House Republicans prepared to do the ‘immoral thing’ and vote against war supplemental.
House Republicans prepared to do the ‘immoral thing’ and vote against war supplemental.
The Hill reports that the House Republicans “are preparing to vote en bloc” against President Obama’s war funding bill, representing a striking 180-degree turn:
For years, Republicans portrayed the bills funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as matters of national security and accused Democrats who voted against them of voting against the troops. In 2005, Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) went so far as to say sending troops into battle and not paying for it would be an “immoral thing to do.” And just last year, more House Republicans voted for the war supplemental bill than did Democrats, who opposed the legislation because it did little to wind down the military effort in Iraq. But Republicans say this year is different.
The GOP objects to increased funding to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to help aid nations through the financial crisis, funding the GOP is calling “a global bailout.” That the financial crisis was largely caused by the United States doesn’t seem to trouble House conservatives.
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Ex-Taliban official describes torture at Bagram: ‘They were beating me…until I was unconscious.’
Ex-Taliban official describes torture at Bagram: ‘They were beating me…until I was unconscious.’
In an interview with CNN, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef — a close ally of Taliban leader Mullah Omar and Afghanistan’s former ambassador to Pakistan — described his detention experiences at Afghanistan’s Bagram Air Base and at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Zaeef has since been freed and claims he is no longer a member of the Taliban. “He says he is still bitter about his time there. Closing Guantanamo Bay, he told CNN, is only part of the justice those detained there deserve”:
“It was a bad stain on American history,” he said. “If they are closing Guantanamo for justice, they have to bring the people who are torturing people, who abuse people, to justice.” [...]
“I didn’t see a worse situation in my life than Bagram,” recalled Zaeef. “They were beating me, they put me in the snow, in the cold, until I was unconscious.”
Watch it:
A progressive debate on how to get Afghanistan right.
A progressive debate on how to get Afghanistan right.
Last week, Center for American Progress senior fellow Lawrence Korb debated The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel about the military surge in Afghanistan. The debate, which was sponsored by Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Foundation and is part of the Rethink Afghanistan documentary campaign, will be posted in three parts this week. Vanden Heuvel, who urges withdrawal from Afghanistan, argued, “Military escalation will inflame and recruit more terrorists.” Korb countered that more troops are “necessary but not sufficient” to counter the security threats which emanate from the region. The extra troops, Korb said, will “enable the United States and its allies to secure particularly the south and the east part of the country where the Taliban is strongest.” Watch part one of the debate:
Afghan government will change marital rape law.
Afghan government will change marital rape law.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai told CNN yesterday that his government will change a law legalizing marital rape, after hundreds of Afghans took to the streets to protest the law:
Karzai told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that he and others were unaware of the provision in the legislation, which he said “has so many articles.” Karzai signed the measure into law last month.
“Now I have instructed, in consultation with clergy of the country, that the law be revised and any article that is not in keeping with the Afghan constitution and Islamic Sharia must be removed from this law,” Karzai said.
(HT: Jezebel)
Afghan women pelted by stones while protesting rape law.
Afghan women pelted by stones while protesting rape law.
Last month, Afghan President Hamid Karzai provoked international outrage when he signed legislation that effectively legalizes marital rape. Afghan women are trying to fight back, joining forces with women’s rights group and protesting the law. But yesterday, the women protesters were greeted by “largely male” counter-protesters:
A group of some 1,000 Afghans swarmed a demonstration of 300 women protesting against a new conservative marriage law on Wednesday. The women were pelted with small stones as police struggled to keep the two groups apart. [...]
[O]thers shouted “Death to the slaves of the Christians!” Female police held hands around the group to create a protective barrier. … “You are a dog! You are not a Shiite woman!” one man shouted to a young woman in a headscarf holding aloft a banner that said “We don’t want Taliban law.” The woman did not shout back at the man, but told him: “This is my land and my people.”
Inhofe: Gates’ Defense Budget ‘Disarms America’ And ‘Cuts Funding For Our Troops In The Field’
Inhofe: Gates’ Defense Budget ‘Disarms America’ And ‘Cuts Funding For Our Troops In The Field’
In a YouTube video that is getting linked around the conservative blogosphere, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) attacked Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ 2010 defense budget recommendations, though he aimed his criticism at President Obama instead of Gates. Speaking from Afghanistan, Inhofe declared that “President Obama is disarming America. Never before has a president so ravaged the military at a time of war.”
