John R. Allen (Credit: AP)
After an Afghan soldier killed two British troops in Kabul on Monday, Gen. John Allen, chief of the international forces in Afghanistan, told reporters in Washington it was the 40th such attack in recent years. “An erosion of trust has emerged,” he conceded.
Such tactful understatement was the order of the day as Allen tried to put the best face on President Obama’s floundering war policy. Fielding friendly questions at the Brookings Institution from Michael O’Hanlon, a war supporter, Allen gave an assessment of the war that was positive in general but downbeat to the point of discouraging in many of its specifics.
The contrast is the norm in Washington as the Obama administration continues to wage an unpopular war with the support of an acquiescent Congress and sympathetic analysts like O’Hanlon. Allen general faced only gentle questioning on Capitol Hill last week despite the fact that 50 percent of Americans polls say the U.S should speed up its troop withdrawals, twice as many as say the U.S. should stick with Obama’s plan to leave by 2014.
The general’s candor sometimes belied his spin. While the Taliban has tried hard to infiltrate the Afghan forces, Allen said the insurgents accounted for less than 50 percent of “green on blue” attacks that have claimed the lives of 15 allied soldiers in the last three months. A majority of the attacks, he went on, have been perpetrated by Afghans whom he described as “self –radicalized.” He cited the influence of the viral video of U.S. soldiers urinating on dead Afghans, the burning of the Koran at a U.S. base, and “the recent events in Panjwai,” a delicate reference to the killing of 17 people by a U.S. army sergeant last week. In other words, the actions of the U.S. military are more effective than Taliban ideology in inspiring Afghans to kill Americans. This was less than reassuring. READ MORE
