| USAToday, June 10, 2009
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate dealt a blow to the drug lobby Thursday by voting to permit people in the United States to order lower-cost drugs from Canada over the Internet. The prescription drug plan, by Sen. David Vitter, R-La., passed the Senate by a 55-36 vote that added it to a $42.9 billion bill funding the Homeland Security Department. The Senate then approved the homeland security measure by a 84-6 vote Thursday night. Critics said Vitter’s amendment would open a gaping loophole that would expose people to Internet scams and unsafe drugs, but the allure of importing U.S.-made drugs from other countries where government policies have driven prices lower has long had a pull on lawmakers. But so too has the drug lobby, which has always defeated attempts to allow consumers widespread access to “reimported” drugs. Several Democratic leaders, including Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and his top lieutenant, Dick Durbin of Illinois, initially opposed Vitter’s amendment, only switching their votes after it became clear the popular idea would pass. Their doubts about the idea may ensure the drug importation rule gets dropped during House-Senate negotiations on a final bill. Currently, U.S. travelers may return with a three-month supply of drugs when crossing the border. The development capped a day of dizzying activity on Capitol Hill on six different spending bills for the 2010 budget year. Read the rest of this entry » |
SENATE VOTES TO ALLOW ONLINE PURCHASES OF CANADIAN DRUGS
Posted by James O'Rourke on July 10, 2009
Posted in *Health Care | Leave a Comment »
Hundreds of Thousands of Workers Will Lose Unemployment Benefits Soon
Posted by James O'Rourke on July 10, 2009
By Marie Cocco, Washington Post Writers Group. Posted July 10, 2009.
Workers laid off early in the downturn are soon to be left without the basic sustenance of an unemployment check.
WASHINGTON — When a virulent disease is ravaging you like a cancer, you don’t want a cacophony of voices promoting different or contradictory cures. Yet that is what we’re starting to hear about the economic crisis, not only from a politically divided — and pretty scared — capital, but from within the Obama administration itself. In just the past few days, Vice President Joe Biden has said the young administration misread the depth of the recession — an honest account, since most private economists did as well. Laura Tyson, an outside economic adviser to the White House, said it’s wise to start preparing another stimulus package.
Then President Barack Obama made everything perfectly muddy when he said in an ABC News interview that the seriousness of the downturn and how to attack it is “something we wrestle with constantly.” Yet in the next breath, he expressed concern about the burgeoning deficit. But if anyone’s looking for some clear voices, there are 650,000 of them just waiting to be heard. That is roughly the number of long-term unemployed who will begin losing their jobless benefits in September, according to the National Employment Law Project. Remember, the recession didn’t start last fall when the government bailed out AIG and the financial system froze. It began in December 2007 — and 6.5 million jobs have been lost since then. Depending on which state and the sort of triggers that apply to benefits, hundreds of thousands of workers laid off early in the downturn are soon to be left without the basic sustenance of an unemployment check.
Meanwhile, the Labor Department says, the number of unemployed people out of work for 27 weeks or longer continues to grow, reaching 4.4 million last month. In June, three out of 10 jobless workers had been out of work for at least six months, according to the department’s data. The stimulus package the president signed soon after taking office did provide extended benefits, and boosted weekly payments. But even that extension runs out on Dec. 26, and would not apply to all the unemployed. Does anyone really believe that a significant portion of the unemployed will have found new work by then? Hardly. Both private and government economists now predict that unemployment will continue to rise at least through the end of this year.
