The Redhunter

CNN has additional information:

The new troop deployment is expected to include 8,000 Marines from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, as well as 4,000 additional Army troops from Fort Lewis, Washington....

Another 5,000 troops will be deployed at a later date to support combat troops, bringing the total to 17,000 the Defense Department said. A senior administration official confirmed the total.

The Obama administration has been conducting several reviews of U.S. policy in Afghanistan, including a review by Gen. David Petraeus, the commander in the region. The president and the Pentagon have been considering a request from the top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, to send as many as 30,000 additional troops....

All 17,000 troops announced Tuesday will go to the southern region of the country where Afghanistan borders Pakistan, with the goal mainly being to stop the flow of foreign fighters, according to a U.S. military official with direct knowledge of the deployment and military plans for Afghanistan.

Another story on CNN provides details of their mission, none of which will be terribly surprising to regular readers of this blog:

1. The increased troop levels expected to last at minimum three to four years.

2. Obama authorized 17K, 12K will get orders soon, another 5K of support troops will get their orders at a later date.

3. The additional troops will ALL go to Afghanistan's southern border region with Pakistan. The aim is primarily (but not solely) to begin to stop the flow of foreign fighters across that border.

4. The US troops will be dual purpose: combat and also training afghan army units. But at least another 2,000 US troops needed specifically for the training mission.

5. The concept of operations by the US military: build a new string of forward operating bases (main base areas) and combat outposts (smaller posts in towns and villages like you saw in Iraq)...troops will move around...engaging in both counter terrorism (fighting foreign fighters essentially) and counter insurgency (fighting basic taliban and insurgents inside the country....including the so-called 'day hires' that join the Taliban just for money.

6. Goal: to have enough troops to 'seize and hold' territory...and maintain basic security in an ever broadening area -there simply haven't been enough troops to hold ground.

7. Taliban continue (as we have said since nov) to maintain at least half a dozen safe haven areas inside Afghanistan. these are prime target areas for US.

Excellent on all counts. The President has apparently signed on for the long term. As I wrote in Afghanistan and the Long War, we've got to realize that insurgencies are not World War II, which was relatively short but intensely violent. If we want to win in Afghanistan, and I think it in our vital national interests to do so, we must accept that it will take decades to win there. This does not mean the same level of effort the entire time, because again it's not World War II. It will require relatively significant forces for awhile, but as we make progress we can slowly draw down and hand things over to the Afghans.

Rejecting the "Minimalist" Approach

The President has rejected the "minimalist" approach advocated by some in his administration. Bill Gertz of The Washington Times has the scoop

According to two U.S. government sources close to the issue, senior policymakers were divided over how comprehensive to make the strategy, involving an initial boost of 17,000 U.S. troops.

On the one side were Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Deputy Secretary of State James B. Steinberg, who argued in closed-door meetings for a minimal strategy of stabilizing Afghanistan that one source described as a "lowest common denominator" approach.

The goal of these advocates was to limit civilian and other nonmilitary efforts in Afghanistan and focus on a main military objective of denying safe haven to the Taliban and al Qaeda terrorists.

The other side of the debate was led by Richard C. Holbrooke, the special envoy for the region, who along with U.S. Central Command leader Gen. David H. Petraeus and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton fought for a major nation-building effort.

The Holbrooke-Petraeus-Clinton faction, according to the sources, prevailed. The result is expected to be a major, long-term military and civilian program to reinvent Afghanistan from one of the most backward, least developed nations to a relatively prosperous democratic state.

It is absolutely predictable that our dope of a vice president was on the wrong side of the issue. A few years ago his solution for Iraq was to split it into three countries, a plan that had the dubious distinction of being opposed by virtually everybody in Iraq.

But Is It Enough?

I don't know. On the one hand, Senator McCain doesn't think so, and we need to remember that he was mostly right on Iraq

Sen. John McCain Friday denounced President Obama's new plan for sending more troops to Afghanistan, saying it was "not enough" and suggesting the president should have been clearer that there will be more troop casualties....

Mr. McCain said he'd send three additional brigades, or around 40,000 additional troops, and suggested a 250,000-person Afghan army instead of the 134,000-strong army the administration aims for.

The Republican said while he appreciates allies who are helping with the effort, some allies have "almost laughable" restrictions on where they will operate. For example, German troops won't go south in the region, he said.

