I'm also worried that we might be trying to achieve too much in Afghanistan. My hopes for Afghanistan are really limited to preventing it from becoming a launching pad for terrorist attacks against us.
So Admiral Mullen makes me worry a bit and makes me feel a bit better, too.
On troops, the numbers seem to keep going up:
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that between 20,000 and 30,000 additional U.S. troops could be sent to Afghanistan to bolster the 31,000 already there.
Sixty-one thousand? I have nightmares of the Stalingrad pocket at worst. Or maybe just Bastogne that works out in the end.
But on strategy and objectives, I feel much better:
But the chairman conceded that the U.S. may have misjudged the central government's ability "to have the kind of impact that we wanted."
Afghanistan, Mullen said, has never been run by a strong central government, and the U.S. may look to communities and tribes in the country's provinces to take on a greater role in future strategy.
He called U.S. goals in Afghanistan "moderate," and said the long-term U.S. vision is for a country that can govern itself while respecting international law, while providing both material and economic security for its people.
So there you go. On the objectives front, I think we're on the right track. As long as our Afghanistan surge is just temporary to achieve specific missions of knocking down the tribes that still feel like making trouble, we could draw down again with decentralized security taking hold in the theoretical country of Afghanistan.
UPDATE: President Karzai also states something I've wanted to see about our surge to Afghanistan:
Karzai's office said in a statement that Mullen told the president the new troops would be sent to insecure regions, particularly along the Pakistan border.
Since much of our Afghanistan problem is actually a Pakistan problem, I've long wanted efforts to control the border better.
