Generaal pleit in Londen voor uitbreiding Afghanistan

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Bizar dat een Generaal zo openlijk pleit voor meer troepen.
Volgens mij een teken dat de verhoudingen in Amerika volledig zoek zijn.
Zelfs een uitbreiding van een oorlog wordt in het publieke domein 'geregeld.'

Groet / Cees

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/02/AR2009100201894.html
McChrystal Flown to Denmark To Discuss War With Obama

By Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 3, 2009

A brief meeting between President Obama and his top general in Afghanistan
on Friday offered the commander in chief an opportunity to question
directly the dire assessment of the war effort there, officials said.

The previously unannounced meeting between Obama and Gen. Stanley A.
McChrystal took place aboard Air Force One after it landed in Copenhagen
Friday morning. McChrystal, who had been in London for a speech, was
whisked to Denmark at Obama's request, White House aides said.

The relationship between the two men is increasingly under scrutiny as
Obama weighs whether to accept McChrystal's recommendations for a major
increase in U.S. troops in Afghanistan. National security officials say
Obama will decide this month, after a series of top-level briefings that
began last week.

Until Friday, Obama had talked with McChrystal only from a distance, and
had met him only once. Aides called the private meeting "productive" and
went out of their way to say how fond Obama is of the man he chose to lead
the war.

Obama likes McChrystal "very much personally," White House press secretary
Robert Gibbs told reporters. He added that Obama "got a chance, as I said
earlier, to meet and talk with his wife, somebody who obviously is, along
with General McChrystal, making personal sacrifices in this whole
endeavor."

McChrystal has spent much of the past two weeks putting enormous pressure
on the Obama administration to back his calls for as many as 40,000
additional troops. The general's classified assessment of the war was
obtained last month by The Washington Post and has freed him to advocate
for it publicly.

In his speech in London, hours before meeting with Obama, McChrystal
warned that refusing to accede to the request for more troops would be
unwise.

Asked whether a scaled-back U.S. effort in Afghanistan -- an option
favored by Vice President Biden and some of Obama's top political advisers
-- would work in practice, McChrystal said, "The short answer is: No."

"You have to navigate from where you are, not from where you wish to be,"
McChrystal said after the speech. "A strategy that does not leave
Afghanistan in a stable position is probably a short-sighted strategy."

Aides refused to say whether Obama scolded McChrystal for his frank answer
or his less-than-subtle campaign on behalf of his troop request. One
adviser noted, however, that the meeting was arranged hastily after Obama
realized that the two men would be close to each other in Europe during
the president's effort to win the 2016 Olympics for Chicago.

"He hired McChrystal to do this job and to give him an assessment," Gibbs
said in an interview Thursday evening. "From that standpoint, he's done
everything the president hoped he'd do."

He added: "The president said that McChrystal understands that he put
together an assessment, and he expects and wants people to ask him
questions about that assessment so that we can get the right strategy."

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