“We can’t ignore this moment when all these folks are running out (of benefits),” says Maurice Emsellem of the National Employment Law Project. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in *Economy | Leave a Comment »
MAKING SURE HEALTH CARE IS AFFORDABLE FOR PEOPLE OVER 50
Posted by James O'Rourke on July 10, 2009
| MAKING SURE HEALTH CARE IS AFFORDABLE FOR PEOPLE OVER 50
Center for Medicare Advocacy, July 9, 2009 The real goal of health care reform is to provide every American with access to high quality, medically necessary, health and medical services. To achieve this goal, Congress is working to make the new health program affordable for the federal government. But, most important, for health care reform to work it must be affordable for all health care consumers, including those over 50. Affordable Premiums Health insurers will no longer be able to deny coverage to people based on pre-existing conditions or to charge them more based on health care conditions, health care usage, or gender. These system reforms will allow more Americans to purchase the health insurance they need. Insurance companies will, however, be allowed to charge higher premiums based on age (age rating). Unfortunately, age rating may be a proxy for pricing insurance premiums based on health status, especially on chronic conditions. The House of Representatives Tri-Committee draft bill allows insurance companies to charge older people twice as much as younger people. The Senate Finance Committee is contemplating letting insurance companies charge up to five times as much based on age. In other words, under the Senate proposal, the health plan that costs someone in his/her twenties $100/month or $1,200/year could cost someone in his/her fifties/sixties $500/month or $6,000/year. Both the House and the Senate are considering “affordability credits” or subsidies to help people with limited incomes pay for the cost of insurance – and hence improve their ability to access medical care. In order to reduce the cost of its health bill, however, the Senate Finance Committee is contemplating limiting subsidies to people with incomes up to 300% of the federal poverty level, or about $32,490 for a single person. That’s not a lot of money for people who live in high cost areas like Washington, D.C., New York, Miami, and Los Angeles. Read the rest of this entry » |
Posted in *Health Care | Leave a Comment »
SENIORS MOST AFFECTED BY FINANCIAL CRISIS
Posted by James O'Rourke on July 10, 2009
| July 3rd, 2009 Smart Money The current economic recession is expected to have a major impact on the way that Americans live for at least a generation. A fundamental shift appears to be underway with individuals seeking to reduce leverage and consume less. 70% of our economy is based upon consumption. For as long as I can remember we have always spent freely and saved very little. Debt was used to finance all major and most minor purchases. Young and old alike both levered up to enjoy the good life. This philosophy worked until the bubble burst in the fall of 2008. The psychological impact of the recession cannot be underestimated. This recession has changed many consumers spending habits forever. Most Americans believe that this economic downturn will have an effect on their quality of life for the foreseeable future. The people most effected by the financial crisis are senior citizens. Senior citizens rely upon a fixed income to manage their finances and pay their bills. Senior citizens are hurt the most by rising costs because there income doesn’t tend to rise with inflation as wages do. Rising medical costs and shrinking retirement plans are creating problems for seniors. The stock market crash of 2008 has forced many senior citizens to reduce their standard of living. Some have resorted to homesharing by taking in roommates to split costs. Many seniors have been forced to come out of retirement and go back to work. This problem is not just specific to the US alone. “In England a staggering one in five seniors – 2 million people – are now living below the poverty line. An alarming 22per cent of seniors are skipping meals, and as many as 25 per cent are cutting back on food. In addition, a further 42 per cent are struggling to afford essential items, 41 per cent are reducing the amount of electricity used and 38 per cent are minimising gas consumption. As the rest of the nation struggles with debt during the economic downturn, senior citizens are struggling to maintain basic living conditions.” Senior citizens are forced to work longer for survival. In Japan senior citizens are being enticed to return to the workforce as well. Some financial experts are saying that the new retirement age will be 70 in the future. Due to this economic setback many people will struggle to have a qualitative retirement that retire at 65. Trillions of dollars of wealth was lost due to the financial meltdowns. IRA’s and 401(k)’s saw their value drop in half. Now there is even talk of raising the age to 70 in order to qualify to get social security. Seniors may have to consider a partial retirement in the future where they work a part time job to supplement their income. |
Posted in Seniors | Leave a Comment »
What’s So Scary About Offering People the Option of a Public Health Plan?
