Interviewer Paul Jay asks “When Obama sits around the table with the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Interviewer Paul Jay asks “When Obama sits around the table with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, what are they really talking about?” Engdahl responds, “Pull out a map…,” but doesn’t explicitly answer the question. If we don’t know what transpires when the JCoS brief Obama, thanks to the release of the Eikenberry memos we are privy to a secret assessment provided by a former Afghanistan military commander turned ambassador for his superiors at the State Department. In the November 6th memo, Eikenberry writes (U.S. Envoy’s Cables Show Worries on Afghan Plans, NYT, Jan. 26, 2010): President Karzai is not an adequate strategic partner. The proposed counterinsurgency strategy assumes an Afghan political leadership that is both able to take responsibility and to exert sovereignty in the furtherance of our goal — a secure, peaceful, minimally self-sufficient Afghanistan hardened against transnational terrorist groups. Yet Karzai continues to shun responsibility for any sovereign burden, whether defense, governance or development. He and much of his circle do not want the U.S. to leave and are only too happy to see us invest further. They assume we covet their territory for a never-ending ‘war on terror’ and for military bases to use against surrounding powers.