I have been trying to come up with a reason everyone but President Obama seems to have seen a top general\u2019s request for more troops in Afghanistan. The request, which is part of a report that is expected to arrive at the Pentagon later this week, came from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The report won\u2019t be seen by the president until some still undisclosed time, according to published reports out of the Pentagon.<\/p>\n
McChrystal warned in his report that the war in Afghanistan will be lost unless more troops are sent within the next year. U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan is already scheduled to reach 68,000 by the end of this year. But McChrystal is asking for an additional 21,000.<\/p>\n
Even more remarkable, considering Obama still hasn\u2019t had a look at McChrystal\u2019s assessment, Gen. David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, said Wednesday that he and the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, endorsed McChrystal views of the situation.<\/p>\n
As far back as the presidential election campaign, Obama talked of getting out of Iraq and beefing up forces in Afghanistan. But public opinion polls of late show that the majority of U.S. citizens are against sending more troops to Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
So, does this mean there is a major rift between the administration and military leaders? Or is something else at work here? Could this whole discussion of McChrystal\u2019s report being played out in the news media simply be a roundabout way of building up public support for what is now being viewed by the administration and the Pentagon as an unpopular decision to expand the war in Afghanistan?<\/p>\n
What do you think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have been trying to come up with a reason everyone but President Obama seems to have seen a top general\u2019s request for more troops in Afghanistan. The request, which is part of a report that is expected to arrive at the Pentagon later this week, came from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[157],"class_list":["post-106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","tag-afghanistan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larryjohnsononline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larryjohnsononline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larryjohnsononline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryjohnsononline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryjohnsononline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=106"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryjohnsononline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryjohnsononline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions\/111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larryjohnsononline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryjohnsononline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryjohnsononline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}