Paul Jay of The Real News interviews F. William Engdahl, economist and author of the best selling book "A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order" who explains US Geopolitical objectives in Afghanistan, in terms clear and simple enough even for US mainstream network television audiences - which is probably why you never see him on television.

Based in Germany, Engdahl has written on issues of energy, politics and economics for more than 30 years, beginning with the first oil shock in the early 1970s, and is a regular contributor to a number of publications including Asia Times Online, Asia, Inc, Japan's Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Foresight magazine, and Freitag and ZeitFragen newspapers in Germany and Switzerland.

Real News Network - December 9, 2009
Why is the USA in Afghanistan?
Engdahl: Key objective is a permanent military presence in Asia

The dissembling has already begun. HuffPo reports this morning on Clinton and Gates talking with David Gregory on Meet The Press this morning: Clinton, Gates Walk Back On Obama's "Locked In" Afghan Withdrawal

Don't be confused by President Obama's speech on Afghanistan. Despite the president's word on Tuesday that a surge of US and international troops in Afghanistan would "allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011," that date is not a "drop dead deadline"--at least according to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates recorded an interview this week with NBC's David Gregory on Meet The Press. Set to air Sunday morning, both Obama advisers will walk back on Obama's withdrawal language. While the president did say during his speech that conditions on the ground would be considered before a transition, Clinton and Gates seem to go a step further:

HILLARY CLINTON: We're not talking about an exit strategy or a drop dead deadline. What we're talking about is an assessment that in January 2011, we can begin a transition. A transition to hand off -- responsibility to the Afghan forces. ROBERT GATES: We're not talking about an abrupt withdrawal. We're talking about something that will take place over a period of time. Our commanders think that these additional forces, and one of the reasons for the President's decision to try and accelerate their deployment is-- is the view that this extended surge has the opportunity to make significant gains in terms of reversing the momentum of the Taliban, denying them control of Afghan territory, and degrading their capabilities.

Video follows...

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Originally published at TomDispatch

[The Obama administration’s surge math:  In his speech on Tuesday night at West Point, the president announced a surge of 30,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan in the coming months.  That sounded way higher than a lot of Democrats might have wanted, but still below the optimal figure -- 40,000 -- that Afghan War commander Stanley McChrystal had requested. (or, depending on how you read the various leaks and news stories of the last months, perhaps demanded).  Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post now reports, however, that the President granted Secretary of Defense Robert Gates the right to “increase the number by 10 percent, or 3,000 troops, without additional White House approval or announcement.”  Think of it, in restaurant terms, as the equivalent of a surge tip.  In addition, DeYoung adds that an unnamed “senior military official” claimed “that the final number could go as high as 35,000 to allow for additional support personnel such as engineers, medevac units and route-clearance teams, which comb roads for bombs.”  So now, in surge math, we’re at 35,000 U.S. troops.  Add in the expected NATO contribution of about 5,000 extra troops and -- voilà -- you have 40,000 on the button.  No wonder the Afghan War commander is reportedly satisfied.  Tom] 

[Note for Readers:  Last week, I wrote an address for the president, “The Afghan Speech Obama Should Give (But Won’t),” which got a fair amount of attention.  Now that the president has given a far more predictable speech, I thought some of you might still be interested in taking a look and thinking about what possibilities exist, even if only outside Washington’s airless corridors of power, when it comes to the Afghan War.  Tom]

Victory at Last!
Monty Python in Afghanistan
By Tom Engelhardt

Let others deal with the details of President Obama’s Afghan speech, with the on-ramps and off-ramps, those 30,000 U.S. troops going in and just where they will be deployed, the benchmarks for what’s called “good governance” in Afghanistan, the corruption of the Karzai regime, the viability of counterinsurgency warfare, the reliability of NATO allies, and so on.  Let’s just skip to the most essential point which, in a nutshell, is this:  Victory at Last!

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In Part 2 of his interview with Paul Jay of The Real News, former chief of staff to US Secretary of State Colin Powell Lawrence Wilkerson continues his analysis of Obama's Afghanistan escalation and of the geopolitical context of the situation, concluding that there is no solely military solution to the situation and that the occupation is simply a money making escapade as well as an attempt at controlling world energy reserves under the banner of a propaganda created fictitous "war on terror", and that continued US attempts at imperial hegemony in the region will bankrupt America.

"This is not a future that we can sustain. We cannot be the new Rome, it is an impossibility in today's world. We will squander our power, we will squander our resources, we will be a third world nation, we will be bankrupt in a generation if we try."

