Despite Failing (Afghanistan) War, White House Says December Review Won't 'Change Channel'

[unhappycamper]

Despite Failing War, White House Says December Review Won't 'Change Channel'
by Robert Dreyfuss
Published on Tuesday, September 21, 2010 by The Nation

The violence-prone, fraud-marred parliamentary election in Afghanistan is only the latest failure in the nine year-long US war, but it's looking less and less likely that the White House is seriously thinking about changing gears. So far, at least, it appears as if President Obama isn't prepared to cut his losses in the war and order a sharp drawdown of troops next July, when, at least according to his stated policy, US forces will begin to leave Afghanistan. Worse, it looks like the much anticipated December 2010 presidential review of war policy is being reduced to a rubber-stamp approval of General David Petraeus's counterinsurgency scheme.

At least, if we believe two major stories in the Washington Post and the New York Times by their chief diplomatic correspondents in the last few days.

The first piece, by Helene Cooper, David Sanger, and Thom Shanker of the Times on September 17 was entitled, "Once Wary, Obama Relies on Petraeus." Its central point, bolstered by insider quotes from White House staffers, was that Obama is increasingly in harmony with Petraeus. The president and the general are "meshing well, advisers say," they reported, adding that the president strikes a "deferential tone" toward Petraeus even though Petraeus "has made clear that he opposes a rapid pullout of troops from Afghanistan beginning next July." And the Times team reported:

~snip~

Of course, when Obama announced his second escalation of the war last December 1, he made a big deal of the fact that he'd review policy and strategy a year later. Now, if DeYoung's reporting is correct, the White House is signaling that the review will mean nothing at all. Which is exactly what General Stan McChrystal and General David Petraeus argued all along.

Since last summer, Petraeus and McChrystal have engaged in an insurgency of their own, bullying the White House, threatening to ally with pro-war Republicans in a direct challenge to presidential authority, leaking favorable documents to the media, and, in McChrystal's case, engaging in outright insubordination that threatened the very foundation of civilian control of the military. Based on what the Post and the Times are reporting now, their insurgency is even more successful that the Taliban's.