Posted by James O'Rourke on July 8, 2009
alternet.org
By Dean Baker, AlterNet. Posted July 8, 2009.
If the public plan is bad, then people will just stay with the options currently available in the private sector.
Independence Day is a time to reflect on the United States and to ask what it is that we really value about our country. Most people would probably list the freedoms that it has usually guaranteed to most members of society. The opportunities for economic success, while not as great as often touted, are nonetheless impressive.
However, some members of Congress were apparently celebrating our system of employer-provided health insurance last weekend. Or, at least that is what they want us to believe.
As Congress starts to delve into the dirt of a health care reform package, the clearest point of conflict is over the existence and structure of a public health care plan. Some members of Congress have thrown down the gauntlet, insisting that they could never allow the public to have the option of buying into a government-run plan.
These members tell us that a government-run plan will be like having the post office manage our health care. While the post office actually does a pretty good job where I live, if the point is that a government-run plan is going to be bureaucratic and inefficient, then why are opponents of a public plan so worried about giving people the choice to buy into it? If the public plan is bad, then people will just stay with the options currently available in the private sector. As those of who believe in the free markets like to say: “what’s wrong with giving people a choice?”
In addition to the members who just say “no” when it comes to a public plan, there are also members who are willing to allow a public plan, but only if they can be sure that it will not provide real competition with existing private plans. This route involves crippling the public plan in various ways to make it less competitive.
For example, one proposal is to establish a series of health insurance cooperatives, which would be prohibited from acting jointly to maximize their bargaining power. The idea is that a newly formed Nebraska health insurance cooperative, insuring a few thousand people, will not be able to put too much pressure on Pfizer or the American Medical Associations when negotiating prices. It also will not be able to provide much competition for Aetna, Cigna, and the other major insurers. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in *Health Care, Politics | Tagged: employer-provided health insurance, public plan | Leave a Comment »
Howard Dean: “This Is Ridiculous. We’re 60 Years Behind the Times” on Fixing Health Care
Posted by James O'Rourke on July 8, 2009
AlterNet.com
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted July 8, 2009.
Progressive leader and health crusader Dean on what it’s going to take to overhaul our health care system.
During the 2004 presidential primaries, the conventional wisdom among Howard Dean’s energized supporters was that the over-the-top conservative attacks on the Vermont governor reflected the degree to which the right feared his nomination. With his blunt, plainspoken populism, the argument went at the time, Dean represented a threat to the Bush administration’s prospects for re-election that his more polished Democratic opponents lacked.
Five years later, and it may be the “disease care” industry — now spending $1.4 million each and every day to lobby lawmakers against implementing significant health reforms — that may be sweating Dean’s simple, but uncompromising, brand of politics.
In his new book, Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Health Care Reform, the physician and former candidate explains what makes the American health care system the most expensive in the world but nowhere near the best. He calmly destroys the industry’s arguments against substantial change and offers a plan to give everyone access to quality health care at a price that won’t break the bank.
AlterNet caught up with Dean to discuss the book and the larger political landscape in which the debate over health care is taking pace.
Joshua Holland: In your new book, you offer a prescription for fixing our ailing health care system. You lay out the scope of the crisis really well, both in human terms and in terms of the costs — the financial burdens our system places on households and firms. And like the plan that Obama has laid out, like the Hacker Plan, your prescription revolves around a robust public health insurance option. Can you explain in a nutshell what that is — what that looks like?
Howard Dean: In a nutshell, it looks like Medicare. We’ve had a single-payer in this country for 45 years, and the Republicans have used the same language today that they were using in 1965 to denounce it. And it works really well.
