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| Afghanistan |
| 'Afghan quagmire negates US-Iran war' |
| 2009-11-18 |
| The US is too bogged down in Afghanistan to engage Iran militarily over its nuclear program, an ex-CIA South Asia expert and current adviser to US President Barack Obama said in Tel Aviv on Tuesday. Bruce Riedel, a senior Brookings Institute and Saban Center fellow for political transitions in the Middle East and South Asia, addressed scholars and journalists at Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies. He warned that the US was fighting a losing battle against Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, and that Washington would soon have to make difficult choices on beefing up troop levels there. "Israelis need to understand that there's going to be a huge drain on resources, attention and capital, and that will have implications," Riedel told The Jerusalem Post before his talk. He acknowledged that those implications would primarily affect the Iran question. During his address, Riedel referred to the US's commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and said, "We've got two wars. You've got to be bold to say, let's start a war against a third party, particularly when the third party can hit you in the first two fronts." The US has learned that it "can't fight two medium-sized wars simultaneously," he said. Riedel retired from the CIA in November 2006 after 30 years of service. In 2007, he was asked by then-senator Barack Obama to be an expert volunteer adviser on counterterrorism. "In June this year, the president called," Riedel said. Obama asked him to assemble a strategic review of US policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. "The president has inherited a disastrous war that is being lost," Riedel said. "Pakistan, next-door to Afghanistan, is being destabilized. Pakistan is the fastest growing nuclear arms state in the world, and has more terrorists per square kilometer than any other country," he continued. Riedel said the scenario that kept him up at night was the potential for a jihadi sweep to power in Pakistan via a violent coup. "That is the nightmare outcome," he warned. Such a development would certainly destabilize the entire world, Riedel said, and would have severe implications for Israel, too. "Pakistan would be a patron state sponsor of terrorism. Hamas would find a lucrative Sunni sponsor," he added, noting that a jihadi Pakistan would be a more attractive patron to Hamas than its current sponsor, the Shi'ite Islamic Republic of Iran. "We're losing... It's getting worse in Afghanistan," Riedel said. The US could either remain in its current position, which would, in effect, mean that the Taliban would control the Afghan countryside and NATO forces would control the cities, or a decision can be made to withdraw, Riedel added. "President Obama has ruled that [a withdrawal] out. I think correctly," Riedel said. But the option of a troop surge was not simple either, he noted. "Every soldier sent to Afghanistan costs the US a million dollars a year. Thirty thousand soldiers cost $30 billion. Extremely large resources are involved," he said. "America is broke." Riedel's Afghanistan review ended with the conclusion that recent recommendations by US Gen. Stanley McCrystal, to send tens of thousands of more troops to Afghanistan, should be tried. "Within 18 to 24 months, we will know whether Obama inherited a dead patient on an operating table," Riedel said. "The question of sending more troops will define Obama's first term in office." |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #21 See also TOPIX > [Canada]TWO EXPERTS SAY US IS HEADED FOR VIETNAM-STYLE DISASTER IN AFGHANISTAN [USA = POTUS Bammer should adopt Canucks' DEH-E-BAGH "model village" pro-Tribalist consensual approach for AFPAK], plus SAME > WESLEY CLARK: NO US MILITARY EXIT FROM AFGHANISTAN, REGION UNTIL AL-QAEDA IS ELIMINATED IN PAKISTAN. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2009-11-18 21:19 |
| #20 I like time travel. Me too. I do that constantly, been doing it all my life, as a matter of fact, exploring the very near immediate future one second at a time, never skipped even one so far. *speechless* |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2009-11-18 19:36 |
| #19 Notice that he's left out the best trained Arab army in the world, which has a grudge against the boys in Tehran and which has real combat experience. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2009-11-18 19:34 |
| #18 Could Zero be brought up on a charge of dereliction of duty? |
| Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 2009-11-18 19:15 |
| #17 I like time travel. Me too. I do that constantly, been doing it all my life, as a matter of fact, exploring the very near immediate future one second at a time, never skipped even one so far. I rock. As for iran, Zhang once pointed thatt he USAF basically was designed to take on the USSR at its peak, so, if it were unfit to get through iranian aird defenses, it should be canned and rebuilt from scratch. But, Mike probably is right, anyway. |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2009-11-18 19:05 |
| #16 I like time travel. |
| Posted by: spiffo 2009-11-18 18:52 |
| #15 Iran = stone age in 30 minutes or less. No nukes. 50 most militarily significant air defense installations/missiles/radars/command-centers. 5 minutes later: Hellfires on Predators guided by globalhawks to target leadership. 50 most important power plants. 50 most important power distribution points. 50 top government/military offices 50 top officials residences. 250 cruise missiles. 5 minutes later Iron Hand 10 minutes later: 50 most militarily important bridges and bases 50 most important water treatment/distribution plants. 50 most important phone exchanges. 50 most important TV/Radio stations. the single oil refinery 202 2000lb guided munitions (2 for the refinery) No lights No power No water No fuel No communications No transport Time travel. 1400 years in 30 minutes. Welcome to the 6th Century. |
| Posted by: Jeager Panda5130 2009-11-18 18:45 |
| #14 Steve, or even if the ports where Iran ships all their oil from, and imports all their gasoline to, suddenly erupted in flames. Sure, ports can be rebuilt, but that takes time. And if you can't import any supplies to do it, and you have no cash because your only export is blocked ... |
