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Eikenberry sent back to Washington some very important, sensible advice, though we don't know whether Clinton forwarded the cables on to her boss. Nor do we know whether Eikenberry exercised his ambassadorial prerogative to contact the President directly.
Eikenberry had served three years in Afghanistan over the course of two separate tours of duty. During 2002-2003, he was responsible for rebuilding Afghan security forces. He then served 18 months (2005-2007) as commander of all U.S. forces stationed in the country. Surely, he could see the toll in killed and wounded that would inevitably result from the hopeless counterinsurgency strategy being urged on "NGO" by the "Gang of Five."
And Eikenberry's cables show that he felt strongly about it. He also knew, of course, that Obama was about to let himself be sandbagged by the Gang and its clever use of the media. So he sent two SECRET NODIS ("NODIS" means No Dissemination) cables to Clinton, who was his boss (and who -- along with Gates -- was one of what Gates called the "un-fireables"). Eikenberry surely doubted that Clinton would share his advice with Obama, but did Eikenberry ever think of resigning loudly on principle? Apparently not.
So, what did he do when he was overruled? He trod up to Congress and fully supported the feckless surge of troops launched out of the cowardice/stupidity of "NGO" in bowing to the "Gang of Five." It probably never occurred to Eikenberry to blow the whistle on the "tough guy/gal" policy which would end up getting a thousand or so U.S. troops killed along with a much larger number of Afghans.
For many a graduate of West Point, the academy's motto seems to get garbled as they climb the ladder of success. Instead of "Duty, Honor, Country," it becomes "Career, President, Sinecure Retirement." Perhaps blowing the whistle did occur to Eikenberry. But if you challenge the Establishment in that way, you seldom end up with a cushy job like running a Research Center at Stanford.
Presumably, Eikenberry takes some gratification now in the fact that he turns out to have been correct in his bleak assessment of the "surge" in Afghanistan. He may even have been the one behind eventually leaking his cables to The New York Times, thus earning him applause from his academic colleagues.
But his burnished credentials didn't save the lives of the soldiers tossed into the Afghan meat grinder or the many civilians who died needlessly as senior U.S. government officials put ideology and careerism -- the need to look tough -- ahead of what made sense for either Afghanistan or the United States.
In the end, however, the bloody futility of the past eight years in Afghanistan rest most heavily on the "Gang of Five" and the easily outmaneuvered "NGO," who sits at the desk where the buck stops.
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