So this week at the Pentagon, my focus has been on Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s 60-day assessment of the situation in Afghanistan. While every point of this process so far has been public, the assessment itself is now considered a confidential military assessment. Thus, my colleagues and I are searching for those who have read it to give you some sense of what’s in it.
From what I can tell, the document will be underwhelming as I don’t think it reveals much more than what the general has already said publicly. The Afghan forces need more training; the mission needs more civilians; and the coalition needs to move its forces out of remote outposts and toward population centers. While the report does not state it explicitly, the general spells out a situation and a strategy that demands more troops.
Privately, advisors to McChrystal say the Pentagon asked for this assessment and the general agreed to do it, in part, to buy time. The assumption was the assessment would give the military time to tell the public the way ahead in Afghanistan, and it would give President Obama time to warm the American public to the idea of sending more troops.
As it turns out, the idea may have backfired. Between the flailing economy, the raging health care debate and an Afghanistan that increasingly appears to both unmanageable and more violent for U.S. troops, the president may find it far more difficult to ask for more troops than had he proposed the idea 60 days ago. Indeed, our own poll found that 56 percent of Americans oppose the idea. And yet, he can’t not send them either. Obama named McChrysal the commander earlier this summer because the military believes the former special forces commander is the best hope the United States has to salvage Afghanistan. So how can the President then not send the general what he believes he needs to win the war? Moreover, Obama called this the just, necessary war, the war the Untied States must win to protect its security.
So 60 days after this exercise started, the President may find that he doesn’t have the political capital to send more troops nor does he have the political standing to not send more.
