Thursday, October 08, 2009

Obama's "Strategy" of March? Fuggeddaboutit

Yah, well. When Obama announced, only 6 months ago, that he had "a strategy" for Afghanistan, he didn't really understand what that "strategy" entailed.

That conclusion, which was later endorsed by the president and members of his national security team, would become the first in a set of recommendations contained in an administration white paper outlining what Obama called "a comprehensive, new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan." Preventing al-Qaeda's return to Afghanistan, the document stated, would require "executing and resourcing an integrated civilian-military counterinsurgency strategy."

To senior military commanders, the sentence was unambiguous: U.S. and NATO forces would have to change the way they operated in Afghanistan. Instead of focusing on hunting and killing insurgents, the troops would have to concentrate on protecting the good Afghans from the bad ones.

And to carry out such a counterinsurgency effort the way its doctrine prescribes, the military would almost certainly need more boots on the ground.

To some civilians who participated in the strategic review, that conclusion was much less clear. Some took it as inevitable that more troops would be needed, but others thought the thrust of the new approach was to send over scores more diplomats and reconstruction experts. They figured a counterinsurgency mission could be accomplished with the forces already in the country, plus the 17,000 new troops Obama had authorized in February.

OOOOOOOOPSIE!!

As Ace correctly deduced, the roomful of ACORN activists (the civilians) thought that you send the community organizers over there and voila!! no more problems!

So.........while the Trainee-in-Chief learns, the troops continue to take fire.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Funny how you wanted time for the Surge to take hold. Why the cold feet now?

Jo Egelhoff, FoxPolitics.net said...

And the President won the Nobel Peace Prize? I'm incredulous.