Sunday, November 29, 2009

Newly deployed Marines to target Taliban bastion By Greg Jaffe,WashPost + Comment

Original Link ~
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/28/AR2009112802454_pf.html OR

http://tinyurl.com/yhwf63z

Newly deployed Marines to target Taliban bastion
RENEWED FOCUS ON HELMAND
Obama expected to give war plan in speech

By Greg Jaffe
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 29, 2009


Afghans watch as vehicles of the 3rd Brigade Special Troops Battallion drive through Logar province.
Afghans watch as vehicles of the 3rd Brigade Special Troops Battallion drive through Logar province. (Dario Lopez-mills/associated Press)

KABUL -- Days after President Obama outlines his new war strategy
in a speech Tuesday, as many as 9,000 Marines will begin final preparations to deploy to southern Afghanistan and renew an assault on a Taliban stronghold that slowed this year amid a troop shortage and political pressure from the Afghan government, senior
U.S. officials said.

The extra Marines will be the first to move into the country as part of Obama's escalation of the eight-year-old war. They will double the size of the U.S. force in the southern province of Helmand and will provide a critical test for Afghan President Hamid Karzai's struggling government and Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's counterinsurgency strategy.


"The first troops out of the door are going to be Marines," Gen. James T. Conway, the Corps' top officer, told fellow Marines in Afghanistan on Saturday. "We've been leaning forward in anticipation of a decision. And we've got some pretty stiff fighting coming."


The Marines will be quickly followed by about 1,000 U.S. Army trainers. They will deploy as early as February to speed the growth of the Afghan army and police force, military officials said.


The new forces will not start moving until Obama outlines his new strategy in a speech at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.

The revised plan, which faces a war-weary and increasingly skeptical American public, is expected to call for 30,000 to 35,000 new troops in a phased deployment over the next 12 to 18 months.


The parceling-out of reinforcements is driven in part by Afghanistan's lack of infrastructure, which cannot immediately support a larger U.S. force. The phased approach will also allow the president to cancel some of the additional reinforcements if the counterinsurgency strategy advocated by McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, does not show results or if the Karzai government does not meet goals for stamping out corruption and providing for the Afghan people, White House officials said.


The first place Obama will look for results is Helmand, a Taliban-dominated province that has been McChrystal's primary focus for much of this year and has been the site of some of the bloodiest fighting. Earlier this year, about 10,000 Marines moved into the area and pushed Taliban fighters out of several major cities there. The Marines then began to rebuild the long-absent Afghan government and police forces in the area.


The U.S. offensive, however, did not dislodge the Taliban from such places as Marjeh, a city of about 50,000 people in central Helmand that remains a major center for the opium trade. After several months of fighting, senior Marine officials concluded that they did not have enough troops to expand into Marjeh and a handful of other Taliban havens while holding on to the gains they had made in the province.


"Where we have gone, goodness follows," Conway said. "But the fact is that we are not as expansive as we would like to be, and those probable additional number of Marines are going to help us to get there."


The Marines' inability to push the Taliban out of these key sanctuaries led some Afghans in the area to doubt U.S. resolve. The Taliban has used its haven in Marjeh to produce roadside bombs and plan attacks on areas where Marines were trying to build the local government and police forces. This month, Taliban fighters from Marjeh killed three Afghan city council members in nearby Nawa, which Marines have held up as a major success story in the province.


"The two questions I get from Afghans are 'When are you leaving?' and 'Why aren't you going into Marjeh?' because that is where the real enemy is," said Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, senior Marine commander in the province.


Marine commanders have little doubt that the additional 9,000 troops moving into the province will push the Taliban out of its remaining sanctuaries in Helmand. But the gains will be transitory if U.S. forces do not build effective local police forces and foster a government that is relatively free of corruption and can provide for the Afghan people, U.S. officials said. "This will be a credibility test for the [Afghan] government to see if it can deliver," said Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a spokesman for McChrystal.


Already there is cause for concern. The Afghan government appears
likely to commit only 60 percent of the troops that Marine and local Afghan commanders estimate that they need for the assault, a senior Marine official in
Helmand said. That means more Marines will probably have to be posted in the city after the initial attack to ensure that the Taliban does not return.


