US Senator John Kerry said, in an interview to be aired yesterday, it was “irresponsible” to send more US troops to Afghanistan at this time, amid a deepening election crisis that has placed the Kabul government’s legitimacy at stake.
The US should not proceed with a new Afghanistan strategy committing a potentially major increase in US resources, including tens of thousands more troops, without first securing a clear partner in Kabul, Kerry told CNN.
“It would be entirely irresponsible for the president of the United States to commit more troops to this country, when we don’t even have an election finished and know who the president is and what kind of government we’re working in, with,” said Kerry, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
“When our own commanding general tells us that a critical component of achieving our mission here is, in fact, good governance, and we’re living with a government that we know has to change and provide it, how could the president responsibly say, ‘Oh, they asked for more, sure — here they are?’” he said.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government has been plagued by uncertainty and a legitimacy crisis after allegations of widespread fraud in the August elections whose preliminary results put him on top, and ongoing charges of corruption.
Kerry, a Democrat, was in Afghanistan ahead of an anticipated announcement on whether a run-off election would be held between Karzai and his main challenger, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah.
Obama is nearing a decision on the way forward in Afghanistan, after weeks of deliberations with his top advisers, but also as public support wanes for the conflict.
The US contingent, set to reach 68,000 troops by the end of the year, is experiencing heavy casualties as it combats a Taliban that has regrouped and gained momentum.
Among those options being considered are to follow a grim assessment by the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, and adopt a counter-insurgency strategy that requires at least 40,000 more troops.
Vice President Joe Biden meanwhile is pushing for a more narrow, counterterrorism approach focused on targeting Al-Qaeda militants in Afghanistan and primarily in Pakistan using unmanned drone aircraft and Special Operations Forces.
Top Democrats in the US Congress, meanwhile, are pushing for a middle path that might see thousands of troops deployed solely to train the Afghan security forces.
Kerry stressed, as the White House has, that withdrawing from Afghanistan, which Obama has called a “war of necessity” and not a “war of choice,” is out of the question for now.
“Obviously, if you exhibit weakness or indecision, or if the United States were to suddenly pull out of here, it would be disastrous in terms of the message that it sends. Nobody is talking about that. That’s not what’s on the table here,” he said.
“What we’re trying to figure out so that we don’t repeat mistakes of the past, is not just ... endlessly asking our military to deploy and go out and fight if we aren’t certain that we’re giving them the mission that, in fact, is achievable and that the American people will in fact stay committed to it,” he said.
Even if Obama were to approve McChrystal’s favored option, most of the reinforcements would not arrive in Afghanistan until next year, Kery said.
Speaking to CBS television, Kerry said he did not see how Obama “can make a decision about the committing of our additional forces, or even the further fulfillment of our mission that’s here today, without an adequate government in place or knowledge about what that government’s going to be.”
He said it was time for Karzai to “step up” and explain how they could be a viable partner.
Excerpts of the interviews were provided by the networks and were to be aired in full yesterday on CNN’s State of the Union and CBS’s Face the Nation.
KINGPIN: Marset allegedly laundered the proceeds of his drug enterprise by purchasing and sponsoring professional soccer teams and even put himself in the starting lineups Notorious Latin American narco trafficker Sebastian Marset, who eluded police for years, was handed over to US authorities after his arrest on Friday in Bolivia. Marset, a Uruguayan national who was on the US most-wanted list, was passed to agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration at Santa Cruz airport in Bolivia, then put on a US airplane, Bolivian state television showed. “The arrest and deportation were carried out pursuant to a court order issued by the US justice system,” Bolivian Minister of Government Marco Antonio Oviedo told reporters. The alleged kingpin was arrested in an upscale neighborhood of Santa
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
Since the war in the Middle East began nearly two weeks ago, the telephone at Ron Hubbard’s bomb shelter company in Texas has not stopped ringing. Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse. With the US and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation customers in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “You can imagine how many people are thinking: ‘I wish I had a bomb shelter,’” Hubbard, 63, said in
RSS