Nederland en Afghanistan 207

Fears of Blame for Defeat Shadow Afghan War Meetings

by: Gareth Porter | Inter Press Service

Washington - In a remarkable parallel with a similar turning point in the Vietnam War 44 years ago, President Barack Obama will preside over a series of meetings in the coming weeks that will determine whether the United States will proceed with an escalation of the Afghanistan War or adjust the strategy to reduce the U.S. military commitment there.

The meetings will take place in the context of a request from Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, for 40,000 additional troops, which reached Washington over the weekend. That would bring the total U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan to 108,000 - nearly a 60-percent increase.

Obama has hinted at serious doubts about being drawn more deeply into the war in Afghanistan, and administration officials have signaled that a key issue is whether the proposed counterinsurgency war could be won.

A plan backed by Vice President Joe Biden to scale back U.S. forces in Afghanistan and to focus more narrowly on al Qaeda was one of the options discussed at a Sep. 13 meeting of top administration officials, according to a report in The Age (Melbourne) Friday. That plan would reportedly depend on U.S. Special Forces to track down al Qaeda and ratchet down the counterinsurgency war.

But the decisions that emerge from the coming meetings are more likely to be shaped primarily by the concerns of the military and of the White House about being blamed for a defeat in Afghanistan that now seems far more likely than it did just six months ago.

In that regard, the approaching White House meetings recall similar consultations in June 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson and his civilian advisers responded to a request from Gen. William Westmoreland and the Joint Chiefs of Staff for a major troop increase in South Vietnam by discussing ways to limit the U.S. military commitment in South Vietnam.

President Johnson, Secretary of Defence Robert S. McNamara and National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy were all doubtful that the war could be won even with a much larger troop commitment.

Johnson, like Obama today, also had an alternative to further escalation of the war - a proposal for a negotiated settlement from Undersecretary of State George Ball, which was strongly opposed by others in Johnson's national security team, including McNamara.

But a few weeks later, Johnson went along with an open-ended troop commitment in Vietnam because he was unwilling to face the likelihood of charges by the military that he was responsible for the loss of South Vietnam.

In a series of appearances on Sunday talk shows Sep. 20, Obama signaled that he wants to avoid getting more deeply involved in Afghanistan, although he left the door open to approving more troops. "Until I'm satisfied that we've got the right strategy," he said on NBC's Meet the Press, "I'm not going to be sending some young man or woman over there - beyond what we already have."
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