Speaking today to the House Armed Services Committee, Admiral Michael Mullen warned that President Obama’s announced drawdown from Afghanistan was “more risky” than he was prepared to accept and that the safer choice would always be to keep more troops in the nation.
The announced withdrawal was actually comparatively minor, with the “33,000” troop figure mostly backloaded into the summer of 2012, and only a few thousand troops likely to leave immediately.
Still, Mullen insisted this was “more aggressive” than what he wanted, and that it is more than what he personally recommended. General David Petraeus also said his recommendation was much slower than what the president decided on. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the military commanders’ comments were “understandable.”
At the end of the day, however, the military leadership’s battle to keep massive number of troops in the nation will continue, and the slow rate of the president’s drawdown plan is going to provide plenty of opportunities for them to derail the process, either with claims of “progress” that must be defended or “setbacks” that must be reversed.
Remind me again why we should care about what the generals think? Their careerist attitudes are an important reason why these wars began and why they haven't ended.
Leave all the mercenaries in. The more of them there are, the more the Taliban can use as target practice.
You have to wonder what the goals of the separate players are in this. Normally, the Administration (any) would be setting the goals towards end game and the military (the tool of the Administration) would devise a strategy designed to achieve the goal. This sounds like there are different goals otherwise the military would just adjust plans to get them to where the Administration wants them. They DO work for the Administration, don't they?
If, on the other hand, the military actually have a different goal then one has to ask who they're working for – perhaps themselves which would raise some really serious questions – and what their goals are. This might explain the quite publicly vocal disagreement with the Executive. Either way, at the base level this kind public display once led to the public rebuke and firing of Gen. MacArthur.
Perhaps BECAUSE there doesn't seem to be a cogent strategy with clear goals this kind of disagreement is more likely to occur. Granted, it's likely that the actual goal of the adventure has never been made public and we, the taxpayer and basic peon, are working on incomplete information. This is where I would expect the "free press" to "investigate" and then report on what is really going on. Perhaps this is why the government is so bent out of shape over the Wikileaks affair. Perhaps.
Ten US soldiers have died in combat in Helmand province in nine separate incidents, on nine separate days the first three weeks of June, 2011. These soldiers are literally being led out and picked off by IED's, small arms fire, and occasionally an rpg or indirect mortar fire. Helmand is advertised often by the Pentagon as a place where the surge has taken hold. What has taken hold is a death machine for US soldiers. And the larger question, why are the casualties and direct consequences of this war never reported by any media anywhere.