Hey Stan, What Part of 18 Months Is Not Clear To You? Posted by Michael Cohen

Perhaps this is the question that Barack Obama should be asking his commanding general in Afghanistan after he reads the transcript from McChrystal's press briefing in Brussels today. Two quotes jump off the page:

McChrystal, the top U.S. and allied commander in Afghanistan, said it will take longer than anticipated for the combined military and civilian offensive he launched this spring to oust the Taliban and win local civilian support of the government.

"I do think it will happen more slowly than we had originally anticipated," McChrystal said, according to an Associated Press dispatch. "It will take a number of months for this to play out, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing."

 . . . Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said the Kandahar operation needs to have demonstrated some success by this fall in order to meet the timetable set down by Obama to begin withdrawing U.S. troops in July 2011.

McChrystal insisted that the strategy needs time to succeed.

"I think it's more important that we get it right than we get it fast," he said. "It's a deliberate process. It takes time to convince people."

You read this stuff and you begin to wonder if McChrystal just skipped over the section of Obama's West Point speech when he talked about an 18-month timeline for withdrawal, which begins, by the way, a year from this month. The fact is, McChrystal's strategy might need more time to succeed, but he doesn't have it . . . which make you wonder why he adopted a strategy that is so time intensive in the first place. This seems like an especially important question when you consider that President Obama reportedly told McChrsytal not to send NATO troops into any region they couldn't turn over to the Afghans by June 2011.

At some point perhaps the President could remind his commanding general in Afghanistan that when he said 18 months . . . he meant it. Because if McChrystal has his way 18 years might be a more approximate estimate for how long the US is going to be in Afghanistan.

Comments

[Don Bacon]

What 18 months, kimosabe?

SecDef Gates said on Wednesday there will have to be progress:

"All of us, for our publics, are going to have to show by the end of the year that our strategy is on the right track and making some headway."

Of course there will be "progress", as the Pentagon reported to the Congress last month. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy:

“I believe we are achieving success,” she said. “We are on the right road for the first time in a long time in Afghanistan. I would argue for the first time, we finally have the right mission, the right strategy, the right leadership team in place.” congressional testimony, May 6, 2010

But don't think that all this "progress" will bring quick results. Gates on Thursday:

". . .we intend, as an alliance and as a large group of nations, to be Afghanistan's partner for a very long time into the future. . .we will continue to partner with them far into the future. . . So I think the key here is that July 2011 is the beginning of the transition, and that that will be conditions based."

"conditions based" -- Rummy used to love that term.

[Michael Drew]

Begin to withdraw troops starting in July 2011 if conditions warrant is what was promised. I totally think Obama deserves whatever public backlash he receives if he doesn't live up to that, or even to a falsely inflated public impression of it. But that doesn't make inaccurate implications from responsible commentators about what was actually promised any less inaccurate than they actually are.

[Don Bacon]

Big deal -- Obama pulls out a platoon -- that's a "start."

[TıkLa-Sohbet]

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[leyla]

Begin to withdraw troops starting in July 2011 if conditions warrant is what was promised. I totally think Obama deserves whatever public backlash he receives if he doesn't live up to that, or even to a falsely inflated public impression of it. But that doesn't make inaccurate implications from responsible commentators about what was actually promised any less inaccurate than they actually are.

[sesli sohbet]

I totally think Obama deserves whatever public backlash he receives if he doesn't live up to that, or even to a falsely inflated public impression of it. But that doesn't make inaccurate implications from responsible commentators about what was actually promised any less inaccurate than they actually are.

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[ghd straightner]

Point speech when he talked about an 18-month timeline for withdrawal, which begins, by the way, a year from this month. The fact is, McChrystal's strategy might need more time to succeed, but he doesn't have it . . . which make you wonder why he adopted a strategy that is so time intensive in the first place. This seems like an especially important question when you consider that President Obama reportedly told McChrsytal not to send NATO troops into any region they couldn't turn over to the Afghans by June 2011.