Afghanistan al bijna net zo'n grote oorlog als Irak

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Het verbaast me dat niemand er over valt dat een rapport van een generaal
aan zijn baas (via een paar schijven) in de krant komt.
Meestal gebeurt dit als iemand een eigen agenda heeft, terwijl hij weet
dat zijn baas er waarschijnlijk anders over denkt.

Maar ja, daarom zal Hillary (Buitenlandse Zaken, niet Defensie) daar ook
wel op reageren, in plaats van die baas ;)

Groet / Cees


http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/09/21/hillary_clinton_tactfully_pushes_mcchrystal_back/
Hillary Clinton Tactfully Pushes McChrystal Back
user-pic
By Steve Clemons - September 21, 2009, 5:10PM

She is tactful about it, but in the exchange below between Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton and The News Hour correspondent Margaret Warner,
Clinton suggests that McChrystal is only one of several voices on
Afghanistan strategy but that his views are not definitive, and that there
are many other decision points. She is respectful that this is his view --
but she is not on board with what the commanding general in the field
suggests as of yet.

She makes clear that the President will not be rushed into a decision by
the McChrystal report and also emphasizes that the outcome of the Afghan
election is not yet decided (wow. . .really?)

Here is the fascinating exchange between Margaret Warner and Hillary
Clinton that will appear on The News Hour tonight (to watch video, click
here):

    MARGARET WARNER: Madam Secretary, thanks for doing this.

    SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON: Well thank you very much for
talking with me today, Margaret.

    MARGARET WARNER: Now you are a key advisor to President Obama as
Secretary of State, as he's reviewing this whole Afghan strategy. What
is your reaction to General McChrystal's assessment?

    HILLARY CLINTON: Well first let me put it into context. I mean one of
the points that the President has made continuously since taking
office is that we're going to be assessing, both our strategy and its
implementation constantly. We're not going to make a decision and then
just let it go on autopilot. We think that it's much better to be very
open and robust in our deliberations. So what General McChrystal has
done is to take a look from his perspective. He's a new commander and
he was asked to please give his best judgment. His memo is what's
called a classified pre-decisional assessment but it goes into the
process. We have a really vigorous process through the NSC and the
White House where we make our contributions and then of course
decisions go to the president. I think the President said very well
yesterday on his marathon talk show appearances that you know we need
to have a clear view of the strategy and its implementation before we
get to resources, and that's the process we're engaged in right now.

    MARGARET WARNER: General McChrystal was very blunt saying if you want
to do counter-insurgency, he needs more resources or the whole war
will, quote, "likely result in failure." Now is there anyone better
positioned to give at least that kind of assessment than the commander
you sent out there, or the president sent out there to do just that?

    HILLARY CLINTON: Well, but, without referencing General McChrystal's
report because it is classified, let me just say that we know,
including our military colleagues that good governance is key to
whether or not what we do has positive results. We know that getting
it right in Pakistan and along the border is critical. So there's not
just one decision point -- number of troops. It is part of a broader
understanding of what are our true goals, how best can we move toward
achieving them? We have a clear and critical objective of trying to
disrupt and dismantle and defeat al-Qaida and their extremist allies
and prevent a return to safe haven, and every piece of this has to fit
together. We don't even know yet who will be the president of
Afghanistan so it's, it's not in any way to say that what General
McChrystal, based on his expertise is presenting or asking for is not
important. It's critically important but it's a part of the overall
process and there are many other considerations that we have to take
into account.

    MARGARET WARNER: In it he goes to the point you raise about
governance. And he says that the Karzai government, he said given the
widespread corruption and I'm just going to quote, he said, "gives
Afghans little reason to support their government." Do you see it that
way? I mean you have people on the ground there, that there's
something pretty fundamentally flawed about this national government
and the way it's regarded by its own people at a time in which part of
the strategy was to stand up a stable and secure national government.

