Afghan Ambassador Says Don’t Send More Troops!

Who is this guy and why should we listen to him? For starters this is not your typical well-healed political campaign donation payback appointment. Lt. Gen Karl Ekinberry, (Ret.) served two tours of duty in Afghanistan: 2002-2003 and 2005-2007 as the top military commander in Afghanistan. He has all the credentials to be a commentator seated on the right side of Karl Rove on Fox News. He was appointed Ambassador in January. Having been intimately engaged in both military and political circles in Afghanistan, he just may be the most qualified person in the world to offer advice to the President.

Why has he been so quiet until now? His chain-of-command upbringing was no doubt getting in the way. He sent a classified message (through chain of command) to the President expressing his concern for sending more troops, and it mysteriously got leaked to the press… wink-wink… So the President may have outed an ally in the how-do-I-get-out-of-Afghanistan dilemma. Ekinberry’s caution against sending more troops may be based on his dealings with the Afghan Government since he became our Ambassador. He said the Afghan Government is corrupt (ambassador’s never use that language), and unable – and possibly unwilling- to lift their weight in support of our troops, in effect putting our troops in unknown peril with no clear plan for success.

President Obama is taking this new input very seriously. He now wants to see more details on exactly how we get to the end-state where we can withdraw and have the mission accomplished, although it’s unclear to me what that means (maybe for him too).

President Obama is a very intelligent man, and yet this intelligent man is banging his head on the wall trying to rationalize why we’re there and how we can do some good and leave with our honor in tact. I think he’s beginning to realize the Vietnamness of the situation. We can only hope that he will not listen to the people who want to make war, who don’t have a clue on how to exit the region, and use his intelligence and position to get us out of this quagmire sooner, not later.