While we hear a lot about Obama needing to heed to General McChrystal’s wishes, since he is Obama’s “hand-picked general”, it turns out another important general has a different perspective.
Retired four-star general Karl Eikenberry, currently serving as U.S Ambassador to Afghanistan, recently sent two private cables to the White House imploring them not to escalate the number of troops on the ground.
Eikenberry warned Obama of President Karzai’s “erratic behavior”, and questioned his ability to root corruption out of his government.
The Ambassador also expressed frustration over the Obama administration’s lack of non-military financial support.
Eikenberry asked the administration to set aside $2.5 billion on non-military development in 2010, but his request has apparently not even been formally addressed yet.
So whenever any of you tout the argument that we should be in Afghanistan, as long as we’re focusing on building up the country, please remember, President Obama does not care about that.
Whether or not we should be spending billions to build a country from scratch is a whole separate debate, but it’s one that the Obama administration probably isn’t even interested in having.
Finally, Eikenberry, who served as commander of U.S forces in Afghanistan from 06-07, and was in charge of the Afghan military training program prior to that, wrote in his cables that sending thousands of new U.S troops would “increase the Afghan government’s dependence on U.S. support at a time when its own security forces should be taking on more responsibility for fighting.”
I hope the media really picks up on this guy, and puts him head to head with McChrystal. They are two different men with two different assignments, but they have equal credibility in this debate.