Real News Network - December 5, 2009
America cannot be the hegemon of Western Asia
Wilkerson Pt2: Diplomacy must lead a regional solution to Afghan war; there is no military solution

Part 1 of this interview is here.

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Real News Network CEO Paul Jay talks with Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to US Secretary of State Colin Powell, about the politics behind Barack Obama's Afghanistan "surge", who explains the devastation of the US Military by the occupation, and how a combination of Obama's own presidential campaign rhetoric and manipulations by his generals had "locked him in" to escalating the occupation of Afghanistan.

Wilkerson then gives us his take from the perspective of being a teacher on the subject of presidential national security decision making about what the geopolitical consequences of this escalation will likely be.

Real News Network - December 4, 2009
"Obama's choice" pure politics
Lawrence Wilkerson: Obama's campaign rhetoric and his generals put him in a corner on Afghanistan

For a long time the Dog supported the war in Afghanistan. There are and were good reasons why we should make the effort to put some kind of functional government in place before leaving any nation where we removed the existing government by force. However, the time has come where it seems clear that we do not have the tools anymore to actually do this job, and so this war has lost the Dog. This is not quite where the president is on this issue.

Originally posted at Squarestate.net

Tonight we will be treated the spectacle of President Obama working to sell the best of the worst choices for Afghanistan. What we will see is a punt, of course. There are no good or easy choices here.

Perhaps if the Republicans were less insane there might be some way for us to begin a withdrawal in short order. Perhaps if we did not still have our war of choice winding down (but not quickly enough) in Iraq we might have the resources required to fight a long-term counter insurgency. Perhaps if the criminal Bush Administration had actually understood merely toppling a government is not winning a war, had understood that when you go to war to get a terrorist group and its leader, the failure to do so is actually losing.

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After initially injecting 21,000 troops into Afghanistan allegedly to stave off imminent defeat, President Obama Tuesday will tell war-weary Americans why he seeks 35,000 more. If he gets them, the U.S. force there will exceed 100,000.

Washington has been pressuring its NATO allies to pour in more fighters even though Europeans don’t want any part of it. The New York Times reported Nov. 25th the U.S. is asking NATO for 10,000 more troops above the 45,000 already in place. That could bring total Allied forces to about 150,000. Toss in 70,000 private contractors and the total force soars to over 200,000. Yes, Afghanistan is shaping up as another Viet Nam.

Obama apparently never seriously considered ending the war diplomatically. Recall his blustering campaign rhetoric about defeating the Taliban; recall the public commitment last December of Defense Secretary Robert Gates to strengthen military bases in Afghanistan. Gates was the Bush official Obama continued in office.

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President Barack Obama intends to announce next week that he will deploy tens of thousands of additional US troops to Afghanistan, according to numerous published reports citing unnamed administration officials, to fight an eight-year-old war that a majority of Americans do not support and numerous Democratic lawmakers say is no longer worth waging.

Leaks coming out of the White House following Obama's final meeting Monday evening with top military officials, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, National Security Adviser Jim Jones, US. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry and 12 other senior members of his administration, indicate that the president will send 34,000 additional troops to the region over the next nine months, far short of the 80,000 troops Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal recommended last August.

Still, the surge would bring the total number of US soldiers in Afghanistan to about 100,000 and would severely strain an already stretched military.

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Originally posted at TomDispatch

The Afghan Speech Obama Should Give
(But Won't)

Sure, the quote in the over-title is only my fantasy. No one in Washington -- no less President Obama -- ever said, "This administration ended, rather than extended, two wars," and right now, it looks as if no one in an official capacity is likely to do so any time soon. It's common knowledge that a president -- but above all a Democratic president -- who tried to de-escalate a war like the one now expanding in Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan, and withdraw American troops, would be so much domestic political dead meat.

This everyday bit of engrained Washington wisdom is, in fact, based on not a shred of evidence in the historical record. We do, however, know something about what could happen to a president who escalated a counterinsurgency war: Lyndon Johnson comes to mind for expanding his inherited war in Vietnam out of fear that he would be labeled the president who "lost" that country to the communists (as Harry Truman had supposedly "lost" China). And then there was Vice President Hubert Humphrey who -- incapable of rejecting Johnson's war policy -- lost the 1968 election to Richard Nixon, a candidate pushing a fraudulent "peace with honor" formula for downsizing the war.

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