this because I am certain it is counterproductive.

We have already bullied Afghanistan for 7 years. It is time to withdraw and see how they fare on their own.

If more involvement is required, let's consult with our allies and find more productive methods than persisting with brutal warfare.

[Beam Me Up]

18. .

:kick:

[Quantess]

19. Plus, it's really expensive.

In money and lives.