The Washington Post reported on October 13 that the U.S. military is deploying 13,000 additional troops to Afghanistan — in addition to the 21,000 extra combat soldiers approved by President Obama last March.

Pentagon officials said that the latest deployment is made up of support troops, such as engineers, medical personnel, and intelligence experts, and and military police, rather than combat troops. However, in military operations such as in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the enemy is comprised of insurgents waging a guerilla operation, support personnel and civilians can become targets as well.

The deployment of the support troops to Afghanistan brings the total increase in troop strength to 34,000. A report in the British Guardian noted that both the White House and Pentagon announced earlier this year that the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan would be raised by 21,000, bringing the total to 68,000 by the end of the year.

Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai, speaking to ABC’s Good Morning America on October 13, expressed support for U.S. General Stanley McChrystal’s request for an extra 40,000 troops, saying: “I’m fully behind him for what he’s seeking in this report.”

The Guardian quoted a U.S. military planner’s statement to the Army Times: “We’ve increased forces in Afghanistan before we’ve reduced forces in Iraq in a meaningful way. If they want forces sooner than 2010, there are no additional forces available. You’ll have to pull them from Iraq and put them in Afghanistan.”

Kagan, who earned her Ph.D in ancient history, and who heads the Institute for the Study of War, previously has taught at West Point, Yale, Georgetown, and the American University. In an essay in Foreign Policy magazine for August 10 entitled “Why the Taliban Are Winning — for Now,” Kagan asserted:

McChrystal might adopt a different campaign design — perhaps requiring additional military resources — when he submits his formal assessment to the U.S. secretary of defense and NATO secretary-general sometime after the Afghan elections.

The fact that we have not been doing the right things for the past few years in Afghanistan is actually good news at this moment. A sound, properly resourced counterinsurgency has not failed in Afghanistan; it has never even been tried. So there is good reason to think that such a new strategy can succeed now. But we have to hurry, for as is often the case in these kinds of war, if you aren’t winning, you’re losing.

Dr. Kagan was, of course, part of McChrystal’s formal strategic assessment team, whose input served as the basis for the general’s well-known request for additional troops.

But if Kagan seems to be well-connected with America’s foreign policy establishment, her credentials are nothing in comparison to her husband, Frederick W. Kagan. The male Dr. Kagan (who received his Ph.D in Russian and Soviet military history from Yale) was an American resident scholar at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (with which he shares an affilation with prominent neocons such as William Kristol) and was also a professor at West Point. Frederick along with his brother, Robert (who is a member of the Aspen Strategy Group), and their father Donald are all signatories to the Project for the New American Century (cofounded by Robert Kagan and William Kristol) manifesto entitled Rebuilding America’s Defenses.

Frederick Kagan and his father David Kagan (a Yale professor and a fellow at the Hudson Institute) coauthored While America Sleeps: Self-Delusion, Military Weakness, and the Threat to Peace Today, in which they argued in favor of a large increase in military spending and warned of future threats, including the now-discredited claim of a threat from Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction program.

Robert Kagan is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and is married to Victoria Nuland, the former U.S. ambassador to NATO, who has twice been a visiting fellow at the CFR.

Back to Dr. Kimberly Kagan, who, along with husband Frederick, was part of the strategic assessment team sent by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates last July to meet with McChrystal and advise the commander about improving U.S. military strategy. As we noted in our July 31 article, “Advisers Call for Afghanistan Troop Buildup,” other members of the team included Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), who was once a national security assistant to Senator John McCain on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Stephen Biddle, a military analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. We noted that the CSIS has been described by some as “a CFR front group” because of the connections of some of its more prominent members to the CFR.

Likewise, Senator McCain, Defense Secretary Gates, and General McChrystal are all CFR members.

Lest we belabor a point, however, the CFR is by no means the only “think tank” (as such elite policy groups generally like to be labelled) exerting disproportionate influence on our government’s foreign policy. Though we often describe the CFR as “internationalist” in its philosophical bent, the association of organizations to which members of the extended Kagan family are affiliated include several that are “neoconservative” (neocon) in orientation. (For a brief introduction to neoconservatism, read “The Passing of Irving Kristol.”)

As we noted previously, William Kristol (Irving’s son) collaborated with Dr. Frederick Kagan (husband of Dr. Kimberly Kagan) in cofounding the neocon Project for the New American Century.

While these interconnected affiliations may be a bit much to absorb in a single sitting, those who would understand the dynamics behind the never-ending succession of wars in which our military has been entangled since (and including) World War II should make a serious effort to follow the trails. Not to do so, is to remain vulnerable to the next propaganda barrage purporting to show why we must send military forces to one backwater satrapy or another — “for our national security.”

Source: The New American

Former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice has said that the United States could experience another terrorist attack like 9/11 if troops are withdrawn from Afghanistan.

“If you want another terrorist attack in the US, abandon Afghanistan,” she said in an interview with Fortune magazine on Tuesday.

“The last time we left Afghanistan, and we abandoned Pakistan, that territory became the very territory on which al-Qaeda trained and attacked us on September 11th.

“So our national security interests are very much tied up in not letting Afghanistan fail again and become a safe haven for terrorists,” Rice added.

President Barack Obama is considering his options after the US commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, said on Monday that extra troops are needed within the next year or else the war “will likely result in failure.”

Rice made the remarks after new threats of a possible terrorist attack emerged following a series of arrests in Denver and New York related to an alleged bomb plot.

“Counterterrorism officials have issued security bulletins to police around the nation about terrorists’ desire to attack stadiums, entertainment complexes, and hotels,” the Associated Press reported.

As the US feels the strain on its armed forces serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, the country’s defense secretary talks of plans to expand the Army by 22,000 soldiers.

Speaking at a Pentagon news conference with Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced that the military has reached a point where “its ability to continue to deploy combat units at acceptable fill rates is at risk.”

Gates argued that the goal of the increase is to ease the strain of deployment, as many troops have faced repeated lengthy rotations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“This is an important and necessary step to ensure that we continue to properly support the needs of commanders in the field, while providing relief for our current force and their families,” Gates explained.

The defense secretary said the increase will last three fiscal years, expanding US troop levels from the current 547,000 to a maximum of 569,000.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that a 30,000 increase in the number of US soldiers could add between $2 billion and $4 billion a year in costs.

This is while previous reports indicate that the US House of Representatives and Senate committees have passed bills that would funnel more money into the department in charge of foreign policy.

Under the bills, the State Department will receive about 25% more from what was spent in 2008 and nearly double the amount in 2005.

Meanwhile US President Barack Obama’s 2010 defense budget seeks to “rebalance military spending,” giving greater weight to funding irregular warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Under the new plans, the Pentagon may be forced to cut traditional weapons spending, and expand resources to protect ground troops and computer networks.

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