Politics Now

Obama faces 'mission creep' in Afghanistan

  WASHINGTON -  By keeping Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and most likely Gates' team, President-elect Barack Obama may be sliding into a situation similar to one that beleaguered President John F. Kennedy. Kennedy inherited his predecessor's military commitments to South Vietnam and the disastrous and abortive Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

    While Obama has tacitly signed onto the agreement between the U.S. and Iraq for three more years of occupation, Obama has specifically called for an "effective strategic partnership" with Pakistan to help fight the Taliban and terrorists in its neighbor Afghanistan.

    Referring to Afghanistan, Obama has said, "if we combine effective development, more effective military work as well as more effective diplomacy, then I think that we can stabilize the situation."

    Obama has consistently called for shifting troops from Iraq to Afghanistan, and that transfer has already begun, sending troops and resources to a country that has never been conquered by a western military force in all of history. There has never been a formal declaration of war against Afghanistan, where an additional 20,000 American troops will soon be deployed.

    The troops are being sent in response to a request from Gen. David McKiernan, American commander in Afghanistan. Among them will be soldiers from the Third Mountain Brigade, who will be sent from Fort Drum, N.Y. There has been no congressional debate over these deployments, which will last at least 18 months. 

     Bush has used the congressional Authorization for the Use of Military Force passed in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks as his justification to punish enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, the war in Afghanistan is on automatic.

   Obama will be faced with having to pay for this unannounced Afghanistan "surge" while he is trying to refrain from drawing down too quickly the 140,000 U.S. troops fighting in Iraq.

     Michael Crowley, writing in The New Republic, estimates that it could take as many as 600,000 troops to quell all the tribal tensions in Afghanistan - roughly 10 times the number of soldiers in the multi-national force there now. Even with more troops, sprawling, mountainous Afganistan may not be winnable. 

    The Greek warlord Alexander couldn't conquer it, nor could Queen Victoria's Imperial forces, nor the Soviet Union in 1979. The upcoming budget for the Defense Department is estimated at $584 billion, not counting the increased commitments for Afghanistan. Reportedly, the U.S. expeditionary forces have enough money to last them through June 2009. But Obama and the Democratic Congress will have to face the consequences of mission creep before then.

-- Douglas Turner
    

      
   

Can the U.S. afford the war any longer?

   WASHINGTON - A Columbia University economist has testified that the Iraq war will cost upwards of $3 trillion, perhaps as much as $5 trillion in direct and indirect costs.

   Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz told the Joint Economic Committee, chaired by Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., that the war's expenses are putting almost unsustainable pressures on the American economy.

   "To offset that depressing effect, the (Federal Reserve Bank) has flooded the economy with liquidity and the regulators looked the other way when very imprudent lending was going up.We were living on borrowed money and borrowed time and eventually a day of reckoning had to come, and it has now come."

   "Flooding the economy with liquidity" is a polite way of saying that the Federal Reserve is going to the printing press and shipping out money that is worth less and less.

   Every time the Fed lowers the overnight price of cash, it lowers the worth of the dollar and adds to pressures for inflation. It also has a direct effect on what American consumers pay for imported gasoline. The less the dollar is worth, the more dollars one pays for a gallon of gas.

   The "very imprudent lending" that Stiglitz mentioned to Sen. Schumer includes the prices that investment houses and banking combines paid for virtually worthless home mortgages up to a year ago.

   The Federal Reserve Bank just stepped in with a $30 billion guarantee to back up the purchase of Bear Stearns by Morgan Chase -- further depleting the Fed's own reserves.

    Peter Morici, the University of Maryland economist, called the Fed's actions "the desperate acts of failing men. Morici said "the threat of contagion and wholesale (economic) breakdown on a scale of 1929 is real." Morici referred to the onset of the Great Depression that paralyzed the American economy for nearly a decade.

      Other analysts agree that the American economy is living on the edge of a knife.

   The soaring price of oil and Chinese currency manipulation accounts for 80 percent of the nation's growing trade deficit ... and continues to position China as this country's leading creditor.

