What to listen for in Obama's speech

In the vein of testing wits, one would say 1) the number 30,000 or so, must be seen by the US president as more than equal to the 100,000 Soviet troops which could not do the job in Afghanistan. 2) From the characteristics observed of the US President, he will appear as the dresser in his speech; now that the boat tilted towards sending troops, he will rush to the other side, and dress the balance, by giving a time frame. I guess he can always dip in the pockets of his wealthy Arab friends. He did say to them "Salam 3aleikum". 3) The Afghanisatn surge will have no effect on any of the other safe havens of al Qaeda. To think otherwise, is really a joke. But it doesn't mean it shouldn't be tried to justify in those terms. 4) I suppose Americans know infinitely more than I do in this department. I can't even hazard a guess. 5) I think the US president should call the war by its name; a war of revenge. But I guess he will have to portray it as vital to US strategic interests, but not so vital as to remain bogged there ad infinitum. I would say he will certainly call on Mr. Karzai to reform, but he knows that the word reform, is anathema to the Afghan president. However why not?, call for reforms, it sounds good and gives the Amercian public the impression, that President Karzai can actually run his country in the near future.
khairi janbek.paris/france

1. There must be some logistical calculation which led to 34,000 troops plus the 5,000 from NATO. Perhaps it jives well with the proposed COIN stages of securing population centers during winter and then launching a post-Winter (April?) offensive in the south and east?

2. If the President veers off the conventional 10 year path then it may have serious political and strategic ramifications. One can only surmise that his own deputy level staff at the Pentagon and State Department are almost unanimous in forseeing another 10 year committment broken down with immediate, intermediary and long term goals. The best summation of this three-tiered approach is included in CAPs "Sustainable Afghanistan" report, the authors of which are quite popular with this administration.

3. I expect the President to brush by this point as there really is no tangible way of guaranteeing that Al Qaeda won't ever use remote or lawless parts of Afghanistan in the future. It's just a logistical impossibility to guarantee against this possibility and anything not in keeping with that understanding would be a bold-faced lie on his part. Other than that, the escalation can only help if we have committed partners in the Pak Army in squeezing FATA from the East while our troops push in from the West. Such a committment is doubtful for many reasons. The escalatinn doesn't really have any tangible assets in it for Yemen or Somalia.

4. Yeah, he won't answer that. And a war sur-tax is terribly unpopular.

5. What will "getting its act toghether" look like? Its a pretty arbitrary out that can be used to justify a withdrawl or cut in funding. Perfect for the fickle, but not really reassuring to the Afghans. We need to define and spell out what we want to see, otherwise nothing much will happen.

It's interesting that GOOD, a progressive-on-almost-everything magazine for 21st century do-good yuppies, is giving a platform for a pro-war Truman Security Project man. Link to post by Michael Lieberman, which mentions and critiques Mr Walt.

It's not a big surprise given how GOOD editors themselves cheered the attack on Gaza (1, 2) at the start of the year. But this instance re:Afghanistan would be significant if they don't give space for an opposing view.

1. There is no independent, logical justification of 34,000 troops. The Petraeus/McChrystal/Neo-con report gave the middle Goldilocks option of 40,000, called medium-risk whatever that means, but didn't tie different strategies to the other troop number options. 40,000 is just a feasible number, more closely correlated to our troop availability than anything else.

2. Realism is required from leaders. If he doesn't explicitly state it will be hard to get out short of 10 years, he fails.

3. I don't care if he skips this one. Only Pakistan worries me, but not for an al-Qaeda safe haven.

4. Again realism, the war must be pay for. I hope he at least mentions the cost of the war. Congress should take the lead in proposing the war surcharge, which is a great idea.

5. My biggest hope is that he backs away from the war of necessity idea. He won't outright repudiate it, but he should say circumstances have changed and it is not necessary to prop up an utterly and unchangeable corrupt government.

CAPTCHA: his orating

I think two questions need to be added. Professor Walt has alluded to them in the previous weeks. They are:

1.) What can we define as "success" in Afghanistan? As it stands, no coherent and/or attainable "success" has been given.

Ronald Reagan's Sec. of Defense Caspar Weinberger gave a speech entitled "The Uses of Military Power". In it, he outlined six key factors that must be analyzed.

A) The U.S. should not commit forces to combat overseas unless the particular engagment or occasion is deemed vital to our national interest or that of our allies.

B)IF we decide it is necessary to put combat troops into a given situation, we should do so wholeheartedly, and with the clear intention of winning.

C)If we DO decide to commit forces to combat overseas, we should have clearly defined political and military objectives. AND HOW our forces can accomplish those clearly defined objectives.

D)The relationship between our objectives and the forces we have committed-- their size, composition and disposition-- must be continually reassessed and adjusted if necessary.

E)Before the the U.S. commits combat forces abroad, there must be some reasonable assurance we will have the support of the American people and their elected representatives in Congress... We cannot fight a battle with Congress at home while asking our troops to win a war overseas or, as in the case of Vietnam (and Iraq and Afghanistan), not to win, but just be there.

F) The commitment of U.S. forces to combat should be a last resort!

2.) Will leaving Afghanistan "ruin America's credibility"? We left Vietnam and still won the Cold War. Reagan left Lebanon, yet during the 1990's the U.S. still held a seat at the negotiating table on I-P.

"No one starts a war -- or rather, no one in his senses out to do so-- without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war, and how he intends to conduct it" Clausewitz

The US war against some elements in Afghanistan is immoral. It is killing people deliberately, and quite indiscriminately, far more indiscriminately than allowed of police agencies in western countries.

Like all immoral actions, the criminal has rationalizations, or something that passes for a thought process. The original intent is corrupt-- to take, to seize, by force and to kill people for these materialistic goals. The immoral person always creates rationalizations for themselves.

We spend far too much time on surface-level discussion, and on facts that don't have a bearing on this immoral behavior. We ought instead examine the long pattern by U.S. of very large aggressions against the Vietnamese, the Koreans, the Iraqis and many other countries who certainly did NOT attack the U.S.

Nothing has changed in U.S. political economy or moral consciousness since the last two megadeath wars. Why would you expect this war to be any differnt? It is a venal and criminal and immoral assembly of interests in the domestic economy and politics, collaborating to commit this crime against humanity.

I've counted at least 6 different cadets in the audience that are flat-out sleeping through this speech.

OK, time to judge how accurate the predictions were.

This is what the CIA station cheif in Kabul thinks about Af/Pak:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/graham-e-fuller/global-viewpoint-obamas-p_b_201355.html