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You may have noticed that another Marine, Gen. Charles Krulak, who served as commandant from 1995 to 1999, recently expressed � ���"total agreement� �� � with columnist George Will's assessment in his recent op-ed, � ���"Time to get out of Afghanistan.� �� �
Sounding very much like his commandant predecessor, Gen. Shoup, Gen. Krulak emphasized that effective counterinsurgency operations would require � ���"hundreds of thousands� �� � additional troops and that our military could not support such a � ���"surge.� �� �
Speaking more generally, Gen. Krulak, asked, � ���"What in Afghanistan is deemed in our nation's vital interest"Who is the enemy?� �� � Krulak added that � ���"No desired end state has ever been clearly articulated and no strategy formulated that would lead us to achieve even an ill defined end state.� �� �
Gen. Krulak's points are well taken. I have come to see that my speechwriter's clever alliteration � ���"disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda� �� � falls far short of an actual strategy for Afghanistan� ��"the more so, inasmuch as most of what is left of al-Qaeda's local leadership is now in Pakistan.
We'll Know Our Goal When We See It
Also troubling is the public reply given by special envoy Richard Holbrooke a few weeks ago, when he was asked at a friendly think tank about our specific goal in Afghanistan.
Holbrooke answered, � ���"We'll know it when we see it.� �� � With that kind of goal, I guess I should not have been surprised that Holbrooke also was unable to deliver on my promise on March 27 that there would be � ���"metrics to measure progress and hold ourselves accountable.� �� �
This is not satisfactory. So I am sending in a Marine. I am asking Gen. Anthony Zinni, who was CENTCOM commander from 1997 to 2000, to do what President Kennedy asked Gen. Shoup to do� ��"not in Vietnam, this time, but in Afghanistan.
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