Frank Rich: Obama At The Precipice In Afghanistan

Barry Blitt
THE most intriguing, and possibly most fateful, news of last week could not be found in the health care horse-trading in Congress, or in the international zoo at the United Nations, or in the Iran slapdown in Pittsburgh. It was an item tucked into a blog at ABCNews.com. George Stephanopoulos reported that the new “must-read book” for President Obama’s war team is “Lessons in Disaster” by Gordon M. Goldstein, a foreign-policy scholar who had collaborated with McGeorge Bundy, the Kennedy-Johnson national security adviser, on writing a Robert McNamara-style mea culpa about his role as an architect of the Vietnam War.
Bundy left his memoir unfinished at his death in 1996. Goldstein’s book, drawn from Bundy’s ruminations and deep new research, is full of fresh information on how the best and the brightest led America into the fiasco. “Lessons in Disaster” caused only a modest stir when published in November, but The Times Book Review cheered it as “an extraordinary cautionary tale for all Americans.” The reviewer was, of all people, the diplomat Richard Holbrooke, whose career began in Vietnam and who would later be charged with the Afghanistan-Pakistan crisis by the new Obama administration.
Holbrooke’s verdict on “Lessons in Disaster” was not only correct but more prescient than even he could have imagined. This book’s intimate account of White House decision-making is almost literally being replayed in Washington (with Holbrooke himself as a principal actor) as the new president sets a course for the war in Afghanistan. The time for all Americans to catch up with this extraordinary cautionary tale is now. LinkHere

Gates Contradicts Obama: Afghan "Exit Strategy" A "Strategic Mistake"

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Sunday it would be a "strategic mistake" for the U.S. to put a timeline or exit strategy on its presence in Afghanistan -- a position that appears to put him at direct odds with the president.
Appearing on CNN's "State of the Union," Gates insisted that far from being a quagmire, Afghanistan was a country that could be pacified and stabilized if the right policy was adopted. One thing the United States should not do, he added, was set deadlines or outline an approach by which military forces would eventually leave the country.
"I think that -- that the notion of -- of timelines and exit strategies and so on, frankly, I think would all be a, a strategic mistake," said Gates. "The reality is, failure in Afghanistan would be a huge setback for the United States. Taliban and Al Qaeda, as far as they're concerned, defeated one superpower. For them to be seen to defeat a second, I think, would have catastrophic consequences in terms of energizing the extremist movement, Al Qaeda recruitment, operations, fundraising, and so on."

Skepticism with exit strategies is a vestige of the approach the Bush administration took to the war in Iraq, where it was routinely predicted that insurgents would wait out American forces before overriding the country. But some politicians at the time -- notably then-Sen. Barack Obama -- insisted that deadlines for troop removal were important for, among other things, spurring political reconciliation within the country.
Not surprisingly, Obama has taken a similar approach to Afghanistan. In a March 20 interview with CBS' 60 Minutes, he insisted that "there's got to be an exit strategy" for U.S. forces in that country so that there is a "sense that this is not perpetual drift and stalemate." LinkHere

Friedman: Nothing Will Work If Our Afghan Partner Is "Rotten To The Core"

83 Diggers injured in Afghanistan became invisible

IN hospitals around Australia, soldiers who have been seriously wounded in Afghanistan are checked in under false names in order to protect them from the public eye.
One Afghanistan veteran, in his early 20s, is in a private hospital in NSW. He has lost both his legs. The doctors and nurses treating him are sworn to secrecy. Were someone to ring the hospital's reception, asking for him by his real name, he would not exist.
As far as the public knows, his terrible injuries never happened. There was no media release from the Defence Department giving even cursory details of this man's suffering. While the dead - there have been 11 Australians killed in Afghanistan - are seen coming home in coffins, in tragic airfield ramp ceremonies, discussion about the badly wounded, who come home in secret, is off limits.
Silence is now official policy. Defence told The Weekend Australian: "In order to protect the privacy of wounded personnel and to aid convalescence, Defence does not publicly release details of the repatriation of wounded personnel. Tragically, some of these have been seriously wounded. However, the figures also include those with minor wounds who recover quickly and continue to serve in theatre."
Australia knows almost nothing about its wounded soldiers. Defence revealed, in response to questions from The Weekend Australian, that 83 soldiers had suffered various forms of wounds in Afghanistan since late 2005, when Australians re-engaged in the war. It says the soldiers have a range of damage, from severe bruising, concussion and fractures, to gunshot and shrapnel wounds and significant blast trauma. Any further breakdown of those figures is not available.
Since late 2005, Defence has issued 22 media releases relating to only 52 of the 83 wounded ADF personnel.
Veterans, old and young, believe Australia is not even getting half the picture of what's happening to ADF personnel in the deteriorating Afghanistan war.
They fear for the long-term mental cost on soldiers who are asked to fight a hidden war. They worry the public has little understanding of what they're going through, and have little appreciation of the soldiers' sacrifice.
Although Defence seems willing, in some cases, to disclose that unnamed soldiers have been wounded by improvised explosive devices, or roadside bombs, they close ranks at any mention of soldiers being shot in battle. Unless, that is, they are forced to discuss it....
LinkHere