[Girlene]

I just don't get the point of this strategy. Forcing your soldiers/Marines to "win the hearts and minds" of local Afghani's by putting their own lives at so much risk seems suicidal to me. I don't know if this is primarily McChrystal's initiative or the obama administration's.

From your link, smooth, it appears Karl Eikenberry, U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, "had misgivings about sending in new troops while there are still so many questions about the leadership of Afghan President Hamid Karzai." .....and so....we get the dithering.

Also from the article: "With the Taliban-led insurgency expanding in size and ability, U.S. military strategy already has shifted to focus on heading off the fighters and protecting Afghan civilians. The evolving U.S. policy, already remapped early in Obama's tenure, increasingly acknowledges that the insurgency can be blunted but not defeated outright by force."

????!!!!

[smoothsailing]

I think the strategy that Obama seeks is the one that offers the least opportunity for victory. Any display of American Exceptionalism threatens his plan to diminish and demean the U.S.

He’s far more interested in domestic social engineering here at home. Afghanistan is an impediment to his domestic agenda and his unfettered expansion of centralized government. Promoting Afghanistan as the “good” war served him well during the ‘08 campaign, but now that he’s in office, it no longer interests him. It never really did.