A Rookie Mistake

Ed at HotAir gives us a summary of this scathing WaPo story about how Obama was and is in over his head with the Afghan war and how to fight it:

For two years, Obama campaigned on changing the strategy in Afghanistan to a more effective counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy, claiming that the Bush administration had dropped the ball in the Af-Pak theater in large part by not committing the resources needed for an effective battle plan (an assessment shared by John McCain). On taking office, Obama quickly increased troop levels in Afghanistan and appointed COIN strategist Gen. Stanley McChrystal to lead the mission.

However, the Post reports that Obama and his team never understood the implications of his demand for the new strategy. McChrystal’s assessment of the needs for his COIN plan sent them into “sticker shock,” according to one Post source in the White House.


After two years of campaigning on this new strategy and eight months of ordering it as Commander in Chief, Barack Obama now has to make up his mind what he meant? It was the single most important issue on the war during the general campaign, thanks to the sharp improvement in Iraq that Obama predicted would never happen. He had hundreds of military officers and foreign-policy experts advising him on this issue — and none of them apparently ever taught the young candidate what COIN actually entailed.

I think we can rest assured that John McCain would not have made this mistake. We elect a rookie, a rookie is what we get.

And this may explain why our soldiers in Afghanistan are depressed and disillusioned.