US general makes key speech on Afghanistan
Updated on 01 October 2009
The White House situation room heard an urgent debate this week over the future conduct of America and Britain's most pressing military issue, the war in Afghanistan. The man at the centre of the debate speaks in London this morning.
General Stanley McChrystal's review of the war makes grim reading, he holds out the real possibility of failure if remedial action is not taken swiftly.
It is a failure that would not just impact on Afghanistan but potentially on the future of Nato as well because McChrystal isn't just the US Commander in Afghanistan but Nato's too.
The options on the table are:
- The counter insurgency approach. Protect the Afghan people from the Taliban as the number one priority. Win them over. Deny the Taliban what Mao would have called 'the water in which they swim'. On the plus side this worked in Iraq albeit heavily supplemented by deals with former Sunni insurgents. On the minus side it requires a major surge of troops to an increasingly unpopular war.
- The counter terror approach. Concentrate on the bad guys; Al Quaeda and the Taliban. Go after them ruthlessly. Don't try to build a nation on Afghanistan's shifting sands. The argument for this approach is that it looks more focussed and acheivable, it is said to have powerful supporters in the shape of the Vice President Joe Biden and the White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel. But this is closer to what the US has already been doing and it hasn't been a resounding success so far.
Well any hints about how much he hopes to see from the British end of things of course, and how much he is pressuring the other Nato allies to pull their weight.
Reassurance perhaps about the US military's view of the UK effort in Afghanistan (some American 'brass' had criticised our contribution in Iraq) and his overall tone will be carefully analysed. Is it getting worse? Are we 'losing'? Can we still 'win'?
And of most immediate concern to many in Britain, how much worse will it get before it gets better? What further sacrifice may be required?
