Go big AND go home
President Obama expected to escalate the Afghan war.
The WaPo previews President Obama’s Afghanistan speech, which will reportedly include an order for 34,000 additional troops, plus a few sign posts toward the exit door.
The new deployments, along with 22,000 troops he authorized early this year, would bring the total U.S. force in Afghanistan to more than 100,000, more than half of which will have been sent to the war zone by Obama.
The president also plans to ask NATO and other partners in an international coalition to contribute 5,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, officials said. The combined U.S. and NATO deployments would nearly reach the 40,000 requested last summer by U.S. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the coalition commander in Afghanistan, as part of an intensified counterinsurgency strategy.
The new troops are to be sent in stages beginning in January, with options to delay or cancel deployments, depending on the performance of the Afghan government and other factors.
As for the exit ramps? They’ll sound familiar to those who followed the unending saga of Iraq under George W. Bush:
Even as he escalates U.S. involvement, Obama will lay out in his speech what amounts to an exit strategy, centered on measures to strengthen the Afghan government so that its security forces can begin taking control of their own country. He is expected to specify benchmarks for Afghan progress on both the military and political fronts, according to U.S. and allied officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity about the strategy.
British P.M. Gordon Brown offered his Parliament a preview of the details:
The military objective, Brown said, is “to create the space for an effective political strategy to work, weakening the Taliban by strengthening Afghanistan itself.” Over the next year, he said, the Afghan army will be expanded from 90,000 to 134,000 troops, with 10,000 of them going to Helmand province, where U.S. Marines and British forces have focused their fight against the Taliban. Further increases are envisioned for later.
The number of Afghan policemen in Helmand will increase immediately to 4,100, Brown said, and the size of the police training academy in Helmand is to be doubled. Within six months, the coalition is to finalize a plan for overall police reform with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Brown said that the strategy calls for “transfer of lead security responsibility to the Afghans — district by district, province by province — with the first districts and provinces potentially being handed over during the next year,” depending on “the Afghans being ready.”
The BBC reports that Karzai the Corrupt has been briefed. And the UK Independent’s Rupert Cornwell advises the prez as follows: escalate if you must, but do explain how you plan to get these troops the hell out of there.
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