December 8th, 2009 by Jason

Ambassador Eikenberry and General McChrystal are on the Hill today testifying before the Armed Services Committees in both the House and Senate. They will continue to flesh out the new Afghan strategy in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee tomorrow and in the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Secretary Gates has arrived in Afghanistan on an unannounced trip, reports Laura Rozen. According to Rozen, Gates has “downplayed the need for a full-scale shake up of the Afghan government, while pledging to press for Afghan president Hamid Karzai to appoint some ‘honest’ ministers.” Roger Cohen calls the announcement of a troop drawdown  ”not a bad way to pressure President Hamid Karzai to get with the program.”

In The New York Times, James Danly speaks from personal experience about the importance of “full-fledged partnership” between local security forces and American soldiers to create a professional, competent Afghan military. Meanwhile, Al Arabiya reports that Karzai has admitted Afghanistan will not be able to fund its own security forces for the next 15-20 years. Also speaking from personal experience as an Army officer, Jonathan Vaccaro laments the cumbersome military and civilian bureaucracies that constrict America’s ability to act nimbly on the ground.

Katrina Vanden Heuvel at The Nation argues the U.S. should focus on economic development, as the counterinsurgency strategy prescribes, as opposed to military action. According to Spencer Ackerman, the U.S. has shifted away from nation-building in favor of “more fulsome development work.” In response, Michael Cohen questions Ackerman’s definition of nation-building, arguing the U.S. is seeking to “deeply embed itself in the country’s economic development, governance, infrastructure and security efforts.”

Reflecting on the human toll of the Afghan and Iraq wars, Richard Cohen concludes, “we all know the Taliban are misogynist thugs aligned with al-Qaeda - and all that is bad. But what we don’t know is whether any of that is worth the life we see on the nightly news or read about in the newspaper.”

Posted in Afghanistan, Congress, Democracy Promotion, Foreign Aid, Iraq, Military, Multilateralism, Reform, Taliban, US foreign policy, US politics, al-Qaeda |