Afghan War Commander’s Report Sets Off Debate, Concern on Delay

A call by the U.S. commander in Afghanistan for a “significant change” to reverse a “deteriorating” war situation has set off renewed debate within the Obama administration on how to defeat the Taliban.

Army General Stanley McChrystal cites “an urgent need” for a counter-insurgency campaign that focuses primarily on protecting and supporting the Afghan population rather than targeting insurgents, according to an assessment published by the Washington Post on its Web site yesterday.

More U.S. troops will be needed to accomplish that objective and the strategy President Barack Obama outlined in March to defeat al-Qaeda and eliminate Afghanistan as a haven for terrorists, McChrystal said in the report.

McChrystal’s recommendations have Obama and his aides, who received the report earlier this month, reconsidering their strategy and Republicans criticizing delays in implementing the commander’s recommendations. Obama sent thousands more troops to Afghanistan soon after taking office in January, saying the military effort had been starved of resources.

“It’s time for the president to clarify where he stands on the strategy he has articulated, because the longer we wait, the more we put our troops at risk,” House Minority Leader John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said yesterday in a statement.

Boehner said he was “deeply troubled” that the White House is “questioning its strategy after the president endorsed ‘an integrated civilian-military counterinsurgency strategy’ six months ago.”

Obama’s Reassessment

Obama said in interviews on Sept. 20 on CBS and ABC that he is reassessing his approach and wants to narrow the U.S. mission in Afghanistan.

The president defended any potential delay in a decision, saying he doesn’t want to add more troops before he is certain the U.S. is taking the right approach.

The deliberation “certainly does confuse the issue on the ground,” said Kimberly Kagan, who served as an outside adviser on McChrystal’s assessment. “It places our soldiers and our commanders in an extremely difficult position as they try to accomplish the mission that they have been given.”

The administration conducted numerous reviews earlier this year to come up with the goals outlined in March and the accompanying military and civilian strategy, said Kagan, founder and president of the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.

U.S. Goal

At the time, Obama said the U.S. goal would be to “to disrupt, dismantle and defeat” al-Qaeda and “prevent their return” to either Afghanistan or Pakistan.

McChrystal cited that goal in his assessment. He said a counter-insurgency strategy was necessary and would demand more and better Afghan national security forces, improved governance and resources sent first to areas where the population is threatened.

Troops led by the U.S. and by NATO must “gain the initiative from the insurgency and signal unwavering commitment to see it through to success,” McChrystal wrote. “Time matters; we must act now to reverse the negative trends and demonstrate progress.”

While McChrystal has completed a request for more troops, he hasn’t submitted it to the Pentagon. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sept. 17 that the administration is “working through the process by which we want that submitted.”

Senator John McCain of Arizona, the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee, said the administration shouldn’t delay acting on McChrystal’s assessment.

Decision Needed

“I feel in the strongest possible terms that further delay in the decision to send the needed additional forces would endanger the lives of the 68,000 men and women currently serving in Afghanistan,” McCain said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. The sooner a decision is made, “the sooner we can implement a strategy that will allow us to reverse the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan.”

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Obama had shown “admirable consistency” and “rightly” stated the goals for the Afghanistan campaign in March. He urged Obama to grant McChrystal’s request for more U.S. troops to a new counter-insurgency strategy to prevent Afghanistan from again becoming a base for al-Qaeda attacks on the West.

“The president must soon explain to the American people his reasons either for accepting the McChrystal plan, or, if he chooses an alternative, explain why he believes the alternative is better,” McConnell said in a Senate floor speech yesterday.

‘Strategic Shift’

Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said in a statement that McChrystal was “wisely avoiding” the mistake of focusing on how many more troops to send “before we accomplish the strategic shift” needed to improve the Afghan army’s capability to fight the Taliban.

U.S. public opinion polls show Americans becoming increasingly wary of the war.

Juan Carlos Zarate, a deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism late in President George W. Bush’s term, said the March strategy was supposed to be the framework for moving forward.

“No question you have to adapt,” Zarate, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said in a telephone interview yesterday. “But I think in the minds of many, there’s a question as to whether or not we know what we’re doing.”