Specifically, Inhofe charged Obama with cutting funding for “our troops in the field during an ongoing war”:
President Obama’s budget, the largest in the history of America, triples the public debt in 10 years, funding every welfare program imaginable, but cuts funding for our troops in the field during an ongoing war.
Here in Afghanistan, while the war is intensifying and the number of US forces increases at the direction of President Obama, he undercuts those he sends into harm’s way. It is not just unbelievable…it is unconscionable.
Watch it:
Needless to say, Inhofe’s over-the-top rhetoric about undercutting American soldiers in Afghanistan is ridiculous. As the New York Times notes, while Gates called for “deep cuts in many traditional weapons systems,” he added “new billions of dollars for others, along with more troops and new technology to fight the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
In his press conference announcing his budget plans, Gates notes that his reforms shift “resources and institutional weight towards supporting the current wars and other potential irregular campaigns.” Here are a few examples of the budget increases that will directly affect the troops in Afghanistan:
– An increase in “intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) support for the warfighter in the base budget by some $2 billion.”
– An additional “$500 million more in the base budget than last year to increase our capacity to field and sustain more helicopters – a capability that is in urgent demand in Afghanistan.”
– “To grow our special operations capabilities, we will increase personnel by more than 2,800 or five percent and will buy more special forces-optimized lift, mobility, and refueling aircraft.”
As Max Bergmann points out at Democracy Arsenal, “this budget represents a clear move toward a more balanced strategy and is a dramatic departure from the strategy of ‘transformation’ that the Bush administration blindly pushed under the leadership of Secretary Rumsfeld.” Additionally, the Gates budget never actually “cuts funding for our troops.” As Bergmann notes, “base spending on defense this year rose by more than $20 billion.”
Pentagon allows media to cover returning war dead for first time in 18 years.
Pentagon allows media to cover returning war dead for first time in 18 years.
At Dover Air Force Base in Delaware last night, the Pentagon granted the news media access to the arrival of a fallen soldier from overseas for the first time in 18 years. In February, the Obama administration lifted the ban on news coverage of returning war dead, which had been in place since the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Following the new policy, the media were allowed to cover the return after the military received consent from family members of the soldier. Below is the return of 30-year old Air Force Staff Sgt. Phillip Myers, who was killed by an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan on April 4:
Rep. Ellison: ‘I Am Skeptical Of The Troop Escalation In Afghanistan’
Rep. Ellison: ‘I Am Skeptical Of The Troop Escalation In Afghanistan’
Roll Call reports today that “anti-war Democrats have been largely mum on President Barack Obama’s recently unveiled policy for Afghanistan — partly because leading liberals don’t yet know where they stand.”
But Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), the first Muslim member of Congress, is clear about his position on the issue. Yesterday, Thinkprogress interviewed Ellison and asked where he stands on President Obama’s plan to send 17,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. Afghans have “seen a lot of foreign powers come to their country — whether it’s the Soviets, the Brits, and now the Americans — and I think they want to see their country finally have peace,” Ellison replied. Ellison told ThinkProgress that he is “skeptical” of the troop increase:
I am skeptical of the troop escalation in Afghanistan. I have my doubts about whether that’s what’s needed. But if troop escalations is what’s going to happen, and if it may in fact be the right thing, the real question is, what are they going to be doing? If they’re just going to be taking it to the “enemy,” I am confident that it will be a failed effort. And I don’t say that with any relish. … The best course of action, I think, is to have an increase in civilian efforts to improve the lot of the average Afghan, with a clear goal to move things into the Afghans as fast as possible.
“We should be trying to exit Afghanistan, too,” he emphasized. “I don’t think we should have any long term plans there either.” Ellison said the U.S. should work to develop agriculture and provide basic security in the area. Watch it:
Ellison was also critical of Obama’s policy of launching “Predator strikes” — or bombing suspected terrorists through remote-piloted aircraft — in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The attacks regularly inadvertendly kill civilians and are deeply unpopular among the public. Ellison said the strikes inflame anti-American sentiment:
I think Predator strikes have not contributed positively. We’ve just heard so many bad things about them. They must really be killing the American image in the mind of the average Afghan. … I think that you need a human being to go see whether or not the strike is actually targeted at a true hostile enemy, rather than a wedding party — which has happened all too often.
