Maj. Gen. Peter Fuller says Afghan government is “isolated from reality”....His assessment is correct.

Major General Peter Fuller makes some very, very good points.
As previously stated on these pages, when it comes to what is needed, what is the "reality" on the battlefield and the ground-level point-of-view, I will always defer to the warriors before I believe anyone inside the Beltway will have the answers. This General is spot-on. General Fuller saved $1.6 Billion dollars by trimming his budget. The feckless POLS should listen to this warrior.

Having spent almost 2 years in Afghanistan, I would advise all to take General Fuller's advice. The POLS vying for the Presidency should do the same.

Really.

General: Afghan leaders out of touch
By: Tim Mak - Politico
November 3, 2011

A senior U.S. Army officer in Afghanistan called key elements of the government “isolated from reality,” said they don’t appreciate America’s sacrifice for their nation and offered up some choice words for President Hamid Karzai.

Maj. Gen. Peter Fuller, deputy commander of the American-led NATO effort to train and equip Afghan security forces, told POLITICO in an interview that top leaders in the Afghan government had not fully recognized the sacrifices in “treasure and blood” that the U.S. was making for their security and recalled that a senior Afghan official even demanded the transfer of tanks just so they could be used for parades.

The two-star general flashed irritation when he brought up Karzai’s recent remarks that Afghanistan would side with Pakistan in a war against the U.S., blasting the president’s comments as “erratic,” and adding, “Why don’t you just poke me in the eye with a needle! You’ve got to be kidding me … I’m sorry, we just gave you $11.6 billion and now you’re telling me, ‘I don’t really care’?”

“When they are going to have a presidential election, you hope they get a guy that’s more articulate in public,” Fuller said during a visit to Washington for a conference.

Karzai is term-limited and will not be running for another term. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Karzai’s remarks have been misunderstood.

Fuller recently involved Afghan generals in a strategic review of the U.S. mission and said that they didn’t understand the extent to which America is in economic distress.

“I said, ‘You guys are isolated from reality.’ The reality is, the world economy is having some significant hiccups. The U.S. is in this [too],” Fuller told POLITICO. “If you’re in a very poor country like Afghanistan, you think that America has roads paved in gold, everybody lives in Hollywood. They don’t understand the sacrifices that America is making to provide for their security. And I think that’s part of my job to educate ’em.”

The problem, he says, is a mentality that the Soviets left behind in Afghanistan.


“We didn’t buy them a lot of things that they had seen bought previously by the Soviets, the tanks and the jets. So they asked for them,’” Fuller said. “They say, ‘Well, the Russians gave us this.’”

Fuller says he responds by saying, “’You’re telling us that you’re not appreciative of $11.2 billion from the U.S. this year? We have challenges going on in our own country, and this is our national treasure.’”

In fact, the Afghan government made requests for F-16 fighter jets and tanks, even without the budget to use or maintain them, said Fuller. “I actually had someone senior tell me, ‘All I want to do is put them [tanks] on a flat bed and drive them around in a parade,” he said.

Fuller described one of his key responsibilities in the NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan rather folksily, as someone who often needs to beat back overzealous demands from certain elements of the Afghan government.

“You can teach a man how to fish, or you can give them a fish,” said Fuller. “We’re giving them fish while they’re learning, and they want more fish! [They say,] ‘I like swordfish, how come you’re giving me cod?’ Guess what? Cod’s on the menu today.”

However, Fuller said later, Afghan leadership is starting to come around to being able to appreciate American sacrifices.

“The senior leaders [in Afghanistan] are starting to understand that there is a finite amount of resources that the American public is going to provide. Do I wish that they had understood that from Day One? Absolutely. But we probably didn’t do a good job of messaging that very well,” said Fuller. “It’s our responsibility to educate them. And when sometimes you deal with sovereign nations, and they don’t hear it the first time, it’s our responsibility to repeat it.”

And Fuller has put his money where his mouth is. His command had been allotted $12.8 billion for the as-yet-unapproved FY2012 budget before he joined that NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan, but he and his team managed to trim $1.6 billion from that figure in August of this year.

“We’re having financial difficulties. I acknowledge it. I’m trying to be the best steward of the resources that are given to us. I could have bought a lot more stuff with $1.6 billion,” Fuller said.

The Hard - US acknowldeges we are in for the long haul in AFGHANISTAN

And now we get the official word, as if those of us who had already been on the ground in AFGHN didn't already see this handwriting on the wall...

The dialogue between Dottie Hinson (played by Geena Davis) and Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks) in the movie " A League of Thier Own" illustrates the concept of what those of us who have been on the ground in AFGHN have known all along.....

Jimmy Dugan: Taking a little day trip?

Dottie Hinson: No, Bob and I are driving home. To Oregon.

Jimmy Dugan: [long pause] You know, I really thought you were a ballplayer.

Dottie Hinson: Well, you were wrong.

Jimmy Dugan: Was I?

Dottie Hinson: Yeah. It is only a game, Jimmy. It's only a game, and, and, I don't need this. I have Bob; I don't need this. At all.

Jimmy Dugan: I, I gave away five years at the end my career to drink. Five years. And now there isn't anything I wouldn't give to get back any one day of it.

Dottie Hinson: Well, we're different.

Jimmy Dugan: Shit, Dottie, if you want to go back to Oregon and make a hundred babies, great, I'm in no position to tell anyone how to live. But sneaking out like this, quitting, you'll regret it for the rest of your life. Baseball is what gets inside you. It's what lights you up, you can't deny that.

