Word: afghanistans
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...grapple with the war he inherited, President Obama has made several important changes. He and Gates fired the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan in May, replacing him with General Stanley McChrystal, who is currently in the middle of a 60-day assessment of how to turn the Afghan war around. Obama is dispatching an additional 21,000 U.S. troops there this year, bringing the total to 68,000 by 2010. His commanders recently ordered 4,000 Marines into Helmand province to begin the long process of "clear, hold and build" - driving the Taliban out of its strongholds, staying there...
...punches. "It's very clear we haven't put the money in to win, we haven't put the troops in to win, and we haven't given the Afghan security forces the resources to win," Cordesman told TIME on July 22. His 28-page study, titled "The Afghanistan Campaign: Can We Win?," raises strong doubts about Washington's willingness to do what he thinks is needed to prevail. Its conclusion is bleak: "The odds of success are not yet good, and failure is all too real a possibility." And Cordesman isn't some ivory-tower critic - he recently returned...
...additional U.S. troops) over the coming year. "This is an American-led war, and large increases in U.S. military forces will be needed to win it," he writes. Yet such troop hikes will only further unnerve those in Congress - especially Democrats - who fear that Afghanistan could become Obama's Vietnam...
Gates and other Americans eager to see rapid progress in Afghanistan need to know that turning the situation around - even with added troops and money - will require "lasting strategic patience," says Cordesman. Even then, they may want to recalibrate their expectations. "Many aspects of the progress required can only move at an Afghan pace," Cordesman writes, "and must be achieved on Afghan terms." But the question of whether America has the patience to maintain its commitment on such an extended time frame is precisely what has Gates worried...
Watch a video on the challenge for the U.S. military in Afghanistan...