    HILLARY CLINTON: Well I see it certainly as a problem. You know
corruption, I have labeled a national security threat. But I think we
have to take a step back which is why this analysis is so important,
and we're not going to jump to a snap judgment. We're going to take
this very deliberately.

    First of all holding any election in a war time setting is very
difficult to do. The fact that this election went forward despite the
flaws and the alleged irregularities is not surprising. It's a
question of whether at the end of the process, and remember there is
both an Afghan independent election commission and an international
election commission, if at the end of the process after sorting
through everything that they have to look at, they conclude that there
was a victor in this first round, or they conclude that you have to go
to a second round, I think that will give a certain reassurance to the
people of Afghanistan. The real question, however, is not so much who
gets elected, but what do they do once they are elected? How do they
built the confidence of their own people that they're a government
that cares about the Afghan people, that they are delivering services,
that they are combating corruption, improving governance, all of that,
and that's what we have to work on.

    MARGARET WARNER: But do you think that President Karzai, I mean he's
been in that job for five years, the U.S. has been saying all those
things for five years, maybe not as emphatically as you all have, do
you have any confidence that he has the political will, the
capability, the background to do any of that?

    HILLARY CLINTON: I don't think he was really tested in the prior
administration. I think that there was such an intense immediate
effort that was totally understandable, to go after the Taliban, to
try to insofar as possible chase down al-Qaida, that governance was
important but it wasn't understood to be central to our military
strategic goals. So what I believe is that there's a lot of good that
has come for the Afghan people over the last years. There hasn't been
a history of you know really strong functioning central governments,
but more people are in school, particularly more girls than women.
There are advances being made that we have now worked on over the last
eight months to deal with the poppy trade, to focus on agriculture so
that we actually bring assets to the people where they live and what
their livelihood is, so I think there are some positive changes going
on. Is it enough? Is it moving at a pace that I prefer? No, but I want
to look at this very objectively. I can see the problems and I can
see, you know, the positives and then we want to move more to the
positive side of the ledger.

    MARGARET WARNER: So how fundamental is this review that President
Obama and you all are doing? How long is it going to take?

    HILLARY CLINTON: Well it is fundamental because it is part of the way
we're approaching these issues. I mean we constantly are saying what's
working, what's not working, so it is both fundamental and it is
thorough and thoughtful. We're not going to make any decisions of any
significance until we know the outcome of this election. I mean
because we have to know who our counterparts are, and we have to make
it clear that in return for X, we expect Y.

    MARGARET WARNER: So is a real change in strategy, at least an
alternative, which is not trying to build up or, or create capacity in
a strong central government, but going to a different model. Doing a
more classic counter-terrorism campaign, attacking al-Qaida leaders
and having fewer combat forces on the ground? Are you actually
reassessing whether counterinsurgency is the way to go here?

    HILLARY CLINTON: You know I think it's fair to say, Margaret, that we
have an open mind to any argument that is made. Now I'm sure each of
us is entering into this process with our own points of view and our
own base of understanding what will or will not work. And what General
McChrystal has done is to provide his assessment. We will get
assessments from others as well. And then we will hash it out in the
National Security Council team and then we will present our best
recommendations to the president. But at the end of the day it's the
president's decision and I think what we heard the president saying
yesterday is look, you're going to have to convince me that whatever
decision, is it classic counter-insurgency with additional troops? Is
it counter-insurgency at the same troop level? Is it a different mix
of troops? Is it a counter terrorism strategy?

    MARGARET WARNER: Fewer troops?

    HILLARY CLINTON: Who knows? I mean what we're looking at though are
the goals that we have. Our goal is to protect the United States of
America, our allies, our friends around the world from what is the
epicenter of terrorism, namely the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. I mean
just today we have this announcement in New York about a very
important terrorism investigation involving people from Afghanistan.
Some people say, "well al-Qaida's no longer in Afghanistan." If
Afghanistan were taken over by the Taliban, I can't tell you how fast
al-Qaida would be back in Afghanistan. So we have to be really
clear-eyed about this, and what I'm very grateful for is that we're
not coming in with any ideological, you know, presuppositions. We're
not coming in wedded to the past. What we try to do in this
administration is to sort out all of the different factors and come to
the resolution based on the best information we have, and then as soon
as we do that we keep going at it. We don't say, "OK, fine, now we're
set for the next five years." That's not the way the president works,
that's not the way that any of us work.