| Posted by: Rambler in Virginia 2009-11-18 17:12 |
| #13 "Nice gasoline refinery you have there, Mahmoud. Say, remind me, it's the only one your country has, right? Sure would be a shame if it went kaboom for some reason." |
| Posted by: Steve White 2009-11-18 15:54 |
| #12 We might not be able to invade, but we can raise holy hell with the infrastructure. |
| Posted by: mojo 2009-11-18 15:03 |
| #11 If I were the president, I'd fire this idiot. No wonder O'Bumble is such a lightweight, with idiots like this "advising" him. The United States went from having an army of 100,000 to having 1.5 MILLION men in France in less than a year (1917). The United States went from having a military of around 375,000 to having the second-largest armed forces in the world (behind Russia)in less than five years. The US still has 125,000 men in Iraq, sitting in camps twiddling their thumbs. These men could bolster the Iraq/Iran border in less than 72 hours. We have 72,000 men in Afghanistan, fighting a war with both feet in the same bucket and one arm tied behind them. Free them up, tell Karzai to go play with goats if he interferes, and show the Pashtuns just what waging war against the United States is REALLY like. In addition to an army of about 700,000, we have about a quarter million active reserves, and somewhere on the order of 11 million retired reserves. About a third of those could be on active duty, assigned to bases in the States, freeing up younger men to fight. The US has learned that it "can't fight two medium-sized wars simultaneously," he said. Translation: The current administration isn't willing to commit the resources to fight two wars OF ANY SIZE, ANYWHERE. We're either going to have to have an armed rebellion, or find a way to stop the current administration from losing another winnable war for us. Breaking a few thousand heads in Washington, DC, beginning with this idiot, would do wonders for this nation. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2009-11-18 14:06 |
| #10 Mike N probably has the correct conclusion here. Most likely this fellow Riedel is just trying to give Obama an excuse for doing nothing while Iran develops nuclear weapons. |
| Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 2009-11-18 14:04 |
| #9 Mike N probably has the correct conclusion here. Most likely this fellow Riedel is just trying to give Obama an excuse for doing nothing while Iran develops nuclear weapons. |
| Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 2009-11-18 14:04 |
| #8 Afghanistan does not negate a US-Iran war. There was never going to be one to begin with. |
| Posted by: Mike N. 2009-11-18 13:39 |
| #7 You gotta have your priorities. Like, what's more important: ObamaCare or a world free from Mad Mullahs with nukes? I'd say a world free from Mad Mullahs with nukes but that's just me. But I'm under no illusions that we can just send a few bombers. If we do that Iran will certainly retaliate. Just being little old me, I have no way of estimating how significant that retaliation would be but I wouldn't want to underestimate it. Containment rather than nation building would be my own personal philosophy WRT Iran. IOW, bomb the hell out of them and then contain their response. If that means leaving Karzai to the tender mercies of the Taliban so be it. But with 800 some billion or whatever dollars being squandered on a phony stimulus and even more due to be lost to ObamaCare I think somebody in the White House doesn't have his priorities in the proper order. |
| Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 2009-11-18 12:32 |
| #6 Verlaine - in beltwayese I'd extend and modify your remarks. Simply talking of "wars" is misleading, and revealed by the reference to "fronts". On 9/11 we went to war, singular. We've fought various battles on various fronts, and opened a few ourselves. There have been skirmishes, engagements, battles and campaigns (I'm trying to list in order of scale) and whatever labels can be interlaced among hat list. Nobody can be realistically surprised that Iran is a geographic area involved, and arguably Fort Hood is not too surprising either. At the other end of the surprise meter, I suppose, you could include Antarctica, Iceland, Kiribati, and similar places. I don't think any large area is off the list (SA - Hugo? the Triangle region? SE Asia - Thailand? etc.) All that said, the "inheriting" and "broke" comments of this "analyst" simply blare out his bias. Perhaps he doesn't recall Yamamoto's opinion in such circumstances? Or he doesn't understand we're still asleep. |
| Posted by: Halliburton - Mysterious Conspiracy Division 2009-11-18 11:50 |
| #5 Behold the intellectual bankruptcy that has given us so much of the crap that the CIA has produced. We're "broke" - yet can expand our national budget obligations in WWII-like fashion, willy-nilly, to the tune of 10 Afghan wars a pop. Right - the US can't handle 1.5-barely medium-sized wars at once, and certainly can't engage another enemy, one that lies physically between the other two theaters, and in fact is part of them. At this point neither Iraq nor A'stan even qualify as regional wars, by the usual standards. Leaving aside the fact that ANY conceivable Iranian engagement does not involve sustained conventional operations. Also, note the idiocy about "inheriting" a dead patient. Typcial Beltway cluelessness about how conflicts work, and are won. Pathetic. |
| Posted by: Verlaine 2009-11-18 11:03 |
| #4 http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y25/mluphoup/baby_quagmire.jpg A baby quagmire. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2009-11-18 10:20 |
| #3 Pakistan is the fastest growing nuclear arms state in the world, and has more terrorists per square kilometer than any other country. Mostly trained/funded by our allies?Pak Army/ ISI! |
| Posted by: Paul2 2009-11-18 09:07 |
| #2 The US is too bogged down in Afghanistan to engage Iran militarily over its nuclear program Short round knows this by helping/funding the Taliban! |
| Posted by: Paul2 2009-11-18 09:03 |
| #1 Even if what Reidel says is true it doesn't mean we can't send a few bombers and cruise missiles to hit Iran's nuke sites. There's no need for an invasion here. |
| Posted by: Parabellum 2009-11-18 08:04 |