Commentary: Obama's mixed Afghanistan messages

U.S. and Afghan forces patrol a Kandahar neighborhood.


Commentary: Obama's mixed Afghanistan messages
By Doyle McManus | Los Angeles Times
Posted on Saturday, June 19, 2010

The news from Afghanistan has been bad lately. The military campaign to win control of Kandahar, the country's second-largest city, has slowed to a crawl. Taliban insurgents have filtered back into parts of southern Afghanistan that U.S. Marines had cleared in the spring. President Hamid Karzai, the erratic leader of Afghanistan's civilian government, has given only halfhearted support to the U.S.-led military effort — and has done little to clean up the corruption that undermines public support for his regime.

Yet when Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the U.S. military commander in Kabul, delivered an assessment of the state of the war last week, he said — very cautiously — that he is succeeding at his initial goal: interrupting the Taliban's momentum.

"We see progress everywhere, but it's incomplete," McChrystal said. "It is slow, but it's positive."

In McChrystal's words lies the central dilemma President Obama will face later this year, when he reviews his policy in Afghanistan: The war isn't being lost anymore — but it isn't being won yet, either.

When Obama agreed to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, he imposed an American timetable on the war. He gave his generals a year to show results, saying he'd review the situation in December 2010. He also set a target date of July 2011 for starting to draw down U.S. troops.



unhappycamper comment: "The war isn't being lost anymore. . . " :woohoo:

And then?

WE'RE NEVER LEAVING.