    MARGARET WARNER: Getting back to General McChrystal's memo though, he
conveys a great sense of urgency. I mean there's one line in there in
which he says, "failure to gain the initiative," and he's talking
about in the near term, while we wait for say the Afghan security
forces to really get able to handle this. He said, "risks and outcome
where defeating the insurgency's no longer possible." So he is
strongly suggesting that there aren't months and months to come to a
decision here.

    HILLARY CLINTON: Well and I respect that because clearly he is the
commander on the ground, but I can only tell you there are other
assessments from, you know, very expert military analysts who have
worked in counter insurgencies that are the exact opposite. So what
our goal is, is to take all of this incoming data and sort it out. And
I don't think anybody is going to push to a conclusion for the sake of
a conclusion. I think you've seen that this president acts and thinks
very deliberatively which I believe is a preferable way to proceed
when you're talking about the lives of young American men and women,
the lives of the young soldiers of our allies who are part of the
international security force, when you're talking about lives of
Afghans. You want to be sure that the approach that we are pursuing
maximizes success. There is no guarantee. There is absolutely no
guarantee, but what we do know is that this remains vital to America's
national security interests, so how do we best define our approach to
protecting the interests and the values that are at stake?

    MARGARET WARNER: Finally, turning to U.N. GA week, U.N. General
Assembly week here, Iran's not formally on the agenda, but it's
clearly an important subtext. What would you like to get out of this
week that would strengthen the hand of the U.S. and its partners in
restraining Iran's nuclear program?

    HILLARY CLINTON: Well, Iran may not be formally on the agenda but it's
on everyone's mind and the upcoming meeting of the permanent members
of the security council, plus Germany on October 1st, is a very
important milestone. The United States had not formerly participated
in these meetings before. We will be at the table. We've made it very
clear to Iran that they may have issues they wish to discuss with this
group, but this group has one issue to discuss with them and that is,
you know, their nuclear program. As I've said many times, we're going
to give the Iranians a choice. They have a choice that they are facing
now. They have flaunted the international community. They have refused
to allow the kind of inspections and follow-up that they are obligated
to do so, and we want to make it very clear what their options are
going forward.

    MARGARET WARNER: The supreme leader, Khamenei, this weekend decried, I
think was the verb used, the reshaping of the missile defense system
for Europe that the Obama administration did last week. Was that
intended as a signal to Iran?

    HILLARY CLINTON: Yes, and his decrying it is probably the strongest
endorsement that we have of the change in policy that has been adopted
in this administration.

    MARGARET WARNER: What kind of signal?

    HILLARY CLINTON: Well we have said from the very beginning that
missile defense in Europe was about Iran. And it was about their
missile capacity. Based on our analysis we determined that they were
much further along in short term and medium ballistic missiles than in
the intercontinental ballistic missiles. So we adapted this, we
adopted this new approach and if you look at the map, we will protect
all of Europe plus much of the caucuses, our troops, NATO troops, and
we've been sending a message. I have repeatedly made clear to the
Iranians that if part of their calculation in pursuing nuclear weapons
that are deliverable on missiles, is that they will be able to better
dominate their region and beyond, they are making an inaccurate
calculation.

    MARGARET WARNER: And will you also be protecting Israel and the Gulf
states?

    HILLARY CLINTON: Well we are in discussions with other friends and
allies in the region.

    MARGARET WARNER: Madam Secretary, thank you for being with us.

    HILLARY CLINTON: Thank you, very much, Margaret.

I will be discussing America's Afghanistan problems with Keith Olbermann
on Countdown tonight from the MSNBC Studio at 30 Rock.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note

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