It has its faults like every system, but it is cheaper, it is more efficient and a far smaller percentage of dollars that goes into it is spent on non-health-care items. It’s about five times as expensive to insure yourself with a private health insurance than it is with Medicare. So that’s what the public option looks like. It’s what we’ve had — and your grandparents, and your parents have had — for years. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in *Health Care, Politics | Tagged: Health Care Reform, health care system, public option, single-payer | Leave a Comment »
PAYING FOR HEALTH CARE IN RETIREMENT
Posted by James O'Rourke on July 8, 2009
July 06, 2009 05:02 PM ET
Emily Brandon Permanent Link Print
Baby boomers who have lost their health insurance often struggle to find affordable coverage until Medicare kicks in at age 65. But even qualifying for government health insurance won’t completely quell your money worries. While Medicare is far more affordable that buying an individual health insurance policy, the program still has significant premiums and out of pocket costs for retirees.
A man who retires this year at age 65 and has median drug expenditures would need $86,000 in savings to have a 50 percent chance of having enough money to pay for health care expenses throughout his retirement, according to recent calculations by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI). That number assumes that the man doesn’t have employment-based retiree health benefits, but purchases Medicare Part B medical insurance, Part D prescription drug coverage, and a Medigap policy. Women, because they tend to live longer, need to save even more. A 65-year-old women scheduled to retire this year would need to accumulate $125,000 to have a 50 percent chance of being able to pay all her medical bills. If these individuals want a 90 percent chance of affording all their health expenses, the man would need $177,000 and the women should save $221,000, according to EBRI.
Couples both age 65 in 2009 will need $210,000 to have a 50 percent chance of affording their medical needs, EBRI found. That number is similar to a Fidelity estimate in March that found that a 65-year-old couple retiring in 2009 will need approximately $240,000 to cover medical expenses throughout their retirement. However, EBRI went on to state the couple will need $338,000 to have a 90 percent chance of being able to pay their medical bills.
For someone currently age 55 who plans to retire at age 65 in 2019, the costs are even higher. To cover Medigap premiums, Medicare Part B and D premiums, and out-of-pocket prescription drug expenses in 2019, a man with median drug expenditures would need $144,000 and a woman would need $210,000 in savings to have a 50 percent chance of having enough money to cover health care expenses in retirement, according to EBRI calculations. For a 90 percent chance of having enough savings, a man would need $297,000 and a woman should save $370,000. Couples will need $352,000 for a 50 percent chance and a whopping $567,000 for a 90 percent chance of being able to pay for all their health care needs.
These estimates do not include the savings needed for long-term care or the expenses associated with retiring before becoming eligible for Medicare, both of which could rapidly escalate health care costs. Above average prescription drug costs would also inflate these numbers. However, some workers can get by saving less if they choose to work during retirement and receive health benefits from their company or if they are eligible for subsidized retiree health benefits from a former employer.
Posted in *Health Care, Seniors | Leave a Comment »
ECONOMY
Posted by James O'Rourke on July 7, 2009
| thinkprogress.org
Still Not At The Bottom Yesterday, during an appearance on ABC’s This Week, Vice President Biden reacted to the latest national jobs report by conceding that the administration “misread how bad the economy was” back when the economic recovery act was being debated. “The figures we worked off of in January were the consensus figures and most of the blue chip indexes out there,” Biden said. “We misread how bad the economy was, but we are now only about 120 days into the recovery package.” Indeed, June’s unemployment numbers further prove the widespread weakness in the labor market due to the current recession, with the unemployment rate hitting an almost 26-year high of 9.5 percent. According to Labor Department statistics released last week, payrolls declined by 467,000 in June, following a 322,000 drop in May. However, Biden added that the administration expects the number of jobs created to pick up as stimulus spending quickens in the coming months. JOBS LOSSES HIT MEN, MINORITIES HARDEST: Since the recession began in December 2007, the economy has lost a record 6.5 million jobs, and “men continue to bear the brunt of job losses” due to the drastic downturns in the manufacturing