Kerry ops for longer bloodier war in Afghanistan

NY Times:

Calling for a broad, patient war strategy, John Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Monday that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the American military commander in Afghanistan, was trying to do too much in a relatively short time.

Senator Kerry, who traveled recently to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said his conversations with General McChrystal covered the importance of a “smart counterinsurgency” approach.

“But I believe his current plan reaches too far, too fast,” Mr. Kerry said at a gathering here of the Council on Foreign Relations, an independent research organization.

While Mr. Kerry did not mention numbers for the troop strength he would like to see in Afghanistan, he seemed to differ, at least implicitly, with General McChrystal, who is believed to be seeking up to 40,000 additional American troops. There are about 68,000 United States troops there now.

Alluding to his and the country’s experiences in Vietnam four decades ago, Mr. Kerry called for a “redefined strategy” that would focus “on what is achievable as well as critical, and empower the Afghans to take control of their own future.”

The senator said the United States must be both patient and realistic, and that “a sustained, long-term commitment to the Afghan people,” on civilian as well as military fronts, is essential to avoid a failure that would have enormous implications.

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Kerry is probably one of the least smart people in public life when it comes to warfare. He has never comprehended counterinsurgency warfare. Never. By opting to have a smaller fighting force he will leave the military fighting with a whack-a-mole strategy, because there will not be enough troops to protect the people in a given region. You need an adequate force to space ration to be able to cut off the enemy's movement to contact and his lines of retreat.

Not providing enough troops to do that is the opposite of "smart." Democrats continue to abuse that word to explain their bad policy positions. What Kerry is proposing is at best a policy based on ignorance. With him, to be charitable, I suspect it is willful ignorance.