Dottie Hinson: It just got too hard.

Jimmy Dugan: It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard... is what makes it great

"The hard...is what makes it great." - Damn straight...

May God keep them safe on the long road ahead.

U.S. appears ready to acknowledge a long haul in Afghanistan
As NATO leaders meet in Lisbon this weekend, the U.S. is expected to endorse a plan for slow withdrawal and gradually handing over security responsibility by 2014.
November 17, 2010 By David S. Cloud, Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Washington — President Obama built his Afghanistan strategy around the bet that he could quickly turn around a "must win" war by narrowing his goals and sending more troops. This weekend he will make his clearest acknowledgement yet that doing so will actually take years.

At a summit in Lisbon this weekend, Obama and other NATO leaders will endorse a plan to gradually turn combat responsibility over to the Afghan army and police by 2014, a timetable that will keep tens of thousands of U.S. combat troops in Afghanistan well beyond the end of Obama's first term.

U.S. and Afghan officials previously have made it clear that Afghanistan will need U.S. help against the insurgency for many years, but the transition plan being presented in Lisbon will be the first time Obama publicly backs such a time frame.

"Reality is starting to set in," said retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen David Barno, who commanded U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005. "There's a better appreciation by the administration that you can't have instantaneous results."

Even as Obama has dramatically increased troop levels to nearly 100,000 during his first two years, he has sought to avoid becoming bogged down. He set a major review of policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan for the end of 2010, and said that troops would start leaving Afghanistan by July 2011. He has emphasized that the United States' goal is to "degrade" the Taliban, not to defeat it.

The full effect of the U.S. troop buildup isn't clear yet. Military officers familiar with data coming in from the field say there have been some promising gains, especially in areas of the south where tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops have been sent. The number of Taliban fighters captured and killed has increased sharply, but so have insurgent attacks and casualties suffered by Americans and other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization force.

Training of Afghan security forces has accelerated, but many units, especially the police, remain poorly trained, corrupt and unable to battle the insurgency without Western assistance, particularly in areas where the Taliban remains strongest.

In the White House, confidence that U.S. involvement could be carefully calibrated has given way to a more sober assessment that lasting gains may take years to accomplish.

The review of policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which began last month, is no longer expected to result in recommendations for changes to the strategy, a senior administration official said. Obama and his advisers now appear unlikely to consider deep reductions in U.S. forces next year.

There is a "recognition of the fact that the Afghans cannot be ready to assume full responsibility for their security before 2014 and the United States and its allies cannot afford to allow the country to relapse into anarchy, which is quite likely what would happen if the they left too early," said James Dobbins, a former U.S. envoy to Afghanistan.

After more than nine years of war, Obama cannot afford politically to allow Afghanistan to slide back into chaos. Even though the U.S. military now seems certain to remain on the ground for years to come, the circumstances offer the president some political cover.

Republicans, who are taking control of the House of Representatives in January and gaining seats in the Senate, generally support continuing the mission in Afghanistan. The war attracted little attention during the campaign for this month's mid-term elections, which were fought over domestic issue. Obama might be able to keep it off the agenda in 2012, as well.

The president can also argue that he put the campaign in the hands of his most capable commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus, who is credited with devising and executing a strategy that helped halt the Sunni Arab insurgency in Iraq.

Petraeus, whom Obama appointed the top NATO commander in Afghanistan this summer, is said to be wary of drawing down U.S. forces too quickly next year, fearing that it could jeopardize any gains.

The general has directed his staff to study data from commanders and units in the field for indications of progress to share with Obama and other NATO leaders when he briefs them during the summit, several aides said.

But a senior U.S. military commander, noting that fighting is expected to die down in the winter as it usually does in Afghanistan, said it won't be clear until next year whether the U.S. has done permanent damage to the Taliban. "We won't know until next spring whether what we are inflicting is permanent damage on the enemy or whether he can regenerate," the officer said.

During a White House debate last year, Vice President Joe Biden pressed for an alternative plan that would have relied on special operations forces, airstrikes and intelligence operations to keep Al Qaeda under pressure in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Obama rejected the idea in favor of a counter-insurgency strategy and more troops. But he also sent a memorandum to his commanders and senior advisers that specified U.S. troops would begin coming home July 2011 — a deadline that he said was meant to convey a sense of urgency and "allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces."

White House aides said Afghan security forces will probably begin taking over security responsibility in some provinces next year, perhaps by late spring. But U.S. and other NATO combat forces will be in the lead for years to come.

Mark Sedwill, NATO's senior civilian representative to Afghanistan, said this week that the transition to Afghan control could go into "2015 and beyond." The year 2014 is a "goal" that is "realistic but not guaranteed," he said.

Some analysts contend that if the insurgency remains as strong as ever next summer, Obama could face renewed pressure to shift course from European governments and advisers skeptical of the Afghan war.

"If the strategy doesn't reduce the violence by next July they will need a Plan B," said Michael O'Hanlon, a military scholar with the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

Even after Afghan forces are given control of a province, NATO troops will be positioned to respond quickly if assistance is needed. By the end of 2014, combat forces could be withdrawn if conditions permit, although tens of thousands very likely will remain for training and advising Afghan units.

The transition "won't happen overnight," said Doug Lute, a senior White House adviser on Afghanistan told reporters Tuesday. "It will be a steady, progressive process."

dcloud@latimes.com