Good point on how our "allies" virtually betrayed us when Bush was on office, and show no signs of doing the right thing now. As I mentioned above, I am not in a position to know if the troop numbers Obama is sending will be sufficient.

We also have these good points from an emailer to The Weekly Standard

The speech was classic Obama -- all show no substance. He announces 17,000 combat troops in a press release but announces 4,000 traniers in a big ceremony. He accepts the Bush level for the ANA [Afghan National Army] when McCain called for at least doubling it last summer. [General David] McKiernan has called for 30,000 troops and candidate Obama said he would get them. President Obama shortchanges the commander he said he would support.

Obama spoke about defeating AQ but not about defeating the Taliban. Obama may have rejected the Biden-Steinberg minimalist path to defeat but he chose a Holbrookian keep options open NOT a Petreaus security first counterinsurgecy strategy. He spoke in platitudes about Afghan governance, counternarcotics, and Pakistan's need to do more on counterterror but offered not a single specific on how to get there. Instead he uses Afghanistan to push his opening to Iran -- as if Iran wants to see the us succeed in Afghanistan so a pro-American, democratic ally is on Tehran'ss eastern border. This is lowest common denominator consensus policy that will not lead to success in Afghanistan.

On the other side, Frederick Kagan and Bill Kristol (the latter the evil neocon publisher of The Weekly Standard are on board with Obama's plan and are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Myself, I'm just going to have to wait until I read more until I can say with certainty. We'll also how this plays out and if Obama really does commit significantly more resources to Afghanistan, or whether his speech was all for show. In the meantime I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Sunday Update

Two trustworthy and unbiased writers on military affairs, Thomas Joscelyn & Bill Roggio, provide some analysis over at The Long War Journal. Make sure you follow the link and read the whole thing, but here are a few tidbits

It is difficult to see how a boost in military and economic support will push Pakistan into taking on Islamist extremists head on. Here, the devil is in the details, and few details are forthcoming at this time...

Afghanistan certainly needs additional forces, and it can be argued that the 24,000 additional troops is too little to achieve positive results quickly. But the troop surge will have a positive impact...

The training partnership model has worked well where it can be implemented, and the additional trainers should serve as force multipliers in allowing the Afghan security forces to shoulder a greater responsibility for security...

The increase in the size of the Afghan Army and police will likely still be insufficient to secure Afghanistan, but the increase in Afghan forces is needed...The Army and police will need to be even larger than the 2011 goal; some estimates indicate there needs to be more than 400,000 members in the Afghan security forces for them to ultimately secure the country and fight the insurgency....

A reconciliation program has been open and underway in Afghanistan for years. The program has pulled thousands of low-level Taliban fighters and leaders away from the insurgency.

This continued effort may peel away additional low-level Taliban members. But the US and Coalition leaders should avoid looking for easy solutions to ending the insurgency such as looking for high-level insurgent leaders or large groups of fighters to pry away....

Their take is generally positive, I think.

Monday Update

The editors of National Review are generally happy, but wish Obama had gone farther:

The Afghan war has always been under-resourced, in terms of U.S. troops and everything else, and Obama has begun to change that....

What is disturbing about Obama's position is the hint of hedging. Commanding general David McKiernan had asked for more troops. Obama approved only part of his request, preferring to wait and make a call on the balance later. But with a tough summer of fighting ahead, it will get politically harder, not easier, to deploy more troops. Obama declined to explicitly endorse an expensive doubling of Afghan security forces today, as some in his administration have advocated, saying only further "increases in Afghan forces may very well be necessary." And he talked of benchmarks for progress in the war, a politically seductive notion that proved useless at best -- and often counter-productive -- in the Iraq war.

In short, today was a start. But much will depend on how Obama performs later, when the Left is more restive and the politics of the war more parlous.

This post is getting long, but journalist-blogger Michael Yon's opinion is always worth considering:

The President's words were disappointing. He talked about our goal to reach a force level of 134,000 Afghan soldiers and 82,000 police by 2011. This is not even in the neighborhood of being enough. Further, the increase of 21,000 U.S. troops is likely just a bucket of water on the growing bonfire. One can only expect that sometime in 2010, the President will again be forced to announce another increase in U.S. forces in Afghanistan.