Oct. 8, 2009
Civilian, Military Divide over Afghanistan
Washington Post: Officials Have Been at Odds for Several Months over Resources Needed for Afghan Mission
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Play CBS Video Video Afghan Answer Weeks Away President Obama met again with his top advisers to consider a new change in the strategy in Afghanistan. As Bill Plante reports, an answer is probably still weeks away.
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Video 40,000 Troops to Afghanistan? General Stanley McChrystal, the top commander of U.S. military forces in Afghanistan, has reportedly told President Obama that at least 40,000 additional troops are needed. Chip Reid reports.
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Video Reflections on the War CBS News reports on the troops to give clarity to the war - but it's dangerous work. Various CBS correspondents offer battlefield accounts that are both moving and chilling.
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President Obama holds a meeting with national security advisers to discuss policy in Afghanistan, Oct. 7, 2009. (The White House)
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Special Report Afghanistan The latest news and analysis on the war in Afghanistan and the debate in Washington over its future.
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In early March, after weeks of debate across a conference table in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, the participants in President Obama's strategic review of the war in Afghanistan figured that the most contentious part of their discussions was behind them. Everyone, save Vice President Biden's national security adviser, agreed that the United States needed to mount a comprehensive counterinsurgency mission to defeat the Taliban.
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.
"It was easy to say, 'Hey, I support COIN,' because nobody had done the assessment of what it would really take, and nobody had thought through whether we want to do what it takes," said one senior civilian administration official who participated in the review, using the shorthand for counterinsurgency.
CBS News Special Report: The Road Ahead
The failure to reach a shared understanding of the resources required to execute the strategy has complicated the White House's response to the grim assessment of the war by the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, forcing the president to decide, in effect, what his administration really meant when it endorsed a counterinsurgency plan. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's follow-up request for more forces, which presents a range of options but makes clear that the best chance of achieving the administration's goals requires an additional 40,000 U.S. troops on top of the 68,000 who are already there, has given senior members of Obama's national security team "a case of sticker shock," the administration official said.
The meetings now underway in Washington are rooted in part in the gap in understanding that became evident in March. This account of how it opened up is based on interviews with several senior civilian members of the administration and military officers directly involved in Afghanistan issues. Nearly all spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about internal policy discussions.
As the president's top defense and foreign policy officials debate the way forward, they have begun to revisit the March review's main conclusion, asking whether the administration's relatively narrow goal of preventing al-Qaeda's return to Afghanistan would best be achieved through a full-on counterinsurgency mission or through a more limited counterterrorism operation that would target any high-level terrorists seeking to operate there again.
This time, the discussions about counterinsurgency will not remain theoretical or involve back-of-the-envelope estimates of troop levels. It is clear to all around the table now that pursuing a full counterinsurgency, at least according to the model developed in Iraq by Gen. David H. Petraeus and embraced by McChrystal, would entail tens of thousands of additional troops, legions of civilian specialists and billions more reconstruction dollars.
Senior military leaders, including Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Petraeus, who now heads the U.S. Central Command, have indicated their support for McChrystal's request in discussions with administration officials. Biden has taken the opposite view, renewing arguments he made earlier this year for a narrower counterterrorism mission instead of a comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign. Others, including Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, have not staked out a firm position.
With the costs now clearer, some officials at the National Security Council and the State Department who voiced support for counterinsurgency in March have started to consider other options. There is increasing interest in Biden's stance, as well as in a modified counterinsurgency effort that would involve sending more military trainers but not more combat forces.
"The skeptics are growing," one senior official said.
Asked why Obama is questioning a key assumption of his Afghanistan strategy just six months after he stood before a bank of flags and endorsed the white paper, administration spokesmen have cited the potential impact on counterinsurgency efforts of the country's fraud-riddled presidential election in August. They have also noted that Obama said in March that he would review whether the United States was "using the right tools and tactics to make progress."
McChrystal Wanted 50,000 Troops
Cooperation Rises between Iran and Taliban
Taliban Threat to Pakistan's Stability?
But senior officials involved in Afghanistan strategy discussions now and earlier this year said the lack of agreement in March about counterinsurgency will make these deliberations more protracted and disputatious.