“So really, it’s like you cut one head off, and three pop up,” Ellison said of the Predator strikes’ effect on terrorism.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai signs a law that ‘legalizes’ rape.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai signs a law that ‘legalizes’ rape.
Today, the UK Independent reports that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has signed the new Shia Family Law, which women’s groups believe will essentially legalize rape. Specifically, the measure “negates the need for sexual consent between married couples, tacitly approves child marriage and restricts a woman’s right to leave the home.” Shinkai Karokhail, a woman MP who campaigned against the legislation, called it “one of the worst bills passed by the parliament this century.” More details:
The most controversial parts of the law deal explicitly with sexual relations. Article 132 requires women to obey their husband’s sexual demands and stipulates that a man can expect to have sex with his wife at least “once every four nights” when travelling, unless they are ill. The law also gives men preferential inheritance rights, easier access to divorce, and priority in court.
A report by the United Nations Development Fund for Women, Unifem, warned: “Article 132 legalises the rape of a wife by her husband”.
Critics are charging that Karzai rushed the bill through parliament “in a bid to appease Islamic fundamentalists ahead of elections in August.” (HT: AMERICAblog)
Goldfarb: ‘PNAC=Mission Accomplished; New mission begins’ with Foreign Policy Initiative.
Goldfarb: ‘PNAC=Mission Accomplished; New mission begins’ with Foreign Policy Initiative.
Last November, Weekly Standard super hawk Bill Kristol hinted that he would be starting up a new “think-tank” modeled after the neoconservative Project for a New American Century (PNAC). PNAC provided much of the ideological framework for the invasion of Iraq and many of its members and sympathizers lobbied heavily for it. Today, Kristol is officially launching PNAC 2.0 — or as it is now called, “The Foreign Policy Initiative” (started with fellow neocons Robert Kagan and Dan Senor) with an event in Washington D.C. on the future of the Afghanistan war. The Wonk Room’s Matt Duss recently observed of FPI:
What do you do if your previous organization — and the ideology behind it — has become inextricably bound in the public’s imagination to one of the worst foreign policy blunders in American history? Obviously, shut it down, and start a new organization with a new name.
However, Michael Goldfarb — Project for a New American Century alum, former McCain campaign spokesman and current Weekly Standard editor — sees it differently. Writing on Twitter yesterday, Goldfard claimed: “PNAC=Mission Accomplished; New mission begins tomorrow morning with the launch of FPI.”
Obama On Afghanistan: I Will Not ‘Simply Assume That More Troops Always Result In An Improved Situation’
Obama On Afghanistan: I Will Not ‘Simply Assume That More Troops Always Result In An Improved Situation’
Since President Obama announced his new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan last week, he and his administration have been careful to distinguish it from President Bush’s surge in Iraq. Today on Fox News Sunday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates stressed that the focus of the mission in Afghanistan has been “narrowed”: “I think what we need to focus on…is making headway and reversing the Taliban’s momentum and strengthening the Afghan army and police, and really going after Al Qaeda.”
Today in an interview with CBS’s Bob Schieffer, Obama underscored this point. He pointed out that the reason he has increased troops in Afghanistan is because levels there are “greatly underresourced.” However, he is not going to “simply assume that more troops always result in an improved situation”:
OBAMA: What I will not do is to simply assume that more troops always result in an improved situation. [...]
But just because we needed to ramp up from the greatly underresourced levels that we had doesn’t automatically mean that, if this strategy doesn’t work, that what’s needed is even more troops.
There may be a point of diminishing returns in terms of troop levels. We’ve got to also make sure that our civilian efforts, our diplomatic efforts and our development efforts are just as robustly encouraged.
Obama added that it this strategy doesn’t work, the answer won’t necessarily be more troops. “It’s not going to be an open-ended commitment of infinite resources,” he said. Watch it:
The 17,000 additional U.S. troops will be focused on fighting the Taliban in the south and east, allowing the U.S. to “partner with Afghan security forces and to go after insurgents along the border.” Later this spring, Obama will also be sending another 4,000 U.S. troops to help train Afghan security forces.
While the increase in U.S. forces has received the majority of media attention, Obama’s Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy is actually a “comprehensive civil-political effort to improve basic services, accountability, and overall governance in order to defeat the hard-core Taliban and al Qaeda fighters at the heart of the insurgency,” as CAP’s Peter Juul has written. The President has also ordered an increase in humanitarian aid and civilian support, recognizing that the effort there cannot be won solely by military means.
