This week, Charlie Rose (CR) began what he calls a series of discussions on Afghanistan.
The first installment aired on Wednesday, March 9, with guests David Ignatius of the NYT, James Shinn of Princeton University, and Gen. Jack Keane, former Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army.
Gen. Keane has deep insider connections in the Pentagon, and in my own opinion, can be considered an advance man/proxy/stalking horse for Gen. Petraeus and for the Military Industrial Congressional Complex as a whole, i.e., the Fanclub For More War Spending In Afghanistan, especially considering the upcoming Petraeus dog-and-pony show in congress.
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CR quoted a recent military analysis piece in the NYT by C.J. Chivers entitled Putting Afghan Plan Into Action Proves Difficult:
Afghan units are supposed to be preparing to take over security. Yet they are often unwilling to set out on independent patrols, beyond trips back and forth between their own positions, or to the bazaar. They remain largely a tag-along force.
The Taliban and the groups it collaborates with remain deeply rooted; the Afghan military and police remain lackluster and given to widespread drug use; the country’s borders remain porous; Kabul Bank, which processes government salaries, is wormy with fraud, and President Hamid Karzai’s government, by almost all accounts, remains weak, corrupt and erratically led. And the Pakistani frontier remains a Taliban safe haven.
As expected, Gen. Keane turned up the volume on recent military gains in Kandahar and Helmand provinces, but fell flat when challenged by CR and David Ignatius on the absence of vital political gains to accompany the military gains, and the backdrop of the corrupt, inefficient Karzai government.
Gen. Keane did own up to the problem of the latter:
[Gen. Keane] This is a power brokerage, patronage system. It's got more crime syndicate aspects to it than it has governance, to be sure.
[snip]
But the serious egregious corruption that exists inside that government, I doubt if we're gonna make much progress with that. What the political strategy is is certainly to move towards a new election in 2014 which is not a replication of 2009 which we all know was a fraudulent political disaster for Afghanistan, and focus in terms of our ally there, put together a political process that makes sense. Karzai exits stage 1, and bring in political leaders, not just leaders, but also parties that are organized around them, helping develop that process. I've spoken to two of these candidates who ran against him in the past. I assume they'll run against him again. That's Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah, and both of these men clearly want a reform agenda and move away from...
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Hold on there a minute!
Gen. Keane must have a high-tech Star Wars crystal ball, or something. He says Karzai exits in 2014??? Where did THAT come from? And is Gen. Keane saying that people are magically going to take over in 2014 and suddenly reform the place? Looks that way to me. How much do you suppose Gen. Keane gets paid to come up with this stuff???
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But let's continue....
[CR] But general, you're talking about 2014. Now, from NATO to the White House, they're saying we want to be out of there for the most part by 2014. And they're also saying, I think have confirmed it this week, that they want to start some kind of departure by July of this year.
[Gen. Keane] I think [stammering] the forces that'll leave, I'll leave that up to General Petraeus, that would leave at the end of this summer, would probably be negligible and not much consequence when they leave...
[CR] More symbolic than anything else.
[snip]
[Gen. Keane] I'm not overly optimistic that in any shape, way or form are we gonna transform the existing Karzai government to something that would be very acceptable to us by the time he exits the stage in 2014. I don't think that's happening. We have to be realistic about that in our own judgments and put together a political process that helps him to exit and hopefully brings in people who want to reform.
Note: transcripts by the diarist, since CR has not yet provided one.
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Say, what? "...a political process that helps him to exit...."??? Uh, what if Karzai doesn't WANT to exit, by the way? And why would he WANT to exit, when the sacks of money are rolling in?
Gen. Keane seems to want to push this ugly little war way past 2014. Too bad the best he can come up with to rationalize this are figments of his crystal ball imagination.
And, here's more Gen. Keane said which presages what Gen. Petraeus will want to do, and why there will only be a token drawdown this summer:
What remains in front of us, though, is also the Haqqani network east of Kabul. We need to re-invest some of the forces from the south up into that network. That will not take place until the end of this year or 2012. And, in 2012 I think we'll bring most of that network quite down. Still remaining on our plate from a security aspect are these Pakistani sanctuaries. And I believe what the command is hoping for, and what our government is hoping for is that we turn the tables in Afghanistan rather significantly and it starts to challenge the Pakistanis in terms of their strategic objective, which has been a hedging strategy supporting the Taliban with the thought that the US would probably at some point would pull out and the Taliban would regain power as a result of that, they have been supporting both of these sanctuaries.
[CR] And supporting the Haqqani network.
