McCain will call for a surge of troops to Afghanistan

[DixieBelle]

An adviser to the campaign told The New York Sun that, in a speech to be delivered in Albuquerque, N.M., the senator will call for an increase in combat troops and the creation of a special Afghanistan tsar to coordinate policy toward the country. "There will be a surge for Afghanistan. It will be moving combat troops in and applying the lessons from Iraq and the strategy that was successful in Iraq and taking that to Afghanistan," this official said.

Mr. McCain has been reluctant to discuss in public what he would do with Afghanistan's neighbor, Pakistan, where reserve Taliban fighters in the tens of thousands are said to reside unmolested in safe havens created after the Pakistani national army stopped fighting a counterinsurgency in these tribal areas. Mr. McCain has said he will not telegraph what his strategy would be as commander in chief toward this sensitive diplomatic and military problem.

Senator Obama has since August 2007 called for the deployment of at least two additional brigades to Afghanistan and has said he will work to cajole the Pakistani military into fighting again.

Mr. Obama's Afghanistan policy was referenced in an op-ed piece by Mr. Obama in the New York Times that reiterated the Democrat's pledge to begin the withdrawal of all combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office. Mr. Obama appeared to be moving away from that stance earlier this month when he announced he would be visiting Iraq to meet with military commanders there, and would be refining his earlier position based on their input.

Mr. Obama has not called his plan for Afghanistan a "surge," the term the White House used for the deployment of more than 30,000 troops to Iraq in 2007. But the idea of an Afghan surge was first broached by a Republican rival of Mr. McCain during the primaries, Mayor Giuliani, who called in early January at a speech in New Hampshire for doubling the number of troops in Afghanistan. At the time there were 25,000 American troops in the country. Today there are approximately 33,000 troops in Afghanistan, compared to more than 150,000 in Iraq.

SNIP
http://www.nysun.com/national/mccain-will-call-for-a-surge-of-troops/81861/

[NHSparky]

Sorry, but nothing in Afghanistan will truly improve for any length of time until we pull out the stops and go into Pakistan, with or without that government's blessing (I should hope with, but not much chance of that).  We know where they are.  We know how many.  WTF are we doing putting our people in harm's way when AlQ has a safe haven 60 miles over the border in Warziristan province?  Someone tell Musharaff that he either plays ball with us or he gets the bat up his ass, already!

[DumbAss Tanker]

I tend to agree with you there, Sparky.