On December 1, President Obama said about Afghanistan:
These are the three core elements of our strategy: a military effort to create the conditions for a transition; a civilian surge that reinforces positive action; and an effective partnership with Pakistan....
[S]ome call for a more dramatic and open-ended escalation of our war effort -- one that would commit us to a nation-building project of up to a decade. I reject this course because it sets goals that are beyond what can be achieved at a reasonable cost, and what we need to achieve to secure our interests. Furthermore, the absence of a time frame for transition would deny us any sense of urgency in working with the Afghan government. It must be clear that Afghans will have to take responsibility for their security, and that America has no interest in fighting an endless war in Afghanistan.
As President, I refuse to set goals that go beyond our responsibility, our means, or our interests....
Now that sounds like an explicit rejection of the ambitious nation-building efforts of counterinsurgency strategy (COIN). (If you haven't had a look at FM 3-24, the US Army's counterinsurgency manual (PDF, Scribd), you really should - at least Chapter 5, "Executing Counterinsurgency Operations," to get a sense of the scale of what's meant when a general is talking about following a counterinsurgency strategy.)
But according to the WaPo, The Pentagon and Gen. McChrystal are blithely talking about implementing "a war strategy that is largely unchanged after a three-month-long White House review of the conflict."
"Stan's mission really hasn't narrowed," said a senior Pentagon official involved with Afghanistan policy. "There won't be a radical change in the way he executes."...
The White House has shied away from labeling this phase of the war a counterinsurgency campaign because of concern that it connotes nation-building -- "counterinsurgency" was conspicuously absent from an administration fact sheet about the strategy issued after Obama's speech. But McChrystal has left little doubt that counterinsurgency is what he intends to do. He used the word multiple times in talking to his troops Wednesday morning in Kabul.
What's clear is that if Afghanistan is a counterinsurgency operation, it's now, in Year Eight of the war, still at the initial stages. And the handover to the host nation is a long, transitional process that begins only in the last stage. Ten or even twenty years or so of occupation was said to be what it would take.
That's troubling enough. But now there's also the memo by retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, commissioned by Gen. Petraeus. It flatly states:
"The international civilian agency surge will essentially not happen ---although State Department officers, US AID, CIA, DEA, and the FBI will make vital contributions. Afghanistan over the next 2-3 years will be simply too dangerous for most civil agencies."
Perhaps that's because the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, which protects diplomats all over the world will be unable to protect civilians in Afghanistan:
The State Department is tripling its civilian presence in Afghanistan, which will require a huge increase in the amount of security needed to look after those civilians. But State's bureau in charge of protecting its personnel is already stretched thin and the Afghanistan surge could only exacerbate its administrative and strategic shortfalls, according to a soon-to-be-released GAO report...
The bureau is strategically rudderless, overly reliant on contractors, and short on the skills needed to do the job, according to the new report, which will be the subject of a Senate hearing Wednesday.
"Although Diplomatic Security's workforce has grown considerably over the last 10 years, staffing shortages in domestic offices and other operational challenges -- such as inadequate facilities, language deficiencies, experience gaps, and balancing security needs with State's diplomatic mission -- further tax its ability to implement all of its missions," the report states.
So, of the features that President Obama talked about that were meant to sell the escalation to the American public - it's not an open-ended commitment, it's not nation-building, we hit the exit ramp in 18 months, there'll be a civilian surge - none of them are shaping up to be true.
Who's putting who on here? Is the Pentagon bamboozling President Obama? Or are the Pentagon and President Obama together trying to bamboozle us?