Dovish SOTU: Obama will Veto AIPAC Iran Sanctions, Pledges Afghanistan Wind-Down

[unhappycamper]

http://www.juancole.com/2014/01/threatens-sanctions-afghanistan.html

Dovish SOTU: Obama will Veto AIPAC Iran Sanctions, Pledges Afghanistan Wind-Down
By Juan Cole | Jan. 29, 2014

~snip~

Opinion polls show that US public support for the Afghanistan War, which began 12 and a half years ago, has fallen to 17 percent. Americans want out of that country. Obama pointed out that “When I took office, nearly 180,000 Americans were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.” He observed that all US troops are out of Iraq now, and he has brought 60,000 troops home from Afghanistan. (What he didn’t say was that he had sent 60,000 extra ones there early in his first term, so unlike with Iraq he is now drawing down his own war). There are still 39,000 or so US military personnel in Afghanistan.

About Afghanistan, Obama said, “Together with our allies, we will complete our mission there by the end of this year, and America’s longest war will finally be over.” This way of putting it is a little disingenuous. What the president means is that US forces won’t be doing active war-fighting and taking the lead in it after December.

He went on to clarify that “If the Afghan government signs a security agreement that we have negotiated, a small force of Americans could remain in Afghanistan with NATO allies to carry out two narrow missions: training and assisting Afghan forces, and counterterrorism operations to pursue any remnants of al Qaeda.”

This paragraph is like an iceberg, with 90% of the meaning not visible. First of all, Obama is implicitly acknowledging that Afghanistan may not sign a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with the US. The current president, Hamid Karzai, is declining to sign the agreement. His successor may not be elected, after run-offs, until summer of 2014. By the time a new president gets settled and studies the issue, the point may be moot. The US military will have to assume it is not staying, and initiate a vast movement of human beings and materiel out of the country. The US may end up with no troops in Afghanistan just because no one could get around to finalizing a SOFA before the clock ran out.