A few weeks ago, the rumor emanating from the White House was that President Obama might approve as few as 10,000 to 20,000 additional troops for Afghanistan. Now the rumor I’ve been hearing is that he will approve more than 30,000 — still considerably short of the 40,000 or so that General McChrystal would like but a lot better than the lowball alternatives being aired earlier. This McClatchy newspapers article flatly reports that the president plans to send 34,000 more troops. This New York Times article claims, no doubt correctly, that no actual decision has been made but that the president is considering three options: “Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s request for roughly another 40,000 troops; a middle scenario sending about 30,000 more troops; and a lower alternative involving 20,000 to 25,000 reinforcements.”

As anyone familiar with the ways of Washington will know, the president almost always chooses the “middle option.” Indeed aides sometimes game the process with, as insiders like to joke, the “high” option being nuclear war, the “low” option being unilateral disarmament, and the “middle” option being whatever the president’s advisers favor. Given this reality, there has been an interesting and subtle redefinition of the middle option going on. Under General McChrystal’s troop request, 40,000 was the middle of the road, moderate-risk option; 60,000 troops was the low-risk option, and 20,000 troops was the high-risk option. If the Times article is accurate, the White House has arbitrarily made McChrystal’s request the high-end estimate and added a third option that’s higher than his low-end request but lower than his middle option. Presumably this is so that Obama can tell his liberal base that he didn’t just “cave” in to what the generals wanted, though why the president should be afraid of “rubber-stamping” a request from his handpicked commander in the field isn’t clear.

I would be more comfortable if the president were to give General McChrystal at least 40,000 troops, but if he does approve at least 30,000, that will enable the general to implement a good deal of his counterinsurgency strategy, albeit with more risk than should be necessary for the troops involved.

Logistics in any case present a limiting factor on how many troops we can flow in. Extra troops are available, especially as the size of the force in Iraq shrinks from 116,000 today to 50,000 by August 2010. But Afghanistan’s infrastructure is so primitive — there are not enough runways, not enough logistics hubs, not enough forward-operating bases, not enough concrete, not enough computer connections — that it is likely that only 20,000 additional troops could be accommodated by next summer. The full request of 40,000 troops could take as long as 18 months to implement. So at least for the summer fighting season in 2010, General McChrystal should have as many additional troops as he can handle.

That’s assuming, of course, that the president announces his long-delayed decision before long, as it takes time to get troops moving and into position. It is imperative also that he not make this a perfunctory announcement but rather goes on the stump, as he has for health-care reform, to make clear to the American people — and just as important, to the rest of the world — that he is foursquare behind the war effort and will commit the resources needed to prevail.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, November 8th, 2009 at 10:30 AM and is filed under Contentions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.