Obama authorizes wider war in Afghanistan [View all]

By Patrick Martin
World Socialist Web Site
24 November 2014

President Barack Obama has authorized the US military to carry out far more widespread air and ground operations in Afghanistan in 2015, effectively reversing his order to end combat actions this year, White House officials told the New York Times.

In a report published Saturday, the Times gave details of the new authority, citing unnamed sources in both the White House and Pentagon, in what amounts to an official leak of the expanded battle plan for the Afghanistan war.

In an announcement delivered in the White House Rose Garden in May, Obama said the US military would end combat operations in Afghanistan by December 31 and the remaining 9,800 troops would be limited to training Afghan forces and conducting strikes against “the remnants of Al Qaeda,” previously estimated to be fewer than 100 people in Afghanistan.

The new rules of engagement set by the president expand the scope of permitted military operations to include attacks on Taliban forces if they are threatening US or NATO troops and actions to assist Afghan forces in the field. In effect, US military commanders will be able to do anything they want with the forces they have available, which includes air strikes from US carriers in the Arabian Sea.

Obama’s decision came as a result of intense pressure from the military brass, reinforced by the debacle suffered by the US-trained Iraqi Army during the summer, when it collapsed in the face of an offensive spearheaded by the Sunni fundamentalist group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), an offshoot of Al Qaeda.

According to the Times account, there was a conflict between “the promise Mr. Obama made to end the war in Afghanistan, versus the demands of the Pentagon that American troops be able to successfully fulfill their remaining missions in the country.”

Civilian advisers pushed for maintaining the longstanding pledge to end US combat operations in Afghanistan. According to the Times, “the military pushed back, and generals both at the Pentagon and in Afghanistan urged Mr. Obama to define the mission more broadly to allow American troops to attack the Taliban.”

“There was a school of thought that wanted the mission to be very limited, focused solely on Al Qaeda,” one official told the Times, adding, “the military pretty much got what it wanted.”

This account, unlike many “official” leaks from the White House and Pentagon, rings true because it underscores who actually calls the shots in official Washington. Democrats and Republicans, presidents and congressmen, come and go, serving as the political front men for Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus, the real decision-makers.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/11/24/afgh-n24.html