I Never Would Have Guessed...

By Cernig

Now that the Surge is over and the US is withdrawing troops, perhaps preparatory to leaving the Iraqis to their own devices at Iraqi insistence, it will finally be possible to send additional troops to Afghanistan. But troops alone won't be enough, according to the commander on the ground.

... a different type of surge is needed in Afghanistan, said Gen. David McKiernan, the top NATO commander there.

"There is no magic number of soldiers that are needed on the ground to win this campaign," McKiernan said in an exclusive interview with CNN. "What we need is security of the people. We need governance. We need reconstruction and development."

No s**t, Sherlock. Governance, reconstruction and development are what's mostly been missing in Iraq too. Which is why there are so many disaffected armed groups seriously contemplating raising up levels of violence again and why the Green Zone elite are more interested in using the apparatus of the State to secure their own sinecures and line their own pockets.

Afghanistan is also complicated by the massive drug growing and trafficking industry there - to say nothing about the intractable problem of Pakistani safe havens, which going "across the border" after will not solve but instead only spread the war.

At least Obama had the sense to realise this early. His policy called for far more reconstruction and a change of emphasis in Pakistan's aid to less military money and more for poverty reduction long before McCain looked at an Atlas and realised Iraq doesn't border Afghanistan.

Not that the media will give Obama credit for that good judgement, they're too intent on their Dewey=Obama and Truman=McSame narrative.