President Obama's Political Pull Out: Say We Won in Afghanistan and Pull Out.

The Only Solution for President Obama's tattered foreign policy is to bail on Afghanistan.-MjS

Pentagon worried about Obama's commitment to Afghanistan

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AP – In this photo taken on Aug. 30, 2009, Senior Airman Shaun Thomas, of the 335th Fighter Squadron at Seymour …

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By Nancy A. Youssef, McClatchy Newspapers – Mon Aug 31, 7:29 pm ET

WASHINGTON — The prospect that U.S. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal may ask for as many as 45,000 additional American troops in Afghanistan is fueling growing tension within President Barack Obama's administration over the U.S. commitment to the war there.

On Monday, McChrystal sent his assessment of the situation inAfghanistan to the Pentagon , the U.S. Central Command, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and NATO . Although the assessment didn't include any request for more troops, senior military officials said they expect McChrystal later in September to seek between 21,000 and 45,000 more troops. There currently are 62,000 American troops in Afghanistan .

However, administration officials said that amid rising violence and casualties, polls that show a majority of Americans now think the war in Afghanistan isn't worth fighting. With tough battles ahead on health care, the budget and other issues, Vice President Joe Biden and other officials are increasingly anxious about how the American public would respond to sending additional troops.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to talk to the media, said Biden has argued that without sustained support from the American people, the U.S. can't make the long-term commitment that would be needed to stabilize Afghanistan and dismantle al Qaida . Biden's office declined to comment.

"I think they (the Obama administration) thought this would be more popular and easier," a senior Pentagon official said. "We are not getting a Bush-like commitment to this war."

Monday's assessment initially was to include troop recommendations, but political concerns prompted White House and Pentagon officials to agree that those recommendations would come later, advisers to McChrystal said. Although the White House took a hands-off approach toward Afghanistan earlier this summer, Pentagon officials said they're now getting more questions about how many troops might be needed and for how long.

Some White House officials said the administration feels it was pressured to send the additional 17,500 combat troops and 4,000 trainers earlier this year, before the administration was comfortable with its plan for Afghanistan , because of the country's election in August.

Obama now feels that McChrystal and his superior, Army Gen. David Petraeus , the head of the Central Command, are pressuring him to commit still more troops to Afghanistan , a senior military official said. The official said that retired Marine Gen. James Jones , Obama's national security adviser, told McChrystal last month not to ask for more troops, but that McChrystal went ahead anyway and indicated in interviews that he may need more.

McChrystal's new assessment is the fifth one ordered since Obama's inauguration. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said that no details of the assessment would be released. Other officials called it a "political hot potato."

Advisers to McChrystal, who spoke to McClatchy on the condition of anonymity because of the matter's sensitivity, said the document is just over 10 pages and broadly spells out McChrystal's assessment of conditions on the ground:

"It says that this could get much worse unless we invest ourselves in this now," one adviser said. "Then it says, 'This is what we propose to do.'"

On Monday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that the Obama administration inherited an under-resourced war in Afghanistan , but he stopped short of promising more troops.

Administration officials said that the White House is planning a series of "quiet discussions" among top advisers over the next six weeks or so about the way ahead.

"What the president is going to want to do is review the report and then discuss and talk with all of those that have equities in it to get their viewpoints and to ensure that each and every person is heard on this, and that's what the president intends to do," Gibbs said Monday.

McChrystal's latest assessment calls for redistributing troops to focus more on protecting population centers and less on chasing Taliban fighters. It also says it will take several years to build a more professional and capable Afghan security force, without saying how large that force should be.

The assessment also calls for more U.S. government civilians to be sent to Afghanistan and for the streamlining of the military's command structure, saying that too much bureaucracy is making it difficult for commanders to make decisions on the ground.

"The situation in Afghanistan is serious, but success is achievable and demands a revised implementation strategy, commitment and resolve, and increased unity of effort," McChrystal said in a statement Monday.