       The choice for American voters is between two Democrats, Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, who are saying very little about the effect of China and the war on the economy, and Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who believes the U.S. should maintain a military presence in Iraq for 100 years, if necessary.

     The new question posed by this fifth anniversary of President Bush's decision to invade, occupy and govern Iraq is not just whether it is worth it in terms of blood and treasure, but whether it is worth breaking the American economy, closing more factories, and sending the nation into a new round of inflation.

    Here's what else Sen. Schumer says we could be doing with the $430 million a day in direct Iraq war costs:

   According to budget and Iraq spending figures, for the amount the Bush administration wants to spend PER DAY in Iraq, over $430 million, we could:

   -- Enroll an additional 58,000 children in Head Start per year.

   -- Put an additional 8,900 police officers on the streets per year;

   -- Provide health insurance for 329,200 low-income children through CHIP per year;

   -- Hire another 10,700 Border patrol agents per year;

   -- Make college more affordable for 163,700 students through Pell Grants per year; and

   -- Help nearly 260,000 American families to keep their homes with foreclosure prevention counseling this year.

-- Douglas Turner

War costs $3.5 trillion?

The Joint Economic Committee, an advisory Senate-House body, is predicting that the ultimate cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will be $3.5 trillion under scenarios outlined by the Bush White House.

This figure is more than triple the number forecast by the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The committee report forecasts a scenario, using the budget office's 10-year window, based on statements by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, that the U.S. will mount a long-term "Korea-like" presence in Iraq. Gates' projections involves a reduction of troops by 66 percent by the year 2013.

A reduction of 33 percent of American forces in Afghanistan by 2013 is also envisioned, according to the Joint Economic Committee.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., the committee chairman said "the backbreaking costs of this war to American families, the federal budget, and the entire economy are beyond measure in many ways."

The war, the committee says, is financed by borrowed  money - money that could be used to pay for new stateside industrial and commercial investment, and housing.

The committee issued its findings the day before the House narrowly approved a short-term $50 billion appropriation for the two wars, funding it through Feb. 1. The legislation carried non-binding clauses requiring the president to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq next month, which he already is, and bringing "most" of the remainder home by the end of next year.

With the president threatening to veto it, there is little chance the bill will pass the Senate.

Bush did veto a spending bill increasing funding for Pell grants and research money for the National Institutes of Health, saying that congressional Democrats are acting "like a teenager with a new credit card." The appropriations bill contained too many congressional earmarks.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., fired back: "If President Bush applied for a credit card, any bank in America would turn him down as a bad credit risk.  He has put more foreign debt on the nation’s credit card than all previous presidents combined — saddling our children and grandchildren with $3.3 trillion in new debt."

The $50 billion war spending bill is only an installment. The White House will return in January with a request for another $200 billion to pay for the war through next Sept. 30.

The committee's report can be found at this link.

-- Douglas Turner

Attack on Iran coming?

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democrats' leading presidential candidate, is defending her vote for a controversial resolution branding as "terrorist" Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps. She said the non- binding resolution "gives us the options to be able to impose sanctions on the primary leaders to try to begin to put some teeth into all this talk about dealing with Iran." At a Democratic presidential candidates debate in New Hampshire no other hopeful supported the resolution.

Clinton and Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., joined 74 other senators, mostly Republicans, in supporting the conserative measure sponsored by Sens. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn. 

In the floor debate, fellow Democrats Joe Biden of Delaware, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Jim Webb of Virginia, warned it could be used by the Bush administration as justification to widen the war in the Middle East.

The move was driven in part by remarks made in New York by Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad which he in effect thumbed his nose at the United Nations, the U.S. and its allies in Western Europe about Iran's program to enrich uranium. Many fear this is part of a plan to build a nuclear bomb. In a number of appearances Ahmadinejad said the subject of the atomic energy "is closed," meaning he does not intend to negotiate its limits with any outside power.

According to Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of American forces in Iraq, Iran is supplying weapons and providing training to insurgents who are attacking U.S. and Iraqi troops.

Iran has reacted angrily to the resolution. A foreign ministry spokesman said the U.S. is moving toward a confrontation with "the great nation of Iran."

