A lot of hot air to arrive at the military consensus

ARTICLE: U.S. to Protect Populous Afghan Areas, Officials Say, By THOM SHANKER, PETER BAKER and HELENE COOPER, New York Times, October 27, 2009

Okay:

President Obama's advisers are focusing on a strategy for Afghanistan aimed at protecting about 10 top population centers, administration officials said Tuesday, describing an approach that would stop short of an all-out assault on the Taliban while still seeking to nurture long-term stability.

But I don't get why this is considered the "middle way." Everything I heard and everybody I talk to basically said this is the essence of McChrystal's plan in the short term, with the obvious hope to expand later on. We fiddle with the troop numbers--fine. Everybody declares we'll still kill AQ in Pakistan--like that was ever coming off the table.

I will go with Cheney's criticism on this one: a lot of dithering to come up with the same basic plan and call it "consensus." Plus a conscious low-balling on the necessary numbers and no real effort yet displayed to regionalize the solution over the longer-term.

To me, that's a lot of sturm und drang with little-to-no innovation.

My, what a crucial debate!

This reminds me of the surge debate on Iraq: basic military line adopted after a lot of hot air expended, with the politicians claiming deep impact. I am not impressed.

Comments

[Dan Hare]

Its the politician in Obama... He is still a young President. Will be interesting to see how he 'grows' up into the sitting the the 'chair' (the Presidents Chair).

[Petrer]

You're right on the money about the hot hair. Frankly, ever since I have kept up with international news on the newspaper, military, and academic/NGO side, I am so surprised, and somewhat scared at how much people know about the issue...where I live, it is skewed to a anti Afghan war argument that holds no water at all, you can shut them down in a minute....but it is not solely a "progressive" idea either.

[Louis Heberlein]

Maybe this will serve as a reality drama that could inspire our groups of squabbling buddies in Afghanistan and Pakistan to adjust to pragmatic approaches after getting their own publicity shares on ego and interest group angles.

Workable consensus solutions usually get a lot of public/media/political emotional static even while they are successful after the public realizes that there will be some pain, and some unintended consequences.

So drama first?

[joe Michels]

Could it be that Obama is still in training? At one point Tom, you were OK with a remarkably inexperienced president, that could be trained-up.

We'll it going to take a lot of training by our defense experts to eliminate the years of leftist indoctrination that Obama has grownup with. I'm specifically talking about trust. That our military personnel can actually be trusted and are actually honorable people. Obama has learn this himself.