Democrats get wobbly on Afghanistan

NY Times:

The leading Senate Democrat on military matters said Thursday that he is against sending more American combat troops to Afghanistan until the United States speeded up the training and equipping of more Afghan security forces.

The comments by the senator, Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who is the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, illustrates the growing skepticism President Obama is facing in his own party as the White House decides whether to commit more deeply to a war that has begun losing public support, even as American commanders acknowledge that the situation on the ground has deteriorated.

Senator Levin’s comments, made in an interview, are significant because his personal stature on military matters gives him the ability to sway fellow lawmakers, and his pivotal committee position provides a platform for vetting Mr. Obama’s major decisions on troops.

Underscoring the increasing unease, the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said earlier Thursday that the president would face opposition if he sought to fulfill an expected request from Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, for more American combat troops.

“I don’t think there is a great deal of support for sending more troops to Afghanistan in the country or in Congress,” Ms. Pelosi told reporters, emphasizing that she was eager to see a report due from the White House in two weeks on benchmarks to measure the success of the administration’s six-month-old strategy.

The White House has begun to indicate that it could be weeks or perhaps much longer before Mr. Obama decides whether to send more troops to Afghanistan.

Administration officials say they want to do a complete review of the effectiveness of the last American troop increase, which put the American presence at 68,000 troops, an all-time high. They are also digesting a strategic assessment of the Afghan mission that General McChrystal has submitted.

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So the White House that complains about the Afghanistan war being under resourced, which did not provide the number of troops requested is going to measure the effectiveness of an inadequate number of troops? This makes no sense. It is already apparent that we have an inadequate force to space ratio in Afghanistan and Obama is dithering on the troop request while Democrats who have no comprehension of counterinsurgency warfare mumble about not sending more troops.

This was sadly predictable. What will happen if they do not send more troops is the war will last much longer and will be much more bloody. The troops will be engaging in whack-o-mole operations having the buy the same real estate over and over because there are too few troops to hold what has been taken. Levin's pretensions of expertise are as inadequate now as they were when he resisted the surge in Iraq. The guy knows little about warfare. Perhaps that why the Democrats trusted him with his position. I just do not have much respect for his opinion on troop levels.