McChrystal says more troops needed

NY Times:

The top military commander in Afghanistan warns in a confidential assessment of the war there that he needs additional troops within the next year or else the conflict “will likely result in failure.”

The grim assessment is contained in a 66-page report that the commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, submitted to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Aug. 30, and which is now under review by President Obama and his top national security advisers.

The disclosure of details in the assessment, reported Sunday night by The Washington Post, coincided with new skepticism expressed by President Obama about sending any more troops into Afghanistan until he was certain that the strategy was clear.

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“Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near term (next 12 months) — while Afghan security capacity matures — risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible,” General McChrystal writes.

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CNN's story on the report says:

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Bob Woodward of the Post -- who wrote the article -- called it "a striking thing for a general to say to the secretary of defense and the commander-in-chief."

McChrystal "really takes his finger and puts it in their eye, 'Deliver or this won't work,'" Woodward told CNN's "American Morning" on Monday. "He says if they don't endorse this full counterinsurgency strategy, don't even give me the troops because it won't work."

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The Washington Post story is here.

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But he repeatedly warns that without more forces and the rapid implementation of a genuine counterinsurgency strategy, defeat is likely. McChrystal describes an Afghan government riddled with corruption and an international force undermined by tactics that alienate civilians.

He provides extensive new details about the Taliban insurgency, which he calls a muscular and sophisticated enemy that uses modern propaganda and systematically reaches into Afghanistan's prisons to recruit members and even plan operations.

McChrystal's assessment is one of several options the White House is considering. His plan could intensify a national debate in which leading Democratic lawmakers have expressed reluctance about committing more troops to an increasingly unpopular war. Obama said last week that he will not decide whether to send more troops until he has "absolute clarity about what the strategy is going to be."

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... Most starkly, he says: "[I]nadequate resources will likely result in failure. However, without a new strategy, the mission should not be resourced."

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That last quoted statement suggest the General is not willing to be the fall guy for Obama dithering and failure to supply an adequate force to space ratio. It is a direct slap at Sen. Carl Levin and his small foot print strategy that would just train Afghan forces.

Levin and Obama have both exposed their ignorance of counterinsurgency operations with their skepticism about the troop request. The additional troops are needed to protect the people and cut off the enemy's ability to move to contact and retreat from contact. It is the cutting off of movement that destroys the enemy strategy and protecting the people leads to the intelligence needed to cut off that movement.