GroundTruth

So here we are one month on from when we expected a decision on whether there would be a troop increase in Afghanistan. And we are still waiting for President Obama to decide.

It is fair to ask whether those of us in the media are not too impatient on such matters. After all this is the most consequential decisioin of his presidency and isn’t deliberation and careful consideration a good thing? Well, to a point.

The truth is that Afghanistan is in a part of the world that doesn’t understand such slow, ponderings. It is mistaken for weakness. I am worried that this administration is locked in indecision.

As President Obama travels to China, the reporters in the bubble are saying that he has asked his national security team to go back at the problem and come up with new alternatives. Right now we know that General Stanley McChrystal seems to want a troop increase of somewhere between 10,000 and 40,000. That to me feels like a fateful miscalculation.

The McChrystal approach feels like a half-hearted attempt at trying to beef up a classic counter insurgency campaign when the truth is a counter insurgency campaign, by the military’s own field manual, would require hundreds of thousands of troops … Our country is not anywhere near ready to accept that kind of burden. So aren’t we wiser to go with the more contained counter-terrorism approach where we focus the mission and define victory in clear achievable terms and then focus on getting out? I think so.

I do understand the weight of the moment on this president who is already carrying a lot on his shoulders. But I truly believe the wisest course in Afghanistan is to hold the troop levels where they are now, then work to clarify the mission as counter terrroism, succeed in accomplishing its limited goals and begin to draw down the troops and leave it to the Afghan people to chart the course for the future of their country.