Obama Warns of Pending Attacks by al Qaeda from Pakistan Safe Haven, Explains Strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan (News & Commentary Round-Up)

by Damozel | Just what we need to get our minds off the economy.

In strikingly ominous tones, Mr. Obama warned — just as President George W. Bush did repeatedly over the years — of intelligence estimates that al Qaeda “is actively planning attacks on the U.S. homeland from its safe haven in Pakistan.”

“The situation is increasingly perilous,” he told government officials, top military officers and diplomats in remarks at the White House...“We have a clear and focused goal to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future.”. (New York Times)

So, according to, Ambinder:

President Barack Obama's new posture toward Afghanistan and Pakistan, to be unveiled tomorrow, codifies for the first time Iran's role in regional diplomacy, emphasizes counterterrorism as the primary mission of U.S. policy, and includes a multi-modal surge of civilians and economic aid to both countries.

According to people who have been briefed on the results of the policy review, Obama plans to emphasize results-driven cooperation with both countries. He will endorse a Senate bill, authored by Sens. John Kerry and Richard Lugar, that would condition a significant increase in aid to Pakistan on measurable improvements in Pakistan's internal efforts to combat terrorism. (President Obama and Vice President Biden were cosponsors of the bill in the Senate.)

In seeking to reassure Americans that help to Pakistan is contingent on internal reforms, he plans to stress that Americans will work with those in both countries who demonstratively seek peace and reconciliation....

This will be interpreted as a warning to both President Asif Ali Zardari in Pakistan and President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan.

Pointedly, the new Afpak policy does not express a preference for specific leaders, another difference from the previous administration, which had been accused of coddling and courting Karzai and former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf at the expense of rooting out corruption and terrorism....

The Americans will lean on Zardari to end his military's ongoing cooperation with the Taliban. Some analysts may interpret the new American policy to mean that the U.S. is open to working more closely with the leader of the main opposition party in Pakistan, Narwaz Sharif.

According to The New York Times, Obama plans to "frame the American commitment as a counterterrorism mission aimed at denying havens for Al Qaeda, with three main goals — training Afghan security forces, supporting the weak central government in Kabul and securing the population." (New York Times 2).

Annnnd therefore, here we go:

President Obama plans to further bolster American forces in Afghanistan and for the first time set benchmarks for progress in fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban there and in Pakistan, officials said Thursday....

The new strategy, which Mr. Obama will formally announce Friday, will send 4,000 more troops to train Afghan security forces on top of the 17,000 extra combat troops that he already ordered to Afghanistan shortly after taking office, administration and Congressional officials said. But for now, Mr. Obama has decided not to send additional combat forces, they said, although military commanders at one point had requested a total of 30,000 more American troops.

Although the administration is still developing the specific benchmarks for Afghanistan and Pakistan, officials said they would be the most explicit demands ever presented to the governments in Kabul and Islamabad. In effect, Mr. Obama would be insisting that two fractured countries plagued by ancient tribal rivalries and modern geopolitical hostility find ways to work together and transform their societies.
(New York Times 2)

But, he promised, he will intends to carry out his goals without creating the sort of quagmire W created in Iraq.

“The era of the blank check is over,” Mr. Obama told Congressional leaders at the White House, according to an account of the meeting provided on the condition of anonymity because it was a private session.  (New York Times 2)

I'm just glad to know we have any money for military ventures or adventures.  I thought we were broke or something.

But I agree with Taylor Marsh:  win, lose, or draw, this isn't a situation we can avoid involving ourselves in --- especially given that we're already in it.  

There will be much resistance on the left regarding Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan. It won’t come from me. As I’ve stated many times, this is a country that is of strategic interest to the United States, as well as the world. Pakistan’s teetering nature required we not allow a failed stated next to it. Then there are the women of this region who would not survive another sharia law state. I stand with them.

Yglesias says, attempting to hearten those who find all this disheartening;

I know not everyone is enthusiastic about that kind of escalating effort, but it is worth recalling that the total number of American troops in Afghanistan will be rising to only about 60,000—that’s much less than were in pre-surge Iraq. Indeed, it’s actually close to some of the high-end estimates for the number of so-called “residual” forces that are supposed to be left in Iraq after the American military has “left.”

