Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) has read the Army-Marine Corps Field Manual on Counterinsurgency that Petraeus quarterbacked in 2006, and he notes that it urges about 20-25 troops per 1000 inhabitants in a given intervention to provide for the security of that population. Doing some math, he calculates that even assuming More…
Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) wants to know the answer to the million-dollar question: how will we know when the Afghanistan war is over? He specifically references Petraeus’ famous half-joking question to reporter Rick Atkinson during the Iraq invasion, “tell me how this ends.”
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) asks a critical question: given the links between some elements in the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency and elements of the Taliban and other extremists, how can the United States really give increased military and intelligence aid to Pakistan? Won’t it end up, at least in part, More…
Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, asks why the new administration strategy didn’t expand the total size of the Afghan security forces. Flournoy says the administration wanted first to review whether that was necessary.
Joining Petraeus and Flournoy is Adm. Eric Olson, the chief of U.S. Special Operations Command, who’s here to explain the irregular-warfare on top of the Af-Pak counterinsurgency strategy. Will he say anything about the drones?
Al-Qaeda’s surviving leaders “have proven adept at communicating and surviving” and “remain a draw” to More…
And here’s the counterinsurgency hero, Gen. David Petraeus. “The most pressing transnational threat” from extremists “in the world” are here in Af-Pak. “Reversing the downward spiral… will require sustained commitment,” which the new strategy will meet. Af-Pak is “a single theater that requires whole-of-governments” — he emphasizes the plural — More…
Here’s Michele Flournoy, the undersecretary of defense for policy and a co-chairman of the Af-Pak review. That review “went back to first principles” — “dismantling, disrupting and defeating al-Qaeda and its extremist allies,” which is “absolutely vital to our national interests.” This is “why we have troops in Afghanistan.” And More…
Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. troops in the Middle East and South Asia, and Michele Flournoy, the undersecretary of defense for policy, are set to go before the Senate Armed Services Committee at 9:30 (ish) this morning to discuss/explain the Obama administration’s Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy. Here are a couple things More…
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