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...Stanley McChrystal's grim assessment of the situation on the ground and his request for reinforcements, Obama has spent the past two months - as U.S. deaths in Afghanistan have reached historic highs - weighing the wisdom of both decisions. In Washington, backers of McChrystal and his manpower-intensive counterinsurgency strategy say delaying the dispatch of reinforcements endangers the mission, but those who are more skeptical of the military's ability to turn the situation around praise Obama's methodical approach, in hopes it will prevent Afghanistan from becoming another Vietnam. (Watch a slideshow of the war in Afghanistan...
...Some top logistics officers say moving additional U.S. forces to Afghanistan is a slow process and needs to start as soon as possible if U.S. forces are to be in place for next spring's expected Taliban offensive. "Even if the President orders 40,000 troops to Afghanistan tomorrow, we can't fly everything into the theater," an officer said on condition of anonymity. "It's 45 days from the U.S. to Pakistan [by sea], and then another two weeks over land into Afghanistan." Some military officers say privately that a quick, forceful decision creates its own momentum toward success...
...Pentagon officials acknowledge a "mild case of heartburn" over the delay, but they like the idea of the "political buy-in" it will represent once Obama decides. Still, they wish the issue hadn't achieved such a high profile. The Obama White House, they say, brought much of this upon itself with its running tally of (now seven) top-level, top-secret meetings, including the attendees and topics being discussed in the media. The Administration compounded its problems by asking McChrystal for his assessment after only 60 days in Afghanistan, well before all the 21,000 U.S. troops ordered there...
...While the wisdom of such lengthy study is subject to debate, not so the reality of the calendar. Time is either an ally or a foe of any commander. "You may have the watches," the Taliban like to say, "but we have the time." No one knows that as well as McChrystal. "Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) - while Afghan security capacity matures - risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible," he wrote on Aug. 30. If, as some at the Pentagon expect, Obama won't decide...
...Critics also believe the idea is motivated by political opportunism. With regional elections looming next March, leftist politicians and pundits say the government is using the national-identity theme to appeal to the right-wing Le Pen voters who flocked to Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign once he began promising to get tough on crime and immigration. Le Pen's daughter Marine, the FN vice president, has voiced a similar accusation. "This country is suffering a major crisis of identity that is driving it into chaos," she told the Europe 1 radio station on Oct. 28. "We've been denied...