US leaning toward exclusive focus on Al-Qaeda

[Reason]

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s national security team is moving to reframe its war strategy by emphasizing the campaign against Al Qaeda in Pakistan while arguing that the Taliban in Afghanistan do not pose a direct threat to the United States, officials said Wednesday.

As Mr. Obama met with advisers for three hours to discuss Pakistan, the White House said he had not decided whether to approve a proposed troop buildup in Afghanistan. But the shift in thinking, outlined by senior administration officials on Wednesday, suggests that the president has been presented with an approach that would not require all of the additional troops that his commanding general in the region has requested.

“Clearly, Al Qaeda is a threat not only to the U.S. homeland and American interests abroad, but it has a murderous agenda,” one senior administration official said in an interview initiated by the White House on Wednesday on the condition of anonymity because the strategy review has not been finished. “We want to destroy its leadership, its infrastructure and its capability.”
The official contrasted that with the Afghan Taliban, which the administration has begun to define as an indigenous group that aspires to reclaim territory and rule the country but does not express ambitions of attacking the United States. “When the two are aligned, it’s mainly on the tactical front,” the official said, noting that Al Qaeda has fewer than 100 fighters in Afghanistan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/world/asia/08prexy.html

If this becomes the policy Obama better make it clear to the Taliban that if they begin to shelter Al-Qaeda that there will be massive retaliation, not the lame 20,000 troops Bush originally sent to Afghanistan after 9/11.

[CM]

Re: US leaning toward exclusive focus on Al-Qaeda

Wait so what has the US been doing for the last 8 years?

[Reason]

Re: US leaning toward exclusive focus on Al-Qaeda

Fighting the Taliban as well in Afghanistan.

[CM]

Re: US leaning toward exclusive focus on Al-Qaeda

So they weren't focusing on Al-Qaeda. That was rather stupid of them to realise that after 8 years.

[Reason]

Not exclusively. The current debate is about whether to focus on Islamists in general in Afghanistan or just Al-Qaeda. The question is how much of a threat is the Taliban? Would it allow Al-Qaeda safe havens like it did in the past? As you surely know, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are cut from the same ideological cloth and share the same goals so I believe it would be a mistake to allow free rein to the Taliban.

Yes, it was profoundly stupid for Bush to divert resources from Afghanistan for an unnecessary war in Iraq, though.

[CM]

Re: US leaning toward exclusive focus on Al-Qaeda

And I see that as a dangerous change of tactics. The Americans like always are concentrating on the potential threat and not the real one. The real threat is that the Taliban are getting more recruits and that they are controlling even more area now than before.

The Helmand operations was a farce. They did nothing. They need to follow the development angle more than the Military one. A guy who has food on the table, a home, a job and a family is not gonna go and join the Taliban. Now a guy who has none of that, that guy is gonna join the Taliban.