IPS reports in "More Troops, More Worries, Less Consensus on Afghanistan":
"Even as U.S. President Barack Obama prepares to deploy more military forces to Afghanistan - what he has called "the central front" in former President George W. Bush's "global war on terror" - a consensus on overall U.S. strategy there remains elusive.
Even Washington's precise war aims in Afghanistan more than seven years after U.S.-backed forces chased the Taliban out of the country appear subject to continuing debate, as, in the face of what virtually all analysts and officials concede is a deteriorating situation, the Pentagon is actively downgrading the Bush administration's hopes of ushering in a thriving democracy to something far less ambitious.
That was made abundantly clear last week when Defence Secretary Robert Gates warned Congress "to be very careful about the nature of the goals we set for ourselves in Afghanistan. If we set ourselves the objective of creating some sort of Central Asian Valhalla over there, we will lose, because nobody in the world has that kind of time, patience, and money," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
And while Gates insisted that Washington faces a "long slog" to achieve even its minimal aims, fears that Afghanistan could become a "new Vietnam", a deadly quagmire in which already overstretched U.S. forces could become bogged down in an unwinnable war, have gained sudden new currency in the mass media.
Indeed, the cover story in the latest edition of 'Newsweek' magazine is headlined, "Obama's Vietnam: The analogy isn't exact. But the war in Afghanistan is starting to look disturbingly familiar."
"Even as U.S. President Barack Obama prepares to deploy more military forces to Afghanistan - what he has called "the central front" in former President George W. Bush's "global war on terror" - a consensus on overall U.S. strategy there remains elusive.
Even Washington's precise war aims in Afghanistan more than seven years after U.S.-backed forces chased the Taliban out of the country appear subject to continuing debate, as, in the face of what virtually all analysts and officials concede is a deteriorating situation, the Pentagon is actively downgrading the Bush administration's hopes of ushering in a thriving democracy to something far less ambitious.
That was made abundantly clear last week when Defence Secretary Robert Gates warned Congress "to be very careful about the nature of the goals we set for ourselves in Afghanistan. If we set ourselves the objective of creating some sort of Central Asian Valhalla over there, we will lose, because nobody in the world has that kind of time, patience, and money," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
And while Gates insisted that Washington faces a "long slog" to achieve even its minimal aims, fears that Afghanistan could become a "new Vietnam", a deadly quagmire in which already overstretched U.S. forces could become bogged down in an unwinnable war, have gained sudden new currency in the mass media.
Indeed, the cover story in the latest edition of 'Newsweek' magazine is headlined, "Obama's Vietnam: The analogy isn't exact. But the war in Afghanistan is starting to look disturbingly familiar."
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