During his testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this morning, Jack Lew, the deputy secretary of state, praised Gen. Stanley McChrystal and Ambassador Eikenberry for “their commitment for truly joined civilian-military efforts are absolute” in Afghanistan. Accordingly, he said, the U.S. troop increase has to be matched by “fully More…
In confirmation hearings six months ago, Gen. Stanley McChrystal painted a bleak picture of an Afghanistan plagued by a growing insurgency. But in two marathon congressional hearings on Tuesday, McChrystal, now the commander of U.S. and More…
The House Armed Services Committee hearing with Gen. McChrystal and Amb. Eikenberry is wrapping up. Two things that we still don’t know, exactly: first, which southern and eastern Afghan population centers will be protected by U.S. and allied forces and which won’t be; and secondly, the ultimate aspirational size of More…
So what happened with those leaked cables from Ambassador Karl Eikenberry doubting the utility of the extended surge? Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) wants to know.
Eikenberry explained that “all the participants in this very vigorous review process” were encouraged to be blunt. “I’d like to clarify that at no point More…
And here’s the once skeptical ambassador to Afghanistan. “I believe the course the president outline does offer the best path to stabilize Afghanistan and ensure that al-Qaeda can no longer gain a foothold to plan new attacks against us,” said Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, one of McChrystal’s predecessors in military command More…
And here’s Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of the Afghanistan war, testifying for the first time since his June congressional hearings. He praised “an old friend,” Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, to signal that whatever tensions they’ve had over the strategy are behind them. “A stable Afghanistan [and] a defunct al-Qaeda” are More…
Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), chairman of the House Armed Services committee, told Gen. Stanley McChrystal and Ambassador Karl Eikenberry that he’s been “long anticipating your testimony today.” An uncertain ally of the Obama administration on Afghanistan, Skelton nevertheless praises the president for the extended troop surge and for “convey[ing] his More…
While this post serves, I think, as a good introduction to the next two days’ worth of Capitol Hill testimony on Afghanistan from Gen. Stanley McChrystal and Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, let’s take it a step further. The comparison with Gen. David Petraeus’ dramatic September 2007 Iraq hearings may be More…
State Department officials have been assuring reporters for the last week that by January, more than 1,000 diplomats, development workers and other U.S. government civilians will be positioned in Afghanistan to help their soon-to-be-100,000 uniformed counterparts in an effort dubbed the “civilian surge.” Indeed, just this morning, Paul Jones, the More…
As mentioned earlier, tomorrow morning Gen. Stanley McChrystal and Amb. Karl Eikenberry begin two days of hearings on the revised Afghanistan strategy. I’ll be providing up-to-the-minute coverage on this blog. And to that end, I was thinking about writing some preview questions about what to look for, as I More…
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