There are a bunch of reports out suggesting that the recommendations of a review done by General McChrystal and an as yet unidentified group of ten or so civilian advisers (including Anthony Cordesman, who made his participation public earlier this week) will include a request for more troops. The Washington Post says that “Several members of the advisory group, who spoke about the issue of force levels on the condition of anonymity, said that they think more U.S. troops are needed but that it was not clear how large an increase McChrystal would seek.” And the lede in the AP’s write-up: “The U.S. general in charge of turning around the war in Afghanistan is likely to recommend significant changes to U.S. and NATO operations, military officials and others familiar with his forthcoming report said. Those changes could include additional U.S. troops despite political headwind against further expansion of the war.” It wasn’t hard to see this coming — and just about everyone on the right did see it coming. When Obama first announced his Afghan strategy, he set a course of escalation in a commendable attempt to recapture the initiative there, announcing the deployment of 17,000 additional U.S. troops to the fight. But that number was less than had been requested by the previous commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan. A month later, the administration announced that another 4,000 troops would be deployed. “The president has decided he is going to resource this war properly,” an administration official told the Washington Post. John McCain warned that the president had left himself open to charges of a “Lyndon Johnson style of incrementalism.” And barely a month later, Obama ordered an additional one thousand special operations forces to Afghanistan. Obama did make a mistake in not committing a larger force to the fight from the outset. But the administration has, to its credit, tried to correct that mistake by providing commanders with the troops they need (notwithstanding the embarrassing “whiskey tango foxtrot moment” that General Jones warned commanders of should they request any additional forces). Now President Obama is once again likely to face a request for significantly more troops in the fight against al Qaeda and their Taliban allies. I’ve heard from defense experts in Washington familiar with the strategy in Afghanistan that McChrystal might need as many as six additional brigades. President Obama may be too timid to talk of victory in Afghanistan, but he has made a commitment to the fight there already and the American people have every right to expect that he will finish what he’s started. If our new commander in Afghanistan, who was selected by President Obama, requests more troops, the president should deliver them. Obama has been in office a little over six months. He has stayed the course on Iran and Israel, despite every indication that his policies have achieved no notable success and, at worst, may have been counterproductive. He has stayed the course in Iraq, where the security situations seems fairly stable and the outlook hopeful, though that was also the situation when he assumed office. So why would he not stay the course in Afghanistan, where he has already sent a steady stream of additional forces and entrusted strategy to a commander with an impressive track record. It would be shameful, not to mention horribly damaging to America’s standing and interests in that part of the world, if the president were to lose his nerve just as things start getting tough.