Since Obama's inauguration, when the war was hailed as a just cause, the administration has been bombarded by signs of a deteriorating situation.

The deaths of 304 U.S. and NATO forces, including 179 Americans, so far this year makes 2009 the deadliest year for both U.S. and NATO forces since the war began eight years ago — and there are still four months to go.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll released in August found that for the first time since the war began, a majority of Americans don't think the war is worth fighting.

Pentagon officials said that White House officials have told them they fear that McChrystal's expected request for more troops won't be his last.

The additional troops are "only a down payment on what would be required to turn things around, and everyone knows that," said another senior military official, who said that's true in part because estimates of what the Afghan forces can do and when they'll be fully capable of handling security threats are being downgraded.

Meanwhile, U.S. military commanders in Kabul feel the political clock ticking, saying they think they have no more than 18 months to show some kind of progress, even as most agree that they don't have enough troops.

Success could mean as little as making the levels of violence plateau, two military officials told McClatchy .

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said any discussion about what the Pentagon is proposing and the White House response is premature.

"We are not there yet," Morrell said. "Let's see what Gen. McChrystal comes back and asks for.

Under weak American Foreign Policy: Russia moves in.

Russia the Bully

Moscow should have no problem finding friends in its own backyard -- but instead it’s just getting lonelier. Here’s why.

BY CHRISTIAN CARYL |

As Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin might be tempted to remind his Ukrainian counterpart Yulia Tymoshenko when they meet this week, her country is a bit of a mess these days. Her ostensible boss, the once-adored President Viktor Yushchenko -- yes, the same guy who emerged from the Orange Revolution as a national hero a few years back -- has become the political equivalent of radioactive waste. With the national election just four months away, his popularity ratings are in the low single digits. Corruption is rife, the economy sagging.

Now, just imagine that you're the man who once called the collapse of the Soviet Union "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century." To Putin and his friends at the pinnacle of the Russian political elite this must seem like a golden opportunity -- the perfect moment to administer the coup de grâce to a shaky rival. Perhaps that's why Putin's ostensible boss, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, recently fired off a torrent of invective at the Ukrainian government that stunned onlookers in Kiev and around the former Soviet Union. The list of grievances in the Russian president's letter was long: The Ukrainians are canoodling with the Europeans behind Russia's back. They're restricting Russian language instruction in the public schools and "distorting" the historical record in Ukrainian textbooks. They're blocking access to the base of Russia's Black Sea Fleet on the Ukrainian territory of Crimea. They've kicked out innocent Russian diplomats on the scandalous pretext of spying. And, just for good measure, he also accused them of supplying weapons to the Georgians in last year's war.

On one level it seems to be working. Candidate Viktor Yanukovych, the man usually described as the "pro-Russian" candidate in the 2004 presidential locations, is now way ahead of both Yushchenko and Tymoshenko in the polls. (The most recent surveys put him with 22 percent of the vote, while Tymoshenko comes second with 11 percent.) When the Moscow-based Orthodox Patriarch Kirill I came for a visit at the end of July, he was mobbed by adoring believers around the country -- and also made a point of allowing Yanukovych to bask in his reflected glory. Meanwhile, Ukrainian approval of NATO remains weak. A majority of Ukrainians consistently express greater distrust of the United States than of Russia.

So why isn't this a Russian success story? Because, at the same time, the idea of Ukrainian independence is going strong. The same polls that show all those encouraging sentiments about Russia also underline the point that Ukrainians -- even those who live in regions ethnically and geographically close to Russia -- are less inclined than ever give up their own state or their own policies. For example, one recent survey showed that 70.2 percent of Ukrainians had a favorable view of Russians -- but that only one in 10 of them wanted closer relations with Moscow. A mere 13.7 percent supported the idea of formulating joint foreign policy with the Russians, and only 9.3 percent liked the idea of a common currency. As a result, say some analysts, if Moscow's preferred candidate Yanukovych wins the presidential election in January 2010, his actual policies may turn out to be considerably less pro-Russian than the cliché would have it -- since, once in office, he'll be the defender of Ukrainian sovereignty.

