Already, the Pentagon, at the direction of the White House, is preparing a set of 'options' for the Obama administration to consider for implementation in Afghanistan. Just ignore the fact that under Bush, and Gates as well, even the nation-building they've conducted in Afghanistan has faltered.
The latest military plan for Afghanistan, passed around today by the NATO chiefs, is to use the troops which would be reduced from the Iraq force and send them to defend Kabul; not heading directly for the Pakistan border to wage the battle against al-Qaeda Mr. Obama promised and encouraged, but heading directly from Iraq to defend the 'mayor of Kabul,' Hamid Karsai.
According to the NYT: "The plan for the incoming brigade, then, means that for the time being fewer reinforcements — or none at all — will be immediately available for the parts of Afghanistan where the insurgency is most intense."
Is this proposed 'surge' of force to defend the Afghanistan capital be the testing ground for Mr. Gates' new 'counterinsurgency' strategy? To me, it looks like the same old smash and grab approach that he's busy repudiating for benefit of the intellectuals he's appealing to in the journal; albeit, a bit less swaggering than his mentor.
"There's a huge building campaign (in Afghanistan) that has already begun," Major-General Michael Tucker, the deputy US commander in Afghanistan said today. "We're pushing dirt as we speak for the arrival of these forces," he said. "We have done in-depth studies on how many building spaces, how many helicopter pads, how many latrines, how many dining facilities ... down to the number of boots on the ground . . ."
An Iraq-type 'surge' in Afghanistan . . . "block by bloody block?"
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