Obama told more troops needed for Afghan victory
Obama must now decide whether to commit thousands of additional American forces or try to hold the line against the Taliban with the troops andstrategy he has already approved. Obama made clear in television interviews he is reassessing whether his narrowed focus on countering the Afghan insurgency is working and will not be rushed into a decision about more troops.
“Resources will not win this war, but under-resourcing could lose it,” Gen Stanley McChrystal wrote in a five-page summary of the war as he found it upon taking command this summer.
McChrystal’s confidential 66-page report, sent to Defence Secretary Robert Gates on August 30, is under review at the White House.
“Although considerable effort and sacrifice have resulted in some progress, many indicators suggest the overall effort is deteriorating,” McChrystal said of the war’s progress.
Obama approved 21,000 additional US troops earlier this year, on the advice of Gates and other senior defence and military leaders. That will bring the number of US troops in Afghanistan to a record 68,000 by the end of this year, working alongside 38,000 Nato-led troops.
The question is whether to divert troops from Iraq or make other adjustments to expand that force significantly early next year.
Gates and others have repeatedly warned that too large a force would do more harm than good in a country hostile to anything it sees as foreign meddling. But Adm Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress last week he thinks more troops are probably necessary.
Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said the McChrystal assessment “is a classified, pre-decisional document, intended to provide President Obama and his national security team with the basis for a very important discussion about where we are now in Afghanistan and how best to get to where we want to be”.
While asserting that more troops are needed, McChrystal, the top US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, also pointed out an “urgent need” to significantly revise strategy. The US needs to interact better with the Afghan people, McChrystal said, and better organise its efforts with Nato allies.
“We run the risk of strategic defeat by pursuing tactical wins that cause civilian casualties orun necessary collateral damage. The insurgents cannot defeat us militarily; but we can defeat ourselves,” he wrote.
In his blunt assessment of the Taliban insurgency, McChrystal warned that unless the US and its allies gain the initiative and reverse the momentum of the militants within the next year, the US “risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible”.
