Last year, Marine Gen. James Jones, now the national security adviser to President Barack Obama, contributed to a think-tank analysis on how to shore up the rapidly deteriorating military situation in Afghanistan. Jones provided his expertise as a member of the Afghanistan Study Group, an offshoot of the U.S. Institute for Peace. USIP is the same quasi-governmental agency that spawned the Iraq Study Group, which set the present course in Iraq. Two members of the Iraq Study Group are top-ranking officials in the new Obama administration: Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a holdover from the Bush administration; and Leon Panetta, Obama's designated CIA director. So Obama's national security adviser, designated CIA director and Defense Secretary all have past ties to the USIP, which would be heartening if the agency lived up to its name. The question is whether the Institute for Peace is really seeking peace. In reality, the plan put forward by the Afghanistan Study Group, which the Obama administration has embraced, calls for doubling U.S. military operations on the ground in Afghanistan. At the same time, the military escalation will be tempered with an increased propaganda campaign that will focus on a more diplomatic approach to resolving the conflict. The two-pronged approach of waging war while advocating diplomacy is not without victims -- Afghan civilians. [read more at http://survivethejivealive.blogspot.com]