"Yanukovych isn't quite the toady that his opponents make him out to be," notes Alexander Motyl, a Ukraine expert at Rutgers University. "I'd bet that he, like every Ukrainian president and PM since 1991, would adopt a moderately pro-Ukrainian and semi-pro-Russian position." If the object of the Kremlin's policies is to drive Ukraine back into the arms of Mother Russia, so far it's not working.

Ever since the Soviet Union broke up at the end of 1991, Russia has been trying hard to reassert its influence over the other ex-Soviet republics -- countries the Russians often refer to in the aggregate as "the near abroad." Over the years this effort has become an increasingly frustrating one for Moscow, which is deeply concerned about the rising power (both real and imagined) of regional rivals like the United States, Western Europe, and China. Yet so far, despite its myriad advantages, the Kremlin has surprisingly little to show for its pains. Somehow the Russians still have trouble getting traction in their own backyard.

It doesn't have to be this way. There's a persistent myth that the republics of the former Soviet Union are inherently and fanatically anti-Russian, always ready to choose the path that doesn't have Moscow on it. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Polls consistently show that people even in countries where tensions with Russia are high - like Ukraine and Georgia - actually want more cooperation with Russia, not less. Most surveys also show that non-Russian ex-Soviets want to maintain linguistic, cultural and religious ties with Russia wherever possible. Militaries across the region still share weaponry, training, and doctrine with Russia. And, of course, there remains a thick web of economic and trade ties between Russia and the post-Soviet states -- especially when it comes to energy. A number of countries (including Georgia) depend to a remarkable degree on remittances transferred home from citizens working in Russia. (One recent study by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, for example, found that in some ex-Soviet states these flows exceed bank deposits or foreign direct investment -- and most of that money is coming from Russia.) Yet Moscow has somehow done a persistently miserable job of transforming all of these potential advantages into good relations with its neighbors -- as even Russian scholars have sometimes seen fit to observe.

Moscow's tensions with the Baltic Republics, Georgia, and now, increasingly, Ukraine have already become the stuff of headlines. But it may be some of the stories that haven't been getting much publicity that are the most instructive. Take, for example, Belarus, the country of 10 million people sandwiched between Russia and Poland and run by the redoubtable dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka. Lukashenka has been president since 1994, and for almost that entire time his country's closeness to Russia has been unsurpassed by any other country in the region; for years the two countries have seriously discussed the possibility of outright legal and economic "union." Yet over the past year Belarus has staged a remarkable reversal. Lukashenka ostentatiously discarded a set of senior officials identified with his years of human rights abuses and made dramatic overtures to the European Union.

The reasons for the shift are straightforward. "After almost two decades of formal independence Belarus is gradually becoming truly independent," says Arkady Moshes of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. "It's drifting away from Russia." Energy is a big part of the equation. Its supplies of oil and natural gas have long been generously subsidized by Moscow, but Minsk hasn't failed to notice that Russia has been working hard to strike deals with other countries to build new transit pipelines that would bypass Belarus. "Lukashenka sees that the days of cheap energy are over," notes Moshes. And with that the prospect of closer economic and cultural ties to Europe suddenly begins to look much more enticing. The fact that Belarus is populated almost entirely by Russian-speakers, it turns out, is not enough to outweigh the relative attractions of the West.

Of course, one more recent event has probably helped to concentrate minds in the region as well -- Russia's small but victorious war with Georgia one year ago. For the past year the Kremlin has been busily lobbying members of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the club of ex-Soviet republics with the closest ties to Russia, to recognize the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the two Russian-backed mini-states inside Georgia. Yet so far takers have been notably absent -- even among the authoritarian states of Central Asia, traditionally among Moscow's most stalwart backers. (The one country in the world aside from Russia that's been willing to extend recognition to the two statelets? Nicaragua.)

