The President Will Make a Decision Next Week on Troop Surge to Afghanistan

The Obama Administration will announce his troop surge strategy to Afghanistan next week. Whatever strategy emerges next week will be his and no one else; he owns this now! In March, the president made a strategic mistake by announcing a strategy that was not thought out, but really only broad concepts. There was no detailed strategy put forward by the administration on the change of objectives from the previous administrations efforts in Afghanistan.

In fairness to the Administration he inherited a war in Afghanistan from the Bush Administration who failed to have any strategy for Afghanistan, nor did it have any effective civil-military plan, failed to coordinate with our NATO allies and administered ineffectively the international aid. Had the Bush Administration put together a viable coherent strategy for Afghanistan we may not be in this situation today.

Now the President must stop re-visiting the past on what the Bush Administration failed to do in Afghanistan and what he failed to do in March by rushing into a strategy that was not fully thought out. His strategy has to have a comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan at the same time address the deteriorating situation in Pakistan.

The president must use all his powers of persuasion to gain the support of congress and most importantly the American people who have become skeptical of continued operations in Afghanistan. Partisan politics cannot be part of the equation as the stakes are too high for America to fail. Any failure on our part will only embolden Islamic extremism in the region and the world and further destabilize the Central Asian region to our detriment.

The presidents has to come out forceful and decisively on what are the short term and long term strategy of our efforts and not paint them in broad rosy terms. The path ahead will be challenging and at times hard in terms in personal and material, but failure will have catastrophic consequence for the nation and the world.

Whatever strategy the president articulates to the nation next week he has to have the conviction to see it through and not buckle under to political pressure when the going gets tough.
The stakes are too high for us and the world!