“I served in al Anbar [Iraq]. I tried to conduct a comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign with insufficient resources . . . I didn’t have enough boots on the ground.” The Iraqi insurgents killed his troops. They blew up his economic projects. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, John Nagl, a retired army officer, called for more American forces in Afghanistan. Nagl is an advocate of the same strategy put forward by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Kabul. “Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months)–while Afghan security capacity matures–risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible,” according to McChrystal’s classified report describing security conditions in Afghanistan, reported by the Washington Post on Monday.

With American forces in Afghanistan experiencing the bloodiest month of battle in August, the administration and Congress are debating the merits of the counterinsurgency strategy in place. Some of the experts testifying on at Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings September 16 and 17 said that a robust counterinsurgency campaign is the only way to win this war, while others supported a less-engaged counter-terrorism approach. Senator John Kerry, the committee’s chairman, seemed to prefer a counter-terrorism campaign, which focuses on targeting terrorists rather than securing the population. Gen. McChrystal is, however, very experienced in the targeted raids and air strike that characterize counter-terror campaigns. As the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command (2003-2008), McChrystal oversaw the capture of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq. As Senator Bob Corker noted in the hearing, “I think frankly that Gen. McChrystal is perhaps the most capable special operations commander that this country has ever produced. If he thought it could be done that way [in Afghanistan], it would be.”