Under the circumstances, I think skeptics of grandiose American power projection—a group in which I’d include myself—would be better off pushing to curtail or eliminate these “residual” deployments of Iraq, which really make no strategic sense, rather than worrying about the small influx to Afghanistan for which I see a reasonable case.

Remember benchmarks?  Yglesias is consoled by the promise of benchmarks:

For one thing, I think clear benchmarks actually make short-term success more likely since they focus the mission on objectives. But more importantly I’ve been worried for months now that Obama’s plan might get the administration caught up in the vicious logic of escalation, where you start escalating because you think there’s a chance it’ll work, and then if it doesn’t work all you can do is keep on escalating.

I think the odds of the multi-modal influx of military forces, civilian development and governance experts, and money working are pretty good. But any honest person is going to have to concede that this is uncertain ground and that our fortunes depend in part on the actions of people we can’t control.

Sullivan's less optimistic.

America's relatively tiny stake there means that we will always be outlasted by those with deeper commitments, wider knowledge and much greater fanaticism. And yet we plow on ...

As I said, my own view is that we plow on because we must.  It's one of those situations where the outcome won't be known for longer than my life is likely to last.  The interests on the line are manifold.  As Marsh says, it isn't only about counterterrorism.  That's just one thing on the line.

Unlike Iraq, this one is our problem.  I don't flatter myself that any line of action could make it go away.  Whatever we do or don't do, it goes on being the same sort of danger.  It's really just a question of whether a given course of action makes it more or less imminent.  On that point, reasonable minds can differ.

Charles Lemos at My DD writes:

Judging by the broad nature of the Afpak strategy, the Holbrooke-Petraeus-Clinton faction prevailed over the Biden-Steinberg minimalist views. The result is expected to be a major, long-term military and civilian program to reinvent Afghanistan from one of the most backward, least developed countries to a relatively stable democratic state.....

The covert drone war will remain a critical component of the strategy. It has been expanded since the Obama Administration took office to target elements of the Pakistani Taliban...

One part of the plan that seems a recognition of the new realism in the Obama Administration's approach is recasting "the Afghan war as a regional issue involving not only Pakistan but also India, Russia, China, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the Central Asian states." However the plan envisions persuading Pakistan to stop focusing military resources on its longstanding enemy, India, so it can concentrate more on battling insurgents in its lawless tribal regions.

This seems unlikely given the history of the region and the involvement of the ISI in a never-ending plot to destabilize India.

Likely or unlikely, and like it or not -- and I do not -- I can see why it is that the administration thinks we have to do this.   But, Jesus, this is exactly what I don't want to hear. Benen:

Ultimately, the administration believes violence can be curtailed and the insurgency can be defeated by "building local governments, wooing the civilian population with aid and providing more help to the Afghan army." Stay tuned.

BooMan, who has been tracking the roll-out, is skeptical:

There is a legitimate case for continuing our efforts in Afghanistan and Obama spells that case out very well. If there is a case for abandoning that effort, it is our inability to solve these conundrums I've highlighted here. In spite of all the difficulties, I am still undecided about the right policy. I'm torn between the logic in Obama's proposals and the seemingly insurmountable illogic of the whole region....

I am skeptical that we can achieve our objectives even though I understand why we have these objectives. Pakistan is probably the hardest challenge from a policy point of view that I've ever seen in foreign policy. When you take the threat of terrorism and add the nuclear issue and the threat of war with India, it's hard to find a more challenging set of considerations.

Given that those considerations will apply whether we involve ourselves or not, can Obama's strategy ever work?  Did the US strategy in Vietnam or Iraq "work"?  I guess it all depends on the standard you apply and when you apply it. In the short term, it's hard to see how anything can. And I don't know enough about the specifics even to guess about the long term, and I doubt Obama does either.

Which is how we go on having wars....

PS.  David Brooks totally thinks we can win this one.

After the trauma in Iraq, it would have been easy for the U.S. to withdraw into exhaustion and realism. Instead, President Obama is doubling down on the very principles that some dismiss as neocon fantasy: the idea that this nation has the capacity to use military and civilian power to promote democracy, nurture civil society and rebuild failed states.

Foreign policy experts can promote one doctrine or another, but this energetic and ambitious response — amid economic crisis and war weariness — says something profound about America’s DNA.

Uh oh.

Memeorandum has more.

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