The case of one of Russia's other closest allies within the ex-Soviet club is equally instructive. Islam Karimov, the dictator of Uzbekistan, gave Moscow a jolt recently by announcing that his country wouldn't be taking part in exercises of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a security grouping that includes several Commonwealth countries. Karimov has also pulled his country out of a recent economic bloc, refused to participate in exercises of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which brings together Russia, China, and the Central Asian republics, and even allowed the U.S. military to use Uzbek facilities to transport supplies into Afghanistan (this after kicking the U.S. out of key bases in his country a few years back). Russia also recently signed a deal with adjacent Kyrgyzstan that will allow it to base forces in the strategically sensitive Ferghana Valley -- but without consulting the perennially paranoid Uzbeks, a typically ham-handed gesture Karimov is not likely to forgive any time soon.

Russia's ability to get in its own way remains a cause for much head-scratching in the region. "When they tried to stop NATO enlargement, whom did they discuss it with? The United States and Germany," notes Kadri Liik, Director of the International Center for Defense Studies in Tallinn, Estonia. "But in fact the biggest driving force of NATO enlargement [was] the countries themselves. Russia tried to discuss these countries over their heads, and it backfired."

Something comparable is now happening again with energy. Moscow's apparent willingness to use energy supplies in its political disputes with some of its neighbors is now driving the European Union to seek greater diversification of supply and alternate pipeline routes. "Russia uses coercion more than attraction," says Moshes, the Finnish analyst.

So is this just a symptom of poor policymaking -- or an expression of a deeper problem? Some worry that this tendency is deeply rooted in the present authoritarian government in Moscow -- one whose intense nationalism demands the constant search for enemies, external and internal, to legitimize its own actions. "That kind of regime cannot by definition enjoy ‘normal' relations with its neighbors," notes Motyl, the Rutgers professor. Whatever the reason, one can only hope that Russia is able to find a way back to healthy relations with its former satellites -- for its own sake, one might add, as much as theirs.

Tariq Ramadan Repudiated (Islamic Terrorism Writers in our Midst)

Tariq Ramadan Repudiated

by Stephen Schwartz

In an important development for the fight against extremist Islam in the West, the Dutch city of Rotterdam and Erasmus University Rotterdam have dismissed Tariq Ramadan, the Swiss-born Islamist academic, from his two local jobs.

Born in Switzerland, Ramadan is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the radical Muslim Brotherhood. He is a close associate of the fundamentalist Muslim theologian Yusuf al-Qaradawi, with whom he collaborates in the so-called European Council for Fatwas and Research [ECFR], a Brotherhood-oriented body. Al-Qaradawi is the leading theorist of a "European Islam" that would abuse Western standards of religious freedom by erecting a parallel system of Shariah law alongside established civil law, coupled with aggressive da'wa or Islamic proselytizing. Ramadan has endorsed this strategy. The ECFR scheme, and Tariq Ramadan's involvement in it, are documented in the recent Center for Islamic Pluralism report, A Guide to Shariah Law and Islamist Ideology in Western Europe, 2007-2009.

Ramadan has been barred from entry into the U.S. since 2004, when he was invited by the University of Notre Dame to become the Henry R. Luce Professor at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. That ruling was based on Ramadan's financial contributions to two Palestinian groups designated by the U.S. Treasury as fundraising agencies for the terrorists of Hamas. Early in July of this year, however, given the new atmosphere of outreach to Muslim radicals under President Barack Obama, the Second Circuit U.S. Appeals Court reversed the lower-court ruling, effectively nullifying the prohibition on an American visa for Ramadan.

Meanwhile, Britain in 2005 allowed Ramadan to take up a position at Oxford University, where he is the His Highness Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Chair in Contemporary Islamic Studies.

Ramadan is an indefatigable self-promoter. Few who have observed him paid attention to his work in The Netherlands as an integration adviser for the city of Rotterdam and a professor of "Citizenship and Identity" at Erasmus University.

