Obama’s Afghan Plan: A Victory For The Industrial-Military Complex

Latest update at 8:00 PM  US (PST):

The White House is strongly denying the validity of the CBS report. At 9:47 PM US(EDT) CBS News posted this editor’s note ahead of David Martin’s article:The White House has issued the following response to this story, attributed to White House National Security Adviser James Jones.

“Reports that President Obama has made a decision about Afghanistan are absolutely false. He has not received final options for his consideration, he has not reviewed those options with his national security team, and he has not made any decisions about resources. Any report of the contrary are completely untrue and come from uninformed sources.”

Earlier:

This evening, according to a CBS News exclusive, President Obama has made up his mind on a new strategy for Afghanistan. CBS News correspondent David Martin reports that the President “will send a lot more troops there and plans to keep a large forces there, long term”.

Informed sources told CBS News that President Obama intends to give General McChrystal most, if not all, the 40,000 additional troops he asked for. All the President’s military advisers have recommended sending more troops.

“Troops alone will not win the war unless Afghan President Karzai cleans up his government. He’s got to take concrete steps to eliminate corruption. That means, you have to rid yourself off those who are corrupt. You have to actually arrest and prosecute them,” said Admiral Michael Mullen chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff last week.

The statement of Admiral Mullen is so naive and absurd that it should be utterly laughable. However, it is not. It is just fueling the rationalization of sending more troops. Karzai, among all of his thugs of  war lords, drug lords and criminal associates, is the most corrupt of all. Expecting Karzai to “clean his government” would be like asking a mafia godfather to give up a life of  crime. Does Admiral Mullen expect Karzai to put himself under arrest?

The last “war of necessity” fought by the United States was World War II. Afghanistan was a war of choice from the get go.  Af-Pak is now President Obama’s war. If the CBS report is confirmed, today is yet another victory for the war-mongers in Washington, the one acting on the behalf of the industrial-military complex. The catastrophic decision to escalate the conflict in Afghanistan could cost President Obama his re-election bid in 2012. I think President Obama should have reflected on the political outcome for Lyndon Johnson from his disastrous escalation in Vietnam.