Daniel Ellsberg: Obama Fears Military Revolt

I suppose what Ellsberg says may be correct but I think other factors are at work. Obama was eager to concentrate upon the Afghan campaign and claimed that Bush was not paying enough attention to it. Also Obama was the one who started a surge of troops last Spring and who also chose McChrystal for the job! It is going to be difficult to go against his military chief of choice and also go into reverse on the Afghan campaign. However he also knows the war is becoming more unpopular among Americans and especially among Democrats. The result of these conflicting tendencies will probably be some muddle in the middle that will please few. I expect that he will send more troops but probably not even the minimum of 40,000 that McChrystal wants. Of course if I am wrong it would not be the first time!

Ellsberg: Obama Fears Military Revolt

by: Sari Gelzer, t r u t h o u t | Report

Ellsberg: Leaked Pentagon Papers from Vietnam give clues to why Obama will most likely grant military requests to send more troops to Afghanistan.

Paul Jay, senior producer of The Real News Network, interviewed former military analyst and Pentagon whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg about the common thread between the conflict in Afghanistan and the war in Vietnam.

Like Vietnam, Ellsberg said "no victory lies ahead [for the US] in Afghanistan" and President Barack ObamaBarack Obama knows it.

Still, Ellsberg believes Obama will "go against his own instincts as to what's best for the country and do what's best for him and his administration and his party in the short run facing elections, which is to avoid a military revolt."

That means the president will likely authorize a sizable increase of US forces in the region, Ellsberg said, because Obama fears that top US military commanders will stage a revolt if he rejects their requests for additional soldiers.

Ellsberg predicted that Obama will cave in to Gen. Stanley McCrystal's request for as many as 40,000 US troops in order to, "prevent his military from making a political case to his public and to the Congress that he has been weak, unmanly, indecisive, and weak on terrorism, and has endangered American troops."

The Pentagon Papers, which Ellberg leaked to The New York Times in 1971, made public the decision-making details behind the Vietnam War. Ellsberg chose to leak the highly-sensitive papers because they revealed that the government was continuing the Vietnam War despite knowing it would not likely be won.

..... Ellsberg said:

"The more troops we put in Vietnam, the more Vietcong were recruited. And, the more troops we put in Afghanistan, the curve shows very clearly from 2005 on, the Taliban has come back having been, as you say, despised and reviled by most of the country. How can it be that they get the degree of support that they do now? One reason only: the number of troops, of US troops that they are fighting."