On Thursday, a spokesman for the Russian government, which in the past has associated itself with Iran, warned the U.S. to let Iran work out problems with the International Atomic Energy agency.

-- Douglas Turner

Pelosi, Dems warn Bush's war "endless"

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who voted against the 2002 resolution authorizing President Bush's preemptive strike on Iraq, charges Bush's enterprise is 'endless.'

"In the fifth year of war, after more than 3,700 brave Americans have lost their lives," Pelosi said, "it is unconscionable to ask additional sacrifices of our military while Iraqi politicians refuse to make the political progress necessary to end sectarian violence.

  "The choice is between a Democratic plan for responsible redeployment and the president’s plan for a 10-year war in Iraq.”

  Democratic Chairman Howard Dean, who as a presidential candidate, opposed the war, said the president's speech was nothing more than a "PR stunt" to advance his idea of "endless war" in Iraq.

Sen. Barak Obama of Illinois, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, said he has "proposed an immediate and sustained removal of one to two combat brigades each month to conclude by the end of next year. We have to come together – not as Republicans and Democrats – but as Americans to turn the page in Iraq so that we can recapture our unity of purpose at home."

Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, also a presidential candidate, said that it is time for Congress to use its constitutional power of the purse to mandate a date certain for withdrawal of all U.S. forces from there. Dodd wants withdrawal to start immediately.

Many war critics said that Bush is considering a permanent presence in Iraq, similar to this country's 54-year garrison in South Korea.  What do you think of that?

--Douglas Turner

Reps Reynolds, Kuhl cautious on Iraq

   WASHINGTON -- Congressman Tom Reynolds, R-Clarence, who won a razor thin re-election last fall, is asking folks for their opinions of the assessments of the Iraq war Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker offered to Congress and the media.

   In an email circulated here and in his district, Reynolds is asking whether they agree with the Petraeus-Crocker reports that the surge is working militarily, or if they agree "somewhat that the counter-insurgency strategy is working but that the Iraqis are incapable of making diplomatic progress."

   Other choices on the Reynolds questionnaire are "no," and "unsure."

   Rep. John R. "Randy" Kuhl Jr., R-Hammonsport, differed with President Bush on one aspect of Bush's Thursday night address from the Oval Office.

   Kuhl said that "while the president feels that the foundation for all other progress in Iraq is the security that our nation's brave military is providing, I must disagree. The true foundation for all progress in Iraq must be for members of opposing parties joining together to reconcile their differences in order to find a political solution. The U.S. military is working tirelessly to provide an environment where these political discussions can occur but it is up to the Iraqi government to find the solution as America's presence in Iraq can not be indefinite. "

   What do you think?

--Douglas Turner, Buffalo News Washington Bureau
      

Should generals be setting political policy?

President Bush, whose credibility on running the Iraq war is around 5 percent, says "America should listen" to Gen. David H. Petraeus, who is testifying today before Congress that the surge of armed forces is working and that major troop withdrawals should be delayed. This is also Bush's position.

Petraeus said the Iraq war was going well three years ago.

In an op-ed piece published in the Washington Post in September, 2004, Petraeus wrote:

"I see tangible progress. Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt from the ground up. The institutions that oversee them are being re-established from the top down. And Iraqi leaders are stepping forward."

Bush has made Petraeus a pivotal and polarizing figure. Right-wing talk shows are saying criticism of Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, is tantamount to treason. Moveon-org, a liberal organization, took out newspaper ads charging Petraeus with betrayal.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., observed that Petraeus is in town to tell people he is "doing a good job." The Democats as a party however, while critical of Bush, have backed away from setting a date for withdrawal.

The Republican Congressional Campaign Committee is calling on Democrats to denounce Moveon.org's "despicable ad." The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is distributing material showing that the Defense Intelligency Agency has data showing Petraeus's talk of progress is wrong.

American forces now number 160,000, not counting private security and other contractors, and the war is costing billions a month. The best that can be anticipated is the withdrawal of only 5,000 troops around Christmastime.

-- Douglas Turner