Obama advisers downplaying Afghanistan dangers

U.S. intelligence, diplomatic and military officials told McClatchy that the Obama White House officials are minimizing warnings from the intelligence community, the military and the State Department about the risks of adopting a limited strategy focused on al Qaida. Recent U.S. intelligence assessments have found that the Taliban and other Pakistan-based groups that are fighting U.S.-led forces have much closer ties to al Qaida now than they did before 9/11, would allow the terrorist network to re-establish bases in Afghanistan and would help Osama bin Laden export his radical brand of Islam to Afghanistan’s neighbors and beyond, the officials said.

McClatchy interviewed more than 15 senior and mid-level U.S. intelligence, military and diplomatic officials, all of whom said they concurred with the assessments. All of them requested anonymity because the assessments are classified and the officials weren’t authorized to speak publicly.

The officials said the White House is searching for an alternative to the broader counterinsurgency strategy favored by Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, and Gen. David Petraeus, the head of the U.S. Central Command.

White House officials, they said, have concluded that McChrystal’s approach could be doomed by election fraud, corruption and other problems in Afghanistan; by continued Pakistani covert support for the insurgency; by the strains on the Army, Marine Corps and the federal budget; and by a lack of political and public support at home, which they fear could also undermine the president’s domestic priorities.

One phrase that always comes up in the administration’s strategy sessions is “public opinion,” one participant told McClatchy.

However, the officials said, in their effort to muster domestic support for a more limited counterterrorism strategy that would concentrate on disrupting and dismantling al Qaida, White House officials are neglecting warnings from their own experts about the dangers of a more modest approach.

“McChrystal and Petraeus are ignoring the problems their (counterinsurgency) approach would face in Afghanistan and here at home,” said one intelligence official with extensive experience in South Asia and counterterrorism. “We don’t have a reliable partner in Afghanistan or Pakistan; doubling the size of the Afghan army is a pipedream, given the corruption and literacy problems; and neither Congress or the American people are likely to give it the money, the troops or the decade or so it would need to work, if it would work.

“Now the White House is downplaying the dangers of doing the only thing that they think Congress and the public will support — a limited war against the guys who hit us on 9/11. The truth is, both approaches have huge problems, and neither one’s likely to work.”

The White House, as well as Congress and U.S. military, “have got to level with the American people, and they are not doing it,” said Marvin Weinbaum, a former State Department intelligence analyst now with the Middle East Institute. “They are taking the easy way out by focusing on the narrow interest of protecting the homeland” from al Qaida.

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October 11, 2009 · Filed Under Afghanistan

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