Kathleen McCaffrey, Associate Editor
Ideology: Libertarian | Writing from: Berlin, Germany

On March 27, 2009, President Obama finally announced that he knew how to proceed in the war in Afghanistan. By June 2009, General Stanley McChrystal was placed on the ground and led to command under the strategy Obama had so carefully contemplated.  Through some coincidence, June was the bloodiest month of the war in Afghanistan. Since June, though, things have not been looking up much as our military continues to suffer in the Middle East.

Earlier this week, though, The Washington Post leaked McChrystal’s highly anticipated report on Afghanistan. In it, “McChrystal calls for a change in strategy by ISAF, which has failed to properly implement a counterinsurgency program to defeat the Taliban and allied groups. ISAF must focus on securing the population, aiding in providing good governance, building and mentoring the Afghan security forces, and shifting itself away from an excessively defensive posture to enable the troops to engage with the Afghan people.” He describes the Afghan effort as “under-resourced.” In other words, it is only a matter of time before he requests more troops. McChrystal’s language also explicitly notes that Taliban have the initiative and time is of the essence in winning this war. This should evoke a sense of urgency in the White House that is “in Afghanistan to confront a common enemy that threatens the United States, our friends and allies, and the people of Afghanistan.”

Previously, Obama has described Afghanistan as a “war of necessity.” This choice of words implies a commitment to success. As far as objectives are concerned, Obama has the same priorities as George W. Bush. However, it was President Bush who almost immediately implemented the Keane-Kagan plan in Iraq after firing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld after Election Day in 2006. It was Bush who saw to it that General David Petraeus hit the ground running in Iraq by February and was able to begin the successful surge by March of 2007. The same surge, of course, that then-Senator Obama opposed. (Though I disagree with the War in Iraq, if our country is going to go through with it, it may as well do it the right way.) Now the options on the table are what “administration officials described as a wholesale reconsideration” of the President’s initial stance in March 2009.

Bush’s logic is in stark contrast to Obama, who has left military officials “questioning the administration’s commitment to succeed in Afghanistan… In Kabul, some members of McChrystal’s staff said they don’t understand why Obama called Afghanistan a ‘war of necessity’ but still hasn’t given them the resources they need to turn things around quickly.”

We should either cut our losses and pull out, or win once and for all using McChrystal’s expertise and guidance.

Regardless, though, we should hold the President accountable to his words from March.