U.S. Marines provide security for fellow Marines during a patrol through the Nawa district of Helmand province, Afghanistan, Oct. 14, 2009. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Artur ShvartsbergFrom DoD Buzz:
It was all things Afghanistan and Pakistan at the House Armed Services Committee with lawmakers weighing the viability of a counterterrorism approach versus population centric counterinsurgency and Afghan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s new strategy. An interesting aspect of this debate is the level of knowledge shown by some members of Congress on everything from the proper troop to civilian ratio called for in classic counterinsurgency doctrine to the intricacies of the Tajik versus Pashtun balance in Afghanistan.
The Obama administration has taken some serious heat in recent days for what former Vice President Dick Cheney called “dithering” over the decision to escalate in Afghanistan or not. The reliably hawkish Tom Donnelly of AEI, part of the escalate often and everywhere crowd, even provided an exhaustive timeline of the Obama administration’s “long road to indecision” that can be found here.
My Comment: The debate within the Bush administration on whether to surge or not in Iraq in 2007 took a number of months, so the Obama administration's approach is not that surprising. The problem with the Obama administration is that they stated publicly in March of this year that they had a plan .... which is clearly not adequate to what is happening now.
In any case, they now have the time to work and formulate a strategy for Afghanistan, and the American people have expectations that they will work it out. If not .... there will repercussions in the polls and more importantly .... in Afghanistan.
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