White House having second thoughts about Afghanistan

The White House is having second thoughts about the aggressive approach to Afghanistan that was promised by Mr. Obama during the campaign and reaffirmed by the President in a major address in March.

From the Washington Post:

Senior White House officials have begun to make the case for a policy shift in Afghanistan that would send few, if any, new combat troops to the country and instead focus on faster military training of Afghan forces, continued assassinations of al-Qaeda leaders and support for the government of neighboring Pakistan in its fight against the Taliban.

In a three-hour meeting Wednesday at the White House, senior advisers challenged some of the key assumptions in Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's blunt assessment of the nearly eight-year-old war, which President Obama has said is being fought to destroy al-Qaeda and its allies in Afghanistan and the ungoverned border areas of Pakistan.

McChrystal, commander of the 100,000 NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, has asked Obama to quickly endorse his call for a change in military strategy and approve the additional resources he needs to retake the initiative from the resurgent Taliban.

But White House officials are resisting McChrystal's call for urgency, which he underscored Thursday during a speech in London, and questioning important elements of his assessment, which calls for a vast expansion of an increasingly unpopular war. One senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the meeting, said, "A lot of assumptions -- and I don't want to say myths, but a lot of assumptions -- were exposed to the light of day"...Continued

Myths? Wow!! Talking about cutting off your Commander at the knees. Ouch.

Some Thoughts:

1. When Pres. Obama was making his promises to aggressively pursue the Afghan War the last two years, I suspected that, when it came down to it, he would flinch. He is after all a "man of the left."

2. Many of these “high level advisors” who are challenging General McChrystal's analysis were dead wrong about about the surge in Iraq. They include Biden, Kerry, and Obama himself.

3. Early in the Iraq war, when Bush ignored calls for more troops in Iraq from his military brass, he was savaged in the press. Will Obama be treated similarly if he turns down McChrystal's request?

4. I fully support the President giving careful deliberation to any escalation in Afghanistan. But, why is he only starting now to deliberate now, nine months into his administration. He did nothing for nine months about the most important decision he will make as President?

5. Does this mean that when he appointed Gen. McChrystal in March and announced an aggressive new counter-insurgency plan, the President did so without deliberation?

6. What happened to that plan he announced in March? The White House now acts like it never existed.

7. Has anyone else noticed that when it was advantageous politically to favor an aggressive prosecution of the Afghan war, the President did so. And, also, now that the political winds have changed, he is suddenly having second thoughts.