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Posted By Joshua Keating
Tuesday, November 24, 2009 - 3:57 PM
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So reports Jonathan Landay, John Walcott, and Nancy A. Youssef of McClatchy:
As it now stands, the plan calls for the deployment over a nine-month period beginning in March of three Army brigades from the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky., and the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y., and a Marine brigade from Camp Lejeune, N.C., for as many as 23,000 additional combat and support troops.
In addition, a 7,000-strong division headquarters would be sent to take command of U.S.-led NATO forces in southern Afghanistan — to which the U.S. has long been committed — and 4,000 U.S. military trainers would be dispatched to help accelerate an expansion of the Afghan army and police.
This is probably the safest short-term political choice -- within the range of McChrystal's request but not following his recommendation to the letter. Strategic leaks in recent weeks have sent the message that Obama carefully considered oterh options and the final plan apparently also contains a number of "off-ramps" -- points in time when the strategy will be reevalutated.
Obama will reportedly addresses the nation to announce his strategy on Dec. 1. It's risky for a president, when laying out a new strategy of this magnitude, to define specific benchmarks for success that can later be used against him if things don't go according to plan.
But after eight years of war, I would hope that, at a bare minimum, Obama will explain in as specific detail as possible: what he believes the U.S. strategic objective in Afghanistan is, why no other strategy would accomplish that objective, and at what point the mission can be considered a success or failure.
This is his war now and "we'll know it when we see it" won't cut it anymore.
Obama's sphinx-like assertion that he intends to "finish the job" in Afghanistan of course prompts us to ask what, precisely, the "job" is.
The Bush policy was belatedly centered on nation-building -- to erect a stable, democratic, national government on top of a population of hardscrabble-poor farmers, deeply divided along tribal/ethnic lines, currently "managed" by corrupt opportunists and war lords -- with a "GDP" based on being the world's primary heroin exporter.
A policy based on providing some cover for our bungled attempt to kill Osama and his chief associates. Rather than leave at that point, Bush, as he did in Iraq, invented a new and equally absurd "mission."
Our actual "accomplishment?" We drove the Taliban into Pakistan, where they can keep training "terrorists" and where we cannot EVER reach them effectively.
The best "mission" we can hope for is to send young soldiers to Afghanistan to die as a credible cover for a strategic retreat.
We may hope that the administration realizes that our only hope for a reasonable way out is with the cooperation of Pakistan and the ISI, which will never live peaceably with an India-friendly government in Kabul. We can cajole forever, but they're never going to move those strategic forces away from their eastern borders.
Pakistan has already demonstrated its ability to crush rogue Taliban elements and the support of its population to do so. They can provide us with Taliban elements that would agree not to use Afghanistan as a base for attacks on the west. And Pakistan has the ability to enforce the same rules on its own territory, once we are gone from the area.
India will have to comfort itself with its military and economic superiority over Pakistan, that nuclear deal with Washington, and continued and growing business ties with America.
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