Obama and Afghanistan

I'm writing this before President Obama's speech on Afghanistan but the details have already been leaked out. After two months of dithering and Obama's second policy review of the year, the results are about what was expected in October. We will add something like 30,000 troops but move them out of the villages to protect the cities.

Will it work? I don't know. It sounds similar to the plans advanced for Iraq by both Obama and Hillary Clinton prior to last year's election. Back then they advocated withdrawing the troops into a few large fortified bases which would be used to train a native army. Our troops would go out on short missions to destroy enemy strongholds but they would not try to hold ground. This was the exact opposite of the surge.

Afghanistan is a different country than Iraq. It is larger and more mountainous. The nature of the enemy is also different so the tactics used in the surge may not work and certainly would need a much larger force than Obama is willing to commit.

Will his new strategy work? Probably not. It seems to be ceding most of the country to the Taliban while preserving the cities.

The process that went into this new strategy will hurt, also. The Taliban knows what goes on in the US. They know that Obama is already looking for a way out. They also probably know that his strongest allies have deserted him on this. MoveOn has already released an email against the new strategy. Nancy Pelosi who has unprecedented power as Speaker of the House is on records as being against any troop increase.

Ironically, the people most likely to support the President are the ones he has spent the last ten months belittling - Republicans and conservatives. Had he followed through on his campaign promises for bipartisanship then he would be in a stronger position today.