and construction industries. In the latest jobs report, 136,000 of the lost jobs were on factory payrolls and another 26,500 were in the auto manufacturing and parts industries. According to the latest data, women currently account for “a record high of 49.8 percent of all payroll jobs,” while men account for 74.2 of the jobs lost since the recession began. “The gap between female and male unemployment has never been as large as it is now,” noted Sophia Koropeckyj, an economist with Moody’s Economy.com. And as Center for American Progress Senior Economist Heather Boushey pointed out, this disparity “has left millions of women nationwide to be the primary breadwinner — a task made more challenging since women typically earn only 78 cents for every dollar men earn.” Minorities have also been especially hard-hit by the recession, with African-American unemployment currently at 14.7 percent and Hispanic unemployment at 12.2 percent. NOT ALL SIGNS ARE DARK: However, not all signs are pointing downward. June’s rise in the unemployment rate was the smallest in a year. The Commerce Department reported last week that factory orders rose a better than expected 1.2 percent in May, and personal income and consumer spending also rose. The 1.4 percent increase in income was the first such increase since February — “outpac[ing] the 0.3 percent gain expected by analysts” — and was driven by increased unemployment benefits and payroll tax cuts that were included in the stimulus. Disposable personal income also rose 1.6 percent, after a 1.3 percent increase in April. “The picture that is emerging with increasing clarity is of an economy that has undergone a wrenching recession the last 18 months but is now gradually transitioning into recovery,” said Bernard Baumohl of the Economic Outlook Group. The rise in income also caused the personal savings rate to shoot up to a 15-year high, a welcome development except for the fact that it translates into muted demand in a weak economy. Finally, the interbank borrowing rate dropped to its lowest level ever yesterday, indicating that various Treasury and Federal Reserve programs have at least temporarily succeeded in easing the credit crunch. GIVING THE STIMULUS TIME TO WORK: As the Washington Post reported last week, “independent economists generally think that it is too early to judge the effectiveness of the stimulus plan, given that the spending package is only starting to ripple through the broader economy.” President Obama has predicted that unemployment will reach 10 percent this year, while Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman noted that “much of the stimulus at the federal level is being undone by budget retrenchment at the state and local level.” But while there has been some talk of a second stimulus package, the administration has thus far distanced itself from the idea. Both Biden and Austan Goolsbee of the Council of Economic Advisers called talk of a second stimulus premature, with Goolsbee adding that “there’s still a major injection coming down the pike” from the first package. In fact, as Boushey pointed out, “the largest job gains from [stimulus] spending were projected to occur in the late fall through 2010,” while the health care and education sectors have both now shown a net job gain since the recession began. In the last few days, stimulus projects have gotten underway in Colorado, New York, and Tennessee. As Obama explained last week, “it took years for us to get into this mess, and it will take us more than a few months to turn it around.” |
Posted in *Economy | Tagged: JOBS LOSSES, stimulus | Leave a Comment »
Thoughts on Palin
Posted by James O'Rourke on July 7, 2009
Eugene Robinson
There are two reasons Palin is taken more seriously than she deserves.
Richard Cohen
Dodging an Alaskan Bullet
Consider how close we all came to the utter disaster of a Palin presidency.
William Kristol
Panicked Over Palin
Why does the establishment want to bury her chances as a presidential possibility?
Posted in Opinions, Politics | Leave a Comment »
The Results Are In: A Public Health Plan Saves Big Money
Posted by James O'Rourke on July 3, 2009
By Bill Scher, Campaign for America’s Future. Posted July 3, 2009.
The arguments by obstructionists are dead — the math shows health care costs will drop while achieving near universal coverage.
When the CBO scored an early draft of the health care form bill from the Senate HELP committee as costing $1 trillion over 10 years but only covering one-third of the uninsured, obstructionists pounced and proclaimed the public plan option dead.
But the CBO had not assessed the cost of the public plan option, nor a mandate on most employers to either provide insurance or contribute to the public plan.
Now they have. And as serious reform advocates long claimed, including those two key provisions drops the 10-year cost of reform by nearly $400 billion, while achieving near universal coverage.