Transcript: More »
Kyl, McConnell skip Obama’s briefing on Afghanistan.
Kyl, McConnell skip Obama’s briefing on Afghanistan.
President Obama has long refrained from detailing the particulars of his plans for Afghanistan and Pakistan, saying he will only do so after conducting a strategic review of the situation. This week, the administration announced that it will will soon release the details of the review. But Senate GOP leaders skipped Obama’s briefing on the strategic review today, opting for a “multi-member meeting”:
Four Democratic senators joined a half dozen House leaders from both parties at the session with Mr. Obama, but Senators Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, and Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Republican whip, were absent. … “He had a long-scheduled, multi-member meeting here at the same time,” [McConnell spokesperson Don] Stewart said. “And as the invitation came in late yesterday, it was tough to move things around.”
“This was nothing more than a snub — pure and simple,” said a senior Senate Democratic aide.
Kristol Launches Project For A New American Century 2.0: ‘The Foreign Policy Initiative’
Kristol Launches Project For A New American Century 2.0: ‘The Foreign Policy Initiative’
In November, after Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and his neoconservative foreign policy were soundly defeated at the polls, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol told right-wing talker Hugh Hewitt that he was considering putting together a refashioned version of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). “A little bit of a political organization” for “the Fred Kagans and Bob Kagans and Reuel Gerechts of the world” wouldn’t “be bad,” said Kristol.
Kristol’s new “political organization” for neoconservatives is now a reality:
A newly-formed and still obscure neo-conservative foreign policy organisation is giving some observers flashbacks to the 1990s, when its predecessor staked out the aggressively unilateralist foreign policy that came to fruition under the George W. Bush administration.
The blandly-named Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) - the brainchild of Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, neo-conservative foreign policy guru Robert Kagan, and former Bush administration official Dan Senor - has thus far kept a low profile; its only activity to this point has been to sponsor a conference pushing for a U.S. “surge” in Afghanistan.
Though it’s not mentioned on their Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) bio page, Kristol and Kagan were co-founders of PNAC in 1997. Matt Duss writes at the Wonk Room that Kristol and Kagan seem to be re-naming their old organization because it became “inextricably bound in the public’s imagination to one of the worst foreign policy blunders in American history,” the invasion of Iraq.
Noting that FPI’s first public event next week, Afghanistan: Planning For Success, features a heavy representation of Iraq war advocates, Duss suggests that a far better title for the event would be Afghanistan: Dealing With The Huge Problems Created By Many Of The People On This Very Stage.
McCain Decries ‘Loose Rhetoric About A Minimal Commitment In Afghanistan’ … Like His Own
McCain Decries ‘Loose Rhetoric About A Minimal Commitment In Afghanistan’ … Like His Own
In today’s Washington Post, Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and John McCain (R-AZ) have an op-ed calling for a robust “comprehensive civil-military counterinsurgency approach” to the war in Afghanistan, demonstrating “unambiguous U.S. political commitment to success…over the long haul”:
As the administration finalizes its policy review, we are troubled by calls in some quarters for the president to adopt a “minimalist” approach toward Afghanistan. Supporters of this course caution that the American people are tired of war and that an ambitious, long-term commitment to Afghanistan may be politically unfeasible. [...]
Loose rhetoric about a minimal commitment in Afghanistan is counterproductive for another reason: It exacerbates suspicions, already widespread in South Asia, that the United States will tire of this war and retreat. These doubts about our staying power deter ordinary Afghans from siding with our coalition against the insurgency.
This pivot to Afghanistan is new for McCain. During the presidential campaign, when Barack Obama was already calling Afghanistan the “central front” in the war on terrorism, McCain was still insisting it was Iraq.
Additionally, as ThinkProgress has highlighted, in November 2003, McCain was tossing around all sorts of “loose rhetoric about a minimal commitment in Afghanistan”:
McCAIN: I am concerned about it, but I’m not as concerned as I am about Iraq today — obviously, or I’d be talking about Afghanistan — but I believe that if Karzai can make the progress that he is making, that in the long term we may muddle through in Afghanistan.
Watch it:
Last month when McCain was delivering a speech on Afghanistan at AEI, the Wonk Room’s Matt Duss challenged the senator on his comments. McCain was at a loss for a response, other than, “Well, obviously you are taking that statement out of context.”
Coulter attacks Obama over Afghanistan: Putting more troops there is ‘insane.’
Coulter attacks Obama over Afghanistan: Putting more troops there is ‘insane.’
