McCaffrey: Obama’s speech was great -- and we’re stuck

Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Tuesday, December 8, 2009 - 11:29 AM Share

Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, reporting back from a trip to Afghanistan, comes to an interesting if contradictory conclusion:

The President's Afghanistan Strategy Speech at West Point was coherent, logical, and sincere. It was the end result of a very deliberative and thoughtful analytical review of the situation in Afghanistan and our several unpalatable options. ... This was not a speech on military strategy. We are unlikely to achieve our political and military goals in 18 months. This will inevitably become a three to ten year strategy to build a viable Afghan state with their own security force that can allow us to withdraw. It may well cost us an additional $300 billion and we are likely to suffer thousands more US casualties.

Ai yi yi.

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NORWEGIAN SHOOTER

3:59 PM ET

December 9, 2009

Tom, were you dithering all that time before Obama's speech?

I hope you're waiting for publication on an article for FP or somebody else, cause a couple hundred words on some weird meta reaction to the speech didn't take but a few minutes to write.

And how about a restatement or reassessment of your dithering charge? It seems many weeks were spent getting the military to work out the absolute fastest deployment schedule that they could come up with.

What about the 2011 withdrawal date? Ploy or serious commitment?

And NATO's contribution? Afghanistan is still the number one military issue out there, why the relative silence?

 

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2:58 AM ET

December 11, 2009

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Thomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military for the Washington Post from 2000 through 2008.

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