The top US military officer was en route to Afghanistan yesterday to explain the sacking of the allied commander in Kabul as the Obama administration insisted the US was not “bogged down” in the fight against the Taliban.
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, departed late on Thursday for a tour of Afghanistan and Pakistan to reassure the region’s leaders that the war effort would not be derailed by the departure of General Stanley McChrystal.
“My message will be clear. Nothing changes about our strategy. Nothing changes about the mission,” Mullen said.
He spoke a day after McChrystal was forced to step down as commander of the NATO-led force over disparaging remarks about administration officials in a bombshell Rolling Stone article this week.
McChrystal’s disrespectful display was “unacceptable” and US President Barack Obama’s choice as the new commander, General David Petraeus, was the “best possible outcome to an awful situation,” US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said at the same press conference.
Gates insisted there was forward movement in the Afghan war, in the latest bid by the administration to defend the mission in the face of troubling signs from the battlefront and a spike in allied and US troop casualties.
“I do not believe we are bogged down. I believe we are making some progress,” Gates said. “It is slower and harder than we anticipated.”
He said he fully supported the change in command and that allies or adversaries should not “misinterpret” the decision as a softening of Washington’s commitment to the war.
Obama said Petraeus would hit the ground running thanks to his work on Afghanistan as head of the regional Central Command, which oversees both war zones.
Obama faced calls from some lawmakers to shake up the diplomatic team for Afghanistan, which they said was needed to repair strained military-civilian relations and bolster ties with Karzai’s government.
The dismissal of McChrystal was met with dismay in Kabul, where Afghans and foreign diplomats praised his bold efforts to change the course of the war. The Afghan presidency credited McChrystal with helping to “increase the level of trust” with the Afghan people since he assumed command last year.
“We don’t care whether it’s McChrystal or Petraeus,” Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi said by telephone from an undisclosed location. “We’ll be fighting the invading forces until they leave.”
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was