Yet while the U.S. authorities now seem inclined to allow him on our shores, and Britain appears untroubled by his presence - although the UK bars his associate al-Qaradawi - the Dutch have taken action to curb Ramadan's ambitions.

His simultaneous dismissal from the Rotterdam city post and the Erasmus appointment was announced on August 19. The specific reason: his weekly television program on PressTV, an Iranian government media network which operates studios in Britain and the U.S. in addition, of course, to the Middle East. PressTV also employs British politician George Galloway of the leftist-Islamist electoral alliance known as the Respect Party, and Yvonne Ridley, a former captive of the Taliban who became Muslim after her kidnapping.

Ramadan's PressTV show was titled "Islam and Life" -- not very different, one might note, from the notorious "Shariah and Life" feature run by al-Qaradawi on Al-Jazeera. Al-Qaradawi has used that platform for outrageous sermons against Jews and Judaism, among other objectionable opinions that support the British decision to keep him out.

In an official statement, Erasmus University stated:

The Municipality of Rotterdam and the Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) have decided to terminate the appointment of Dr. Tariq Ramadan... The reason for this is his involvement in the Iranian television channel PressTV, which is considered to be irreconcilable with his positions in Rotterdam...

....

Press TV is a channel financed by the Iranian government. The excessive force used by this government in June against demonstrators, many of whom were students, prompted a number of journalists to cut their ties with the channel. However, Tariq Ramadan chose not to do so, and has since justified his decision in a statement...[T]here is no longer the essential public support for the contribution to the city and the university and...the credibility of Dr. Ramadan's continued work for the city and the university has suffered lasting damage.

Tariq Ramadan has always been extremely capable in his manipulation of Western public opinion, but the problematical items on his CV are not limited to his link with PressTV. As if his association with Al-Qaradawi were insufficient, Ramadan was also criticized in France in 2003 when he published a Jew-baiting attack on several leading French intellectuals, including Bernard-Henri Lévy and André Glucksmann. Ramadan claimed it was "curious" that that these two individuals were the most important Western European defenders of the Bosnian Muslims during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, as well as of the human rights of the Chechens, but also supported the U.S. intervention in Iraq. According to Ramadan, the removal of Saddam Hussein was intended to guarantee "a greater security for Israel with assured economic advantages."

In the same article, Ramadan falsely alleged that Israeli military advisers participated in the Iraq war, and labeled Paul Wolfowitz the "notorious Zionist" allegedly responsible for the invasion of Iraq in the interest of Israel. He accused Lévy and Glucksmann of abandoning universal principles and acting "as Jews, or nationalists, as defenders of Israel." Publication of this screed was refused by the Parisian dailies Le Monde and Libération, but it was eventually posted on an Islamist website, http://www.oumma.com/.

Tariq Ramadan hides his extremist views in plain sight. Why do the British and now, unfortunately, the American authorities fail to comprehend the evidence in front of them? The U.S. ban on him should be reviewed again... and upheld.

Stephen Schwartz is executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism. This article was sponsored by Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum .

(HOW TO GET SAUDI ARABIA AGAINST AMERICA: Retribution)

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Was bomber who tried to kill Saudi prince an al Qaeda "mole"?

DEBKAfile Special Report

August 31, 2009, 5:46 PM (GMT+02:00)

Suicide bomber Abdullah al-Asiri failed to kill Saudi prince

Al Qaeda Sunday, Aug. 30, identified the suicide bomber who slightly injured Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, son of the interior minister and nephew of King Abdullah, in Jeddah Thursday Aug. 27, as Abdullah Hassan Tali al-Asiri, known as Abul Khair. Islamist sites reported: "The hero martyr on the list of 85 wanted persons… managed to enter his palace, pass his guards and blow up a package."

The communiqué suggested Asiri was apparently flow to Jeddah from Najran on the prince's private jet after entering from Yemen, claiming he wanted to give himself up as a repentant terrorist.

