Perhaps more a matter of shock for all of us and grateful awe on the part of the defense industry. Maybe that's why the market is rising on the morning that Obama is revealed to have "decided to expedite the deployment of 30,000 additional American troops to Afghanistan over the next six months, in an effort to reverse the momentum of Taliban gains and create urgency for the government in Kabul to match the American surge with one using its own forces, according to senior administration officials."
Will Karzai's government act with increased urgency? Don't know. Will "more, sooner" mean the ultimate withdrawal from Afghanistan will come sooner?
In bringing the total American force to nearly 100,000 troops by the end of May, the administration will move far faster than it had originally planned. Until recently, discussions focused on a deployment that would take a year, but Mr. Obama concluded that the situation required “more, sooner,” as one official said, explaining the some of the central conclusions Mr. Obama reached at the end of a nearly three-month review of American war strategy. ...
... The strategy aims to prevent Al Qaeda from returning to Afghanistan, whose territory it used to prepare for the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and to keep Taliban insurgents from toppling the government there. The 30,000 new American troops will focus on securing a number of population centers in Afghanistan where the Taliban are strongest, including Kandahar in the south and Khost in the east, the officials said. The American forces, they said, will pair up with specific Afghan units in an effort to end eight years of frustrating attempts to build them into an independent fighting force. ... NYT
The Washington Post reports:
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown -- with whom Obama spoke Monday -- offered a preview of aspects of the strategy when he addressed Parliament.
The military objective, Brown said, is "to create the space for an effective political strategy to work, weakening the Taliban by strengthening Afghanistan itself."
Wait a minute. Excuse me. Did I get this wrong? Don't the Taliban make up a substantial part of Afghanistan? Aren't they (like it or not) part of the political fabric of that country? What kind of "effective political strategy" will work well enough for us to leave Afghanistan?
