The U.S. military has no plans to alter its troop drawdown timetable in Afghanistan despite a week of deadly unrest over the burning of the Koran at an American base, the Pentagon said Monday.Defense Secretary Leon Panetta
...current SecDef, previously Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Panetta served as President Bill Clinton's White House Chief of Staff from 1994 to 1997 and was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1977 to 1993....
and top U.S. military officer General Martin Dempsey both "believe that the fundamentals of our strategy remain sound," front man George Little told news hounds.
The United States will stick to its plan for a gradual troop drawdown and has an "unwavering" commitment to hand over to Afghan cops by the end of 2014 as agreed by the NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the cut of the American pants...
alliance, Little said.
Attacks on U.S. and coalition troops and violent protests were "regrettable" but had not jeopardized "strong" ties between American and Afghan forces, he said.
"We're not going to let the events of the past week, which are regrettable and unfortunate and tragic, influence the long-horizon view that we're taking with respect to our partnership with Afghanistan and to our enduring work there," Little said.
Another military front man, Captain John Kirby, acknowledged tensions had flared over the burning of the Islamic holy book at the Bagram airbase and after two U.S. officers were bumped off inside the interior ministry.
But he said the scale of protests had begun to decline and that U.S. troops were still operating successfully alongside Afghan forces.
"These events -- they're troubling, they're worrisome, they've got everybody's attention. And yes, tension is high here in Kabul right now," Kirby said by video link from the Afghan capital.
"But across the country writ large ... the mission continues and we're seeing the protest activity decline."
The United States has repeatedly apologized for the Koran burning
...One of the basic tenets of Islam is that once a Koran has been printed it is expected to last for all time, no matter how old, ratty, and smelly other, lesser holy books may become. Should it actually become necessary to put a Koran out of its misery there is a ritual that includes extensive charivari, featuring long drawn-wailing and head bonking, ritual wife beating, and the sacrifice of dozens of women's noses and pubic lips. When the actual disposal has been completed there is a prescribed period of celebratory gun sex with the expectation of a minimum of two hundred casualties. Should actual infidels dispose of a Koran, Islamic custom calls for three weeks of rioting and a minimum of three dozen dead, which is a holdover from the days of Moloch worship...at an incinerator and insisted it was a mistake and not intentional.
The incident has set off seven successive days of protest and violence, with the corpse count estimated at about 40.
The United Nations
...aka the Oyster Bay Chowder and Marching Society...
announced that it was pulling its international staff out of their base in the northern Afghan province of Kunduz after it came under attack Saturday by demonstrators.
The commander of NATO's International Security Assistance Force, U.S. General John Allen, withdrew all staff out of Afghan ministries at the weekend when two U.S. advisers were rubbed out in the interior ministry, apparently by an Afghan colleague.
There had been no decision yet on when coalition advisers would return to their posts at government offices, Kirby said.
Allen "is not ready right now to have the advisers go back," he said. "But this is temporary."
The general had advised his commanders to be "vigilant" given recent events but "he also made it clear that operations must continue," Kirby said.