The NY Times has a pretty interesting look at the process by which Obama and his senior civilian and military advisors arrived at the planned escalation of troop strength in Afghanistan. If you want some idea of what the administration’s strategy is in Afghanistan, this is probably as close as you’re going to get. What it makes clear is that Obama remains as focused on getting troops out of Afghanistan as he is getting them in, despite having come around to accepting the urgency of the situation. Though the conditions for withdrawal are obviously quite vague, and the administration is determined to hedge their bets, it’s clear there is no open-ended commitment to Afghanistan. If anything, it appears the administration’s strategy is focused on buying time for the Karzai administration to bolster it’s forces, but that they are willing to buy only so much time for the Afghan government. The article gives you the strong impression that Obama decided on a maximum commitment that we can make to Afghanistan in terms of money and manpower, and developed a strategy to take advantage of what we’re willing to give as quickly as possible. Which sounds great if-like me-you’re someone who believes that however “necessary” the war in Afghanistan is, there is an absolute limit to the amount of money we can spend and the amount of casualties our military can endure. At the same time, it’s going to be awfully difficult politically for the Obama administration to start pulling those forces out if Afghanistan is mired in similar circumstances to the ones that it exist today, and it’s going to be awfully tempting to stretch those deployments beyond what was initially planned for. Given an inch of wiggle room in the withdrawal strategy, and it’s going to be hard not to take a mile, especially when there’s no appreciable Afghanistan “awakening” on the horizon.

Anyway, it’s a good read. Check it out.