Plan To Support Counterinsurgency In Pakistan Reveals Rift

Pakistani Army Chief Ashfaq Kayani (right) meets with U.S. General David Petraeus in Islamabad in January. (Photo from Radio Free Europe)

From The Washington Independent:

Dispute Highlights Gap Between Broad Goals and Immediate Challenges

A program that the Obama administration calls crucial to Pakistan’s fight against the Taliban is being criticized at the State Department and on Capitol Hill for overly militarizing the problem.

The dispute represents an early rift with some progressive members of Congress over discrepancies between the administration’s broad foreign policy goals and its approach to immediate challenges. One of the central aspects of the administration’s approach to the crisis in Pakistan is a new creation called the Pakistani Counterinsurgency Capabilities Fund, a $400 million annual program to give the Pakistani military equipment and training for counterinsurgency missions that it had shown little competency in waging. During April testimony, Michele Flournoy, the undersecretary of defense for policy, called it “absolutely critical to the success” of the Obama administration’s strategy in Pakistan. Both the House and the Senate showed themselves receptive to the proposal, adding the so-called PCCF to the war supplemental that passed the House on May 14 and the Senate on May 21.

Read more ....

My Comment: I always gave credit to President Bush on his attempts and efforts to make sure that the conduct of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan stayed out of the hands of the politicians. There were many incidents (of course) in which politics intervened .... but overall I will have to say that much of this intervention was minimized on the prosecution and conduct of the war when the actual fighting had to be done.

This is not the case now. Generals and commanders in the field are now being constantly over ruled by people back home. The result of this armchair quarter backing is highlighted by the complete lack of support for assisting the counter insurgency campaign in Pakistan.

The above article accurately reports this rift.