By the time you read this, Gen. Stanley McChrystal may very well have lost his command in Afghanistan. McChrystal is headed to a White House Situation Room meeting with President Obama on Wednesday; Time’s Joe Klein reported Tuesday afternoon that the general offered to resign after making disrespectful comments More…
Lots of things were unclear about U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2008: the precise mission, the resources, the broader national dedication. But one thing wasn’t in doubt: The main area of U.S. focus was in Afghanistan’s Pashtun east, where the primary lines of Taliban infiltration from neighboring More…
Here’s new video released from Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s command in Afghanistan of McChrystal issuing post-speech strategic guidance to some of his deputies. He praises “a new clarity in our mission. … We are here to provide the government of Afghanistan and our Afghan partners time, space and capability to defend More…
So: $25 billion, five years and 17,000 U.S. trainer troops to yield 400,000 total Afghan soldiers and cops. That’s Center for a New American Security president John Nagl’s estimate of what it’ll cost to double the size of Afghan security forces, Bloomberg’s Indira A.R. Lakshmanan reports. Next week, Gen. More…
Nancy Youssef at McClatchy reports that Defense Secretary Bob Gates has ordered incoming Afghanistan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his deputy, Gen. David Rodriguez, to spend 60 days reviewing war strategy. The task is nothing new for McChrystal, who just finished a different review of war strategy for More…
To adapt, clumsily, one of the more memorable quips of what used to be called the War on Terror: in Afghanistan, we set up the military command structure that we can, and in Iraq, we set up the military command structure that we must. Except maybe not anymore. (You More…
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