[Gen. Keane] We should be able to leverage that strategic concern that they have as a result of the progress we make.
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Got it, now?
Do you hope much, Gen. Keane?
Here's why there will only be a token drawdown this summer: our troops will be wheeled around from the south to go after the Haqqani network. Oh, and what could POSSIBLY go wrong here, eh? Piece of cake, right? The Haqqani network will greet us as liberators! And, the Pakistani ISI will say, "You win, you superior Americans! We can no longer hedge our interests by supporting the evil Taliban and Haqqani network! All praise to America!" And, we will accomplish this while partnered with a corrupt, non-functional Karzai government which is acknowledged to be even by Gen. Keane!
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Or, if you're not buying this shit one bit, and you value our service members and their blood and their families and your government's budget, you can call, write...no, VISIT the offices of your Congress Critters, and insist they take effective action to redeploy our troops and end this bizarre experiment we are inflicting on one of the poorest, most miserable places on Earth.
Tell your representatives that if they are not already one of the 55 co-sponsors of Barbara Lee's H.R. 780 - Responsible End to the War in Afghanistan Act, then tell 'em to get on board. This is the strongest bill I've seen to end this bizarre experiment.
States that it is the policy of the United States to ensure that funds made available for operations of the Armed Forces in Afghanistan are to be used only for providing for the safe and orderly withdrawal of all U.S. military personnel and Department of Defense (DOD) contractor personnel in Afghanistan. Allows such funds to be obligated and expended only for such purpose.
Co-sponsors, listed alphabetically, as of today:
o Rep. Karen Bass [D, CA-33]
o Rep. Earl Blumenauer [D, OR-3]
o Rep. Michael Capuano [D, MA-8]
o Rep. Judy Chu [D, CA-32]
o Rep. Yvette Clarke [D, NY-11]
o Rep. William Clay [D, MO-1]
o Rep. Emanuel Cleaver [D, MO-5]
o Rep. Steve Cohen [D, TN-9]
o Rep. John Conyers [D, MI-14]
o Rep. Elijah Cummings [D, MD-7]
o Rep. Diana DeGette [D, CO-1]
o Rep. Donna Edwards [D, MD-4]
o Rep. Keith Ellison [D, MN-5]
o Rep. Sam Farr [D, CA-17]
o Rep. Bob Filner [D, CA-51]
o Rep. Barney Frank [D, MA-4]
o Rep. Marcia Fudge [D, OH-11]
o Rep. John Garamendi [D, CA-10]
o Rep. Raul Grijalva [D, AZ-7]
o Rep. Colleen Hanabusa [D, HI-1]
o Rep. Alcee Hastings [D, FL-23]
o Rep. Mazie Hirono [D, HI-2]
o Rep. Michael Honda [D, CA-15]
o Rep. Jesse Jackson [D, IL-2]
o Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee [D, TX-18]
o Rep. Eddie Johnson [D, TX-30]
o Rep. Walter Jones [R, NC-3]
o Rep. Dennis Kucinich [D, OH-10]
o Rep. John Lewis [D, GA-5]
o Rep. Zoe Lofgren [D, CA-16]
o Rep. Carolyn Maloney [D, NY-14]
o Rep. James McDermott [D, WA-7]
o Rep. Michael Michaud [D, ME-2]
o Rep. George Miller [D, CA-7]
o Rep. Gwen Moore [D, WI-4]
o Rep. Jerrold Nadler [D, NY-8]
o Rep. Grace Napolitano [D, CA-38]
o Rep. John Olver [D, MA-1]
o Rep. Ronald Paul [R, TX-14]
o Rep. Donald Payne [D, NJ-10]
o Rep. Chellie Pingree [D, ME-1]
o Rep. Loretta Sanchez [D, CA-47]
o Rep. Linda Sánchez [D, CA-39]
o Rep. Janice Schakowsky [D, IL-9]
o Rep. José Serrano [D, NY-16]
o Rep. Louise Slaughter [D, NY-28]
o Rep. Jackie Speier [D, CA-12]
o Rep. Fortney Stark [D, CA-13]
o Rep. Bennie Thompson [D, MS-2]
o Rep. Edolphus Towns [D, NY-10]
o Rep. Nydia Velázquez [D, NY-12]
o Rep. Maxine Waters [D, CA-35]
o Rep. Melvin Watt [D, NC-12]
o Rep. Peter Welch [D, VT-0]
o Rep. Lynn Woolsey [D, CA-6]
. .
And, if your Rep is on the list, please be sure to acknowledge and thank them for it.