"We're going back to key assumptions," one official said.
Agreement on the Goal
Less than three weeks after Obama took office, the White House selected former CIA officer Bruce Riedel to review U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan. Riedel was told to consult broadly but act quickly: The president wanted his conclusions by mid-March, before a NATO summit in Europe early in April.
Working with national security adviser James L. Jones and his top aides, Riedel assembled a team that included representatives from the Defense and State departments and the CIA. A senior official from the Joint Chiefs of Staff was there. So, too, was Biden's national security adviser, Antony Blinken, and Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, who was President George W. Bush's Iraq war czar but was kept on by Jones to help manage Afghanistan war policy for the National Security Council. Petraeus and Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration's point man at the State Department for Afghanistan and Pakistan, often attended the group's meetings.
In a campaign speech in June 2008, Obama called the fight against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and in the frontier regions of Pakistan "a war that we must win." He did not mention the Taliban, the insurgents battling U.S. forces and the Afghan government. Although the Taliban welcomed Osama bin Laden when it ruled Afghanistan, U.S. intelligence officials say they believe there are few, if any, links between Taliban commanders in Afghanistan today and senior al-Qaeda members.
Obama's choice of words was not lost on members of the review team. They, too, argued that the United States should focus on al-Qaeda. Their final document made the point bluntly: "The core goal of the U.S. must be to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda."
But the question of how to achieve that end provoked pointed debate. Most participants insisted that the only way to prevent al-Qaeda from returning to Afghanistan would be to build up an Afghan government, with a large enough police force and army to defend itself. That would require continued U.S. assistance, in reconstruction and in fighting the Taliban. And that meant counterinsurgency.
Blinken, speaking for his boss, argued that trying to build an Afghan state strong enough to withstand the Taliban would take more time and resources than the American public would be willing to tolerate. If the goal is defeating al-Qaeda, he said, the United States should
One participant described the counterinsurgency vs. counterterrorism debate as "very spirited." But, the participant said, referring to Blinken, "at the end of the day, he was a minority of one."
Counterterrorism is "what the Bush administration did largely for seven years, and it didn't work," Riedel said. "And it's not likely to work in the future."
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
© 2009 The Washington Post Company
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- Asking the military what to do about Afghanistan is like asking carpetlayers what to do about a new, empty house. Hardwood floors or wall-to-wall ? What do you think they're going to say ? Pat Buchanon was on the TV yesterday saying that it will probably fail, but he just can't hand a "victory" to the Taliban, so he says put more troops in there ! These guys will put our boys into the jaws of death for any stupid reason. It's all about bravado, it's all about what other people will think for them. All of this was said during the Viet Nam war - now we take vacations there. Someone somewhere has to think about our real national interests, and stop this madness. Let the Afghans rule themselves.
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- superdem1
I agree with the analogy to a point. When ask what a Military Commanders assessment of the situation is. Of course he is going to give you a MILITARY assessment. That is why we as the tax payers pay their salaries of OUR Professional Military Commanders to make military assessments. NOT POLITICAL ASSESSMENTS.
And your last sentence you stated let the Afghans rule themselves. I ask you. Do you think right now they can REALLY rule themselves?
Just my thoughts. Thank you for reading.
- superdem1
- The Islamic& Christian "right" ,both hate Obama,but the Islamic will lay down their lives for the fight,the Evangelicals keep to political back stabbing & lies.....
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- You would think that after seeing what happened to the Russians we would have sense enough to realize that this war is an exercise in futility. We will have ourselves another Viet Nam if we continue with this stupidity. Our initial goal was to get Ben Laden and we failed due to the previous administration's ineptness. The best thing we can do is start withdrawing our troops and get out of there as soon as possible. We have been there for eight years and the enemy is stronger than ever. They are tougher than the Viet Cong and will fight to the last man. We need to realize that the middle east will never be anything like the west and we cannot force our ways on the people there. We need to let them determine their own destiny and concentrate on our own country.
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- Why must they keep reporting that we are at odds over the Afghan mission when there is no clear mission?
This war will be a long, expensive failed endeavor in the end, if there ever is to be an end to it. What a mess. - Reply to this comment