Will the self-proclaimed deficit hawks now embrace the public plan option since it would save money? Or will they come up with fresh excuses, such as fear-mongering that the public plan would decimate the private insurance industry?
Let’s add one more piece of information to the mix: the underreported report from the Urban Institute, “Is the Public Plan Option a Necessary Part of Health Reform?”
What did the Urban Institute find?
First, a public plan won’t kill competition, because competition is currently non-existent:
…health insurance markets today, by and large, are simply not competitive. And as such, these markets are not providing the benefits one would expect from competition, including efficient operations and consequent control over health care costs. We believe that the concentration in the insurance and hospital industries that has taken place over the past several years has been a significant contributor to this problem. The role of the government plan is to counter the adverse impacts of market concentration and, in doing so, slow the growth in health care costs.
Second, Urban predicts private companies would respond to the new competition in a fashion that would allow them to maintain a significant share of the market, taking issue with an earlier report from the Lewin Group that assumed a whopping 119 million would leave private plans. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in *Health Care | Leave a Comment »
Spending $102 Billion a Year on 800 Worldwide Military Bases Is Bankrupting the Country
Posted by James O'Rourke on July 3, 2009
By Chalmers Johnson, Tomdispatch.com. Posted July 3, 2009.
We’re building new “embassies” that run close to $1 billion and host countries keep jacking the rent for existing bases.
The following is an introduction from Tom Engelhardt: Along with postcards of cowboys riding jackalopes and giant berries on flatcars, there’s a brand new entry in the American gigantism sweepstakes: an embassy complex to be built in Islamabad, Pakistan, for — if you assume the normal cost overruns on such projects — what’s likely to be close to a billion dollars. If that doesn’t make the U.S. number one in the imperial hubris footrace for all eternity, what will? The question is: with its projected “large military and intelligence contingent,” and its “surge” of diplomats, will that embassy also issue the largest visas on the planet?
Here’s the strange thing: The embassy story was broken at the end of May by the superb journalists at McClatchy News (in this case, Warren P. Stroebel and Saeed Shah). As part of what Shah, in the Christian Science Monitor, estimates as a staggering “$2-billion-plus price tag on a revamped diplomatic presence for the United States in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” they reported that an appropriation of $736 million for embassy construction had quietly made its way through both houses of Congress without a peep from anyone. This news, however, seemed to plunge off a steep cliff into a deep well of silence. Indicative as the Obama administration’s decision to build such an imperial monstrosity may be of a longer-term commitment to a wider war in the Af-Pak (as in Afghanistan-Pakistan) theater of operations, it evidently proved of no interest to anyone here.
The story was not widely picked up or played up significantly. Despite the fact that major news operations have been bolstering their staffs in Pakistan, there has been no further reporting on the appropriation, the plans for the embassy, or what it all might mean. As far as I can tell, nowhere in the United States did a mainstream editorial page decry, challenge, or even discuss the development. Charlie Rose didn’t gather experts to consider it, nor did the Newshour with Jim Lehrer seem to think it worth exploring. Letters of outrage at the thought of those desperately needed funds heading Islamabad-wards didn’t pour into local newspapers (perhaps because few knew it was happening and those who did saw it as just another humdrum story about making the U.S. safer in a dangerous world). I’ve seen no obvious congressional attempts to oppose the passage of the money. The general attitude is evidently: Been there, done that (in Iraq, as a matter of fact, in the Bush years).
