General Calls for More Troops in Afghanistan, Obama Skeptical
In a report he submitted to US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on August 30, the top military commander in Afghanistan called for a surge in that country similar to the one implemented in Iraq a few years ago by George W. Bush.
If the new president Barack Obama doesn’t send more troops, General McChrystal said, the war effort will “likely result in failure.”
“Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near term (next 12 months) — while Afghan security capacity matures — risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible,” General McChrystal writes.
A copy of the assessment, with some operational details removed at the Pentagon’s request to avoid compromising future operations, was posted on The Post’s Web site.
In his five-page commander’s summary, General McChrystal ends on a cautiously optimistic note: “While the situation is serious, success is still achievable.”
But more troops are required. The US cannot be successful if more troops aren’t send.
And guess what? “President Obama on Sunday would not tip his hand on whether he would approve sending more troops to Afghanistan.”
In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” one of five that Mr. Obama taped for the Sunday morning talk shows, the president was asked about a report that said General Stanley A. McChrystal, the commander in Afghanistan, had been told to delay any specific troop request.
“No, no, no, no,” Mr. Obama replied. He said that he had inherited a strategy on Afghanistan that was “somewhat adrift,” and wanted to restore a sharp focus on defeating the al-Qaeda threat.“We lost that focus for a while and you started seeing a classic case of mission creep,” he said.
He added: “I don’t want to put the resource question before the strategy question.” But at a time of waning public support for the war — but a sense of urgency among some commanders in Afghanistan — he made clear in his interviews that there was no presumption that more troops would be the best answer.
“I am now going to take all this information,” he said on ABC’s “This Week,” “and we’re going to test whatever resources we have against our strategy, which is if by sending young men and women into harm’s way, we are defeating Al Qaeda and, and that can be shown to a skeptical audience, namely me — somebody who is always asking hard questions about deploying troops, then we will do what’s required to keep the American people safe.”
Right – he didn’t read it yet, he is not sure what the General truly recommended, but skeptical about sending more troops nonetheless… is he stalling?
Why, I think he is because he’s afraid to alienate liberal anti-war groups.
Is blanketing Afghanistan with more soldiers really going to fix the problem? The afghani police and military need to be self reliant and police their country themselves.
To succeed in Afghanistan, only one strategy can work:
1) Obliging Hamid Kasai to form a national unity government including all opposition parties, with the representation of all the significant tribes and regions of Afghanistan including even non-alqaida talibans such that they hold a stake in the national unity government
2) Then, a surge fighting together with local Afghan troops and even talibans who have changed sides!
Easier said than done ….
I am from vancouver,canada and i wanted to say that the U.S. gov.will reap what they sow.It was the U.S.gov.that caused this problem in Afghanistan to begin with by supporting the talaban in the 1980s.At the present time they are making things worse than when the talaban was in power.The U.S.gov.and nato are part of the problem.The elections were completly useless.You can’t have elections when a country is occupied by foreign troops.There won’t be any peace until the foreign troops leave.There is no time in the past where the U.S.gov.or nato did anything to benefit the people in any country in the world.Their past history tells it all.