Tweet
And now I have summed up this Washington Post piece. For more straight-laced commentary — and it would be hard to produce less – see this post of mine.
You know what’s unfortunate about the Post piece? It contains so many great pieces of reporting that aren’t Eikenberry-related but had to be cobbled into the piece because of the unfortunate constraints of the newspaper format — instead of being pulled out and put into linkable, modular blog posts of narrative utility — that will now be ignored because of the holy-fuck-edness of the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and former commander of the war dissenting on escalation taking up all the attention. Like for instance:
– Gates, the swing vote, has swung, in favor of 30,000-n-change more troops
– Dude is going to ask the allies for more, to back up their COIN enthusiasm
– There’s a debate over how many population centers you have to secure to keep the country governable. McChrystal thinks like 10 or 12. I’ve heard as few as three; check out this piece
– Canada and the Netherlands are on track to remove nearly 5000 troops by 2011, so we need that many at least to keep pace, and while I guess that’s not news, it doesn’t really make it into the papers in a simple, easy-to-read format
Really an amazing piece. But it would make a ludicrously spectacular series of blog posts!
5 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About ATTACKERMAN
RSS/XML Feed
Some Dem should plan to run against Obama if he escalates the war. It’s the only thing likely to get his attention, as he’s now running completely scared of what Petraeus, McChrystal and the GOP will do if he doesn’t do their bidding.
Damn. I did not see that coming. Maybe PO is finally read to lead rather than follow, eh?
Indeed, a better blog post it would have been. Interestingly, this was not mentioned, for which WaPo would need a whole other article. So if that goes through, -9000. Maybe they will be relocated to Basra’s airport…
I like to believe that the the president does not do the bidding of the military or any political party. I would say he is more scared of bolloxing Afghanistan. Rightfully so.
An aside: I cannot believe that a purely counterterrorism approach is actually being debated. It is so Rumsfeldian.
You linked to page four of that WaPo article, Spencer, just so you know.
I think it’s worth noting that Eikenberry is essentially the top of the top officials to protest Karzai’s corruption, and what that means for the US engagement in country. But he’s by no means the only one offering that criticism, and the fact remains that the US is still between a rock and a hard place. Karzai has several years behind him already, and is Pashtun, that carries him pretty far. After Abdullah withdrawing and the runoffs being cancelled, I really don’t think anything–even this–will sway the forthcoming martial commitment to Afghanistan.
That doesn’t make Eikenberry’s point of view unimportant, but I think it doesn’t likely hold a lot of power in the discussion.
I meant to! To get people to read down into the piece!