Maybe in a world where near-trillion-dollar bailouts are the norm, a mere three-quarters of a billion for a fortress of an embassy seems like so much chump change, the sort of news that only Democracy Now! would even consider significant. Fortunately, Chalmers Johnson, author of The Blowback Trilogy, and an expert on U.S. military bases abroad, did notice, understood its significance, and has now put it in his gun sights. (Catch my TomDispatch audio interview with Johnson about our Empire of Bases by clicking here). — Tom Engelhardt
The U.S. Empire of Bases — at $102 billion a year already the world’s costliest military enterprise — just got a good deal more expensive. As a start, on May 27th, we learned that the State Department will build a new “embassy” in Islamabad, Pakistan, which at $736 million will be the second priciest ever constructed, only $4 million less, if cost overruns don’t occur, than the Vatican-City-sized one the Bush administration put up in Baghdad. The State Department was also reportedly planning to buy the five-star Pearl Continental Hotel (complete with pool) in Peshawar, near the border with Afghanistan, to use as a consulate and living quarters for its staff there.
Unfortunately for such plans, on June 9th Pakistani militants rammed a truck filled with explosives into the hotel, killing 18 occupants, wounding at least 55, and collapsing one entire wing of the structure. There has been no news since about whether the State Department is still going ahead with the purchase. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Diplomacy, World Affairs | Tagged: embasies | Leave a Comment »
On the Offensive
Posted by James O'Rourke on July 3, 2009
Can commanders in Afghanistan tell the president the truth about troop shortages?
Friday, July 3, 2009
AS U.S. MARINES launched a major offensive in Afghanistan’s Taliban-infested Helmand province yesterday, one problem was already apparent: There are not enough troops to properly carry out the Pentagon’s new counterinsurgency strategy. The force is “a little light,” Marine Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson, its commander, told national security adviser James L. Jones in a meeting reported by The Post’s Bob Woodward. “We don’t have enough force to go everywhere.”
Those comments will come as no surprise to anyone who has been following the attempts by U.S. commanders to turn around the Afghan war. The idea is to replicate the strategy that finally reversed American fortunes in Iraq: protecting the population rather than seeking out insurgents, while building the economy and political institutions. Though the Bush and Obama administrations approved new troop deployments that will double the U.S. force, the ratio of American and allied Afghan soldiers to the population is still well below that mandated by the Army’s new counterinsurgency doctrine.
Gen. Nicholson said his greatest need is for more Afghan troops — only 500 are joining the new Marine operation, when thousands are needed. But the Afghan army is still relatively small, and, despite a major effort to accelerate training, it is years away from reaching a size that would allow it to operate across the country. That’s one reason the recently departed top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David D. McKiernan, requested that a further deployment of 10,000 U.S. troops be scheduled for next year — and that the present effort to double the size of the Afghan army and police by 2011 be followed by another doubling by 2016. Mr. Woodward quoted one senior commander as saying privately that 100,000 U.S. troops might be needed, compared with the 68,000 currently authorized.
Mr. Obama elected to defer decisions on Gen. McKiernan’s requests at the time he approved this year’s deployment of 21,000 troops. So it was surprising, and troubling, to read Mr. Woodward’s account of meetings in Afghanistan last month at which Mr. Jones lectured U.S. commanders about the offense they might cause the president by asking for more forces. Mr. Jones was quoted as saying that such a request would cause Mr. Obama to have “a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment” — military jargon for the expression “what the [expletive].” He further declared, in reference to Iraq, “we are not going to build that empire again.”
What “empire,” we wonder, was Mr. Jones talking about? That of the successful “surge” — or that of the years before, when the Pentagon chronically failed to deploy enough troops to secure Iraq? It’s true, as Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has pointed out, that a larger American force could prompt a backlash by Afghans. But that is not the problem at the moment: According to polls, most Afghans still favor the presence of American troops.
The new Afghanistan commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, is conducting his own assessment of the war, including troop needs. Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told The Post’s Ann Scott Tyson on Wednesday that Gen. McChrystal has been told “you can come back and ask for what you need.” We hope that is the case. One of the Bush administration’s greatest failings was to pressure military commanders into low-balling requests for forces, even as the president insisted that he would give the generals whatever they needed. Mr. Obama needs to hear the honest assessment of his own generals — and to provide them with the resources that will give the new counterinsurgency strategy a chance to succeed.
Posted in Afghanistan | Leave a Comment »