During her speech at CPAC today, right-wing loon Ann Coulter said we owe “a thank you to George Bush for keeping us so safe.” That comment earned a rousing ovation from the audience of conservative activists. Coulter then proceeded to claim Obama is continuing Bush’s national security policies, before attacking him over Afghanistan:
The one real problem with Obama on national security is… he’s putting more troops into Afghanistan, which is insane. This has been the focus of the terrorists — they’re all streaming across into Iraq, where we can win. Now it’s gonna be in Afghanistan, which could well be another Vietnam.
So for politically correct reasons, we’re moving the focus of the war on terrorism to a very bad place for us. The Russians couldn’t win there. Peter the Great couldn’t win there. Oh, but maybe the messiah can win there, ok.
Interestingly, the attack by Coulter didn’t seem to receive any reaction from the audience, positive or negative. Watch it:
Afghan Foreign Minister Says ‘The Majority Of Afghans Still Support’ International Troop Presence
Afghan Foreign Minister Says ‘The Majority Of Afghans Still Support’ International Troop Presence
A recent ABC/BBC/ARD poll released earlier this month found that Afghans’ support of U.S. and NATO forces’ efforts in that nation is tumbling. Just 47 percent said they had a favorable view of the United States, down from 83 percent in 2005. Only 37 percent said that most people in their area support NATO and the International Security Assistance Force; 67 percent supported ISAF in 2006.
Today, ThinkProgress interviewed Afghanistan’s foreign minister, Dr. Rangin Dadfar Spanta. We asked him about the poll’s grim findings and how NATO and the Afghan government “can win back the hearts and minds of the Afghan civilians.” Spanta disputed the poll’s results, claiming that a majority of Afghans still support the U.S.-led international coalition:
SPANTA: Now, this is the opinion to places that you ask the people, the ordinary Afghans, the majority of all the Afghans still support the presence of the international community because they believe that the international community came to Afghanistan after two and a half decades of tyranny in my country…and the international community brought us liberation. This is still the perception of the people of Afghanistan
Watch it:
Spanta later said that Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak and Gen. David McKiernan, top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, have agreed that Afghan forces will be more “involved” in the “preparation [and] implantation of military action on operations,” including “arresting Afghans in house searching” to ensure more respect for the culture of Afghans.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has suggested recently that the U.S. lower expectations for its mission in Afghanistan by “setting standards far below the sweeping desires of regional democratization that were a foundation of Bush administration national security policy.” Spencer Ackerman notes that, during a later event hosted by the Center for American Progress, Spanta criticized this new approach, calling it “reductionist” and warning that “any reductionist policy is bound to fail.”
ThinkProgress Challenges McCain On His 2003 Statement That We May ‘Muddle Through In Afghanistan’
ThinkProgress Challenges McCain On His 2003 Statement That We May ‘Muddle Through In Afghanistan’
Yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) delivered a speech on Afghanistan at the neoconservative think tank American Enterprise Institute. TP Wonk Room’s Matt Duss attended the event and asked McCain this question:
In November 2003, in discussing Afghanistan, you said that given everything else that was going on, we’d probably just “muddle through” in Afghanistan. Now given the rather ambitious set of goals that you’ve set out for us today, it seems that you’ve come to a conclusion that muddling through is not an acceptable outcome. Could you just briefly describe the kind of process in your thinking by which you arrived at this conclusion?
McCain disputed the premise of the question, claiming: “Well, obviously you are taking that statement out of context.” Watch it:
Duss responds on The Wonk Room with the video of McCain’s original statement in 2003:
MCCAIN: I am concerned about it, but I’m not as concerned as I am about Iraq today — obviously, or I’d be talking about Afghanistan — but I believe that if Karzai can make the progress that he is making, that in the long term we may muddle through in Afghanistan.
Watch it:
McCain’s new position is that the Afghanistan war is necessary. “I know Americans are weary of war,” he said yesterday. “I’m weary of it. But we must win the war in Afghanistan.”
The larger issue, of course, is that McCain — like the Bush administration — was so feverishly eager to go to war with Iraq after 9/11 that he largely neglected the issue of Afghanistan. Indeed, ABC News reported last year that, as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, McCain missed every single hearing on Afghanistan over the past two years.
