Today, President Obama will lead another meeting to debate strategy in Afghanistan. He will presumably discuss the questions that have divided his advisers: How many troops to commit? How to define plausible goals? Should troops be deployed broadly or just in the cities and towns? For the past few days I have tried to do what journalists are supposed to do. I've called around to several of the smartest military experts I know to get their views on these controversies.
I called retired officers, analysts who have written books about counterinsurgency warfare, people who have spent years in Afghanistan. I tried to get them to talk about the strategic choices facing the president. To my surprise, I found them largely uninterested. Most of them have no doubt that the president is conducting an intelligent policy review. They have no doubt that he will come up with some plausible troop level. They are not worried about his policy choices. Their concerns are more fundamental. They are worried about his determination...
More at The New York Times.
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PS, sorry...links to the Gant and Wineera papers:
TET: http://blog.stevenpressfield.com/wp-content/themes/stevenpressfield/one…
Interbella: http://sjponeill.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/wineera-vbb-presentation-c…
Both definitely worth a read but also worthy of wider dissemination to friends, allies and countrymen...
Yep...let's leave it all up to President Obama to decide - and then lambast him when he makes what we will consider to be the wrong decision.
He is probably right to be questioning the war in Afghanistan. It has been going on for 8 years - longer than the Vietnam War (from Tonkin to withdrawal in '73) and there is not too much that appears as visible progress.
There are no clear strategic objectives i.e. why are we there? to counter AG; to introduce democracy to any nation that neither wants not cares about it; because we've been there so long we can't just pull out?
All those analysts, consultants and interested parties from the Don't Care Party need to get out of the game. The one thing that WILL lose this war is apathy - if soldiers like Jim Gant (Tribal Engagement Teams) and Josh Wineera (Interbella) can get off their bums and develop and present alternatives to the current big guns and hitech strategy, why can't others, especially among these analysts and consultants - any fool can snipe from afar; it takes some guts to get into the fight.
The NYT article closes: "Gen. Stanley McChrystal has said that counterinsurgency is 'an argument to win the support of the people.' But its not an argument won through sophisticated analysis. Its an argument won through the display of raw determination." That is correct but the people whose support is most necessary first are those of the US and the other contributing nations.
<em>"Every argument about troop levels is really a proxy argument for whether the U.S. should stay or go."</em>
What the hell is this guy talking about?
<em>"So I guess the presidents most important meeting is not the one with the Joint Chiefs and the cabinet secretaries. Its the one with the mirror, in which he looks for some firm conviction about whether Afghanistan is worthy of his full and unshakable commitment. If the president cannot find that core conviction, we should get out now."</em>
So national will no longer matters. Now it all boils down to Obama's will. Has he stolen our collective mojo?