President Obama and Gen. Stanley McChrystal began their decisive one-on-one talk in the Oval Office at 9:51 a.m., according to ABC’s Jake Tapper. Whether or not McChrystal loses his command, all signs point to Obama sticking with his current Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy. If so, that means that operational and More…
Vice President Biden will probably have the last laugh now that Gen. Stanley McChrystal is returning to Washington to learn his fate as commanding general in Afghanistan after insulting his civilian bosses and colleagues to Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings. No matter what happens to McChrystal, the article strengthens More…
The president of the Center for a New American Security, John Nagl, has an op-ed in the New York Daily News arguing against despair for the Afghanistan war. “[I]t is possible over the next five years to build an Afghan government that can outperform the Taliban and an Afghan Army More…
Shortly after Michele Flournoy, the undersecretary of defense for policy, told a Senate panel this morning that “we are regaining the initiative and insurgency is beginning to lose momentum,” insurgents assassinated Hajji Abdul Jabar, the governor of Arghandab district in Kandahar. According to The Wall Street Journal, insurgents More…
Today’s now-postponed Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Afghanistan was overshadowed by Gen. David Petraeus’s brief but frightening loss of consciousness. But before Petraeus momentarily took ill about 45 minutes into the hearing, he and Michele Flournoy, the undersecretary of defense for policy, made a vigorous case that training More…
That’s going to be the focus of this morning’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing this morning with Gen. David Petraeus and Michele Flournoy, the undersecretary of defense for policy, and tomorrow’s complementary hearings in the House. Both The New York Times and The Washington Post have big stories on congressional More…
Gen. Stanley McChrystal effectively settles this calibration of how his strategy for the “process” of securing Kandahar shifted in reaction to local perspectives:
The operation to secure the Kandahar region will unfold more slowly and last longer than the military had planned, Gen. Stanley McChrystal said. The slower pace
Something that yesterday’s look at the NATO/Afghan “process” to secure Kandahar overlooked is that one of the reasons U.S. officials have taken pains to say that operations in Kandahar won’t look like the February invasion of Marja is that Marja isn’t going particularly well. While the insurgents do not More…
This New York Times piece about a “shift” in the NATO-Afghan plan to secure Kandahar from Taliban insurgents to a focus on civilian efforts is kind of overstated. It’s true that over the last couple of weeks U.S. and Afghan officials have de-emphasized military operations and stopped using the word More…
Yesterday, I cited a blind quote in a McClatchy story from a Defense Department official. It raised doubts that the force levels anticipated for Kandahar’s “rising tide” — 20,350 NATO and Afghan troops by September — are sufficient to protect the population from insurgents. “None of this makes any More…
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