Fred Kagan: ‘The Iraqis Were Not Bitching’ About Civilian Deaths Because They ‘Sort Of Accept’ Them
Fred Kagan: ‘The Iraqis Were Not Bitching’ About Civilian Deaths Because They ‘Sort Of Accept’ Them
AEI’s Fred Kagan, the architect of the Iraq surge, has a history of grossly misreading events on the ground in Iraq. In August 2007, amidst the height of skyrocketing violence in Iraq, Kagan claimed that “sectarian deaths” were “way down.” After Baghdad had been virtually cleansed of Sunnis in March 2008, Kagan decried the “magnificent myth” of ethnic cleansing in Iraq.
At an AEI panel Wednesday, Kagan drastically overplayed Iraqis’ tolerance for “collateral damage” resulting from U.S. military incursions. Comparing Afghanistan and Iraq, Kagan said that a notable difference between the two wars is that Iraqi civilians “were not bitching” when civilians were killed:
KAGAN: The interesting thing is that when we were fighting those battles and doing that damage, on the whole the Iraqis were not bitching about collateral damage. You had nothing like the degree of upset about how many civilians were being injured and how much damage was being done to the infrastructure in Iraq at a much higher level of destruction than you have in Afghanistan at a much lower level of destruction.
Kagan then attributed the differences between Iraqis’ so-called tolerance for civilian deaths — and Afghan’s intolerance — to “cultural reasons”:
KAGAN: I think there’s a cultural reason for that: Afghans don’t fight in their cities. Iraqis do. For good or ill, Iraqis expect to fight in their cities. That’s where the insurgents dug in, Saddam Hussein planned to dig in to the cities or lure us into an urban fight. It’s sort of understood that the battlefield is going to be there, that doesn’t mean that they don’t complain about it, that doesn’t mean that it’s not a problem, but it does mean that when the insurgents dig in and we root them out, the Iraqis don’t on the whole say “darn it, you shouldn’t have blown up all of our houses.” They sort of accept that. Afghans do not.
Listen here:
Over at the Wonk Room, Matt Duss notes that Kagan’s casual dismissal of human rights marks a line in the sand between progressives and neoconservatives. “Neoconservatism is based in the idea that there’s no national security problem that can’t be overcome by the relentless application of the military force. Progressives understand that this is wrong,” he writes.
According to Kagan, Iraqis’ overwhelming disapproval of the U.S. occupation, demanding a timetable for withdrawal, and celebrating a man who threw shoes at President Bush signifies their tolerance for “collateral damage.”
Obama approves deployment of more than 10,000 troops to Afghanistan.
Obama approves deployment of more than 10,000 troops to Afghanistan.
This afternoon, the White House released a statement by President Obama announcing the deployment of additional troops to Afghanistan. Noting that the “situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan demands urgent attention and swift action,” Obama said that he “approved a request from Secretary Gates to deploy a Marine Expeditionary Brigade later this spring and an Army Stryker Brigade and the enabling forces necessary to support them later this summer.” Various media outlets are reporting that he will be sending roughly 12,000 troops to Afghanistan. The Progress Report has more on the challenges remaining in Afghanistan.
Obama’s full statement below: More »
To remain effective in Afghanistan, we desperately need to reduce the civilian death toll. That means less airstrikes. Which probably means more boots on the ground. And hopefully more boots on the ground can also reduce civilian exposure to death-by-Taliban. That’d be how you get the job done.But success of this venture is contingent not so much on the additional troops as on the adoption of a different strategy—one more focused on population security and less reliant on air power. It would be nice to learn some more details so as to really evaluate what’s happening.
Ed Henry to Obama: Will you allow Americans to ‘see the full human cost of war?’
Ed Henry to Obama: Will you allow Americans to ‘see the full human cost of war?’
Since 1991, the media have been banned from covering the arrival of remains of military dead at Delaware’s Dover Air Force Base. Yesterday, noting that Vice President Biden has previously criticized this policy, CNN’s Ed Henry asked President Obama a hard-hitting question on whether the administration will rescind this policy in the spirit of transparency:
HENRY: And back in 2004, then-Senator Joe Biden said that it was shameful for dead soldiers to be, quote, snuck back into the country under the cover of night. You’ve promised unprecedented transparency, openness in your government. Will you overturn that policy so the American people can see the full human cost of war?
Obama answered that “we are in the process of reviewing those policies in conversations with the Department of Defense.” Watch it:
The question comes as four American soldiers and an interpreter were killed Monday in a suicide bombing in Mosul, Iraq.
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