Gareth Porter: Obama looks escalation in the eye (Asia Times)

[laststeamtrain]

Obama looks escalation in the eye
By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - In a remarkable parallel with a turning point in the Vietnam War 44 years ago, United States President Barack Obama will preside over a series of meetings in the coming weeks that will determine whether the US will proceed with an escalation of the Afghanistan war or adjust its strategy and reduce the US military commitment there.

The meetings will take place in the context of a request from General Stanley A McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, for 40,000 additional troops, which reached Washington over the weekend. That would bring the total US troop strength to 108,000 - nearly a 60% increase.


Obama has hinted at serious doubts about being drawn more deeply into the war in Afghanistan, and administration officials have signaled that a key issue is whether the proposed counter-insurgency war can be won.

A plan backed by Vice President Joe Biden to scale back US forces in Afghanistan and to focus more narrowly on al-Qaeda was one of the options discussed at a September 13 meeting of top administration officials, according to a report in the Australian newspaper The Age last Friday. That plan would reportedly depend on US Special Forces to track down al-Qaeda and ratchet down the counter-insurgency war.

But the decisions that emerge from the coming meetings are more likely to be shaped primarily by the concerns of the military and of the White House about being blamed for a defeat in Afghanistan that now seems far more likely than it did just six months ago.

In that regard, the approaching White House meetings recall similar consultations in June 1965, when president Lyndon B Johnson and his civilian advisers responded to a request from General William Westmoreland and the Joint Chiefs of Staff for a major troop increase in South Vietnam by discussing ways to limit the US military commitment in South Vietnam.

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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KI30Df04.html

[thereismore]

1. Either way, the luunatic fringe will blame him. Listen to Biden, Mr. President! nt