Afghanistan: Time to Rethink the Timeline

James Phillips / June 25, 2010

President Obama has stated that his decision to relieve Gen. Stanley McChrystal and replace him with Gen. David Petraeus is a change of personnel, but not of policy.  But many analysts believe that a change of policy is also in order.

Daniel Serwer, Vice President of the Centers for Peacebuilding Innovation at the U.S. Institute of Peace, today wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post which advised President Obama to clearly state his desired end state for Afghanistan and adopt a more realistic timeframe for attaining his goal.  Otherwise, Serwer warns, the administration’s strategy for negotiating a political settlement in Afghanistan could end up turning Afghanistan into another Lebanon, an unstable state that has fallen increasingly under the sway of Hezbollah, a radical Islamist organization similar to the Taliban that represses human rights, unleashes terrorism and remains virulently hostile to U.S. interests.

One of the major takeaways from the Rolling Stone article that led to General McChrystal’s dismissal was the tremendous frustration of many high-ranking military officers in Afghanistan (not just McChrystal) with the Obama Administration’s artificial timeline for beginning a troop withdrawal by July 2011.  As Heritage Foundation national security expert James Carafano wrote yesterday, “timelines need to be set based on the situation on the ground, not the political calendar in Washington. You don’t get your allies to stand shoulder to shoulder with you by threatening to abandon them.” (more…)