WASHINGTON, D.C. – According to a recent leak from CBS News, General McChrystal is leaning toward requesting a range of troop levels, depending upon the risk the Pentagon is willing to take. In a column released today, Senior Fellow Lawrence Korb urges the Obama administration, and the Pentagon, to give Afghanistan priority over Iraq when it comes to troop deployment.
Read full column by Lawrence Korb, In Afghanistan, Do What We Must, here.
“Here we go again. Newly appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, explained on December 11, 2007 that he and Secretary of Defense Gates were ignoring General Dan McNeill’s urgent request for 50,000 more troops in Afghanistan and allowing the situation to deteriorate because, "In Afghanistan, we do what we can. In Iraq, we do what we must."
Now as the security situation in Afghanistan continues to go downhill, Secretary Gates said on August 13, 2009 that he wants the current U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General Stan McChrystal, to ask for what he thinks he needs in the way of troops, but he still believes that the U.S. troop presence in Iraq remains a limiting factor on any additional deployments.
Not only are Gates and Mullen’s positions strategically unsound—they are the exact opposite of what President Obama said during the campaign. If the United States does not have enough troops to wage two wars, why would we give priority to Iraq over Afghanistan? The war in Iraq was a war of choice, as Ted Sorensen correctly noted, "a mindless, needless, senseless war," but Afghanistan is a war of necessity. Even President Bush admitted that Iraq posed no imminent threat to the United States.
It is time for President Obama to tell the Pentagon that it is in Afghanistan that we do what we must, and in Iraq that we do what we can. If we had done that in 2007, the Taliban would not be controlling so much of Afghanistan, Pakistan would be more stable, and Iraq would be just as it is today: A factionalized state whose leaders still have not made the compromises necessary to share political and economic power and where security forces still are loyal to their tribes or sect rather than the nation. Peter, Paul and Mary put it well when they warned us some 40 years ago, "when will they ever learn?"
Read full column by Lawrence Korb, In Afghanistan, Do What We Must, here.
To speak with Lawrence Korb, please contact Suzi Emmerling at 202-481-8224 or [email protected]
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