One of the holes DEBKAfile's counter-terror sources find in the official Saudi account of the first known close-quarters attempt on a Saudi royal since the 9/11 attacks on the United States is the statement that no one else was hurt, although the would-be assassin blew himself up in a group of people in Prince Mohammed's bureau.

The al Qaeda account confirms DEBKAfile's report linking the attempted murder to Saudi Arabia's involvement in the civil war tearing Yemen apart.

Our military sources were the first to reveal on Aug. 22 that Saudi Air Force bombers were pounding rebel al-Houthi strongholds in northern Yemen and that the targeted Saudi prince is coordinating operations on behalf of the royal house with Washington, Cairo and the Yemeni army command and government in Sanaa.

If the al Qaeda statement is correct, it would suggest that Osama bin Laden's "Qaeda Jihad Organization in the Arab Peninsula" has been able to get a double agent close to the key Saudi coordinator of the Yemen war effort. This organization was formed by a merger between the Saudi and Yemeni branches of al Qaeda.

If Al Asiri could pass through security screening at Najran and Jeddah airports while armed after entering from Yemen and board the prince's private jet, then Prince Muhammad must have recognized him as someone he wanted to debrief on the state of the Yemen battlefield, i.e. a Saudi agent or informant whom he trusted.

The prince asked his bodyguards not to search al Asiri, little suspecting he had opened himself up to attack by an al Qaeda mole.

DEBKAfile's military sources add that the Yemeni army is faring badly against the al-Houthi rebels armed by Iran and backed by al Qaeda. The troops have failed to break through to the rebel strongholds in the northern Sadaa province which borders on Saudi Arabia's Najran and Asir. Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh has finally decided to throw his elite presidential guard, the 29th Mechanized Division, into the fray in a desperate bid to tip the scales in his favor.

Six nations may reveal data concealed by ELBaradei on Iran's nuclear progress

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

August 31, 2009, 9:11 AM (GMT+02:00)

Iran is up to "weapon design" stage

US, Israel and four other governments are urgently discussing the release of intelligence that Iran is running covert military nuclear projects parallel to its civilian program after Mohammed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, withheld this data from his last report, DEBKAfile's military and intelligence sources disclose.

The four governments are Britain, France, Netherlands and Japan. All six had provided ElBaradei with new and detailed information on the advances made by Iran in its race to develop a nuclear bomb for inclusion in his last report on Aug. 28 before he retires next month. But ElBaradei, true to his usual custom of blurring Iran's breaches, omitted the new evidence.

In Paragraphs 18 to 20 of his report, he admits to possessing substantial intelligence but regrets he is unable to use it to confront Iran without betraying his sources and so Iran was not able to fully answer IAEA queries.

US and Israeli sources denounce this evasion as a diplomatic scandal verging on fraud.

The material passed to him left no doubt that Iran was engaged in developing a nuclear weapon and revealed for the first time that it reached the final stages, weapon design, of the process. But ElBaradei decided to keep it hidden on the pretext of not exposing sources.

One official told DEBKAfile that passing the new information to the IAEA director had compromised its sources anyway so there was no point in holding it back any longer.

The seven governments concerned will decide very soon which parts of this unpublished information to air. According to our sources, it will not be attributed directly to any government but to "Iranian exiles" who will present it as coming from inside Iran.

This tactic was employed in 2004, when the opposition Mojaheddin al-Khalq leaders first broke the news of Iran's uranium enrichment plant in Natanz at press conferences in Washington and Paris.

The Israeli foreign ministry denounced the ElBaradei report, released ahead of the nuclear watchdog's regular annual meeting in Vienna on Sept. 7, for omitting "to detail Iran's efforts to obtain nuclear arms or its continued attempts to deceive and conceal those efforts. Neither did it mention Tehran's refusal to cooperate with the IAEA and the international community."

Next month, when the UN General Assembly opens, a special high-level meeting of the UN Security Council will discuss nuclear proliferation.