Barack Obama will unveil his plan for Afghanistan Friday. Mike Allen reports that the new plan will include 4200 more troops, as well as civilian reinforcements. (See Goldfarb on the politics of the plan here.) Allen writes:
The plan is at the heavier end of the spectrum of possibilities the White House considered, according to several top officials briefed on the plan. A minimalist approach would have focused on counterterrorism and providing security past national elections later this year. An even more robust approach would have included a broader counterinsurgency campaign and an even longer and more idealistic commitment to the central government.
John McCain warned against such a “minimalist” approach in a thoughtful speech at the Brussels Forum last weekend. And he laid out his vision — a compelling one, in my view — for a more aggressive counterinsurgency strategy.
A narrow short-term focus on counterterrorism, by contrast, would repeat precisely the mistakes we the United States made for years in Iraq prior to the surge, with the same catastrophic consequences. Before 2007 in Iraq, American Special Forces had complete freedom of action to strike at terrorist leaders, backed by more than 120,000 conventional American forces and overwhelming airpower. Although we succeeded in killing countless terrorists – including the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq – the insurgency continued to grow in strength and violence. It was not until we changed course and applied a new approach – a counterinsurgency strategy focused on providing basic security for the people and improving their lives – that the cycle of violence was at last broken.
One indication of the extraordinary success of that strategy in Iraq is this fact: “Iraq didn’t come up once,” reports someone who traveled with McCain. “Amazing what a year and a surge will do.” Indeed.