"To have American Marines standing on a corner in a key village isn't nearly as effective as having an Afghan policeman or Afghan soldier," Conway said.


Karzai intervened to halt an attack into Marjeh by U.S. Special Operations forces and Afghan troops this year after residents in the area complained of excessive civilian casualties, senior military officials said. The coming assault on the city will be a measure of Karzai's willingness to buck allies with ties to the opium industry, these officials said.


The other major area of concern is whether the Afghan government and the U.S. military can meet the aggressive new growth targets laid out for the Afghan army and police force in the Obama administration's war strategy. "We have to increase recruiting. We have to increase retention, and we have to decrease attrition this year," said Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, who leads the U.S. training effort in Kabul, Afghanistan's capital.


The administration's new plans for the Afghan army and police, which will probably be a heavy focus of Tuesday's speech, call for increasing the size of the army to about 134,000 troops by October, four years earlier than the initial goal of 2014. To meet that target, the Afghan Defense Ministry must bring in about 5,000 new recruits a month and dramatically cut attrition in battalions.


This month, the ministry missed its monthly recruiting goal by more than 2,000 troops.


Afghan soldiers and police officers were recently given a 40 percent pay increase, but it is too early to tell whether the extra money will fix the recruiting problem, U.S. officials said.


"The extra pay literally brought us to parity with what the Taliban are offering," a senior military official in Kabul said.


Original Link ~
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/28/AR2009112802454_pf.html OR

http://tinyurl.com/yhwf63z


Related Links VIA Cort Greene <cort.greene@gmail.com> ~ 
 
DoD Handling of Military Dissidents and Protests
 
 
German secret bombing video, Generals and former ministers
could be charge with war crimes

Here is another smart ass one! 
http://elcampeador.com/2009/11/29/newly-deployed-marines-to-target-taliban-bastion-lbjs-vietnam-tactics-alive-and-well/

And one more via Amanpour ~ hope you do not get information overload!

Pakistan determined to fight Taliban, retired general says

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/11/24/pakistan.taliban/


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Comment: It is patent that Obama is backtracking from his campaign promises and verbal rhetoric about peace in the Middle East and the Amerikan version of democracy.

In my humble opinion, sitting on my ass here comfortably inside the United States, we should stay the hell out of the Middle East, or better, not bring more hell over there. We will get repercussions here inside the United States. Obama is swapping at a hornet's nest in the Middle East and it is sure that Afghanistan is the Achilles heel of the Obama regime.
The whole world knows that Karzai of Aghan is a fascist. What does this exhibit about the intelligence of U.S. citizens who tolerate this evilness?

Where is the condemnation for the fascist military coup-d-etat in Honduras? What happened to the criticism of the expansion of Israel settlements? Why are we spending billions of tax-dollars on foreign wars and allowing at least thousands of homeless refugees in Amerika's urban streets?!? Does Obama fear the Amerikan Warlords, despite him having the title and position of Commander-in-Chief?!?!?!

The progressive movement ~wherever it is on the political spectrum of the left vs. right schizophrenia scale~ should be clear, consistent and comprehensive in its unity consciousness. We should point an accusing finger at the evils far off and then point our fingers at ourselves in terms of what WE SHOULD BE DOING ON THE LOCAL LEVEL!

In our general analyzes we must interconnect domestic concerns with international issues as we are all on this one lonely planet. What we do here now inside the United States can and should have global implications both here and overseas.

The U.S. military use of drones or Unmanned Area Vehicles (UAVs) that is going on now in Pakistan is another example of fascism at home and ol' U.S. imperialism overseas. A lot of world events and situations build up until there is a shift, a quantum leap and a tipping point on the scales of the balance of global power. Beware Amerika! Wake up Amerika! There is a war going on!
 
Venceremos Unidos! Education for Liberation!

Peter S. López, Jr. aka~Peta
HumanE-Liberation-Party
Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com
http://twitter.com/Peta51

c/s

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